Gloria (13 page)
‘Yes, and I already tell him everything I know.’
‘Well we think maybe yu know more than yu telling.’
No matter how much I try to hide the panic I was feeling I know for sure I musta look as guilty as sin. Written all over me for the constables to see, plain as day.
‘Well he not a friend exactly.’
They sigh. Both together like they rehearse it so many times before. And then the first one reach into his pocket and fetch out a piece of paper and hand it to me. It the address of the police station in North Street.
‘Yu going have to come down the station because we not getting nowhere standing on this veranda. We not going ask yu to come wid us right now but tomorrow, ’bout two o’clock, mek sure yu there. Tell the officer at the desk yu name and we will come talk to yu.’ And then he have another thought and say, ‘Tonight yu can have a real good think to yuself ’bout what yu want to say to us.’
Sybil say the police just fishing. ‘Is not even you they interested in.’
But that is no consolation because I know for sure the more questions they ask me the bigger the hole I digging for myself.
‘Don’t bother go down there then.’
‘I cyan do that! Yu want them put out a warrant for my arrest?’
‘Warrant? Yu think yu that important? Cho, they must have a dozen men just like Yang Pao they busy chasing down right now and most a them doing worse things than him.’
‘I not worried ’bout what the police going find out about Yang Pao. A worried ’bout what they going find out about us, and me, and Henry. I would hate anything to happen to Henry on account a all a this.’
‘Yu got a middle name there, Gloria Campbell?’
The constable sitting across the table from me writing in his little notebook. The table and the chairs made of metal. They cold and hard. And when he come in the room and tek the chair that was propping open the door he drag it ’cross the floor so it mek a din of screeching and scratching. And then he position it left a centre a the table and sidung. And tek out the notebook from the breast pocket a his shirt and rest it on the table and start write.
‘My middle name is Antoinette.’
‘Antoinette!’ And he smirk. ‘So where yu get a name like that, Gloria Antoinette?’
‘My mother name me it after a story she hear ’bout a French planter and the slave girl he tek for his wife.’
‘So after that Antoinette not nuh slave no more.’
‘So the story go.’
The walls a the room paint yellow. Not a bright yellow, rich and lively, but a pale wash-out sorta colour that barely cover the white a the concrete that was under it. All the woodwork and things grey. The metal furniture grey as well. And the tile floor. Grey. What kinda colour scheme is that for a police station? I reckon a police station should be blue and white. I don’t know why. Maybe the yellow mek people forget where they is. Maybe it mek them talk more than they should for their own good. Whereas blue and white would remind yu to keep yu mouth shut. This yellow is like a school room where yu talk-talk because yu eager to please the teacher with how smart yu is and how hard yu work. Yu want her to know yu conscientious. And then I remember yellow was the colour of my school room but back then, me pleasing the teacher never happen too often. Mostly I just sit there and feel anxious and fraid that maybe she ask me something, because I knew I would have no idea what to say to her. So I would just open my mouth and see what come out. And even though I was talking I never really know what I was saying because all I could hear was the sound of my own heart beating. And then the whole room laughing.
The window high on the wall and it got a black wrought-iron grid over it, so as to stop me from escaping. That is what I reckon. But it so little and covered over it mek the room dark even though it mid-afternoon and there is bright Jamaican sunshine out there. Maybe that is why they paint the room yellow. And the corridor outside and the main room yu come into off the street as well. And because they not got much window, they have to switch on the electric light even in the middle a the day.
‘So Gloria, where yu live?’ And I tell him. ‘So that would be Franklyn Town?’ I dunno why he saying this. It was only yesterday he was standing there on the veranda wid his friend. And just as I think that, the other constable open the door and walk in.
‘Miss Campbell, can I fetch you something to drink? A little ice water maybe?’
And I say, ‘Yes, thank yu.’
He open the door and stick his head into the corridor and shout ‘Water’ and then he bring the fold-up metal chair he carrying and sit down next to his friend. They nuh say nothing but soon after that a policewoman come in the door with a glass a water and her own chair and sidung next to me. They got me well and truly surrounded now with nowhere to go.
And then the first one start up again. ‘So, Miss Gloria Antoinette Campbell of Franklyn Town, what would you say would be your occupation as such?’
‘My occupation?’
‘That is correct. Your occupation.’
So I say, ‘I am a housekeeper.’
‘Housekeeper?’ And he laugh.
‘Yes, before that I was in service with a family uptown but now I am a housekeeper.’
‘At this address here?’ And he use the end a his pencil to point to the place on the page.
‘Yes, that is correct.’
He just roll his eyes.
The second one lean forward with his elbows on the table and say, ‘To tell yu the truth, Miss Campbell, we know what yu do. And we know what gwaan in that house in Franklyn Town.’ And then he stop and glance at the policewoman sit next to me before he carry on. ‘We know all about that. We not interested in yu little girly business. What we want to talk about is Yang Pao.’
‘I don’t know nothing ’bout him.’
‘Nothing?’
‘He come to the house once in a while. That is all. A lot a people come to the house.’
‘Sure enough.’ And he laugh. And then he tek a finger and fiddle with something in his teeth. ‘The thing is, we hear it more than that.’
I don’t say nothing.
‘We always know more than you people credit us for. Yu nuh think yu already in enough trouble? I could stick yu behind bars right now for what yu and yu girlfriends doing over there. But why waste the cell when yu could be sitting here telling me all about yu boyfriend?’ I sit there feeling all their eyes resting on me.
And then the other one say, ‘Yu born in Kingston, Miss Gloria Antoinette Campbell?’ My heart miss a beat I so fraid where all a this is going.
‘No. Westmoreland.’
‘Westmoreland. What part a Westmoreland would that be?’
‘Near Petersfield.’
‘Near Petersfield. So yu come from country.’
He wait a minute and then say, ‘When yu come from country?’
I drink down the water and ask the policewoman if I can have another glass and she get up and step out into the corridor.
‘1938.’
‘1938. A good year for rioting that.’ And he sit. Still, like he thinking something important. ‘What mek yu come to Kingston in 1938, Miss Gloria Antoinette Campbell?’
My mouth parch but there is not a drop a water leave in the little plastic glass on the table.
‘I think maybe me and my sista could mek a better life in town.’
‘Yu have a sista? Right here in town? Live wid yu in the house there?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘Now that is a thing. A sista.’
They not got nothing to say except asking me the same questions round and round in circles ’bout what I know a Yang Pao and what he up to. And since I nuh telling them nothing, in the end they let me go.
When I step outside the sunlight almost blind me. Sybil and Marcia waiting for me. They sitting on a wooden bench in the shade ’cross the street.
‘What tek yu so long?’
‘I have to answer their questions Marcia. It tek as long as it tek.’ And the two a them stand up and we start walk.
Sybil say to me, ‘Yu all right?’
And I say, ‘Yes. I didn’t tell them nothing, but I got a feeling inside my belly that this thing not done with yet.’
I didn’t say nothing to Pao ’bout the constable or the police station. There wasn’t no need for him to get himself any more involve. I just carry on and he carry on coming to the house three times a week like always and life go on.
Time pass and since I never hear no more from the police I reckon I could let myself believe that they finish with their enquiries or maybe decide to leave me out of it. I try to believe that anyway. And in some small way it work. My mind didn’t have to think on it every second a every day, even though it was always there. Something in a shadow that I could reach for unwillingly, or maybe sometimes on purpose to make myself feel afraid or just to remind me that I had no reason to feel content never mind happy about anything.
Every week Henry come tell me how Fay arguing with her mother. ‘The two do nothing but cuss all day and all night. That is what they do.’
‘What they cuss about?’ Asking him like I am interested, which I am not.
‘Anything and everything. Anything and everything.’
‘So like give me an example.’
‘Cicely say to Fay, “You going out again?” And Fay say, “That is none of your business. I am a grown woman and I go where I please.” Then Cicely say, “You go where you please but you not going there with any money you earn. When you start pay your own way that is when you can talk about what a grown woman you are.” And Fay say, “What like you mean how you pay your own way?” And that is how it go until one of them walk out room or Fay jump in car and leave it in dust behind her.’
‘So is money they always arguing ’bout?’
‘Money, where Fay go, what she do, who she see, what she say. Anything and everything.’ He pause. ‘You know one time she argue with her mother and leave the house and not come back for six months. Six months, Gloria! And when she come in she just carry on like nothing happen.’
‘So where is go?’
‘Stay with friend. That is all she tell me.’
I wait a minute and then I say, ‘Life up the house must be miserable Henry.’ He look at me like that is the most ridiculous thing I could a said to him. It so obvious.
All this go on and on, every week a report of another argument between Fay and Cicely, until in the end I realise Henry not got a soul he can talk to. He reduce to me, a woman with barely any schooling that nobody can find no use for apart from laying on her back.
Then one day I inside and I hear a booming voice on a bullhorn so I step on to the veranda and see the car with the loudspeaker strap to the roof and I listen to the message, up and down the street, over and over. It go on for a week with the same thing: ‘Come Friday night, corner a Jackson Road and Giltress Street, and hear the leaders of the People’s National Party share wid yu how they going serve the whole country and mek life better for all the masses a working men and women.’
Sybil hear the message as well and say we should go over there and see what gwaan. I say to her, ‘What mek yu think they have any interest in the likes a us?’
‘Well yu not going know unless yu go find out.’
So come Friday night me and Sybil stroll over to Jackson Road. What we find when we get there is music and dancing and a big high platform with banners and lights that the speakers going stand on so we can all see them when they tell us what they got to say. The crowd was like nothing I ever see before. It was a multitude, happy and jigging and calling each other comrade. Like I go to a carnival in the middle a the street. And when the speakers step up, the people go wild, cheering and clapping and whistling. It was pure jubilation. A man come to the microphone and say, ‘Comrades, hush yuself nuh,’ so everybody simmer down.
Then he say, ‘I give you the Member of Parliament for East Kingston and Port Royal, the Brown Bomber, Florizel Augustus Glasspole,’ and the commotion start up again, hooting and hollering and making so much merriment the man couldn’t even talk. All he could do was stand there with the banners flapping behind him and his arms waving in the air trying to calm them so he could start his speech.
And what all the speakers got to say is how the PNP going get education for all, and how important this is because most people in the country can’t read or write. That full and proper self-government is going to be our future, which is better than talking ’bout a little more bread and a little more butter like what Mr Bustamante and the Jamaica Labour Party always going on about. And just so, the crowd start up shouting, ‘Sweep them out! Sweep them out!’ with a whole heap of the comrades raising the broom they bring with them to show just how they going sweep out the JLP.
And when Norman Washington Manley walk up to the microphone I swear people must a heard the uproar from as far away as Savanna-la-Mar or Port Antonio, or any damn place on this island, there was so much excitement. He stand there in a long-sleeve blue shirt, his arms at his side and a half-smile on his face. And when he finally open his mouth yu know right away this man know how to use the English language. My Saturday morning wrinkle hand was not a patch on him. But it wasn’t just the way he talk it, it was how he was in himself. He take you in. He capture you. He mesmerise you. This was a educated man. So you know for sure, a educated person would join the PNP. And when he finish talk, the crowd start sing. I don’t know how many hundreds a people singing these songs they all know the words to. But they was singing like it was a Sunday morning service and a true act a worship.
