Skin Folk (13 page)

The farting vroom of Clifton’s motorcycle interrupted her thoughts. Grinning, he slewed the bike to a dramatic halt in front
of her. “Study time done now, darling. Time to play.”

He looked good this evening, as he always did. Tight white shirt, jeans that showed off the bulges of his thighs. The crinkle
of the thin gold chain at his neck set off his dark brown skin. Beatrice stood, tucked the physics text under her arm, smoothed
the skirt over her hips. Clifton’s eyes followed the movement of her hands. See, it didn’t take much to make people treat
you nice. She smiled at him.

Samuel would still show up hopefully every so often to ask her to accompany him on a drive through the country. He was so
much older than all her other suitors. And dry? Country drives, Lord! She went out with him a few times; he was so persistent
and she couldn’t figure out how to tell him no. He didn’t seem to get her hints that really she should be studying. Truth
to tell, though, she started to find his quiet, undemanding presence soothing. His eggshell-white BMW took the graveled country
roads so quietly that she could hear the kiskedee birds in the mango trees, chanting their query: “Dit, dit, qu’est-ce qu’il
dit?”

One day, Samuel brought her a gift.

“These are for you and your family,” he said shyly, handing her a wrinkled paper bag. “I know your mother likes them.” Inside
were three plump eggplants from his kitchen garden, raised by his own hands. Beatrice took the humble gift out of the bag.
The skins of the eggplants had a taut, blue sheen to them. Later she would realise that that was when she’d begun to love
Samuel. He was stable, solid, responsible. He would make Mummy and her happy.

Beatrice gave in more to Samuel’s diffident wooing. He was cultured and well spoken. He had been abroad, talked of exotic
sports: ice hockey, downhill skiing. He took her to fancy restaurants she’d only heard of, that her other, young, unestablished
boyfriends would never have been able to afford, and would probably only have embarrassed her if they had taken her. Samuel
had polish. But he was humble, too, like the way he grew his own vegetables, or the self-deprecating tone in which he spoke
of himself. He was always punctual, always courteous to her and her mother. Beatrice could count on him for little things,
like picking her up after class, or driving her mother to the hairdresser’s. With the other men, she always had to be on guard:
pouting until they took her somewhere else for dinner, not another free meal in her mother’s restaurant, wheedling them into
using the condoms. She always had to hold something of herself shut away. With Samuel, Beatrice relaxed into trust.

“Beatrice, come! Come quick, nuh!”

Beatrice ran in from the backyard at the sound of her mother’s voice. Had something happened to Mummy?

Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table, knife still poised to crack an egg into the bowl for the pound cake she was making
to take to the shop. She was staring in openmouthed delight at Samuel, who was fretfully twisting the long stems on a bouquet
of blood-red roses. “Lord, Beatrice; Samuel say he want to marry you!”

Beatrice looked to Sammy for verification. “Samuel,” she asked unbelievingly, “what you saying? Is true?”

He nodded yes. “True, Beatrice.”

Something gave way in Beatrice’s chest, gently as a long-held breath. Her heart had been trapped in glass, and he’d freed
it.

They’d been married two months later. Mummy was retired now; Samuel had bought her a little house in the suburbs, and he paid
for the maid to come in three times a week. In the excitement of planning for the wedding, Beatrice had let her studying slip.
To her dismay she finished her final year of university with barely a C average.

“Never mind, sweetness,” Samuel told her. “I didn’t like the idea of you studying, anyway. Is for children. You’re a big woman
now.” Mummy had agreed with him too, said she didn’t need all that now. She tried to argue with them, but Samuel was very
clear about his wishes, and she’d stopped, not wanting anything to cause friction between them just yet. Despite his genteel
manner, Samuel had just a bit of a temper. No point in crossing him, it took so little to make him happy, and he was her love,
the one man she’d found in whom she could have faith.

Too besides, she was learning how to be the lady of the house, trying to use the right mix of authority and jocularity with
Gloria, the maid, and Cleitis, the yardboy who came twice a month to do the mowing and the weeding. Odd to be giving orders
to people when she was used to being the one taking orders, in Mummy’s shop. It made her feel uncomfortable to tell people
to do her work for her. Mummy said she should get used to it, it was her right now.

The sky rumbled with thunder. Still no rain. The warmth of the day was nice, but you could have too much of a good thing.
Beatrice opened her mouth, gasping a little, trying to pull more air into her lungs. She was a little short of breath nowadays
as the baby pressed on her diaphragm. She knew she could go inside for relief from the heat, but Samuel kept the air-conditioning
on high, so cold that they could keep the butter in its dish on the kitchen counter. It never went rancid. Even insects refused
to come inside. Sometimes Beatrice felt as though the house were really somewhere else, not the tropics. She had been used
to waging constant war against ants and cockroaches, but not in Samuel’s house. The cold in it made Beatrice shiver, dried
her eyes out until they felt like boiled eggs sitting in their sockets. She went outside as often as possible, even though
Samuel didn’t like her to spend too much time in the sun. He said he feared that cancer would mar her soft skin, that he didn’t
want to lose another wife. But Beatrice knew he just didn’t want her to get too brown. When the sun touched her, it brought
out the sepia and cinnamon in her blood, overpowered the milk and honey, and he could no longer pretend she was white. He
loved her skin pale. “Look how you gleam in the moonlight,” he’d say to her when he made gentle, almost supplicating love
to her at night in the four-poster bed. His hand would slide over her flesh, cup her breasts with an air of reverence. The
look in his eyes was so close to worship that it sometimes frightened her. To be loved so much! He would whisper to her, “Beauty.
Pale Beauty, to my Beast,” then blow a cool breath over the delicate membranes of her ear, making her shiver in delight. For
her part, she loved to look at him, his molasses-dark skin, his broad chest, the way the planes of flat muscle slid across
it. She imagined tectonic plates shifting in the earth. She loved the bluish-black cast the moonlight lent him. Once, gazing
up at him as he loomed above her, body working against and in hers, she had seen the moonlight playing glints of deepest blue
in his trim beard.

“Black Beauty,” she had joked softly, reaching to pull his face closer for a kiss. At the words, he had lurched up off her
to sit on the edge of the bed, pulling a sheet over him to hide his nakedness. Beatrice watched him, confused, feeling their
blended sweat cooling along her body.

“Never call me that, please, Beatrice,” he said softly. “You don’t have to draw attention to my colour. I’m not a handsome
man, and I know it. Black and ugly as my mother made me.”

“But, Samuel…!”

“No.”

Shadows lay between them on the bed. He wouldn’t touch her again that night.

Beatrice sometimes wondered why Samuel hadn’t married a white woman. She thought she knew the reason, though. She had seen
the way that Samuel behaved around white people. He smiled too broadly, he simpered, he made silly jokes. It pained her to
see it, and she could tell from the desperate look in his eyes that it hurt him too. For all his love of creamy white skin,
Samuel probably couldn’t have brought himself to approach a white woman the way he’d courted her.

The broken glass was in a neat pile under the guava tree. Time to make Samuel’s dinner now. She went up the verandah stairs
to the front door, stopping to wipe her sandals on the coir mat just outside the door. Samuel hated dust. As she opened the
door, she felt another gust of warm wind at her back, blowing past her into the cool house. Quickly, she stepped inside and
closed the door, so that the interior would stay as cool as Sammy liked it. The insulated door shut behind her with a hollow
sound. It was air-tight. None of the windows in the house could be opened. She had asked Samuel, “Why you want to live in
a box like this, sweetheart? The fresh air good for you.”

“I don’t like the heat, Beatrice. I don’t like baking like meat in the sun. The sealed windows keep the conditioned air in.”
She hadn’t argued.

She walked through the elegant, formal living room to the kitchen. She found the heavy imported furnishings cold and stuffy,
but Samuel liked them.

In the kitchen she set water to boil and hunted a bit—where did Gloria keep it?—until she found the Dutch pot. She put it
on the burner to toast the fragrant coriander seeds that would flavour the curry. She put on water to boil, stood staring
at the steam rising from the pots. Dinner was going to be special tonight. Curried eggs, Samuel’s favourite. The eggs in their
cardboard case put Beatrice in mind of a trick she’d learned in physics class, for getting an egg unbroken into a narrow-mouthed
bottle. You had to boil the egg hard and peel it, then stand a lit candle in the bottle. If you put the narrow end of the
egg into the mouth of the bottle, it made a seal, and when the candle had burnt up all the air in the bottle, the vacuum it
created would suck the egg in, whole. Beatrice had been the only one in her class patient enough to make the trick work. Patience
was all her husband needed. Poor, mysterious Samuel had lost two wives in this isolated country home. He’d been rattling about
in the airless house like the egg in the bottle. He kept to himself. The closest neighbours were miles away, and he didn’t
even know their names.

She was going to change all that, though. Invite her mother to stay for a while, maybe have a dinner party for the distant
neighbours. Before her pregnancy made her too lethargic to do much.

A baby would complete their family. Samuel
would
be pleased, he would. She remembered him joking that no woman should have to give birth to his ugly black babies, but she
would show him how beautiful their children would be, little brown bodies new as the earth after the rain. She would show
him how to love himself in them.

It was hot in the kitchen. Perhaps the heat from the stove? Beatrice went out into the living room, wandered through the guest
bedroom, the master bedroom, both bathrooms. The whole house was warmer than she’d ever felt it. Then she realised she could
hear sounds coming from the outside, the cicadas singing loudly for rain. There was no whisper of cool air through the vents
in the house. The air conditioner wasn’t running.

Beatrice began to feel worried. Samuel liked it cold. She had planned tonight to be a special night for the two of them, but
he wouldn’t react well if everything wasn’t to his liking. He’d raised his voice at her a few times. Once or twice he had
stopped in the middle of an argument, one hand pulled back as if to strike, to take deep breaths, battling for self-control.
His dark face would flush almost blue-black as he fought his rage down. Those times she’d stayed out of his way until he was
calm again.