Karlene Morgan, Contributor
Somewhere in America, dirty red brick piles on dirty red brick to claw at a metallic, summer-evening sky. People bustle, antlike, in and out of doorways; women with bags, men with long arms. A basketball thuds; a boy tips his bicycle back on to one wheel and grins; taut bellies, short shorts, confident behinds jiggle by, then jiggle back. 'Ooh baby, you so fine'. Brand-name sneakers slide, turn, stomp out new dance moves; fat women fan themselves in the stultifying evening heat. In a hazy window, several floors above, a woman appears briefly, then withdraws.
When the doctor tell me I might never have a baby, I feel like somebody rub my neck and shoulder with healing oil and cause the pain I carry there for so many years to just drain away. I cry that day, but under the sadness I feel relief. Is like when I was little and do something wrong and Gran say, 'Wait till your father come home,' and I sit and wait with my hands twitching and my mind in a knot. Then Daddy come and cut a switch from the tamarind tree and give me a whaling. And when it is over, I feel free, because at last I pay the price and I know I won't ever be punished again for that particular thing I did.
I always knew that God would punish me for the first baby I throw away. It was just a matter of when and how.
My sister, I am afraid, and I am writing this letter in case something happen to me. Then somebody might find it and send it to you so you cannot say you never heard a last word from me. I am in America, but I don't know where. Four days now I am in this broke-down room with rat and roach and all manner of evil, and nobody come. I cannot find Sam and I don't know who to talk to or who to call.
Remember that hymn we used to sing at communion? I am not worthy, Holy Lord? That Sunday when they sing that hymn, it was like they was singing it for me and I walk up to th to receive the bread and wine, and Pastor Williams give it to me even though I was not baptized. 'Speak but the word, one gracious word can set the prisoner free.' I believe it was that Sunday, six years now, my womb open and God give me Sam. And that is why I haven't gone off of my head these last two days, for after all those years and no child, God would not give him to me only to take him again so soon.
I realise now I make a mistake to leave Jamaica and come to this place. Now, I think I understand what Gran mean when she say stiff neck and wanting going to kill me. But what's wrong with wanting? Every day I wake up is just like the day before; go for water, go to shop, pick up a job work here or there, getting old. I didn't want to get old in Blake Town before I was young somewhere else. I hope you understand.
I am going to set down everything clearly so that if you ever need evidence you will have it.
On August 5, I meet a man in town and he give me two passport that I paid 4,000 American dollars for. Remember Millicent? The girl who used to look after Miss Sarah? She set it up for me. It is every cent I have in my name and I save it a long time, scrimping here and scrimping there. The passport says my name is LaTonya Harvey and that Sam name Jhevar Watts. I didn't want to give Sam up, him being only a little boy, but the man said we should travel separate. He appoint a woman name Sharon to take Sam up as her own child. The arrangement is that I would wait here for two days, then they would bring Sam and we would go to where Millicent is waiting. That should have been Tuesday. Today is Thursday and still no Sam.
From last night I have a headache that won't go away and the heat don't help at all. People tell you how America cold, but nobody tell you about the heat. This place dirty and hot as hell. Duke, the man who bring me here, give me a box of chicken and two bottles of water and tell me I must wait for him and, whatever I do, I must not go out or talk to no one. I hear people walking up and down the stairs outside, some cursing, some fighting, sometimes they laughing. This morning I almost call out to a woman who stop outside to quarrel with her children and that is when I decide to write on the back of this old calendar to stop myself from screaming.
Did Brother Watson get the pimento pick? I am sitting here thinking how I promise him faithfully to come on Monday morning, for they getting ripe and dropping off the tree, and how I just get up and leave without saying a word to anybody. If worse come to worse, tell him I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Junior crying and saying him sorry and I say I sorry too, but don't really mean it and he want to get up and fix up his clothes and I hold him like I want to comfort him, but I really just want him to stay longer and I am looking at the light coming through the pimento leaves and thinking how old people find it hard to understand ... how Pastor Williams and Elder fighting 'gainst us, call us up in the office to rebuke us, say be careful for Junior going to Bible College September and I have to find something to do with myself. I can see they don't think I will pass the exam, the science part was tricky I finish long before the time and start to sweat because if I don't pass and go to nursing school I going to be stuck in Burke Village forever and Junior going to leave me because a man who go to college won't want a girl who don't have any education or even if he stubborn and married to her the whole community gang up and carry news and mash up the relationship because they don't believe she deserve him.
I love the smell of ripe pimento. If I close my eyes I can smell it now, me and Junior lying on the bags under the tree and him saying we have to get up now or ants will kill us, but I know it is only because he feel bad about what we just did and I am saying is alright is alright and not wanting to move because the warm sun and the ripe pimento berry making me sleepy and I feel contented because I win and Pastor Williams and Elder and all of them others lose and when Granny give me the glass of pimento dram Christmas morning to settle my stomach for whole week I feeling sick I sip it then vomit down the place and she look at me and say, ' Hmmm ah sah!' which is what she always say when she think something wrong and can't make up her mind what to do about it and the exam results come back and I fail the science and can't get into nursing school and I am wondering if I must write to Junior and tell him about the baby then Pastor read his letter in church, how he doing well and growing in the Lord and everybody get up and wave and say Hallelujah and I know whatever happen I must deal with it myself and the man in the pharmacy looking at me kind of scornful like even though he taking my money the dog, and give me the pills and say if you have any pain don't go to nobody else come straight back to me and when I go to toilet and stay long I feel Granny following me with her eyes and she draw in her breath and say ' Ah sah', and I bleed and bleed and think this bleeding will never stop, then Junior coming back and I go to Pablo's where I see a pretty piece of pound cloth and I sit up late at night making the dress for I learning to sew with Miss Hyacinth, but I am not expert yet and when I put it on Sunday morning I know nothing can stop me and Granny hug me as I going through the gate and say why you so pig headed? Why you want so much? But I don't care for after two years Junior coming back and I see the new broad hat sitting up in the front row and wonder who have such a fancy hat and then Junior get up and introduce the bitch under the hat as his fiancée and everybody get up and say Praise the Lord and maybe I stand up too or maybe I don't for my mind fuzzy but I look down on the dress and notice that even though I hold up the fabric and examine it from corner to corner before I buy it, it still have a small hole that going to ravel out the first time I wash it which is what happen when you buy things cheap.
The day the nurse put Sam in my arms I feel like I was redeemed. Martin standing there at the foot of the bed still looking anxious, for it was a hard labour, and I tell him I love him. Martin face kind of melt and he step outside the ward and I hear him blowing his nose. Sis, whatever happen between us afterwards, I really wanted to love him then. Now I know it was a mistake to marry him, but he love me and I think that would be good enough for both of us. But I couldn't get the smell of ripe pimento out of my head and so after a while things collapse, and we staying together only because of Sam, and Martin going around with this haunted look that make me feel bad but I can't do anything about it.
'Go with the nice lady, Mummy will soon come' and Sam is crying and holding on to me and I have to tear his hand from round my neck and it was like tearing my heart apart for this is the first time we will ever separate and now everything I was sure about starting to look shaky suppose something happen to him and I am not there to help suppose he get lost like that time in the market when I leave him by Sister Janet's stall and tell him to wait and he get tired waiting and went looking for me and get frightened by all those long legs passing and the push carts and the stalls piled high, when I find him he is sitting on a hamper with his face wet and his finger in his mouth and a loud man saying 'Whose child?' and I shout out 'Is mine' and my heart nearly break to see him so. I nearly take him back and tell the woman that I change my mind that this America thing not worth it but I think of getting up another day to the same old life and I cut off my feeling and after he is gone I bolt the door behind me and hope that Martin and Junior won't follow me to this new life I am making.
Everybody say Martin was always such a careful man, so what could have possess him to change the truck tyre on Knott's Hill without properly cotching the wheels? Everybody say God knows best. The Lord giveth and he taketh. But I know, more than any God, that Martin die because he give up. Every day I wake up, I think how he used to laugh, and how after a while he stop, because of me. It seem that everything I touch, everything turn to dust.
Footsteps fall on the landing, a key turns, a tiny figure hesitates then surges forward. The woman reels backwards under the impact as a little boy hurls himself into her arms. They are on the dirty floor laughing and then crying, long, drawn-out sobs, and she cradles the boy and says, 'I am sorry.'
'We tell her to buy a plane ticket from Florida and the b—— cl—- woman take the bus instead.'
The broad-shouldered man-not Duke, somebody else-allows them a few more minutes then starts collecting her things. 'Come, I don't have time.'
Brick piles on brick, scrambling up to an inky night sky. Scores of yellow eyes dot a dark, indifferent concrete face. A television set blares. Creatures huddle around a pipe; figures embrace, bodies pressed against mortar until they seem one with the structure that supports them. Two figures emerge in a shaft of light: a woman with a child on her shoulder and a man dragging a suitcase. He points her to a car. The engine roars, and they ease out into the lamplit street.
- Karlene Morgan
