Dancing Lessons (7 page)

SINCE I'VE BEEN HERE
at Ellesmere Lodge I've offered more than once to help Matron in the office. I have no doubt I could be useful there but it's really because I want to learn how to use the computer. That idea came to me when I realized that writing in a journal wasn't a safe thing to do and I remembered Mr. Levy explaining about his laptop to Heathcliff and telling him about passwords. I thought of asking Her to buy me a computer; I have never asked her for anything before, but I imagine it is too much money and she's already spending so much on me. Suppose I can't learn how to use it? But Mr. Levy is much older than me and there he is, typing away—he says he is writing his memoirs. Well, so am I, come to think of it. So now I have this itch. I really need to check out this computer thing, but I am too much in awe of Mr. Levy, who is a patrician old gentleman with snowy white hair and a lovely manner, to ask him anything. So it was to Matron again, making my offer, willing her to say yes and invite me in, but she smiled sweetly and said again in that smarmy way of hers, “Oh that is so nice of you. Mrs. Samphire. Thenk you. Very much. I will bear it in mind.” And that's been the end of that. I didn't expect anything, of course. Because I'm silent, and I don't have the kind of background the rest of them have, she too thinks I'm stupid. Or maybe it was just the way I mumbled it so it came out in a rush, all nonsense sounding.

I don't think it's because she's afraid I'll go through her files and ferret out her little secrets. Not at all. I'm sure she doesn't think me capable of that. I have already done that, of course, the few times she's left me alone in there, for I'm quick like that. Always have been. I like to know about the enemy. Which is how I found the picture when I was searching through Aunt Zena's bureau one day when they were both entertaining visitors on the veranda. A picture of a man and Aunt Zena, wearing a wedding dress! Without a doubt, it was her, looking much younger and happier, a long, clinging white lace dress and a veil which in the photograph was so long it was draped on the ground all the way around the two of them almost in a full circle and her arm linked tightly into his. I didn't have a chance to have a good look at him that day as I didn't want to press my luck, but I later confirmed my first impression of a portly man with a broad, flat face and straight black hair, and skin darker than hers, like an Indian's, the one on the cigar box that Miss Celia kept her sewing things in, not the other kind, and not unhandsome.

That was a shock to me for she seemed such a solitary one, as tightly wound up and dangerous as barbed wire. I couldn't imagine anyone getting close to her and wondered when this wedding was and what had happened to the husband. Maybe she cut him to pieces. I had no idea then she had ever been away from home, for although Miss Celia was her mother, she was very much the ruler of the kingdom. Of course I couldn't ask and no one ever told me anything. As soon as I appeared the adults shut up or changed the subject if they were talking about anything the least bit interesting. So of course they turned me into a spy, creeping around and listening. But about Aunt Zena's husband and married life, not a word did I ever hear. Until one day after I had gone to live with Ma D, Charlie Samphire's mother, I had the brilliant idea of asking her, for she knew them.

“Ah, Zena,” she said, in response to my question as to whether Zena had ever married. Ma D smiled a twisted little smile and paused in the middle of what she was doing, which was cutting out a piece of cloth, the scissors already slicing the material. It was beautiful silk material, salmon coloured, she was cutting to make a blouse for me. I stood across the table from her with my mouth open, torn between wanting to hear the story and keeping one eye on the scissors and praying her hand wouldn't slip and ruin the material. But of course Ma D was a pro on both counts. Not that she told me very much then, I think she still regarded me as a child and not yet ready to be let into adult secrets. But at least she wasn't as rude about it as the others.

“Married,” she laughed. “Oh yes, she rather made a habit of it.”

“What!” I'm sure my voice rose in disbelief.

“Well, it depends on what you call marriage.” I leaned forward eagerly, but all Ma D added in a very dry voice was, “She's been churched once.” And, though I waited to hear more, the fact that she had resumed cutting where she left off made me understand that no more would be forthcoming, at least for now. I didn't press her for more, I was too shy to do so anyway, but what she had said left my head spinning, as I tried to figure out what it meant. Was there so much more to Aunt Zena than the little countrywoman I had grown with and never learned to love? The foremost mystery in my mind had always been that of my mother. Now I filed away Zena's story as the second. What wouldn't I give to know things?

OF COURSE NOW
I think about it, I treated my own children the same way, for I never told them anything at all. Not a word did I say to them about their sister going to live with someone else. “Soon come back” was all I ever said. Not a word did I say about my black eyes and split lip and noises in the night. Not a word when their father left. Didn't I of all people know the awfully destructive power of silence? Yet I silenced my own children with a look, forced their own words back inside them with a hand raised to strike. For I hit them, O yes, and don't tell me anything now about child abuse and cruelty. What did people like us know? Though I can't say I myself was physically beaten as a child, that didn't stop the anger from pooling inside me, ready to burst on my children. Not all bruises show.

I couldn't take it out on him, could I? Women just didn't do that. In his presence I was always too frightened to speak or make a move and once the moment of high anxiety passed, the pressure dropped and I could not build the anger up to boiling point again.

I suppose I felt I had to protect them, shield them from the worst of it, as if I could stop his straying. Every time he found a new girl he would go and get drunk and come home and take it out on me. It took me a long time to figure out the pattern. My first thoughts were always for the children and as soon as I heard him coming down the road, singing drunkenly, sometimes alone, sometimes with others, I would rush to shut the door to their room. When it first began, after Junior's birth, we had only two bedrooms, and the children were all piled up together on the bed in theirs.

It didn't happen that often I suppose. After my initial shock and outrage, I learned to deal with it. For he never beat me when he was sober, nor did he ever touch the children. He was sometimes too drunk to stand up straight, most of the punches missed, and we usually ended up going round and round with him holding on to me for support while trying to hit me, banging into things, knocking over furniture, like we were in this crazy drunken dance, and I would finally waltz him off to bed. He never raised his voice to me at those times, it was all silently done, just him grunting as he aimed a punch or a kick. At first I cried out for him to stop, but that woke up the children. To this day I can still see Her stricken moonface at the bedroom door, so I bore it in silence.

The next day he would wake up and behave as if nothing had happened, and I did the same, hiding the bruises on my body, preparing explanations for my black eye, my swollen lip in case anyone asked. But no one did. I hardly went anywhere outside the house and field anyway. When I did, people averted their eyes from me as they laughed with him. He was the one everyone knew and loved, for many miles around—after he got the car, for hundreds of miles no doubt. I hardly saw him: our roving ambassador. And there came a time when I was thankful that he roved.

Well, he did take care of us, I'll give him that, as far as he was able, though it got to be less and less as he needed more and more for his drink and his women. He put a roof over our heads and food on the table, when he could, and sometimes money for clothes and the children's schoolbooks. When Lise, the last child, was eight or nine he left home as usual one day, and he never came back. Sent me nothing but a note asking me to deliver his clothes to the messenger, and I'm proud to say I didn't rip them to shreds as I wanted to. I behaved in a civilized way. I packed them neatly in his bags and I handed them over, even offered the man something to eat while he waited. And I just carried on. For I was the one who had kept the little farm going all along, the four acres of family land he was given when we married, and I was only glad he didn't want to bring the other woman there and throw us off it, for by now I believed him capable of that. No love of farming in him, I could see that from the start, so it was fortunate that I took to it, with help only with the hard work, the digging and hoeing and weeding. A boy to cut the bananas when they were ready and climb the coconut trees or dig the yams.

He did try at first to help in a half-hearted way, but after the third child—Charles Junior—was born, and we were still so desperately poor, he got the job as a bookkeeper down at the sugar estate, keeping track of the men's work and paying them, maintaining the records. He was good at that sort of thing. Suddenly having a regular income coming in made a big difference. He was able to extend the house, he bought the car, and for a while we were much better off than we had ever been. For the first time since we got married I could see a path opening before us.

Sam had a good head on his shoulders and some education. He and his brothers had all been sent to a fine boys' school—the same one that took Charles Junior—though how long they lasted there I have no idea. I can't say he was at heart a wicked man, but he was a weak, vacillating one, hollow at the core, and I think that made him cruel. I think all of them had been injured too much by their father to really make a go of anything. But he did stick to this work, probably because it was so undemanding, and it gave him an excuse to be away from home.

When he failed to come home that last time I knew where he went, don't think I didn't have my channel to everything that was happening. Millie who came to help out when I had the first child for some reason remained true to me all her life, and as she ironed or cleaned the floor, she kept me informed. She came from a family of hard-working women with their tentacles spread wide—one sister worked at the post office, two others worked for the best families in the district, and her mother was a higgler who went to the city market every week. Of course I had no way of knowing how much of what occurred in my own household made the rounds. But somehow, if I came close to trusting anyone it would be Millie, for she has known me better and longer than anyone else, and when I came to Ellesmere Lodge it was in her care that I left my house and land. Perhaps I trust Millie because she was the only person who seemed to prefer me to my husband. I could see it in the way she acted whenever he was around, and she was ever so sympathetic to me, always, though I wasn't sure how much of it was simply out of opposition to her twin sister, Kay. Don't ask me why, but those two girls had to disagree on everything, they were like night and day, and since Kay was a big fan of Sam's, I think Millie was duty bound to despise him and champion me. So she kept track of his business, and could announce with glee one day that his new woman had thrown him out.

It wasn't even Millie's day to work for me. By then I could only afford to employ her for two days. But she dropped by anyway, so urgent did she consider the news. When Millie went to work she went barefoot and dressed in a blue cambric shift with her hair in little plaits covered by a cap, and she assumed a manner to match. On her days off, when she had a tendency to wander around the district, Millie was a sight, for even in the middle of the week she could be seen dressed up in red boots that laced in front and a tight hobble skirt that showed off her bottom and a frilly blouse that showed off her breasts. Hair upswept, smelling sweet with the coconut oil she applied to her skin so it shone and the khus khus perfume she dabbed behind her ears, she walked with careful, rolling steps that showed off her finer points. In later years of course it would be hot pants, Jheri curls, and Afro-glow, and later still a track suit, trainers, and a blonde wig, for Millie kept up-to-date.

Millie was a sambo girl, rather plump with squashed features, so she wasn't really pretty, but she had something that was sweet to men for they were attracted to her like honeybees. Unlike the other girls around who couldn't wait to get a man, and usually got a baby instead, Millie said she wasn't ready to settle down and flirted and laughed with them all, showing the gap between her front teeth that was supposed to be the sign of a loose woman. But I don't think she was; though she had a reputation as a “walk-bout,” Millie didn't care. Unlike her younger sister Vie, who had to stay home to mind the three children she already had at age twenty, Millie was “free, single, and disengaged,” as she liked to describe herself to any who dared to criticize her.

“Why me should stay coop up a yard like cunno-munno and me nuh have man or pikni to mind?” was her standard question, hands on hips. She was proud of her independence and, indeed, was the only one of those girls who would eventually settle for nothing less than marriage. Since she and her other sisters all worked out of the house, they left poor Vie not just to mind pikni but do the cooking and the chores for the rest of them. So Millie on her days off was free to walk. And talk. She walked to the shop, she walked to the post office, she walked miles to visit her friends and relatives when her mind took her, in the process harnessing all news and gossip and trailing behind her the ugly chat-chat that followed women who did not stay at their yard and—even worse—had no children of their own. Yet, because Millie had such a pleasant, smiling face, with dimples, and a temper to match, everyone liked her, even the women, so the remarks passed behind her back were nowhere as stinging as they would have been were she less well liked, or less well connected in the marketplace of gossip.