Dancing Lessons (21 page)

On top of it all, Ma D, who had been ill with cancer, died. I had gone to stay with her from time to time, though it was hard for me to leave my home. She had her other daughters-in-law to take care of her, for all her sons were married by then and living nearby. Then one day they took her to the hospital for treatment that didn't work. I never saw her again. Losing Ma D was like losing a part of myself, for though after I married and moved away we didn't see each other that often, just knowing she was there was good enough for me. I went to her funeral and wore black and bawled like a baby, not caring what anyone thought—in those days pregnant women were not supposed to go to funerals or wear black or bawl their heads off. But this was one time I got my own way with Sam. He didn't want me to go, but I simply got dressed and seated myself in the car and refused to get out until he finally gave up and drove.

I suppose I was in mourning for a lot of things by the time Lise came, not least for the death of something I couldn't even name, for some spark that I thought would come and live inside me the day I rode off with Sam, that would keep the darkness at bay. It's not that I turned away from the baby. At least I don't think so. She was breast-fed like the others. But they say babies can sense things even in the womb. She must have felt chilly winds blowing. I suppose I should accept some blame for the way Lise turned out. Loud and demanding, selfish and mean-spirited. I know it's bad to say such things about one's child, but really, she had none of the sweetness or charm of the others. Which is probably why she felt she had to grab all the attention. She wasn't an attractive child, definitely shortchanged as far as looks were concerned, though by the time she was in her early teens she certainly had learnt to make the most of what she had. Don't ask me where she got it, that thing called sexiness, but you should have seen her at the wedding—sixteen looking twenty-five, with her overripe breasts falling out of her frock, and behaving like forty, drinking champagne and carrying on with all the men. I have to say she did look fantastic as Celia's bridesmaid. I know Celia wanted Shirley as her maid of honour, but Shirley had gone to New York by then and didn't come for the wedding. I'm not sure I ever knew the reason why, except that Celia was terribly upset about it. Young as Lise was, she carried it off. I had to admire her.

At the reception, she barely deigned to notice me. She was hooked up under her father's arm the whole time, which is probably where she felt she belonged. I spent my time avoiding them. As far as I was concerned she was her father's responsibility. So why did I feel shame every time news of one of Lise's scandalous affairs reached me?

IT'S WHEN I LOOK
at people like Miss Pitt-Grainger and one or two of the other folk at Ellesmere Lodge who never seem to have visitors, who clearly have no one, that I have come to appreciate how much Celia has done for me. I wonder why, for apart from life, what have I really given her? She's given me so much. For one thing, she gave me status among my neighbours once she started to get her name and picture in the papers. You wouldn't believe how important people considered this. Well, I was proud of her too, of course, every step of the way, but I certainly wouldn't have gone around the place boasting about her the way everyone else did. As for when she started to host one of those television talk shows. Well, you'd have thought she was the Queen and I the Queen Mother.

Of course, by this time people in the district had begun to benefit from having children abroad or themselves going overseas as farm workers; foreign travel was now the norm rather than the exception. Many homes boasted large TV sets and a few had satellite dishes on the roofs. Quite a difference from when I was a child and we seemed so cut off from the rest of the world. I was still cut off in a way, for apart from my radio all I had was an old black and white TV. Until Junior turned up at my house one day with this big colour one. Of course it didn't mean very much, as I didn't have a satellite dish, so it was still just the local station I could watch. But that's what she was on, this talk show. So at least I could watch her. Mark you, Junior did say he would see about getting me a dish, but I absolutely refused it, I thought the whole thing was too ostentatious and far too much money to spend, though I was pleased that he was being so thoughtful.

It was after Celia's wedding that Junior got into the habit of dropping by. He never stayed long, but I was happy to see him. He stayed long enough to eat, as he missed my cooking, or so he said, and I usually rushed to the kitchen to rustle up something. Junior always loved his food and now I could see it showing. I teased him, for he was certainly filling out. I kept asking him about Shirley. I had had no reply to any of the letters I wrote to her in New York and I was getting seriously worried. Junior assured me she was all right, they often spoke on the phone and she always asked for me, she was just too busy; studying and working at the same time. I believed him, but I still fretted over Shirley, wondering why she never answered any of my letters.

I was always glad when any of the children came by—though, if truth be told, Lise and I couldn't be together for five minutes before we fell out. Or at least, she argued and shouted and I said little, but she knew how to read my body language and my silence itself enraged her. After my first few words and her reaction I would just give up in disgust and let her rant. Almost every visit ended with her slamming the door and leaving in a huff. And then I would heave a sigh and say, “Good riddance.” But really, it would take me hours and sometimes days to get over the disturbance she left in her wake. What did we argue about? Maybe the same things all mothers argue with their teenage girls about. The way she dressed and carried herself, her behaviour, her school work, boys, her lack of consideration. Her lying. I caught her out so many times. Maybe we would have resolved our differences in time. I was not to find out because, as it was with Junior, she didn't have to stay around and take it from me. She had her father to run to.

As the youngest, I suppose she was always Daddy's girl. She was the only one who asked after her father when he left us for good.

She just came right out and asked, “Where's Papa?”

We were all sitting at the table having dinner, stew peas and rice. To this day I remember that moment and the turmoil I felt. Her question forced me to face up to something I wanted to pretend wasn't happening. Although he had been gone over a week, I hadn't prepared an answer to that question, not even for myself. I never answered her; I was too afraid of bursting into tears. But I could feel the silence around the table getting longer and longer, as if all of us were collectively holding our breath. I gave Lise a look that normally would silence her. It did, but it didn't stop her playing with the empty spoon in her wide open mouth and gazing at me with what I called her mongoose look. The one the mongoose gave to the boa constrictor to stop it in its tracks. Even then, at eight or nine, Lise was already tough. My God! She had her father's face and eyes and red colouring, but not his good looks, and at this moment with her coarse little plaits unravelling and her face covered in freckles she was an awkward, plain-looking child, her eyelashes stubby and almost white, her eyes pale and disconcerting. Her looks brought her plenty of teasing. “Mongoose,” the children called her, “Muss-Muss.” “Quaw.” “Redibo.” If they did this in my hearing, I would tell them to stop; but I didn't worry about it, for I really didn't see it as anything more than what children did to each other. So I guess Lise learnt at an early age to fight her own fights.

At first the teasing would make her cry, but then she got more and more aggressive: throwing sticks, stones, whatever there was to hand, fearlessly launching her skinny self at children much bigger, trying to scratch their eyes out. She was fierce. Where she got this from, God only knows. To me she was just the bad seed. And didn't she prove it? But that was still to come.

At the table that day her question went unanswered, and not another word was uttered for the rest of the meal, not even by talkative Shirley. I could feel the tension, though, growing and growing from the day I sent off their father's clothes. Maybe I was the one generating it, for I felt brittle and stretched. So now the question hung in the air, tantalizing, unsettling, as mysteries are. We sat there, trying to eat, but overly conscious of each other, of every movement, the slightest little sound. For once, I couldn't wait for them to leave the table. They couldn't wait either, and as soon as I said they could go they jumped up and cleared the table with great eagerness while I just sat for a long long time till darkness fell. For once I didn't check on them or the house. I got up and flung myself down on my bed and fell fast asleep.

But Lise refused to let it go. For more than once after that she asked, without getting any answer from me, “When's Papa coming back?” And whenever she got into a real temper, which she did more and more, lying on the floor kicking and screaming, scratching her own face and tearing out her hair in clumps, inevitably the tantrum would end up with her falling quiet, gulping in air along with huge sobs, and muttering “Papa, Papa,” half swallowing the words until she fell silent. After a while I paid her no mind; I just left her to sleep it off wherever she had thrown herself. I had decided that I would not allow this child to rule me. I had too many other things to worry about.

But don't think I didn't notice the two older ones those times, how they exchanged looks between them, secret guilty looks as if they were in some grand conspiracy. They always were, weren't they, Shirley and Junior. They must have let Lise in on the mystery, however they saw it, for after a while she stopped mentioning her father. To me, that was all to the good.

EIGHT YEARS LATER AND
Lise was living with him, in his nice posh house on the outskirts of town, where the rich people lived, with his new woman. Lise left home as soon as she finished her exams. She didn't wait on the results, probably because she knew she had done so badly. She stayed in the town to get a job for the summer, she said, sharing with Shirley, who by then had a little apartment of her own on the side of someone's house. Lise used to come home for weekends quite often, for I insisted, and then it got less and less. She was such a liar that it was some time before I knew that she was no longer living with Shirley but had moved in with her father. It wasn't “a big ting” as she put it, she had her own room and she wasn't paying rent, and though it was a bit out of town Dad—as he had become—drove her to and from work for she had no intention of going back to school.

Next thing I knew, she was having a baby. Some married man she had taken up with. Lise always worried about her looks, considered herself ugly, which is probably why from an early age she was so determined to attract attention from boys. I could see it in the way she sexed up her clothes, puffed up the hair, dyed it, pouted her lips, invested in looks rather than books until she did become in time quite glamorous looking, in the way of teenagers then, tight skirts, little tops, cleavage, and endless costume jewellery and makeup. An earlier version of my hairdresser Morveen. But what the hell was she doing at eighteen with this hard-back businessman even though he drove a Mercedes-Benz? His wife rammed her car into their apartment building at one time and grabbed Lise on the street one day and gave her a good box, though of course Lise retaliated. Next thing she's up on an assault charge, though I guess wiser heads prevailed and the charge was dropped. Ostrich-like, I kept my head down and pretended it had nothing to do with me each time a new scandal reached my ears. Millie or someone else in the district would be sure to bring me the news. They all professed sympathy at those times, but I could see their eyes glittering with the excitement of the scandal, hoping to get some extra tidbit from me. They never did, for my only reaction was, “I don't business.”

That was only the beginning. Lise got into any number of scrapes and ended up having two other children by two different men. She had moved to some other part of the island and for a long time I neither saw nor heard from her. Junior told me she had settled down and taken some business courses and had gone into real estate and was doing quite well. That part didn't surprise me. Lise was so good at getting what she wanted she probably twisted the arms of her clients till they signed.

Some years later who should turn up driving this posh new gold-coloured car and looking rather grand but Miss Lise herself. I almost didn't recognize her as she stepped out of what Ken assured me later with awe in his voice was a
BMW
. She looked completely different, really glamorous, like a movie star. She had managed to smooth out her complexion so her skin looked golden, to match the hair that was plentiful and straight and reddish blonde, whether her own or a wig I don't know. Makeup and her long mascaraed lashes gave her eyes colour and depth, so they looked challenging rather than weak. Her lips, which were rather large to begin with, were emphasized with a pale orange glossy lipstick. She looked very fit, as if she spent all her time at a gym, and the dress, a plain white linen sheath, wasn't tight but showed all her curves. The black and strappy heels were high, the pearly orange nails were out to here, and the rings and necklaces and bracelets looked expensive and real. Her manner had changed to match the exterior gloss. All smiles and charm and beautifully modulated voice, as if she couldn't mash ants. But underneath tough as nails still, you could feel it, for she exuded a kind of powerful energy, as if she had finally found a way of channelling her ferocity. I was genuinely glad to see her, glad that she had turned into someone, even though that someone frightened me a bit.

She pretended to be happy to see me and promised to bring the children to visit as soon as school was out. But she never did, and I thought afterwards that she only came to show off on me, to show me how wonderful she had turned out. She was that kind of person.