The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir (4 page)

T
he Saturday after Delano turns six, Grandma walks us both over to Miss Cherry’s house. She tells me that Miss Cherry is going to keep me for the day while she takes Delano to see his father. My chest tightens as I watch the two of them walking away. I try to get down from Miss Cherry’s arms, but she holds me until they both disappear. She carries me inside wailing against her bosom. Marse Jeb lies in the bed moaning. He is covered from neck to toes with white sheets and he smells like cold medicine and fever grass. There is a basin of water with bits of fever-grass floating in it. I use my toe to move the fever-grass blades around.

“Stacey, take out you foot out dat dirty water! Grandma go kill me if she come back here and you catch any cold from dat sick-water. Now you sit down dere and don’t touch nothing else.”

Miss Cherry does not have a veranda, so I have to stay inside. I wonder when Delano and Grandma are coming back. She gives me a plate with curry chicken and white rice. It does not taste like Grandma’s. I push the bowl away. “It don’t taste good, Miss Cherry. Me don’t want it.”

“Aah! Is the salt? Marse Jeb is so sick him cannot eat salt. Lemme put some on it fi you.” It still doesn’t taste like Grandma’s.

Marse Jeb pushes his face into the wall and moans quietly. “Miss Cherry, I think Marse Jeb sick again.”

“No, man, him all right! Him just groan like that sometimes. Him all right.”

She sits and scoops me onto her lap. “Is not so him did stay all the time, you know. Him used to be a big strapping man who could cut down
any bush! Stacey, you shoulda see him with him machete. Him used to sell cane in Montego Bay. Every Saturday him come down with a whole load of blue ribbon cane. Blue ribbon is the softest and the sweetest cane in the world. Him used to bring cane and jelly coconut fi me every week.” She sighs. “Well, me chile, God works in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform! Come drink some more water. Children with your color need them water!”

The cup smells like cod liver oil but I hold my breath and finish the water. She tells me to sleep a little while she tidies up the place. Then Delano’s excited voice drags me from sleep and for a moment I don’t understand why I am in this strange bed with Marse Jeb shaking and moaning beside me.

“Wake up, Stacey! Wake up, nuh! You don’t want to hear ’bout Montego Bay? Them have cars everywhere,” he screams. “And big buildings and stores with all kinds of things on sale. My father have a big supermarket! Me get fi pack me bag meself. And me have strawberry syrup, fi make red lemonade! And Grandma pick up a whole heap of condensed milk and sugar.”

I rub my eyes and sit up.

“Stacey, you listening to me? You shoulda see the place! Them have a drawer to put the money into. And when you press a button the drawer fly wide open! And me father have so much biscuit and bread and crackers and cheese—everything you want is right there in the supermarket. And when we leave there we go up to the big clock and we see Uncle Harold. Him is Grandma big son and him is a policeman. Him have a real gun and a real police car with a big red light on the top of it.”

I am so jealous I want to hit him. But I want to hear more, so I ask, “Him make you drive inside the car?”

“Stacey, is a police car! Only criminal must ride in there with the police! Me look like criminal to you? Then we go inside a big clothes store and buy more things fi me.”

At home Grandma opens the big bag and puts the things away. There is khaki cloth to make Delano new school clothes. He also got new shoes. Socks and briefs and pencils and pens tumble out of his new schoolbag. Grandma bought a dress for me, but I want a new schoolbag and pencils and socks. I ask Delano if he picked up any school things for me. If my father were the one with the supermarket I would have picked up things for him.

“Grandma, why you never buy no new shoes for me?”

“Stacey, you don’t need no shoes. You have your little white slippers.”

“But, Grandma, Delano get new shoes and him have shoes already!”

“Stacey, I never buy that for him. Is him father give that to him. And this new dress go look so nice with your little white slippers.”

I
t is one week before my fourth birthday. Delano and I are sprawled out under the ackee tree watching the black ants march from one rotten ackee pod to the next. Now and then I squash one to inhale the rancid liquid that oozes out of its big round bottom. It is Christmastime, so the bright yellow fruits with the shiny black heads are in full season. There are so many open ackee pods on the branches that if I half close my eyes I can see a big green Christmas tree with red bulbs hanging all over it. I wish I could eat ackees every day. I can hardly contain my excitement when I watch Grandma boiling, draining, and frying them up with onions and something salty. Salted codfish or salt-pork or salt-mackerel—it doesn’t matter which. My mouth is still watering from the soft, sweet fruit we had with red herring and boiled green bananas this morning. Christmastime is the best time for food in Jamaica. The only thing missing is presents.

“Delano, I wish we could get Christmas presents like the children in Miss Sis storybook. You think the missionaries will send any presents from America this year?”

Delano kicks the ground and sucks his teeth. “Even if them send things, I don’t want none! Last year, the little water gun them give me was so crack up it couldn’t hold no water!”

Grandma is inside ironing clothes for church tomorrow. I feel bad for wanting presents because Pastor Panton has been preaching against those among us who can’t wait for Christmas because their families send barrels of clothes and shoes and tin goods from England, America, and Canada at Christmastime. Such sinners, he declares, are called Christmasmongers. I don’t want to be a Christmasmonger, but I wish my mother would send us a barrel with Christmas presents wrapped up in pretty paper. I say a quick prayer to Jesus, asking him to help me to get a present this Christmas.

Delano hears me and says, “If we mother never abandon us, Jesus could never have so much power over we.”

“What you mean by that, Delano?”

“Well, Jesus is only important to people who don’t have any money. Real rich people don’t even have to go to church.”

“Your father don’t go to church?”

“Me don’t know. But me know him don’t have to beg-beg God for nothing. And when me go to live with him me won’t have to go to church either.”

I kill another ant and watch the others run for cover. “So when you going to live with him?”

“When you get bigger. If me leave you, you won’t have no big brother to tell you what to do. Me have to stay because you so little. But when me go live with him, you will see that when you rich, things is better for you.”

“Delano, you think things would be better for us if we was Jews?”

“What kinda stupid question is that?”

“Well, everything in the Bible is about the Jews them, because them is God’s chosen people. Bad things only happen to them when them stop listening to God. But God still send Jesus to come and save them. Even when them give God’s only Son to the Romans to kill him.”

“No, Stacey, the Romans only kill Jesus because it was God’s plan. God did know how everything was going to turn out already because him is God.”

“Well, is a good thing me is not God, Delano, because if I was God, and I know who kill my son, I woulda burn up every one of them!”

“God know everything, yes, but him is a good God. That is how we get the chance fi have salvation. And even if them was going against God, him wouldn’t just burn them up. Him too good fi that.”

“So if God so good, why him burn up the people in Sodom and Gomorrah? Them wasn’t even committing blasphemy.”

“Stacey, the people in Sodom and Gomorrah was doing something worse than blasphemy. That is why God have to destroy the city.”

“Worse than blasphemy? Is what them was doing so?”

“Is something really bad—something that have to do with a man who is funny. If you are a funny man, that is even worse than blasphemy!”

“Worse than blasphemy? What you mean by funny? Like when somebody tell a nasty joke?”

Delano turns away.

“Delano, tell me what you mean by funny. What them was doing in Sodom and Gommorrah that was funny?”

“Stacey, me done talk ’bout that now! You always want talk ’bout things what nobody else want talk ’bout. Come on, it getting late. Make we go inside.”

Sunday morning comes and there are no presents from the missionaries in America. I take my seat in the front pew beside Delano. Pastor Panton climbs the pulpit and begins his sermon.

“Brothers and sisters, long before the miraculous birth of Christ Jesus, he saw his own future—yes, he saw himself hanging there from that wretched tree! Dead! Eyes closed, mouth shut—dead! But he had no fear of it because he knew that he had to do this to save us!”

A few members shout back, “Hallelujah! Praise his name!”

“Sinners! Imagine the Son of God—who had to pass through the sinful loins of a woman—nailed to that cross! Imagine that steel sword piercing his heart. Christmas is not about presents! Christmas is not about barrels from foreign lands! Christmas is about sacrifice! Christmas is about abstaining! Abstaining from all you love—abstaining so you have the clarity to consider the greatest love of all! The Good Book tells us, ‘Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.’ If you are a friend of Jesus, lift your voice and sing!”

People from the congregation are screaming and jumping. Miss Cherry has already fallen to the floor. Her arms and legs are flailing. I see her big white panties as she lifts her dress. The other women gather around her and throw a white cloth over her legs.

“Merciful Jesus, we thank you!”

“Hallelujah!”

“Praise him!”

“Brothers and sisters, if we do not recognize the birth of the Son of God as a part of the death of the Son of God, we are on a one-way train straight into the bowels of a raging fire. Let us use this holiday to confess our carnal sins and have the blood of Jesus wash the stains from our human hearts. If we fail to confess, brothers and sisters, we are all going to hell! Sing with me, brothers and sisters. Sing if you have confessed!”

Pastor Panton leads us into the next hymn and everyone starts jumping and screaming again. I dance and sing along with the brightly robed choir. I don’t want to go to hell for being a Christmasmonger. I want to be one with the bloody Christ nailed to the cruel cross. The sunlight is streaming through the stained-glass window. In the blue and red light rays I see Christ rising from the dead. I close my eyes and let the melody carry me away.

I raise my hands to the heavens and beg God to forgive me for being a Christmasmonger. I don’t care about presents. All I want is to be washed in the blood so I can be saved from the flames of hell. I will never again think of Christmas without thinking of the bloody body of God’s only son, hanging from that cruel cross. I wipe the tears from my face and sing the words of the hymn as loudly as I can.

Delano covers his mouth with his hand. His body is shaking. He is snickering so loud I can no longer feel the Spirit. “Delano, is what wrong with you?”

“Nothing wrong with me, is you is the idiot!” He is laughing so hard he has to lean against the pew to keep from falling.

“Delano Mark Anthony Chin, what you mean by that?”

“Is not so the song go.” He hiccups. “You singing the words wrong. Hic! Is not
I am dying O Lord.
Hic! Is
I am Thine O Lord, I have heard Thy cry
…”

The other people in our pew are looking at us.

“How you alone can be so fool-fool? Hic! You must—hic! You must have a twin to share that burden?”

I point my finger in his face. “Delano, me don’t have no twin, only one brother. If me a fool, then you is also a foo—”

The red hardcover of his hymnal connects with the side of my head. The children behind us are laughing, the old ladies are shaking their heads—everybody is looking at me. Without thinking, I smack him in the face with the word of the Lord, King James version, twice, before he jumps me.

Miss Lerlene, the Sunday school teacher, pulls us out of the service. She narrows her eyes at me and asks Delano what happened.

He tells her, “Miss Lerlene, I never do anything to her! She was singing God’s song wrong and I correct her and she hit me!”

“Miss Lerlene, that is not true! Is him take him stinking hymnal and hit me in me head first! I only hit him in him stupid face because him hit me first!”

Miss Lerlene grabs me by the shoulder and shakes me. “Stacey, this is not the place to use those words. And you should speak when you are spoken to. I did not ask you. So just keep that filthy mouth shut, young lady. Now continue on, Delano.”

She listens to Delano. Then she turns to me. “Stacey, you are a real problem in God’s kingdom. You must learn to curb that mouth of yours. No matter what happened between you and your brother, a young lady does not hit anybody—and certainly not in the middle of the service! In every house someone has to be in charge. Your brother is older and he is the boy. It is ordained in the scripture that a woman must yield to the will of the men in her family. Now, just answer me yes or no, were you making a mockery of the service?”

“No, Miss Lerlene.”

“Were you singing the song wrong?”

I don’t say anything. And Miss Lerlene lights into me. “Well, Little Miss Mouth Almighty, you will be punished on three counts: one for fighting in the house of God, two for mocking the Lord God Almighty, and three for rising up against those ordained by God! Go straight into the vestry and read Proverbs fifteen, verse one:
A soft word turneth away wrath, but grievous words stir up anger.
When you are finished, write down ten traits of a good Christian woman—please to include obedience and the ability to properly take instructions from a man.”