Chapter One PDF

F or the first few moments we completely ignored him. The class sat quietly boiling with vexation at the Circus-horse and at ourselves. Then we flew into a rage and all started talking at the same time. Mr Tewarie stood nervously by as our noise grew louder and hands waved angrily in the air. W...

F or the first few moments we completely ignored him. The class sat quietly boiling with vexation at the Circus-horse and at ourselves. Then we flew into a rage and all started talking at the same time. Mr Tewarie stood nervously by as our noise grew louder and hands waved angrily in the air. We would do for that witch. We would do for her. We would put a thumbtack on her chair, push her down the stairs, scrape her car, go to the principal, write to the government, complain to our parents. Mr Tewarie began to make a feeble protest. Nobody paid him any mind. But he was getting angrier and angrier, until all meekness left him and he shocked us by suddenly slamming his book on to the table. The class fell silent; it was our turn to be nervous. ‘What the hell is going on here! This is a fish market or what! You can’t behave yourselves, you damn jokers, you can’t behave? Take out your Span¬ ish books!’ The class stayed quiet, and in the few minutes of peace we learned to say ‘Mother is making an omelette.’ Then you began to hear little muffled sounds of 68 commotion coming from different parts of the class¬ room. A noise was building up again. Suddenly a girl ran screaming from her seat and took refuge behind Mr Tewarie. He was very startled. ‘What is this ? What the hell is going on here ? What happen to you, child ? Who trouble you ?’ It was foolish Joanne Carr, prim and proper and afraid of her own shadow. Teasing her was one of the favourite occupations of the boys in the class. ‘Sir, they put something on me, sir,’ she wailed. Mr Tewarie turned automatically towards Marlon Peters. At that moment a member of Marlon Peters’s gang sitting near me slipped a matchbox on to my desk and sat back straining to look innocent. I peered into the box. There lay nothing but a dead cockroach. The class was in uproar again. Mr Tewarie was shouting at Marlon Peters and everyone was hold¬ ing a loud, excited discussion with a neighbour. I took up the cockroach by its feelers and walked to the teacher’s table, to present it to Mr Tewarie. But he was too busy with Marlon Peters and did not see me. I put the cockroach on the table. When Joanne Carr caught sight of it, she started scream¬ ing again. Then Mr Tewarie turned and saw the cockroach, too, and nearly jumped out of his skin... Choking with anger, Mr Tewarie sent out Marlon Peters, Wayne Joseph, and Anderson Lewis. Marlon Peters protested: ‘Sir, what about Persad and Ali, sir? Them was in it, too!’ A chorus of voices agreed. It seemed to us that Mr Tewarie was always letting 69 off the Indian boys in the gang, and blaming Peters and the rest for everything. ‘Get out of here! Get out of here before I go for the principal!’ Mr Tewarie roared. Lewis and Joseph grabbed each other and rushed out of the door with wide-open eyes and funny, jerky movements, like cartoon characters. Marlon Peters sauntered out, singing under his breath: Coolie, coolie Come for roti All the roti done. Mr Tewarie, in shock, summoned him back. ‘Yes, sir? Me, sir?’ Marlon Peters stuck his head through the door, with a stupid grin spread across his face. ‘What is that! What kind of thing is that I hear you singing? Right in front of me? Eh?’ Mr Tewarie was going to burst. ‘Damn jokers! That is what you fellas are! A damn set of jokers, man! Damn ba¬ boons ! Damn good-for-nothing baboons!’ Marlon Peters came back into the classroom, still grinning: ‘Sir, that is a song I hear the other day, sir. You want me to sing it for you, sir ?’ And he sang the other verse: Nigger is a nation Damn botheration Gi’ them a kick And send them in the station. And he did an Indian dance all the way to the door, rocking his head on his neck and twirling his hands in front of him. 70  Children shrieked, booed, laughed, sang along with him, beat their rulers on their geometry pans, danced in the aisles... And really, we had nothing much against poor Mr Tewarie. 71 M ichael was a new little boy. He was folding his cover neatly every day, and putting his toys away, and even bathing without being asked. I contin¬ ued to read to him, sometimes a whole story, some¬ times part of a story. I often stopped at the most exciting point and left him battling to find out the rest for himself. Sometimes he finished the story by asking me every other word. Sometimes he struggled so pitifully with the words - his forehead squeezed into a knot and shoulders hunched over the book - that I gave in and finished it for him. But he got better and better at it. He began to tackle books on his own. Now I could bribe him to sweep the room by bringing home books for him from the school library. He learned to sweep quite clean - even Ma would have been satisfied. One evening I was teaching him to wash dishes. Miss Velma was at her post in the gallery with the Daily Word, for Mr Cephas was out. I was giving instructions to Michael, and Michael was talking without stopping, like a parrot. Now that he was no longer afraid of me, he could not stop chattering. He would talk for hours if I didn’t shut him up. Michael was standing on a stool at the sink - 72 V splashing water, playing with the soap, and talking his head off. Mr Cephas was suddenly upon us. He gasped and rushed back out towards the gal¬ lery. Michael fell silent. He stopped playing in the sink and started to wash dishes in earnest, thinking, perhaps, that his father would be pleased at his helpfulness. Mr Cephas was ranting in the drawing room and the angry sound was coming closer. Then he was in the kitchen again, with Miss Velma meek and cower¬ ing behind him. She was looking as if he had dragged her bodily through the house. ‘Washing wares! Washing wares!’ Mr Cephas was shouting at her. ‘In the kitchen, washing wares! I tired talk to you about how you turning this boy into a damn cunumunu\ No wonder he can’t learn his book! Two female in the house and my son have to be washing wares! Boy, get your tail down from there! And if your mother put you to wash wares again, tell her to go to hell!’ And twice his hand flew up as if to hit Miss Velma, and she cringed each time. I was opening my mouth to say to Mr Cephas that it was not Miss Velma... but Miss Velma shot me a glance which said I should be quiet. She was right. Mr Cephas knew full well that she had not made Michael wash the dishes. Miss Velma couldn’t make Michael do anything. So Mr Cephas must have known that I was the one who had him over the sink. But throughout his ranting he never once looked in my direction. Later in the evening he called Michael, in a grim voice, to come and read. Although Michael could read much better now, he still baulked and stalled when his father ordered him to read (and the school reading book contained so much foolishness that anybody would choke on it). That evening Mr Cephas beat him with the reading book, his belt, his slipper, and a carved walking stick that was part of the drawing-room decorations. Miss Velma stayed hidden. The following afternoon Miss Velma called me into her bedroom. There was a photograph album on the bed, and this she invited me to look through. It began with pictures of herself as a young girl, posing in gardens and on steps with her skirt gaily spread out around her, pictures of her taken in studios, against painted walls of sea, mountain, or flowery meadow. In one photograph she was wearing a school uniform. In all, she was a laughing, lively young person. There was her wedding picture, with Mr Cephas looking like a fattened penguin in his three-piece suit, and Miss Velma with life still shining out from her. There were pictures of Michael, an ugly baby, bald and with an old man’s face. While I looked through the album, Miss Velma was sorting the clothes that she had just taken off the line. Suddenly she said: ‘You mustn’t go against them, you know. Your father, you mustn’t go against him. It don’t pay to get them vex. When you get big and you have your husband, you will know for yourself. Jump high or jump low, you have to please them. That is a woman’s lot.’ 74 't  She took the album and turned back to the picture of herself in school uniform. In the picture she looked about twelve years old. ‘I was a bright little girl like you, you know. Bright as a bulb, they used to say. I start to go to secondary school, too. But it wasn’t like now. In those days you had to pay school fees. And then they only had secondary schools in the city. So when you add up school fees, bus fare, books, uniform, lunch... Well - when my younger brother reach the age for secondary school, they take me out and put him in. They didn’t have the money to pay for two. And it’s more important for a boy to get education. They put me by a lady to learn sewing. Then I went to work in a shirt factory. When I meet your father, I was working there. As soon as we get married, he make me leave the job.’ Miss Velma sighed and her talkative mood van¬ ished. There was still a mountain of clothes on the bed to be sorted out before the hours of ironing began — mostly Michael’s and Mr Cephas’s shirts, jerseys, vests, trousers, shorts, underpants, socks, towels, washcloths, handkerchiefs... I made a move to help her, but she waved me away: ‘No, child. That is my work. You take your book and study your lesson. And study it good.’ 75  here was nobody in our class who did not feel A for Anjanee. Although I was the only one who really knew her, the others could tell that all was not well with their classmate. They sympathized with Anjanee and they liked her because she was so warm and good-natured. The children in the class were always trying to help Anjanee — offering to share their textbooks with her, giving her copybook pages when hers ran out, prompting her under their breath when a teacher asked her a question that she could not answer. One day in P.E. Anjanee felt faint and had to sit down in the middle of the field. Before the teacher could say anything, a whole band of children, led by Marlon Peters and Naushad Ali, was racing desperately to¬ wards the home-ec room to get a glass of water for her. Now everyone was quietly up in arms against the Circus-horse for the way that she was treating Anja¬ nee. There was no love lost between Mrs Lopez and any of us, but Anjanee had become her special scapegoat. A good half of the class was no better at maths than Anjanee. Marlon Peters and Wayne Joseph were 76 utterly hopeless at it and furthermore did not care a damn. But Anjanee tried, and worried, and put out every ounce of effort she could squeeze from her tired body. She did her homework in the lunch hour, when she could use my book. In class she did not let anything distract her - she listened intently to every word that fell out of the Circus-horse’s mouth, rub¬ bing her eyes to chase away sleep. Sometimes her head fell forward suddenly on to her chest but imme¬ diately shot up again. Then she sat bolt upright, looking around her in confusion. On some days she simply had to put her head down on the desk for a few seconds at a time. But always she would rouse herself and bravely tackle whatever work we were given in class. Yet Circus-horse was always throwing her most sarcastic remarks at Anjanee. She referred to her as ‘Miss Jugmohansingh,’ with a sneer in her voice. Some people in the class were hardly ever called upon to answer questions, but Circus-horse never forgot to spring them on Anjanee. She asked Anjanee questions which she knew full well she couldn’t answer, and insulted her when the girl either gave the wrong answer or just stared speechlessly, at a loss. Mrs Lopez wrote all over Anjanee’s exercise books with her hurtful red-ink pen: ‘Hopeless.’ ‘You will never learn.’ ‘This is disgraceful. You haven’t a clue and you never will.’ And so on. Anjanee came to school one Monday and disappeared for the rest of the week. I grew more despondent 77 every day that she didn’t turn up, afraid that Anjanee had dropped out now for good. Of late she had begun to talk about giving up the struggle. But if Anjanee ever had to drop out of school she would slowly shrivel up and die. She was so deter¬ mined not to end up like her mother! Anjanee wanted to pass her exams and get a job and a place to live, and take her mother to live with her. Anjanee would cook and clean for the two of them. Her mother would never have to lift a finger again — she would just wear nice clothes, and get fat and healthy, and go to the cinema every weekend to see love movies, Indian and English. I was miserable, and frightened. Every morning I hoped that Anjanee would scurry into the classroom in the way that she always did, trying to make herself invisible because she was so late. Anybody would think that the Circus-horse also missed her sorely, for again and again she inquired after ‘Miss Jugmohansingh.’ On Friday, at the beginning of the maths period, she looked around the classroom for Anjanee and remarked: ‘So Miss Jugmohansingh has left us?’ Then she turned to clean the blackboard, adding not quite under her breath: ‘That is one less dunce. One less headache for me. Praise God.’ This was too much for the class. Immediately the grumbling started up. I was so angry that I couldn’t talk. Anjanee might be sick or dying, for all this woman knew. And if Anjanee had, in fact, given up, then this woman had helped to drive her out of school. I made a loud noise with my chair to catch Mrs 78 i V. Lopez’s attention, and then, looking her straight in the eye, I pushed my pan of maths instruments off the desk. A few seconds of silence passed. Then a little mousy girl sitting near me - a girl who was so quiet and unnoticeable that my mother would have named her God-Rest-the-Dead - positioned her pan at the front of her desk and with a wide movement of her whole arm swept it over the edge. Then, all over the classroom, pans crashed to the floor, spilling out compasses, set squares, pencils, rulers... The noise was deafening. Circus-horse had no words for this occasion. ‘I am going for the principal’ was all she said, as she gathered her belongings and shot through the door. We waited for the principal. Doreen Sandiford was the lookout. She stood in the doorway, ready to dart back into her seat at the first glimpse of the principal. The rest of us held a noisy conference to decide what we would tell her. Our books were open before us so that when Doreen gave the signal we would stop talking and start to ‘study’ with all our might. But the principal never came. As the days went by, we got used to the Circus-horse marching out of the classroom to ‘go for the principal’. 79 M r Tewarie never bothered to threaten us with any principal. After two or three more scuffles with our class, he just went straight to Miss Hafeez and told on us. She walked into the classroom one morning with irritation on her face. ‘Okay, iH, so why will you not behave in your Spanish class ?’ She put down the register and stood looking at us, waiting for an answer. We stared back at her with over-innocent faces, but after a while Marlon Peters grumbled from behind a book: ‘Miss, that man too racial, miss.’ ‘What was that, Peters ?’ asked Miss Hafeez. Goody-goody Alicia Henderson, who was always ready to carry news, and who sat right up under the teacher’s table, reported: ‘Miss, he say Mr Tewarie too racial, miss.’ Children nodded and murmured in agreement. ‘And what is the meaning of this word “racial,” class ? That doesn’t say very much. If you want to accuse Mr Tewarie of something, then the least you can do is get the right word. What is it you’re saying about your Spanish teacher ?’ There was a brief hush, then some snickers. Then 80 Doreen Sandiford shot up brazenly and said in her loud, hoarse voice: ‘Miss, he don’t like black-hen chicken, miss. He does only show us bad-face, like if them Indian children doesn’t play tricks in class, too, miss.’ Everybody was giggling from the time she said ‘black-hen chicken,’ but now Miss held up her hand for us to stop. Just at that moment, however, Marlon Peters was saying, behind his book, to his fans around him: ‘My father say the only good coolie is a dead coolie,’ and everybody heard, so everybody started laughing again. Miss was shaking her head weakly from side to side. The gang of boys at the back now seemed to be having their own private joke. Miss held up both her hands for all the noise to stop, and right away Marlon Peters stood up to speak, with Anand Persad trying to pull him back down into the chair: ‘Miss, Persad say...’ Persad tried to clamp his hand over Peters’s mouth. Peters grabbed both of Persad’s arms and held him in a tight, struggling hug while he Tattled off, as fast as he could: ‘Miss, Persad say he uncle tell him he want to go in South Africa and help them white people kill-out nigger.’ Miss Hafeez was a small lady, but very tough, usually. Yet now, while Peters and Persad boxed each other playfully and we laughed with glee, we saw her sink into her chair, holding her heart and gasping: ‘Lord have mercy!’ The laughing died down, because Miss looked really stricken. We stared at her and she at us. We hoped that Mr Tewarie was forgotten. 81  ‘Well,’ she breathed. ‘I don’t know what to say. But I will tell you that the word for all of that is not “racial.” It is “racist.” And it is not a laughing matter.’ ‘“Racist”, miss?’ someone asked. ‘Miss, “racist” is like over in America, or South Africa, miss. Like them Klu Klee... Klu Klu... Klu Klux Klan and thing. We not so, miss.’ The class agreed. ‘Racist’ was the word for those wicked white people in South Africa and America. In our country we just had some people who were racial. Miss held her head and looked frantic: ‘What you mean “just” ? People talking about killing off one another and you laugh kya-kya and you say “just”! That is not “just” anything, that is racism, children, and it is dangerous! You really think it can be all right to want one another dead ?’ Miss obviously found this offence much, much worse than whatever we had done to Mr Tewarie. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘All the dooglas in the class, stand up - everybody with one parent of Indian descent and the other of African descent.’ About five children stood up. Marlon Peters bobbed up and down, and one of his gang reported: ‘Miss, Peters say he’s a half-doogla, miss. He grand¬ father was a Indian.’ ‘Okay, Peters, stand up if that is true. Any more “half-dooglas'’'1 ?’ Two girls stood up. ‘Now,’ said Miss. ‘I saw all of you laughing and skinning your teeth just now. So you think it would be a big joke if one side of your family were to kill off the other side, eh ?’ 82  ‘No, miss,’ they droned, for there didn’t seem to be much else to be said. ‘Or, we could just divide the whole class into “coolie” and “nigger” and let one half kill off the other—’ Miss stopped abruptly. ‘But the two of you still think it’s a joke!’ We looked around, and Peters and Persad were shooting imaginary guns at each other. We didn’t laugh too loudly, for we knew that Miss would get even more upset. Everybody was relieved that she had gone off the topic of Mr Tewarie, and now, luckily, the bell rang before she could get back to it. She still hadn’t seen about roll call. ‘Who is absent, apart from Anjanee ?’ she asked, hurriedly filling out the register. As she got up to go, she made as if to say some¬ thing to us; but then she only shook her head sadly, and left. 83 I went home on weekends until about the middle of the term. Then my father put his foot down. One Friday morning, with my bag already packed, I went to Miss Velma for the bus fare as usual. ‘I forget to tell you, darling. Your father say he not sending you home this weekend. He give some¬ body the message for your grandmother already.’ Not sending me home? Mr Cephas was keeping me here in this house for the weekend? I rested my bag of clothes on a chair, and opened my mouth to protest. But what was the use of protesting to Miss Velma ? It was Mr Cephas who was preventing me from going home. He had left poor Miss Velma to give me the news and he was safely out of the house. Miss Velma looked so sorrowful that I could not say anything to make her feel worse. ‘All right, Miss Velma,’ I said, and took the clothes back into the bedroom. I went to school. Sitting in class, I could think of nothing but how to get away for the weekend. I worked out scheme after scheme. I would go on the bus and tell the driver that he would get his money next week... I would go home at lunchtime and beg Miss Velma to lend me the bus fare... I 84 would go to Ma Zelline... Aha! Ma Zelline! She would surely help me... and my grandmother would surely break my bones for harassing Ma Zelline and, worst of all, asking for money! Ma had told me to go and find Ma Zelline if I was in trouble. ‘But only if you in real trouble,’ she had added. What she meant by real trouble she never said, but I knew it was to do with my father. Ma thought my father might do something really terrible to me, something she couldn’t even talk about. I only saw it in her face every now and then as she ques¬ tioned me about how he was treating me. ‘I not sending you to harass the lady with every little stupidness, but you know that she will help you if something happen. Zelline don’t want no child round her neck.’ If Ma Zelline wanted children she would have made some, Ma said. Or, her sister had about twenty hungry children and she could have taken any one of them that she wanted. ‘But who say just because you name Woman you must mind child? Not Zelline!’ Ma and my mother often talked about Ma Zelline. I heard Ma say that there were ignorant people in this world who counted a woman as nothing if she didn’t have children. But Zelline, she said, was the rightest one for them. One of the stories I’d heard them tell was about how once, in the heat of a quarrel, another woman had taunted Ma Zelline about not having children: she called Ma Zelline a ‘mule’. Ma Zelline gathered up her skirt, pushed her face in the other woman’s face, and said: ‘Yes. Look the mule!’ and turning 85 around swiftly, she fired a terrible kick, backwards, at the woman. I had not been to see Ma Zelline since the day we came to town to register. It would be so good to visit her, not to ask for anything, but just to listen to her talk, look at her books, stroll through her flower garden. She would be glad to see me, I knew. If I couldn’t go home for the weekend, maybe I would pay Ma Zelline a visit... Anjanee slid into her seat next to me, flustered and puffing. I would wait till break time to tell her how Mr Cephas planned to tie my foot for the weekend. ‘So what you going to do ?’ Anjanee asked, her eyes wide with concern. ‘Nothing,’ I said. I was calmer now. Spending the weekend in town wouldn’t be so bad if I could visit Ma Zelline. Mr Cephas was never home, and I could get Miss Velma to send me to the market or some¬ thing. I would stay and make the best of a bad situation. And my ‘bad situation’ was nothing compared to Anjanee’s! Here she was, ready to take on my trou¬ bles when she had so much to worry about — too much for one person. One of Anjanee’s worries right now was the mid¬ term test coming up the following week. She had missed so many days that what we were doing in class now was like gibberish to her, and she didn’t have all the textbooks to study and catch up. I had lent her my geography book to take home overnight. ‘You learn the geography ?’ ‘I read a part in the bus going home yesterday. But 86 V this morning I couldn’t get to read again — the bus was full and I had to stand up. ‘Okay. Lunchtime we will learn it,’ I promised. ‘And then you will carry home the science book for the weekend.’ We wandered along the corridors until the bell rang. 87 T hat same Friday evening Mr Cephas came home so early that he startled Miss Velma. I was sitting at the dining-room table doing my homework, mainly revising for the midterm test. My mind was not on the work. I kept thinking of home and what everybody would be doing. The little chil¬ dren would be very disappointed when I didn’t turn up. Ma might be worried. Mr Cephas had sent a message, yes, but Ma didn’t trust my father. She might be so worried that she might send Uncle Leroy for me. When I heard the car outside, my spirits lifted for a moment. I thought, wishfully, that it might be Uncle Leroy and Jai. Rampie’s son Jai, who was a mechanic, had an old, sprawling, rusty American car that Pappy called a ‘moving accident’. Jai liked to tell people how a Yankee fella working down at the oil company had paid him five dollars to just drive the old junk away, out of his sight forever. The whole of the Balatier football team would pack into Jai’s car when they had to go and play a match against another village. Every now and then 88 Uncle Leroy and Jai, and some other men and women from Sooklal Trace, would get into the car and go liming in Junction, or La Puerta. Sometimes they would even put God out of their thoughts and drive all the way to the city in Jai’s sputtering old junk... But it was not Uncle Leroy, only Mr Cephas, coming through the door with a nervous smile on his face. I said ‘Good evening’ and turned to my books again. ‘Doing your home lesson, eh ?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, with a face that put an end to all conversation. Michael crept in through the back door. He had come home from school and disappeared again shortly afterwards to God knows where. Sometimes he went to a neighbour’s house to watch television. Wherever he was, he must have seen Mr Cephas’s car and sped home. ‘Good evening, Daddy,’ he panted. ‘So where you now coming from, mister ?’ ‘Nowhere, Daddy.’ ‘Get your book and do your home lesson!’ Michael dived into the bedroom and came out again with his schoolbag. For the next hour or so, he sat at the table with a copybook in front of him, fidgeting, scratching his legs, and turning pages, until Miss Velma came to set the table and put him out of his misery. Mr Cephas did not change his clothes and go back out again. Instead, he stayed home and cleaned his car. When he had eaten, he still did not go out. He sat in the drawing room, studying a newspaper. Miss Velma and I cleared the table. I knew that 89 my father had come home early to make sure that I was there, and was staying home to prevent me from escaping. Once or twice he cleared his throat and shot me a glance as if he wanted to start a conversa¬ tion with me but didn’t know how. The next morning I got up and washed my clothes. Then I helped Miss Velma with the housework. Mr Cephas woke up at about ten o’clock and peeped out at me as I was sweeping the drawing room. I said ‘Good morning’, as politely as I could. Mr Cephas sat down to eat and then started shouting at Michael to get out of bed and take up his book. Michael appeared, dazed, at the bedroom door. ‘Boy!’ Mr Cephas snapped. ‘What is your ambition!’ ‘I don’t know, Daddy,’ Michael replied. ‘You don’t know? You damn right you don’t know! And I don’t know why I feeding you and clothing you and spending money on you. Money that I work hard for. Why I should feed you and clothe you, boy ? What you doing to earn your keep ?’ ‘Nothing, Daddy.’ ‘Yes! Nothing self! Well, from this weekend you going to start to earn your keep. I not feeding any loafers and ingrates and all who think I does pick money off a tree. Go and wash your face and take up your book!’ Mr Cephas ate his fill and got up. After a long spell in the bathroom and an even longer time moving about in the bedroom, he was stepping out through 90 v the front door, smartly dressed and smelling sweet, - and still patting his hair down. It was clear that he was really going out, and not just around the corner. This was my time to go and visit Ma Zelline. 91 S o, ti-mamzelle. All this time you staying in La Puerta and not one day you can’t say let me go and see if the old soucouyant dead or alive?’ Ma Zelline was trying to look stern, but her eyes, as always, were full of laughter. ‘My grandmother say not to bother you...’ ‘And what you say ? You find is botheration if you come and see me now and then?’ ‘No, Ma Zelline.’ ‘All right. So tell me what you doing in school. You studying your books? What they teaching you up there?’ Soon I was telling Ma Zelline all about our battles with the Circus-horse, the antics of Marlon Peters and his gang, Mr Tewarie, Anjanee... She was interested in everything. She filled her pipe and settled back to listen, mostly chuckling at the stories that I told. But when I told her about Anjanee, a cloud came over her face. She stopped puffing at her pipe and stared at me grimly. Then her eyes seemed to be looking straight past me as she shook her head from side to side. ‘Bonjay, Lord God!’ she said to herself. ‘That 92 poor little girl will do something one day; and then all of them will hold they head and bawl.’ We sat in a heavy silence until Ma Zelline put her pipe in her mouth again and sucked on it. ‘So what about Cephas, now,’ she inquired, adding under her breath: ‘That old nastiness.’ I told her that my father was well. ‘Yes, I know he well, he always well - God ain’t ready for he yet. I want to know if you well. He treating you properly, or he take you to make servant ?’ I didn’t know where to start, but the next thing I knew, vexation was tumbling out of me. I was talking very fast and almost at the top of my voice. ‘I will stay there to go to school, but I don’t want to stay there for the weekend! I want to go home, or else I not staying there!’ Ma Zelline gently laid a hand on my arm. ‘Come,’ she said. ‘Let’s go and get some juice, and then you will tell me about this thing.’ I followed her into the kitchen, where she poured two large enamel mugs of guava juice and listened to my tale of woe. 'Salaud! The stingy dog!’ Ma Zelline fumed. ‘Just the two-cents for you to pay the bus to go home. Don’t want to put he hand in he pocket. Salaud. Not to worry with that, you hear, child? You just study your book, and one day you will have your own money. You will never have to ask no man for nothing. Well,.1 do declare! When he keep you here for the weekend, you just come and look for me, you hear, and take your mind off of he.’ I wasn’t so sure what my father would think of 93 that arrangement, but I promised Ma Zelline that I would come and see her. Then I thought I would take my leave, but Ma Zelline had other plans. ‘So what we eating for lunch? I wasn’t cooking today - pot turn down. Is so when you living in bachie, you could turn down your pot when you want. Nobody to say “Zelline, where my food? Zelline, I hungry...” But today I have guest V It was funny to hear Ma Zelline talk about herself as ‘living in bachie’. I had somehow thought that only a man’s place could be called a bachie. That was what Uncle Leroy called his room, which had its own door and steps to the outside, and where we were not allowed unless he invited us in. He had built this room, with the help of his friends, on to the side of our house. ‘I better go back now. I don’t know when Mr Cephas coming home, and he might be vex,’ I explained. ‘Vex? You gone by your grandmother ma corn- mere — you gone by Zelline. Ma Zelline is your grandmother good, good friend. So you gone by your family — Cephas can’t be so drunk as to vex with you for that. Come we jook down a breadfruit and make some oildown. Vex? Cephas know bow you grow and get big ? He know where you get food to eat till now ? I don’t know why your grandmother take you and give you to that worthless man. He don’t deserve to have no child like you, to tell people about “my daughter, my daughter.” Since when he know he have daughter? Look here!...’ Ma Zelline now fretted to herself in patois as she marched me off towards the back door. 94  We went out through the door and round to the side of the house where there was a big breadfruit tree. Ma Zelline sighted a breadfruit that was about the size of my head, and just the right shade of green for picking. Using Ma Zelline’s long bamboo rod with the cocoa knife at the top, we jabbed at its stem until the breadfruit came crashing down through the leaves of the tree. It fell with a loud thud, but it was firm enough and did not burst. In an old tub under the eave of the house Ma Zelline had a forest of herbs growing, and she picked some leaves of thyme while I went in search of a green pepper. Then we went into the front yard to cut some dasheen bush to put on top of everything in the pot — breadfruit, salt meat, seasoning, and coco¬ nut milk. Ma Zelline cut some leaves, then dug up a dasheen as well, which she weighed in her hand with pride. She moved around slowly and contentedly, and we chatted as we went. She wanted to know how my grandmother was, and then everybody else in the family. ‘How your mammy, you writing to her ?’ I told her how my mother had started to go to high school in New York. ‘Well, praise God! I did always tell Patsy, “Don’t mind you miss your chance as a young girl, you have your brains. You will get a chance again, and when you get it, is to take it.” Praise God!’ Ma Zelline straightened up from bending over the dasheen patch. ‘And you, now. You have the best chance. You see and do good! Don’t mind no Cephas, no Circus-horse... That dotish Velma and all will 95 put a blight on you. Look how hard your mammy have to work to get a little education, and you get it right in your hand. Don’t throw away that!’