Red Jacket (34 page)

Groaning Towards the Spirit

After lunch the women return to The Xooana to change for the graduation ceremony, while the men go to be further briefed on arrangements for security.

Upstairs, Grace is unsteady on her feet because of the pain. As she shoves her door hard to open it, she notices that the blister now covers almost all her upraised hand. It has acquired black spots, and the itching has turned into soreness. The blister and spots make her think of jiggers, though, what with the size of the bubble of skin, they'd have to be gigantic! Once when she was maybe eight or so, Ma used her slimmest needle to pick a female jigger, swollen with eggs, from under her second toe. She explained to Grace that you had to remove the whole creature in one piece, for if the eggs escaped, each one would plant itself, lay its own eggs, and eventually the heap of jigger fleas chomping away would devour your foot, leaving only bone. Sort of like the AIDS virus injecting its DNA into healthy cells, spreading as they multiply.

“It's the way with nature, Grace.” Ma held the miniscule creature up against the light. “Everything fix on growing and making itself again, groaning like Romans say towards the life of the Spirit. Everything, jiggers included.” Even then, Grace thought that peculiar. How could her mother see flesh-eating fleas as nature “groaning towards the life of the Spirit?” Might HIV/AIDS be a manifestation of that groaning towards the Spirit too?

As she steps into her room, she trips on the carpet and falls flat. When she tries to get up, she can't move. At that point she admits what she's known all along. These are no jiggers. These are symptoms that all WHO personnel are familiar with, manifestations of a macabre disease, the stuff of science fiction. Jiggers, even giant ones, she'd be grateful for. She can't face this. She closes her eyes, falls asleep instantly and dreams that Jimmy is showing Jeremiah how to fly a kite which gently lifts them both aloft into a dark sky out of which grow ground orchids in purple, pink, and orange. Jeremiah is about to put one in his mouth. Her impulse to stop him wakes her up long enough to drag herself to the bed, where she collapses again. Pain is ravaging her hand. Trust Papa God! Her shining moment, and she's going to die right in the middle of it! Punishment no doubt for saying she has more brains in her little finger than God has in his head. It's all on account of a finger; one tiny digit has given mortal offense. She thinks of Pa, envies his placid stump.

She's dreaming again, making her way through snow falling in plump, heavy flakes that are warm to the touch. She is crying, tears and nose-nought mixing up with snowflakes on her face to make a kind of elemental mush. Now and then, she takes the sleeve of her down jacket and swipes the sticky mess. Not so smart, for the jacket's material, whatever it is, can't absorb any of the stuff, so her face is wet, and pale green slime streaks the sleeves.

Standing on the sidewalk waiting to cross Baldwin and walk the short distance to Beloved, she slips and nearly drops in front of a car making its way around the corner. A big, tall, white skinhead man puts out his hand and catches her, and she looks up into mismatched eyes, one grey and one green.

“You all right?” he asks.

She can't smile, can't talk, so she nods her head, swift bobs up and down. The man looks around, not sure what to do, maybe trying to find somewhere to take her, or someone to help him, and she realizes he's still holding her up. He's starting to speak when Maisie, all in white — mink coat, Gucci purse, and boots — emerges out of curtains of snow, a glittering goddess, commanding the space on the sidewalk, grabbing Grace, smiling, and saying, “Many thanks. I'll take care of her.”

Maisie is a strong woman — just as well, for she is able to sling one arm around Grace, and use it to steady her and keep her on her feet. The warm, close human body is a comfort, and the familiar smell of Maisie's perfume, French, expensive, over-proof, Belle Mademoiselle, or Jolie Madame, or something, marches into her nostrils with such firm strides that it wakes her up.

The bubble now covers the hand beside her on the bed and is making its way up her arm. Underneath feels like soup. It's not itching any more, only hurting worse than labour pains, worse than toothache, worse than any hurt she has ever felt in her life. Her body is full of awareness, every cell responding to an alarm bell, a siren, a wailing korchi. She can feel the spaces between nerve endings in her brain, and she knows the moment of knowing, the vibration of the old word, “korchi,” as it leaps across her synapses. She must get up and force herself down the hall to their door. Mona is there changing for the ceremony. The woman is no fool, she who called and invited Grace to join them for sherry, who asked about Jeremiah, who retired to change the wine-sprinkled sari. Grace recalls how she'd looked at the two of them when she came back outside.

She's about to knock when the door opens to reveal Mona, regal in purple, dark hair falling around her like a silk wrap.

“Grace! What's wrong? You look awful.”

“I'm in dreadful pain, and my arm is doing something peculiar. Look. I think I'm really ill, so you, you should probably stay far from me.” She knows that probably won't do any good — except perhaps persuade Mona Blackman she's a thoughtful person. “Could you call an ambulance, please? I'll wait in my room till it comes.” The last thing she hears is Mona shouting, “Mark!” as she crumples in the doorway.

Your Cheating Heart …

Having come back from the graduation ceremony by six o'clock, Mark and Mona are sitting, quiet, in their room at The Xooana, which is dark and cool. She asks for an update on the murdered minister, but there is no word on him. The curfew is still on, and the security situation is much the same.

Mark thinks he'd better get on with it. “So, aren't you going to say anything?”

“Anything like what, Mark?”

“Anything like anything, Mona.”

“Okay. Anything.”

“You sound like a child playing a game.”

“And who has been behaving like a child playing a game, Chancellor?”

“Me, I suppose?”

“Throw a stone into a pig pen, the one that go
quee-quee
, is him it lick.”

“If I'm a pig, then that child is my piglet. If he isn't, I have a pig double somewhere in the universe.”

“Mark, that's such an endearing admission of adultery.”

“Mona, we been married a long time. You're as familiar as my own bad breath.”

“Thank you. You're Prince Charming this evening.”

“That's how I'm certain you been on to this thing from the start. All along I had a feeling, though, honestly, I've no idea how you could have found out.”

“You listening to yourself? I need to be sure I'm hearing what you're saying.”

“I know very well what I'm saying. I'm saying you knew about Grace and me. Not that there's very much to know.”

“If you gave her a baby, there's enough to know.”

“That's all there was to it. I suspect you knew about the child too.”

“Don't you think you've got hold of the wrong end of the stick?”

“I'm not dealing with any stick.”

“You quit that then? Good. Glad to hear it.”

“Grace, this is not a laughing matter.”

“I'm not Grace, Mark. I'm Mona.”

He fumbles. She doesn't pause. “That makes it even less of a laughing matter. I thought I knew men from these islands pretty well. I thought I knew you very well, but you manage to astound me. You've just found out you have a child, just admitted you've been unfaithful, and just seen your baby-mother go off to hospital looking like she's at death's door, and all you can say is the child looks so much like you he must be yours, and you've no idea how I could've found out about your infidelity?”

“They're the first two things that came to mind, so I said them. What's wrong with that?”

“Nothing at all wrong with saying what's on your mind. But I'd have hoped those thoughts might have taken second place to expressions of concern for even one of the three people I've mentioned. Jeremiah is four years old. He doesn't know he has a papa, and, never mind that Grace has been raising him without letting you know that he exists, you may jolly well end up being his only parent. I won't bother to go on about the gravity of her present circumstances, and I'll resist making any comment about where I stand in all this.”

“You stand where you've always stood.”

“No, Mark. That's where you're wrong. You're only just learning about it, but I've known that you were Jeremiah's father for over two years now. Jan Leighton called me and told me she'd met Jeremiah and his grandmother in Geneva at a luncheon put on by some Caribbean social group, and he was your dead stamp.”

“Trust your mouth-a-massy friend.”

“She doesn't like you either. So I went to see for myself and found out that my husband had not only been unfaithful, but he'd fathered another woman's child, conceived like spite after our baby dies, swatted like a fly in his sleep. Ergo, I am married to a Royal Rat — and I'm not talking about Reepicheep either.”

“Who the hell is that?”

“A mouse of noble lineage in the
Chronicles of Narnia
.”

“Oh, for the love of God! Not in the middle of this! Mona, let's cut the crap! We both know this isn't the first time I've been unfaithful.”

“Is that so?”

“You expected me to be celibate when you were looking at me like I was something that smelled bad every time I touched you?”

“Being celibate is not impossible, my village ram. Some men are celibate for their entire lives.”

“That's unnatural.”

“You sound like some born-again fundamentalist. Celibacy is old as man's belief in God: holy men of every tradition — monks, priests, shamans — are celibate.”

“They have a religious motivation. Marriage is about two people becoming one flesh. It's carnal. Your body abdicated a responsibility to mine.”

“Our baby had just died! It can't have been easy for you, and I'm sorry. But I was ill. I couldn't help myself. We've been through that.”

“Well, I couldn't help myself either.”

“If you say so. We're straying from the point.”

“Which of the many?”

“I'd have been reassured if your first thought had been for the child, or for the child's sick-unto-dying mother, or for me — somebody other than yourself.”

She goes to the bar. The lights are still off. “You want a drink?”

“No thanks, Mona. I want a clear head for this.”

“You'll permit me?” She pours herself a glass of rum.

“You don't plan to chase that?”

“Sipping it slow, like I've stepped slow finding my way through every day since Adam died. And it's just as well you're not drinking, what with calling me ‘Grace' when you're dead sober.”

“We're different in the way we use language. You use words precisely, and speak with lots of pauses, because you're organizing what you're going to say. I blurt things out. I submit that my excitement about the child — ”

“His name is Jeremiah.”

“... about Jeremiah looking so much like me is very much related to the fact that I'm concerned about him, that I will indeed be responsible for him, and take care of him, whether his mother dies or not. My anxiety to know how you found out — I repeat, not that there's much to find out — is related to the fact that I knew it wasn't something you'd be happy about, and like every good husband, wished to spare you distress.”

“Mark, you know, in a crude way, both those things make sense? I should probably be packing my bags and threatening to leave you, as I well might, in time. But you didn't see that woman's face at the door, or the balloon on her forearm; you didn't see her slither down that doorjamb. And you haven't been watching that little boy grow up over two years. He's funny and smart — ”

“I'm sure he's a fine child, and I'm very happy that you're so fond of him, but right now, I'm just keen to establish that, however it may have seemed to you, I wasn't just thinking about myself and why my attempts at sparing your feelings failed so miserably. I still can't figure out —”

“Don't push your luck, Chancellor. You're already way ahead of the game. He's a great youngster. His grandma takes care of him, and she and I like each other. If his mother dies, he can walk right into our lives. If his mother lives, it's a whole different kettle of fish. Which is not to say that I want her to die. But she's worked hard to keep you out of his life. If she refuses to name you as his father, are you going to press the matter? All this, assuming, of course, that the two of you don't choose to rush into each other's arms once you find out that it was I who purloined the letters that were intended to fan the the flames.”

“Thanks for telling me.”

“You're welcome. I brought them, if you want them.”

“Really?”

“Why not? I'm not going to fight to keep you, Mark. You need to make up your mind. And I may as well tell you. She called you at home from that African place, the one with the weeping stone that's been in the news these past couple years.”

“I think there's someone at the door, Mona.”

“I'll get it. Maybe it's news about Grace.”

He turns on a light as she moves to the door.

“Father Atule? How nice to meet you. Phyllis has told me all about you. Just a minute, please. Let me take off this chain. Do come in.”

“Hello, Dr. Blackman.”

“It's Mona. Please. I'm Trinidadian, God's most laid-back people.”

“I'm Jimmy. I think you know Jeremiah?”

“We do know each other. Hi, Jeremiah. You did very well at graduation, going to collect Mama's award.”

“With Tules. From him.” He points to Mark, standing by his chair, intent on the child holding the priest's hand.

“Yes, that's the person who gave it to you. He's my husband. His name is Mark. How are you doing?”

“Kidoki. Mama's sick. Grandma is at hospital 'cause Mama's sick!”

“I'm sorry. But your mama must be happy to have Grandma with her.”

The priest had walked up with the child to receive the award, a shell carved from pink marble, mounted on a base of granite, the mote in its lip a black pearl. The child was grave, courtly, saying, “Thank you, sir,” as he took the shell.

“Mona, would you to take Jeremiah for a walk downstairs, maybe around the pond in the atrium?”

The request strikes Mark as presumptuous, but he says nothing.

“I was about to say ‘the duck pond,' ” the priest continues, “but he insists there are swans.”

“There are, actually, statues of two swans,” Mona says, “I'd be happy to take him. It's lovely now. They turn the mood lighting on at six when happy hour starts and everyone deserts the atrium for the bar. We'll have it to ourselves.”

“Jeremiah, how'd you like to go and have a look at the swans?”

“Kidoki.”

“We'll see you in a while. Say, half an hour?”

“Half an hour would be good. Thanks very much.”

Mona takes the child's hand. He looks up at her and smiles as they go through the door.