The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir (14 page)

Dreadie, the callaloo man, makes music of his wares.

He lifts the brooms down from his head before he bows and speaks to me. “Hello, little bright-eye princess, where is the imperial queen of this house? I have some royal-quality callaloo for this house of kings and queens and prince and princess.”

“Hello. Auntie is inside, but she say she don’t want anything today.”

“All right, sweet princess, maybe next time the queen will buy from the Dread.”

His smile is flawless as he hoists the bundle back on his head, singing.

I sing along. When Glen hears me, he starts laughing. “Yes, man, Stacey, practice up you song, because that is what you will have to do when you get big. You going to have to married de rastaman and sell broom with him on Saturday and Sunday. Nobody going married to you with your big mouth and your dirty sheet them. You can’t even wash you own clothes properly, plus you too stink and ugly fi get married to anybody good.”

Andy is quick to join in. “Yes, man, Glen! And the way how she cook is just right fi de rastaman style, no salt, no pork, no taste, no nutten but a bellyache! No man no want no woman who can’t cook. Stacey, it make sense you just go drown yuh-self, or find a rastaman husband! There is nothing else left fi a woman like you.”

Diana leans over the rail. “Lawd, man. Oonu no get tired of teasing her? And even if nobody want to married her, it is none of oonu business! Oonu is her cousins, so who she married is not oonu concern.”

Andy tosses a mango seed at her. “I know she is me cousin, but you never hear the saying that ‘cousin and cousin make good soup’? If her big head of hair wasn’t so knot-up and dirty, me would take pity on her and married to her right now!”

Auntie opens her bedroom door and sends Diana back inside. “All right, all right! Oonu leave her alone! She will learn fi cook in time and then God will send her a good husband.”

I tell them I do not want to marry anybody. Auntie laughs and disappears into her room. Andy says he is sorry for the man who will have to marry me. I tell him if these men in the house are any examples of the men out there in the world, I will kill the man before I marry anybody. He tells me to wait and see what happens to me after I get my period. Then I will start begging for a man to look at me and touch me.

“You must be God to know what will be inside my head! I don’t like nobody touching me anywhere! Nobody at all! The things that them worthless men want to do to a girl is nasty! And if anybody ever try that with me I will get a gun and shoot them!”

Andy laughs and says I will change my mind.

The next day while I am in the kitchen getting a glass of water Andy pushes me up against the wall and slides his hands up under my dress. I am so shocked I can’t move my mouth to say anything. He presses his
crotch into my belly and asks me if I like it. I push him away and call out to Auntie. He lets me go and Auntie rushes in to ask why I am bawling out her name like a loudspeaker. I tell her that Andy wouldn’t let me go.

“What you mean, him wouldn’t let you go?”

“Auntie, I was just passing him and him squeeze me up on the wall. And then him hold on to me and wouldn’t let me go.”

“Mama, is brush me brush ’gainst her when me pass. The place small and she walk wide like a duck.”

“Stacey, me not going tell you again. Stop calling me for everything. You are not a princess or a baby. You cannot call me-call me, for foolishness. If him brush you by accident, just say sorry and go your way. Mark my words, if you call me again for no stupidness I going to pull out that leather belt and beat you. And what happen to your hair? Why it look like a fowl nest?”

Andy is grinning at me behind Auntie’s back. After that I try my best to avoid him. I stick close to Glen or Elisha if he is in the house. And I make sure that Grace locks our bedroom door at night.

Two weeks before Christmas, Grace goes away with Elisha’s father. They take Elisha with them. I lock the door and wrap the sheet around my body three times before I go to sleep.

I am dreaming that I am drowning. The water closes over me and I cannot catch my breath. I wake up gasping for air. There is something crawling around in my panties. I open my eyes to find Andy on top of me. One hand is covering my nose. His mouth is over mine. The fingers of the other hand are in my panties, pushing themselves into my coco-bread. His nails are hurting me. He moans something unintelligible against my mouth. At first I don’t understand. Then he says it again.

“You like it, eh, Stacey? You like this? Tell me you don’t like it.”

His voice breaks the spell. I reach for my pencil on the bedside table and drive the point into his hand. He lets go of my nose and I scream.

The whole house is awake in minutes. Glen is laughing at me cowering in the corner. Diana looks in and quietly slips away. Shappy says everybody should stop providing an audience to Jezebel and go back to sleep. No one asks me what happened. No one wants to know what Andy is doing in my bed at two in the morning. Auntie drags me to the veranda and pushes me into a chair. “I don’t know what is wrong with you! But it going to stop tonight!”

“Nothing is wrong with me, Auntie! Is your nasty son have something wrong with him!”

“What that you say to me?”

“Auntie, is him come in the room with me. I never invited him into me bed.”

“Stacey, lemme tell you something. If you do not say anything to Andy, if you keep away from him and walk him out, things will go better for you. I think him just bother you because you do not have any manners to him.”

“Auntie, how me must have manners to him, when him want to come do what him want with me when you not looking? If him come near me again I going to stab him with a knife! I swear to God, Auntie, if him come near me, I going to kill him!”

I do not see Auntie’s hand snake out. But I feel the sting of her palm across my face.

“Hear what me telling you, Stacey. You are no bull-buck and duppy-conquerer in this house. And I cannot sit here with you, no matter what him do—I cannot sit here with you and listen to you talk about taking the life of one of my children. After all I do for you?” She stands up to her full height over me. “Just stay clear of Andy and don’t provoke him anymore! Now get out of me face and go back to you bed!”

Back in the room I put on an extra pair of panties. The moon, fat and heavy, peeks in through the glass louvers. The yellow light makes a funny pattern on the bed. I carefully wrap the sheet around my body again. Then I lie down across the bottom of the locked door.

I
feel like I have hit gold when I find three dirty picture magazines in the pile of abandoned books under the house. I dust them off to reveal a series of blondes wearing very small brassieres over their very large breasts. I read about women who are excited to discover
the orgasm
.

None of the women have any clothes on—and all of them have their legs wide open. I look at the pictures of them rubbing their coco-breads with shiny red fingernails. It is all very strange and
exciting
. My heart is beating fast and then slow and then fast again. In some of the pictures the women look happy and sad at the same time, as if they were eating an ice-cream cone that is not really their favorite flavor.

Looking at the photographs makes me want to touch myself too. And I want to know if my coco-bread looks the same as those in the magazine. I decide the only way to find out is to have a look. I choose the one place nobody would find me. The pit toilet. Day after day it stands empty until there is a water lock-off. Not much more than a woodshed built over a twenty-foot concrete-covered sewage receptacle, the pit toilet is so small that only a makeshift toilet seat of wood can fit inside. And it smells like milk farts all the time.

I look down into the hole. There are giant roaches crawling up the inner walls of the seat. I look farther down. Bits of things are floating in what looks like a big black swimming pool. I climb up onto the seat and slowly squat. My naked bottom hangs over the gigantic opening of the square toilet. I carefully examine my coco-bread. There are tiny black hairs and some little things that look like tiny mouths keeping a big secret. I push the mouths open. The tongue pokes out at me. I poke the
tongue and the lips get wet. I poke the tongue again. And again. And again. The lips get wetter and wetter and wetter. I am bouncing up and down so much my foot slips and I fall into the pit.

My right leg and right arm are both completely in. The left arm is grasping at the side of the seat. The left leg is caught in a strange angle that has just barely kept me from falling all the way in. I can’t call anyone to help me. The dirty magazine is sprawled out open on the floor with Deviled Daisy’s bottom cheeks separated by the spine of the open pages. Luscious Lily’s lips are throwing kisses at me.

The stench from the waste below makes it difficult to breathe, and there are things I cannot see crawling along my foot. My palms sweat and make it almost impossible to get a firm grip on the wood. It takes me nearly an hour to drag myself up from out of the mouth of the pit. When I finally collapse, shaking and picking pieces of roach legs off my hip and thigh, I know I am never going to look at my coco-bread again.

A
ndy tells me that I am the ugliest girl he has ever seen in his life. He has been teasing me for nine months now, so I know better than to get into an argument with him. I make my way down to the small concrete receptacle known as the fish tank. The square is set deep into the dark red soil of the front yard. Hidden under the alcove created by the kissing tops of the sweetsop, breadfruit, and mango trees, the fish tank protrudes a foot or so out from the ground.

I peer down at my reflection and wonder if I am really that ugly. I wish I could make my hair smooth the way Grandma used to do it. I drop a small stone and watch the untidy image of my head break into a million little pieces. Auntie likes to boast about the days when fish used to swim in the once-clear water, but now only the slimy moss moves through the tank.

Auntie leans over the veranda rail and watches me toss another rock in. “Stacey, you see how oonu children treat that fish tank? God going to sin every one of yuh for how oonu destroy that good, good fish tank.”

Glen comes running from behind the house. “Yes, Mama, them really treat the fish tank bad.”

“If oonu was a different set of children, there would be goldfish and
tadpoles and all kind of fish running about in the tank! You see them children on the TV from Africa? God know them would kill themselves for a little niceness like this fish tank.”

I am quick to correct her. “Auntie, the children in Africa need clean water! Not this nasty, dirty stink-hole that don’t even have no fish in there!”

“Stacey, come up here, make me box you in your face! You don’t have no manners, eh? Which child would not want to have a fish tank? You stay there, the time will come when you will look back and see how much the good Lord has given to you in your young days.”

It is still morning, but the day already feels hot and long. Elisha joins me on the metal plant stand and offers two of her four sweetsops. We suck at the sticky fruit and toss the seeds into the dark, thick water below.

Before long, we are bored with the small plunk, plunk, plunk as the seeds and handfuls of sweetsop skins crash into the water. Elisha jumps down from the plant stand and swishes a stick around slowly in the viscous water.

“Stacey, you think this water was ever clean like how Mama say it was?”

“Everybody is always talking ’bout how everything was always better before we born. But I think them just say that to make them feel like them know better things than us.”

“Maybe if we clean it we can put fish to live in there.”

“I not sure no fish can live in there, but I suppose we can clean it. Is not as if we have anything else to do.”

Plunk. I throw a rock in the water and tell Elisha to listen for when it hits the bottom. She says she doesn’t hear anything.

“Stacey, how deep you think it is in there?”

“There is too much rubbish on the bottom for me to tell. Maybe when we clean it out and we could see how deep it really is.”

Elisha bellows for Glen. “Glen! Glen! Come quick! Stacey say we goin’ clean the fish tank.”

Glen comes running from the bathroom holding his pants together. Elisha and I roll our eyes at each other. Glen is always in the toilet. No matter what time of the day you call him, he rushes out grasping the waist of his pants. Elisha thinks he has a permanent case of diarrhea. I think he is masturbating. But I do not say anything.

“Glen, Stacey say we going to clean the fish tank!” Elisha is excited by the task at hand.

“Clean which fish tank? You must drop and lick you head this morning! You see how nasty that water is?”

“If you don’t want to help us, then go on and finish what you were doing in the bathroom. We don’t need you to help us. But remember, whatever we find in there is ours. Money, jewelry—any kind of treasure we find, you will not get any of it! You hear?”

It takes him only a second to switch arguments. “All right. I will help, but only because me is a boy and in these kinds of work, a man can do some things that a woman can’t do.”

“Oh, shut up your stupid mouth! You are almost two years younger than me, and I am ten times brighter than you in school, and I can beat you up anytime!” I take a threatening step toward him and he steps back. I point my finger at his chest and continue, “Yes, Mr. Glenford Mosiah Garvey, what you can do that I can’t do? Nothing! Zero! Nil!”

I raise my finger to point it at his nose and tell him, “If you want to help, you can help, but make sure you keep your clappers shut ’bout what a man can do!”

“All right, Miss Staceyann Marshree Chin, I going fix your business right, right now!” Glen storms inside to tell Auntie that we are outside cleaning the dirty fish tank.

“Is about time oonu do something about that thing. It never stay like that until oonu start use it as rubbish heap. When them older ones was pickney, fish used to live in there. Is oonu mash it up so! So, yes, is oonu must clean it up!”

Glen puffs up his chest like it was his idea. “Yes, Mama! I tell them we should clean it up so it look just like how it did look before we was born!”

Auntie says she does not care who came up with the idea. “Just clean it as best as oonu can. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and I believe that fish tank is a gift from God!”

The first order of business is to fish the debris from the tank. I send Glen to get wire hangers from inside the house. Elisha is dispatched to get the green and yellow buckets to bail water from the tank. The dogs are so excited they don’t know whom to follow. One stays with me while the other darts back and forth between Glen and Elisha.

When Glen comes back, he points to the rastaman standing by the
front gate. “Stacey, you don’t see you husband waiting at the gate for you?”

The rastaman waves and calls out to me. “Hello, little princess! I see you working today. You need anything from the Dread?”

I barely wave back. “No, no, we don’t need nutten today, Dreadie!”

Even flattened out, the hangers are not long enough to reach in and hook anything without wetting our shoulders. We decide to bail first. We scoop bucket after bucket of fetid water and pour it into the ground at our feet. The area around the tank soon becomes a sea of red mud. After about an hour we see objects pointing out of the water.

I push the dogs away from the tank and reach for a wire hanger. The first treasures are bountiful and without value: three blackened socks, one foot of Glen’s grade-two school shoes, Shappy’s missing tie, Grace’s old brassiere, Auntie’s broken leather belt, Elisha’s baby blanket. Then the objects we retrieve become things we have no history for: an old bicycle chain, two cowboy hats, a black doll with no head, a ratchet knife with a rabbit carved into its handle.

Glen is quick to claim the best finds. “All of the boy-things are mine! You and Elisha can take the brassiere and the dolly! The knife and the chain and the hats is mine!” He stuffs the blade into his pocket.

“Glen, if you know what is good for you, you put it back on the ground.” I say it so quietly, I am not sure I even spoke out loud.

“Stacey, this house is my mother house. Anything we find here belong to me!” He picks up the chain and turns his back to us.

I leap into the tank and scoop a bucket of the muck from the bottom. I stand ankle-deep in the stink and hold the bucket out to Elisha.

“Elisha, hold this!”

In one swift movement I climb over the concrete wall, take the bucket, and swing it high, emptying every drop of the slop onto Glen’s head. I grin as the green slimy dirt runs down his face and into his mouth as he bawls. I push him against the mango tree and dig into his front pocket. His screaming brings Auntie running to the veranda. She appears just as I yank the knife from his pocket. She watches as I pull the chain from his hands, shove him to the ground, and step over him. He is crying loud and hard. His open mouth inhales and spits out bits of rotten leaves and snot all over his chest.

Auntie stares and stares and stares at me. She says nothing for a long, long time.

Finally, she calls Glen inside. “Glen, come in here and stop the cow bawling. Is nothing, just dirty water. Meet me round the back and make me wash it off your face. Never mind, man, dirt is not like sin, a little water will wash this off. Hurry up and come.”

I ignore the unfolding fracas and go right back to bailing. I don’t know what Auntie is going to do to me. But for the first time since I came to Paradise Crescent, I don’t care. When Glen is washed and dressed in clean clothes, Auntie leans over the veranda rail and looks at me. I tell myself that if she beats me I will not cry. No matter how hard she slaps me with the belt, I will just look at her and laugh.

“Boy, little girl, I see today that you have the living Devil inside you. Nothing can be done with you. Just like Pontius Pilate, I wash my hands of you and release you into the hand of Jesus. While you are here, you can eat and sleep and go to school. But know from this day that I do what I can for God’s sake, not yours. Anything I do for you is duty, not love. Now you have nobody in this world but yourself and God.”

I bail and bail and bail. I do not look up from the task at hand. I don’t want Elisha to see the tears rolling down my face. Auntie goes back inside to make lime-leaf tea for Glen. Elisha works silently beside me. When we can fish nothing else with the hanger, we bail again. The water level recedes past our ankles. We see the tops of our feet. The dogs jump in with us, but I lift them out and keep bailing. The water level drops till the buckets cannot scoop any more. I send Elisha to get condensed milk cans to scoop the water. While she is gone, I wipe my face on the sleeve of my dress. I feel like sitting down in the pool of muddy water and crying until the tank is full.

The muck is so thick, it is almost solid. We keep scooping with the cans. Then we hit gold. Silver coins plop out of the cans of slush: copper-colored one-cent pieces, silver five-, ten-, and even some fifty-cent pieces! Elisha is bouncing up and down and singing, “Glory hallelujah, we rich, praise God Almighty, we rich!”

I count eleven dollars and eighty-three cents. I gather every penny and lay it carefully inside the hammock I make with the tail of my dress. My steps are measured as I walk up the stairs. I swing open the veranda gate and step into the house. The door to Auntie’s bedroom is open. Auntie has Glen jammed up against her on the bed. He is eating milk crackers and drinking lime-leaf tea.

“Excuse me, Auntie, this is the money we find in the fish tank. You can take all of it.”

“Child, take you Devil money out of me face. I am not Judas. You will not buy me with yuh thirty pieces of silver. Take it and buy something to eat, but take care you don’t choke on it.”

I shift my weight from one leg to the next. I can see Glen’s gaze moving back and forth between the money and Auntie’s face.

Finally he gets up and stands next to me. “Mama, what if we take the money from her and bless it? Then it would be holy money, not Devil money. I can use it to buy icy-mints to suck on in church tomorrow.”

“Glen, me boy, some kinds of money can’t come clean with all the prayer in the world. What is for Caesar, give it to Caesar! What belong to the Devil, let him keep it, me son. Now go and eat you crackers and shut up your mouth!”

She tells me to make sure I don’t drop any of that muddy water on her clean floor. Then she drops her eyes to the Bible on her lap. As carefully as I had climbed the stairs, I make my way back to the fish tank. I walk right up to the edge of the tank and tip my shirt and watch the coins fall in.