The New Moon's Arms (28 page)

“They were fighting,” I said. “Mumma and Dadda. That night.”

Gene didn’t seem to change his steady, focussed attack on the food at all, but something about him came fully alert to what I was saying. “Fighting? What about?”

“I don’t know, some big-people something. They used to fight every now and again.”

“He ever hit her?”

“No. He would strap me if I crossed him. West Indian tough love. But he never touched Mumma. He wasn’t that kind of man.” I laughed. “Though I think he would have lost if he had been foolish enough to take Mumma on. She was taller than him, and wider. She used to joke she could pick him up and carry him out of a burning building if she had to. But I don’t think it was completely joke.”

“They used to fight plenty?”

“No. Just every so often.”

“And what would happen then?”

“Mumma would threaten to leave. Dadda would tell her to feel free. Sometimes she would go out for a few hours.”

“To where?”

“I don’t know. For a walk, probably. To cool down. Little more, she would come back. They would talk. By next morning, they would be laughing and joking with each other again.”

Gene studiously poured ketchup on his fries in a spiral pattern. “Kiss and make up?”

I nodded. “I guess. But sometimes she would stay out overnight instead.”

He put the ketchup bottle down and looked at me. “A whole night?”

On the television, the music programme ended. Time for the news. Good. Now I would be able to hear myself think.

“Yeah,” I said, “a whole night. She would row over to the big island, stay with relatives. Sometimes two nights, till her anger blow over. Gene, what if you find out that he killed her in truth?”

His face crumpled. “I don’t even want to think about that. I want him to be the hero in my mind, you know? The man who made the world make sense for me.” He was silent for a bit. “But the truth is, if we find out he was guilty, nobody know but you and me.”

I sputtered on my Shampa. He said it so calmly.

“But we couldn’t do that!” I said. “We would have to let the authorities know!”

Some of the spark came back. “Sweetheart, I
am
the authorities.”

“Not you one! Not all by yourself!” My heart was thumping at that “sweetheart,” but this was more important.

Gene gave me a long, measuring look. “You something else, you know that?” He sounded bemused. “You cuss like a sailor, you have a temper like a crocodile, but you more honest than any judge I know.”

My face was heating up. “That not any virtue to speak of. The honesty, I mean. Only backtracking. I do it because my first impulse is to lie.”

“How you mean?”

“You ever try being a nineteen-year-old single mother in this country?”

“Nah, man. Maybe when I retire.”

I threw a serviette at him. He laughed.

“Serious, though,” I said. “A teenager on her own with a three-year-old on her hip, and no baby father in sight. Try renting an apartment. Getting a fucking bank account.”

He shrugged. “All legal. Nothing to prevent you.”

“Man, you know better than that. Or is what kind of officer of the law you are?” I was waving my Shampa bottle around in the air to make my point. I kissed my teeth, put down my bottle. “Nineteen is in between. You can’t drink booze yet, but you old enough to have a child walking and talking. Try to get a driver’s licence, they either want to know where your husband or where your parents. And when you can’t produce either, you going to wait till you drop while they check every friggin piece of i.d. you have, and call your job, and verify your signature. You ever try waiting in a bank line-up with a three-year-old?”

He laughed. “Yeah. I can match you there.”

I realised I didn’t know plenty about him. Cool breeze; he would get his grilling later. “People have a way to judge you. That’s all I’m saying.” Remembering those times was making me grumpy.

“True that. But what it have to do with being honest?”

For a second, I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then I remembered. “Oh. That. Sorry. Forgetful nowadays. I just mean that I got good at lying. I would tell people my husband working in foreign. Or that Auntie Pearl was my mother. Sometimes I even pretended that Ifeoma was my little sister.”

Sometimes I would pretend I wasn’t Ifeoma’s mother.

I managed to keep talking. “But then my conscience would start pronging me,” I told him. “And I would take back the lie, but sometimes people will get on so bad when they find out you tricked them that it would have been better to just leave them ignorant. So now I try to tell the truth right off the bat. Stand tall, look people in the eye, and tell them about me. If they going to make trouble for me because of it, best I find out one time, so I don’t have nothing more to do with them.” But my little girl had heard me telling people that she wasn’t mine.

“And how you figure that’s not a virtue?”

I gave an embarrassed laugh. “Because sometimes I still tell a lie, and have to take it back afterwards.”

He wasn’t paying attention. He was looking at the television. I turned to see what was so absorbing. The announcer was saying:

“…race heated up this morning, when prime minister Garth Johnson and minister of Foreign Trade and Economic Affairs Guinevere Poon announced the date of the ribbon-cutting ceremony to officially open the new Gilmor Saline, Incorporated, plant that has recently been completed on the island of Dolorosse.

“Last year, reduced restrictions on foreign investment in Cayaba made it possible for the Johnson government to lease the small island of Dolorosse to Gilmor Saline. The U.S.-based company, which has operated a salt production factory on the main island of Cayaba since 1955, has created artificial salt ponds and constructed a second factory on the southwest coast of Dolorosse.”

The shot cut to Johnson at his press conference. He was saying:

“Cayaba citizens deserve a high-quality standard of living—”

“Damn right!” a woman from another table burst out. The woman with her shushed her.

“—to provide well for their families. That has been and will always be my priority for this country. For more than five decades, Gilmor Saline has been a key partner with the government of Cayaba, providing employment for a significant proportion of the Cayaba population. This new venture

between us is a tangible demonstration of the exemplary cooperation that exists between Cayaba and Gilmor Saline.”

“As part of the agreement between Gilmor Saline and the Cayaba government,”
said the announcer,
“the corporation will provide three new, state-of-the-art waterbuses to increase service on the ferry route, and is currently building towers and installing antennae on Dolorosse to boost cell phone reception for Dolorosse residents.”

“That’s the part I like,” I told Gene.

“Opposition leader Caroline Sookdeo-Grant was on hand for comment. She applauded the increased employment that the second plant has brought and congratulated the prime minister in that regard. She also joked about the apparently strategic timing of the ceremony, which will take place just three days before the upcoming election. But speaking on a more serious note, Mrs. Sookdeo-Grant also had a caution for the prime minister.”

Now we were seeing Sookdeo-Grant at the press conference, with the noise and bustle of people milling around her. She said:
“Cayaba should be moving very carefully in any dealings we make with foreign multinationals or accepting more foreign aid. The FFWD demands that we reduce trade restrictions as a condition of lending us money. This allows foreign multinationals such as Gilmor Saline to grow unchecked in our country, forcing small farmers out of business. What will happen to the independent small salt farms on Dolorosse and the other islands? Will they be priced out of business? Forced to seek work in the Gilmor Saline factory for minimum wage?”

“Tell them!” shouted an old East Indian man sitting alone with the paper and a Banks beer.

“Mr. Ramlal, hush, nuh?” said Kevin Smalley’s wife from over by the cash register. She pointed at the television. “Listen.”

The announcer was saying, “
Mrs. Sookdeo-Grant says that should her party win the upcoming elections, it intends to implement programmes to foster small business growth.
”

The din in the restaurant got worse as people began to argue.

“
And in other news…”

Gene still watching the blasted television. “Like that tv have you hypnotized,” I said. He just pointed at it with his chin.

“Opposition party leader Mrs. Caroline Sookdeo-Grant paid a visit today to a remarkable woman.”

Crap. It was me on the television, looking stunned and shaking Sookdeo-Grant’s hand.

Gene said, “You know, I just had a feeling you were a remarkable woman.”

“…leapt into the rough seas off Dolorosse on Sunday, to save the life of a little boy in the water.”

In the restaurant, a woman called out, “Look her there!” She was pointing at me.

The announcer said, “
Mrs. Lambkin, a recent widow, had buried her husband only the day before…
”

I put my head in my hands. From inside my handbag, my cell phone started ringing.

O
NE
,
TWO
,
THREE
,
FOUR
,
FIVE
. Six. Today Alexander Tremaine counted six monk seals in the Zooquarium where five were supposed to be. But Crab Cake was not one of them. She was missing. Alexander closed his eyes. She would be back in a few days. They always were.

And the hell with the incident report. Management had never responded to a single one of them.

Alexander made a note to get in extra seal chow. Heaven only knew how many seals would be in the enclosure tomorrow.

“W
OI
.” Hector threw down the sandpaper and wiped his brow with the back of his hand. He was sitting on an upturned bucket in the back yard, fixing up the tricycle like he’d promised. “I just need to tighten up that back wheel now, and put on a coat of paint.” He was sweating in the hot sun.

“I really appreciate your doing this, you know?” I poured him a glass of pineapple juice from the frosty jug I’d brought out, with plenty ice cubes. He pushed the container of fried ripe plantain that he’d brought with him closer to me.

“Don’t mention it. It’s a good thing for Agway to have.”

Hector was being friendly enough, but a little cool. Hadn’t been smart of me, going off on Michael and Orso like that with Hector to witness it. I was working hard to regain lost ground.

Agway brought his sippy cup back for more. Without the sea to cool him off, the heat was making him weary and fractious. I’d put a blanket down for him just inside the kitchen door where he’d be in the shade but I could still keep an eye on him. I tried again to offer him some plantain, but he pushed my hand away. He had his own snack.

Hector sucked down about half his glass one time and helped himself to some fried plantain. He opened up the paint can and got back to work.

I munched on some of the plantain slices myself. A flock of spoonbills flew over us. Hector watched them. “They kinda pale,” he said.

“Those must be the ones from the lagoon. No shrimp there to make them pink.”

Hector shook his head. “You impress me.”

“What? Why?”

“Plenty people wouldn’t know that it’s shrimp that gives the roseate spoonbill its colour.”

“Stanley knows.”

“I not surprised. They say the fruit don’t fall far from the tree. Ifeoma has a mind like yours, too.”

“Ife? Yes, she’s pretty smart. And curious. Just flighty-flighty.”

“Very smart. And pretty. Cayaba is something else, you know? Everywhere you turn, something else precious and rare.” Not looking at me, he smiled. Lawdamercy. This time, the heat I was feeling wasn’t from no hot flash.

He glanced inside the kitchen, and his face took on an expression somewhere between horror and disgust. “Calamity, what is that child eating?”

“His afternoon snack. Shrimps.” Tailor-sat on the kitchen floor with his bowl, Agway was happily tearing each shrimp out of its cuticle shell with his teeth, chewing it down, and swallowing the yellow matter out of the head. He had a growing pile of empty shrimp shells on the floor beside him.

“He eating them
raw
?”

“Apparently he likes them like that.”

“Well, best he eat his fill now,” he said. “The day might come soon that you have to watch how much fish you eat from Cayaba waters.”

“Why?”

He pursed his lips like he was trying to make up his mind about something. “You could keep a secret?” he asked.

“Man, you asking a Yaban if they know how to be close-mouthed? This whole country would collapse if people didn’t mind whose business they talk.”

Ruefully, he said, “So I coming to find out. All right. You know I’m trying to figure out how Mediterranean monk seals come to be here.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s not the only thing I’m doing. You shouldn’t tell anyone, you understand? There might not even be a problem. Don’t want to frighten people before we know for sure.”

“Yeah, yeah. Just blasted well tell me, nuh?”

“I’m spying on Gilmor Saline.”

“You kidding!”

“No lie.”

“Why?”

“They might be dumping their bittern illegally.”

“Their what?”

“Bittern. That’s what get leave behind when you manufacture salt. Every pound of salt give you a pound of bittern. And bittern in high levels is toxic. Gilmor Saline supposed to dilute it three hundred to one with water and pipe it way out to sea. We think they releasing it strong just so into the waters around Cayaba.”

“Oh, shit.” The water the sea people lived in. I took Agway’s bowl from him, though he’d already finished the shrimps and had curled up on his blanket to nap. “I should make him vomit them up?” I remembered the sound little Ife had made when I put my finger down her throat.

“Nah, man. Would take plenty plenty bittern to make him sick. It’s edible in reasonable amounts. It’s what they use to make tofu.”