Iron Balloons (11 page)

She shake her head and say, “Yes.”

“She normally go to school by herself?”

“Yes.”

“And come home by herself?”

“Yes.”

“So let her go on then. Let her go on. Don’t follow her up.”

She cover her face and start to bawl loud, loud now. You could stay across the street and hear. So, I put my arm around her like she’s my friend long time and hush her. And as I hushing her now, she start to tell me how the girl was a nice, nice girl until she turn seventeen last year. After that, she don’t know why, but the girl start to follow some friends into a bad crowd. And now she want everything to be her way. And she not studying her books.

She didn’t exactly say “bad crowd,” but that is what I pick from it. I know how to pick things out o’ things, you know, and how to make sense out o’ nonsense. If you ever hear how much money that mother spend on psychologist! And how she waste the guidance counselor time! When all she had to do was what she as a mother was suppose to do. But I know why she didn’t do her duty. She ’fraid.

Anyway, as I’m listening to her now, I realize that when I thought she and her daughter was Italian, I was wrong. To tell you the truth, I can’t tell you exactly what she was. But is not Italian. She look Italian
ish
though, and she had a funny accent. But Italians in they forties not coming to America again, like one time. And you could tell how her accent thick that she didn’t live in America long. Plus, I know Italians. I live with them.

When I just come to America in 1976, is mostly Italian use to live near me, you know. That was up in the Bronx … up by Boston Road and Eastchester Road there—3678 Corsa Avenue, the first house I own in this place.

Serious as a judge. You might see mostly West Indians up there now—though I hear a lot o’ Hispanics moving in—Lord Jesus. But it was pure Italian up there in my time. Even now, out in Long Island where I live now, guess what? I buck up on Italian again. Is like they love me. Perillo one side! Moretti next side! Polish in the back.

So when I say the woman wasn’t Italian, I
know
what I talking about. But you could tell she was some kind o’ cousin to them though … something from round that side. I’m not so good with the European setup, so I can’t tell you where exact. But that don’t mean I don’t know the continent though, you know.

My son Andrew, the one who follow Karen—the bond lawyer—he must be send me over there about six or seven times a’ready. Everything first class! But I didn’t go where use to be the Communist part though. And I think she’s from over that. Listen to me, Communism come in like germs, you know. When you think it gone, it come right back and hold you. And when you think you have the medicine, it change on you. It evolve! Look at Russia. They say they free, but is Communism still. Can you imagine if I go make my son pay for me to go over there and something happen to make me can’t come back? What I would tell Mr. Macy’s Monday morning?

Thirty years at Herald Square, and never missed a day! Never been late! Perfect record. Thirty years! That’s why I can do as I like up there. They don’t bother with me. You know why? I’m a dedicated, disciplined worker. And these days especially, when workers like to jump from place to place, you can’t beat that.

So anyway, as I said, they wasn’t no Italian. But Italian was never the point. Here was a mother in distress. And this was a distress that touch something in my mind. As it touch me now, I told the woman that I went through the same thing with my daughter Karen, who is older than her. The woman, as I said, was in her forties. Karen must be fifty now. For I’m sixty-eight.

“You see, when they get like that and you try with them,” I say to her, “and you keep on trying with them, and they still not hearing, is only one thing left to do. You have to beat they ass. Don’t make America turn you into any fool. You don’t come from here. As there is a God in heaven, when children—especially girls—start to act a certain way … like they is equal to you … you have to put them in they place. And don’t make them or anybody else frighten you ’bout police and child welfare and all o’ that. If you know
exactly
how to beat a child—call the police? You mad? After what they get from you?

Hmm … they wouldn’t dare!

When the woman run off screaming down the street, a voice say to me that maybe I didn’t really bring my point across. Maybe I didn’t fully explain the whole thing with the police. So I start to think how when you look at the state of young people in this country today, there’s a lot of parents who could benefit from knowing how to grow their children right. What to do when they start to bend away from how they brought them up. How to grab ahold of them and straighten them out.

So it’s this voice and this incident, my fellow classmates, that made me change my speech from “How to Make a Budget and Stick to It” to one more beneficial to the world these days: “How to Beat a Child the Right and Proper Way.”

By the way, professor, I see you giving me the signal that I’m over my time, but I should point out to you that neither Singh nor Avila nor Cumberbatch are here this evening to give their presentation, so you might as well give me their time. And look. See, everyone agree. Why you think they clapping for?

So, Professor Hansen and considerate classmates, to understand why I behaved the way I did today you have to understand a little bit about my life.

I was born in Jamaica in 1938, and although you mightn’t believe it, when I was coming up I was very poor.

My mother and father had eight of us. My father was a postman, and my mother use to work in a sweetie factory, making lollipops and bubble gum. When you have those kinds of work in Jamaica, especially in those days, things was very hard. It’s not like up here, where if you are a postman you can live a decent life. Down there they use to pay the postman like he was a child riding a bicycle and all they had to do was give him pocket change. But he use to have to pedal round the city in the heat with pounds and pounds of mail.

So when you see me now, don’t grudge me. I’m coming from very far.

Now, the house where I grow up was at 2a Saunders Lane in East Kingston. It was a board house, a rent house. It was smaller than this trailer here. By the way, professor, I can’t take this room. It make me feel like I waiting for bail. Anyway, all of us live in that one-room house. But you know something? We keep it clean.

There was about six house in the yard and only one pipe outside by a mango tree, where everybody have to go and brush their teeth and bathe. And one kitchen too, where everybody go and cook, although sometime you use to just catch up a wood fire and cook your food on that.

I’m the last of all the eight, and I watch as all of my brothers and sisters turn twelve and my parents take them out of school and send them to a person in the area to learn a trade. But I didn’t want a trade. I wanted a profession. From I was small I want to be something important in life. I don’t know where the ambition come from, but that is what I have inside me from I born.

But anyway, it didn’t look like life was going to work out like I want. Although teacher said I had the brain in primary school, my parents didn’t have money to pay for the exam to pass and go to high school. And even if I did pass the exam, who was going pay for the uniform and the books?

Plus, you know something? My parents never think it was important. None o’ them never go to high school yet. And none o’ them never know nobody that went to high school either. But for me to go and learn a trade like making hats or sewing clothes was a normal thing.

To cut a long story short, I got to go to high school, but not the whole entire time. My bigger brother, Ezroy, was twelve years older than me, and he use to be a mechanic for the railway until a diesel engine drop on him and crush him up in 1953. Well, he use to like to gamble a lot. But he use to lose all his money because he was dunce.

So when it was coming up to exam time, I went down to the train yard by West Street and tell him that I can help him to win. He ask me how, and I explain to him that Crown & Anchor and most of those games with dice use things from maths, and I knew my maths very well.

He didn’t believe me at first, so I took him down to the market where some men had their boards set up. It was a Friday evening and everybody get them pay and the crowd was big. All the women had their baskets with their yam and banana and their fruits out on the sidewalk. And when you walk you have to make sure you watch where you put your foot—for if you step in somebody basket or knock over them things, is war.

So I tell Ezroy I need to watch how the dice playing for the first twenty throws, and when I finish now, I take him one side and tell him how to bet. But only in him head. I tell him not to put down any money. Afterward I take him one side and ask him how much money him bet in him mind and him tell me. Then I ask him how much money him make in him mind and him tell me too. Then I ask him if him ever win money like that before and him say no. Then I say to him is time to bet with the real live thing, but first, we have to make a deal. The first set o’ winnings have to go to me because I need to pay for some exams.

So that is how I get to go to high school—Ezroy. He paid all my fees until he died. That school doesn’t exist anymore. Salem College was the name. When Ezroy died I had to leave the school at fourteen, with no trade now, and go and look for work.

By the second week I get a job at National Tanning Industries, which make handbags and shoes.

But believe you me, I only spent five years on the factory floor before I got an office job. All the while I was stitching bags and shoes I use to put away a little money to take some correspondence course. In those days, high school exams in Jamaica use to come from England, from University of Cambridge. But if you didn’t go to high school you could still study and pass, because they had schools up there that would stay from there and teach you, so long as you have the money and the time. So one day I see a advertisement for one o’ them in the paper and I write to them, and going back and forth, and back and forth, is how I pass six subjects in Senior Cambridge by myself. To tell you the truth, I didn’t pass English; but I get distinction for maths.

When I get my results, I go to work extra early the next morning and wait for Mr. Parnell—rest in peace—who use to own the place. Mr. Parnell was a Englishman. And you know how they strict a’ready. So I make sure put myself together spic-and-span, and when I see him step out o’ him blue Cortina I go up to him and show him the paper with the passes I got.

He said, “Miss Thompson. Congratulations. I’m so proud of you. I hope you keep it up.”

One thing I use to love about Mr. Parnell is that he knew every worker by face and name. And let me tell you, today I know every single person who work at Herald Square.

Anyway, I said, “I don’t have anymore to keep up, sir. I pass my subjects now. What I want is to apply for a office job. But I know the people who work up there won’t give me a chance because I work in the plant and I’m not fair skin. Not that I try, but they wouldn’t even let me see a application if I ask them. I know how they stay. But I know you as a fair man, Mr. Parnell, so I come to talk to you.”

Mr. Parnell face turn red and then him start to laugh. But him wasn’t laughing at me. I just catch him by surprise.

He said to me, “Miss Thompson, we looking for somebody in bookkeeping. But we need experience, so we don’t have anything for you up there right now. But keep up the good work, okay.”

I said, “Mr. Parnell, as long as it have to do with maths, I can do it. Just let me watch somebody do it for a week. When that week done, I want you to give me a test. I don’t want anybody else to gi’ me the test—I want you—because they will sabotage me, because they don’t want all like me to work up there because my skin too dark.”

Mr. Parnell kind o’ hold down him head and mumble. What I pick out of the mumbling was, “What you saying is true. It’s not right. But I understand.”

“But if I fail the test,” I say to him, “then I don’t want to work here anymore. Because I can’t pass subjects like this and be sewing handbag and know that certain people working in the office and they only pass worm.”

So that is how I end up doing accounts, until now.

By that time I was already married and Karen was already born. My husband was a solider man—Dalton was his name—and, basically, we get married because I got myself in trouble. Stupid, man. Stupid. Lose my focus. Get my priorities out o’ line.

Marriage? I wasn’t ready for that, but that became my lot in life because I made a bad mistake. And even though it was a big mistake, I wasn’t going to add to it by disgracing myself and my family by bringing no bastard child. It was a stupid reason. I agree. But I was only eighteen, and that is how it went in those days. Plus, I had the example of my mother, who was a
Mrs.
She wasn’t any common-law wife or concubine.

Suffice it to say, the marriage didn’t work. My husband was an alcoholic, but I have to say he didn’t use to womanize. And by the time I left him in 1968, I had three children to care for. Karen and Andrew were three years apart. Roger came four years behind.

When I left my husband, I didn’t take anything. I just leave everything, because I couldn’t stand the arguing anymore. Next thing, I say I want to take something, and him say it should stay, and it boil into a fuss and get loud like a market, and then is just a big disgrace. Plus, whoever leave a marriage should prepare to leave everything behind.

Hopefully it won’t come to that. Hopefully you can work it out. But if it not working out, make up your mind before that you won’t make things like furniture and all o’ that hold you back. When you got to go, you got to go.

When I was walking out o’ that house, which was at 1c Deanery Road, I made three promises to God: one, I wasn’t coming back; two, I was going to buy my own house very soon with only my name on it; and three, all o’ my three children was going reach further than me in life. So it meant I had to take a second job.

By the time I had to beat my child the right and proper way, it was 1972, and I was heading up accounts at the plant, which was down on Foreshore Road—they rename it Marcus Garvey Drive later on—a hectic area near the wharf. In fact, the plant was in the same compound as the wharf, for most of those shoes we use to make was to export. A lot of other factories were around or nearby, down on Spanish Town Road. Beer. Rum. Tiles. Paper. Ice cream. Mattress. Cornmeal. Ice.