Part 57 (1/2)

”Well, that ain't good enough.”

Ciel had let the suitcase go before he jerked it away. She looked at Eugene, and the poison of reality began to spread through her body like gangrene. It drew his scent out of her nostrils and sc.r.a.ped the veil from her eyes, and he stood before her just as he really was-a tall, skinny black man with arrogance and selfishness twisting his mouth into a strange shape. And, she thought, I don't feel anything now. But soon, very soon, I will start to hate you. I promise-I will hate you. And I'll never forgive myself for not having done it sooner-soon enough to have saved my baby. Oh, dear G.o.d, my baby.

Eugene thought the tears that began to crowd into her eyes were for him. But she was allowing herself this one last luxury of brief mourning for the loss of something denied to her. It troubled her that she wasn't sure exactly what that something was, or which one of them was to blame for taking it away. Ciel began to feel the overpowering need to be near someone who loved her. I'll get Serena and we'll go visit Mattie now, she thought in a daze.

Then they heard the scream from the kitchen.

The church was small and dark. The air hung about them like a stale blanket. Ciel looked straight ahead, oblivious to the seats filling up behind her. She didn't feel the damp pressure of Mattie's heavy arm or the doubt that invaded the air over Eugene's absence. The plaintive Merciful Jesuses, lightly sprinkled with sobs, were lost on her ears. Her dry eyes were locked on the tiny pearl-gray casket, flanked with oversized arrangements of red-carnationed bleeding hearts and white-lilied eternal circles. The sagging chords that came loping out of the huge organ and mixed with the droning voice of the black-robed old man behind the coffin were also unable to penetrate her.

Ciel's whole universe existed in the seven feet of s.p.a.ce between herself and her child's narrow coffin. There was not even room for this comforting G.o.d whose melodious virtues floated around her sphere, attempting to get in. Obviously, He had deserted or d.a.m.ned her, it didn't matter which. All Ciel knew was that her prayers had gone unheeded-that afternoon she had lifted her daughter's body off the kitchen floor, those blank days in the hospital, and now. So she was left to do what G.o.d had chosen not to.

People had mistaken it for shock when she refused to cry. They thought it some special sort of grief when she stopped eating and even drinking water unless forced to; her hair went uncombed and her body unbathed. But Ciel was not grieving for Serena. She was simply tired of hurting. And she was forced to slowly give up the life that G.o.d had refused to take from her.

After the funeral the well-meaning came to console and offer their dog-eared faith in the form of coconut cakes, potato pies, fried chicken, and tears. Ciel sat in the bed with her back resting against the headboard; her long thin fingers still as midnight frost on a frozen pond, lay on the covers. She acknowledged their kindnesses with nods of her head and slight lip movements, but no sound. It was as if her voice was too tired to make the journey from the diaphragm through the larynx to the mouth.

Her visitors' impotent words flew against the steel edge of her pain, bled slowly, and returned to die in the senders' throats. No one came too near. They stood around the door and the dressing table, or sat on the edges of the two worn chairs that needed upholstering, but they unconsciously pushed themselves back against the wall as if her hurt was contagious.

A neighbor woman entered in studied certainty and stood in the middle of the room. ”Child, I know how you feel, but don't do this to yourself. I lost one, too. The Lord will . . .” And she choked, because the words were jammed down into her throat by the naked force of Ciel's eyes. Ciel had opened them fully now to look at the woman, but raw fires had eaten them worse than lifeless-worse than death. The woman saw in that mute appeal for silence the ragings of a personal h.e.l.l flowing through Ciel's eyes. And just as she went to reach for the girl's hand, she stopped as if a muscle spasm had overtaken her body and, cowardly, shrank back. Reminiscences of old, dried-over pains were no consolation in the face of this. They had the effect of cold beads of water on a hot iron-they danced and fizzled up while the room stank from their steam.

Mattie stood in the doorway, and an involuntary shudder went through her when she saw Ciel's eyes. Dear G.o.d, she thought, she's dying, and right in front of our faces.

”Merciful Father, no!” she bellowed. There was no prayer, no bended knee or sackcloth supplication in those words, but a blasphemous fireball that shot forth and went smas.h.i.+ng against the gates of heaven, raging and kicking, demanding to be heard.

”No! No! No!” Like a black Brahman cow, desperate to protect her young, she surged into the room, pus.h.i.+ng the neighbor woman and the others out of her way. She approached the bed with her lips clamped shut in such force that the muscles in her jaw and the back of her neck began to ache.

She sat on the edge of the bed and enfolded the tissue-thin body in her huge ebony arms. And she rocked. Ciel's body was so hot it burned Mattie when she first touched her, but she held on and rocked. Back and forth, back and forth-she had Ciel so tightly she could feel her young b.r.e.a.s.t.s flatten against the b.u.t.tons of her dress. The black mammoth gripped so firmly that the slightest increase of pressure would have cracked the girl's spine. But she rocked.

And somewhere from the bowels of her being came a moan from Ciel, so high at first it couldn't be heard by anyone there, but the yard dogs began an unholy howling. And Mattie rocked. And then, agonizingly slow, it broke its way through the parched lips in a spaghetti-thin column of air that could be faintly heard in the frozen room.

Ciel moaned. Mattie rocked. Propelled by the sound, Mattie rocked her out of that bed, out of that room, into a blue vastness just underneath the sun and above time. She rocked her over Aegean seas so clean they shone like crystal, so clear the fresh blood of sacrificed babies torn from their mother's arms and given to Neptune could be seen like pink froth on the water. She rocked her on and on, past Dachau, where soul-gutted Jewish mothers swept their children's entrails off laboratory floors. They flew past the spilled brains of Senegalese infants whose mothers had dashed them on the wooden sides of slave s.h.i.+ps. And she rocked on.

She rocked her into her childhood and let her see murdered dreams. And she rocked her back, back the womb, to the nadir of her hurt, and they found it-a slight silver splinter, embedded just below the surface of the skin. And Mattie rocked and pulled-and the splinter gave way, but its roots were deep, gigantic, ragged, and they tore up flesh with bits of fat and muscle tissue clinging to them. They left a huge hole, which was already starting to pus over, but Mattie was satisfied. It would heal.

The bile that had formed a tight knot in Ciel's stomach began to rise and gagged her just as it pa.s.sed her throat. Mattie put her hand over the girl's mouth and rushed her out the now-empty room to the toilet. Ciel retched yellowish-green phlegm, and she brought up white lumps of slime that hit the seat of the toilet and rolled off, splattering onto the tiles. After a while she heaved only air, but the body did not seem to want to stop. It was exorcising the evilness of pain.

Mattie cupped her hands under the faucet and motioned for Ciel to drink and clean her mouth. When the water left Ciel's mouth, it tasted as if she had been rinsing with a mild acid. Mattie drew a tub of hot water and undressed Ciel. She let the nightgown fall off the narrow shoulders, over the pitifully thin b.r.e.a.s.t.s and jutting hipbones. She slowly helped her into the water, and it was like a dried brown autumn leaf hitting the surface of a puddle.

And slowly she bathed her. She took the soap, and, using only her hands, she washed Ciel's hair and the back of her neck. She raised her arms and cleaned the armpits, soaping well the downy brown hair there. She let the soap slip between the girls b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and she washed each one separately, cupping it in her hands. She took each leg and even cleaned under the toenails. Making Ciel rise and kneel in the tub, she cleaned the crack in her behind, soaped her pubic hair, and gently washed the creases in her v.a.g.i.n.a-slowly, reverently, as if handling a newborn.

She took her from the tub and toweled her in the same manner she had been bathed-as if too much friction would break the skin tissue. All of this had been done without either woman saying a word. Ciel stood there, naked, and felt the cool air play against the clean surface of her skin. She had the sensation of fresh mint coursing through her pores. She closed her eyes and the fire was gone. Her tears no longer fried within her, killing her internal organs with their steam. So Ciel began to cry-there, naked, in the center of the bathroom floor.

Mattie emptied the tub and rinsed it. She led the still-naked Ciel to a chair in the bedroom. The tears were flowing so freely now Ciel couldn't see, and she allowed herself to be led as if blind. She sat on the chair and cried-head erect. Since she made no effort to wipe them away, the tears dripped down her chin and landed on her chest and rolled down to her stomach and onto her dark public hair. Ignoring Ciel, Mattie took away the crumpled linen and made the bed, stretching the sheets tight and fresh. She beat the pillows into a virgin plumpness and dressed them in white cases.

And Ciel sat. And cried. The unmolested tears had rolled down her parted thighs and were beginning to wet the chair. But they were cold and good. She put out her tongue and began to drink in their saltiness, feeding on them. The first tears were gone. Her thin shoulders began to quiver, and spasms circled her body as new tears came-this time, hot and stinging. And she sobbed, the first sound she'd made since the moaning.

Mattie took the edges of the dirty sheet she'd pulled off the bed and wiped the mucus that had been running out of Ciel's nose. She then led her freshly wet, glistening body, baptized now, to the bed. She covered her with one sheet and laid a towel across the pillow-it would help for a while.

And Ciel lay down and cried. But Mattie knew the tears would end. And she would sleep. And morning would come.

Fortune.

BY R. ERICA DOYLE.

Two doors down lives Fortune. She breathes in daybreak in black sarongs and flamboyant halter tops, orchids on her tongue. You watch her heave the gate open in the morning, trip-dance down the wooden steps to Morne Coco Road. The banana tree hides her for a moment, and your heart stops with her disappearance, starts again when her sandals clack on the street. The roosters crow before and behind her, hailing, ”Fortune, ho ho, Fortune, ho ho.” Her dougla hair, that curly ma.s.s of Africa and India making love, caresses her shoulders, bounces down her back, winds itself over the straps of her red handbag. She has bangles like a garden of silver on her full golden arms.

You stand in the doorway with your tea, now cold, sip it with a grimace. Fortune comes even with your hungry stance, two points converging, two pairs of cocoa eyes meeting, and then she is past you, throwing you a hard-won ”Good morning Yvette!” over her shoulder. Her round b.u.t.tocks describe circles under the cotton. ”Fortune is a woman could walk and win' at the same time,” Couteledge from down the road always said, ”That what make them old hags tongue wag, can't stand no woman that age hard back and fete one time, no children no man to slow she down.” The chickens in your front yard raise their heads from the dust they've been scouring for corn and insects to watch her. She is the sun rising over the hill, then setting below it, lost from your sight.

Something is pulling at the bottom of your short pants leg. You don't turn, know it is your little nephew, Selwyn, eighteen months old, awake and wanting breakfast. You wait. Two months now your sister, Dulce, send him from New York for you to raise. The child come walking, but ain't saying a word at first, only pointing and grabbing at things he want. To teach him you didn't answer those pulls, matched his silence with your own expectant stare, eyebrows raised into question marks, and smiling to show you not vexed, only waiting. Patience is one thing you always have. That and respect for few words. Finally he began to talk, say ”Mek” for ”Milk” and ”Bah bah” for bottle or cup or ball or bath, and ”t.i.ti,” his name for you, when he don't know the word at all. You pick things up for him then, showcase fruit, food, and toys like the game show white lady on Miss Flora television until he know what he wants.

”t.i.ti?” says Selwyn, still pulling, but not too bad.

You turn, crouch down to meet his luminous gray eyes, smile. You open your arms and he falls in, laughing. ”Good morning, Sello darling.” His sweet still-baby smell of powder and coconut oil mix together, his fresh breath on your cheek.

”G'mah nah t.i.ti,” he replies.

”Good boy! You hungry?”

”Yesh, t.i.ti!” He laughs at his own words, proud.

You stand and he runs into the house in front of you. You are always surprised at how quickly he covers distances with that chubby duckwalk he have. Not that there is far to go in the small house, it only have two rooms, but he speeds through like a windup toy, and into everything like a little monkey. When the stewardess handed him to you in Piarco airport, you called the woozy and fearful child ”Paw Paw Boy” to make him smile, for he was dense and yellow as a papaya, with a shock of reddish hair to match the fruit's insides.

Selwyn climbs onto the seat you've stacked with newspapers to make him a high chair of sorts and fold his hands neatly on the table, ghost eyes s.h.i.+ning.

”I have some roast bake for you this morning,” you sing, holding up the iron skillet for him to see the bread round and solid within. ”And some nice buljahl I make fresh fresh.”

Selwyn giggles. His impossibly small teeth are like pearls between his pink lips. ”Fwes.h.!.+”

”Yes, my dear.” You place the bowl of codfish on the table next to the bake. ”Uh-oh Sello-” you spread your hands wide in puzzlement. ”One thing, one thing missing. What is it?” You place a finger on your forehead as if thinking, and his brow furrows to match. ”Hmmm . . .”

”Jooch!” cries Selwyn.

”That's right my love, juice!” You take the plastic pitcher full of yellow juice from the narrow counter and put it on the table. ”Now, what kind is it?”

”Mmm,” says Sello, tapping his head with the palm of one tiny hand, ”onch?”

”Good guess, but it's not orange. Try again.”

”Magoh?”

”Mango is darker, love. Try again.”

Selwyn thinks hard, then smiles and holds up one hand, fingers spread.

”Right, my dear! Five-finger fruit. But you can say 'star' if that's too too difficult. Can you say 'star'?”