If I Never Went Home (14 page)

Bea stood in the corner with her mother curled up next to her holding on tight. Her father threw another suitcase on the bed next to Bea and then went into Bea’s room and yanked the clothes out of her closet.

Bea rubbed her eyes, crying.

‘It’s time to leave, Bea. Help Daddy pack.’

Disentangling from her mother was impossible. The grip around her was too tight.

‘No, baby, you have to stay with Mummy,’ she pleaded through tears. ‘Stay with Mummy, darling.’

‘Don’t cry,’ said Bea. ‘I’ll come back to see you.’

‘If you leave this house I’ll kill myself. I swear I will kill myself.’

‘Mummy, don’t say that! Don’t say that!’

‘I will! You know I will!’

Bea knew exactly where she hid the stockpile of pills. The open whiskey bottle was in full view.

Her father was almost done packing while her mother hung onto her tightly.

Would her mother survive the simultaneous loss of a husband and a daughter on this July afternoon?

Tick, tock.

Tick, tock.

Tick, tock.

Bea had to make up her mind.

Tick, tock.

Tick, tock.

Save father or kill mother? Betray father or save mother?

Eeny-Meeny-Miney-Mo

Catch a fellow by his toe

If he hollers, let him go

Eeny-Meeny-Miney-Mo.

‘I’m staying with Mummy,’ said Bea, roughly wiping her tears away.

Mummy stopped crying. Both parents seemed shocked at the little girl’s sudden resolve.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ said her Daddy. ‘Get your clothes now.’

‘I’m not leaving Mummy,’ Bea repeated with the same newfound clarity.

Eeny-Meeny.

Betrayed father.

Miney-Mo.

Saved mother.

He sneered. ‘Oh, I see. You think your mother have time for you? All right. But Bea, when I gone, I gone for good. You hear me?’

Her father dragged his suitcase down to the car, then returned to the bedroom for a bag left in the corner of the bedroom. He looked at Bea, telling her with his eyes that this was the last chance to change her mind. She knew from his look of anger and determination that if she didn’t follow him she’d never again be Daddy’s Girl.

Bea followed him out. As they walked through the living room, her father stopped and collapsed onto the old chocolate brown sofa. He closed his eyes and inhaled loud deep breaths. ‘I’m going now, baby. Give Daddy a hug.’

‘Daddy!’

He began to cry quietly.

‘Come sit by Daddy before I go.’

‘Don’t go!’

He put his warm arm around her.

‘Play some music, Beezy,’ he whispered.

Bea held onto her Daddy. In between their sobs they inhaled the ‘Air on the G string’.

*

A phone was ringing in Michael’s apartment. Bea assumed it was Michael’s but soon realised the sound was coming from her handbag. Mira was on the line.

Michael eventually called from the kitchen. ‘Is everything okay?’

In a daze Bea walked into the kitchen and told him the devastating news.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Two days later, Bea and Michael were on a plane to Trinidad for Alan Clark’s funeral. Michael’s company had a project on the island and thought he could combine the funeral with work. Bea was thankful for the emotional and practical support. It was Michael who organised the plane tickets and spoke with Mira. She was there to pick them up at Piarco airport.

They drove in near complete silence, afraid of saying the wrong thing, afraid of each other. Although they had come off a six-hour flight, Bea wanted to drop her bags, change and head straight to her father’s house where family and friends had been keeping wake for the past two nights. Michael followed her lead. She had not said much during the flight, and every time she had tried to talk she broke down in tears.

They arrived to a wake in full swing. Cars lined the street and Mira was forced to park some way from the house. It was easy to mistake the scene for a party. Well-dressed women arrived with covered pots of cooked provisions to share. The men were bringing bottles of Old Oak rum, often with fresh coconut water to chase it.

Bea followed the trail around to the back yard. The small space was packed. In one glance she was drenched by a wave of faces at once familiar and unfamiliar. She was afraid she would burst into tears at the slightest mention of her dead father. A group of men playing poker at a plastic table paused to take in the newcomers. One of the men with thick grey sideburns, his cheeks red from drink and heat, raised his hands, beckoning to them to come near.

‘You is Alan daughter?’ he asked. ‘I recognise the face.’

‘Yes,’ replied Bea softly.

‘You now reach?’

‘Yes.’

‘You come from America?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

He pushed his chair away and stood up shakily to offer his hand. ‘Tate Walker. Please accept my condolences on your father passing. Me and the boys here was real tight with Alan. Every Friday we used to lime with your father, playing poker right here under the chenette tree.’

‘Thanks,’ said Bea softly. ‘Do you know where my Granny is?’

‘Granny Gwen right over there. She ain’t stop crying since the news. You know he was she eyeball. Granny lived she life for Alan.’

Tate Walker peered behind Bea. She smelt the rum on his breath. ‘And you is the mother?’

Before Mira could answer, Granny Gwen had spotted them and pushed her way through the clusters of people sitting around on plastic chairs.

‘Well, look at my crosses,’ Granny Gwen said, holding Bea in a tight hug and bursting into fresh hot tears. ‘I nearly didn’t make out me own grandchild. Miss Glenda say she see somebody looking just like Bea so I say let me come see for myself. Let me look at you. I been waiting for you to come.’

Bea sobbed aloud. She felt close to collapsing.

Her grandmother wailed. ‘You is all I have now of your father.’ She held Bea’s tear-stained face in her hand and kept repeating, ‘Alan’s only child. Alan’s only child.’

Gradually she and Bea let each other go. Granny Gwen led her to a group of older women. ‘All you know me granddaughter, Bea? She is the one teaching university in America.’

‘Hello, Granny Gwen,’ said Mira.

‘Mira girl, he gone,’ bawled Granny Gwen. ‘He with the Heavenly Father now.’

She pulled Mira close. ‘This is me daughter-in-law. Never mind she and Alan wasn’t together when he pass. Ain’t she still me daughter-in-law? I use to say that Alan would never meet another woman good like you. But people don’t listen to an old lady.’

If Mira was surprised by this interpretation of her marriage and subsequent divorce, she was magnanimous enough to keep it to herself. Bea had told Michael that from early courtship and throughout the marriage, Granny Gwen had kept Mira on the periphery of the Clark family, viewing her with the suspicion and jealousy a lover might feel for a rival. In the years following the breakdown of the marriage they had rarely seen each other.

‘I don’t know if you remember Corrie and Rupert who were Alan’s good friends long time now?’ asked Mira, pulling away slightly.

‘You mean the friends them living England somewhere?’ inquired Granny Gwen.

‘Yes,’ Mira confirmed. ‘This is their son, Michael. You remember little Mike? Well, he ain’t no little Mike no more. He’s a big man now. A handsome man.’

‘Well, oh gosh, I would’ve never know is you!’ Granny Gwen looked him up and down. ‘Last time I see this child he was little so,’ she said with her hand at hip height. ‘Come let me take a good look at you.’ Granny Gwen gripped his forearm and Michael kissed the old woman’s wet, marshmallow-soft cheek.

‘Hello, Granny Gwen,’ he said with a shy smile.

‘You well resemble your mother. Yes man, you is Corrie child. You nice and fair just like she. How your parents them? They well?’

Michael nodded. ‘They’re fine and sorry not to be here. But they send their love to you. I’m really sorry.’

‘I so glad you here to see your uncle bury. Never mind you not blood. Your father grow up here like me own son, you hear. So you is one of me own.’           

Granny Gwen sighed and rubbed her forehead as if detained from her grief long enough by these conversations. Tears began silently flowing again and she motioned for them to sit. Bea sat down and covered her face with her hands.

‘He left that morning to see a friend living Claxton Bay side,’ said Granny Gwen to no one in particular. ‘They say the other driver was drunk as a sailor. Is a wonder he only kill one person that day. Wasn’t nothing Alan could do.’

Bea looked up from behind her hands. ‘How did you find out?’

‘My heart must be strong as an ox,’ said Granny Gwen. ‘They call the hardware. He was driving the Toyota and we have the hardware sign painted on the car door them. The police see the number and call we. Your Uncle Robin was the one answer the phone.’ She paused, wiped her eyes and put her hand over her heart.

‘I hear Robin bawl out so I run come to see what going on,’ Granny continued. ‘I had a feeling in me waters before he did even say one word. Then he tell me the policeman want him to come quite by San Fernando General Hospital to identify the body.’

The old lady broke down again and Bea gently stroked her back. ‘Just so, just so, I find out me son dead,’ whispered Granny Gwen. ‘One day Alan here good-good, talking and laughing right under this same chenette tree. Next thing you know he gone and dead.’

She wiped her face. ‘Is not right. Is not right,’ she said from behind her hands. ‘A mother never supposed to have to bury one son. Now I burying a second one. I can’t believe he not going walk in here any minute now.’

Granny Gwen’s tears flowed uncontrollably. Mira was quietly crying too. Occasionally Granny Gwen plunged into her blouse and removed a small, stained handkerchief that she used to blow her nose loudly before secreting it again in the folds of her ample bosom. Bea looked so small and lost. Faced with pure raw grief she did not know how to comfort Granny Gwen, or herself for that matter.

People continued to pour into the yard. Bea felt dehydrated so she and Michael made for the makeshift bar under a tent.

‘This is a good wake, yes,’ said the bartender who Bea did not know.

‘Yes. Good turnout,’ said Michael.

The man next to him quipped, ‘At least nobody ain’t get shot.’

All eyes at the bar looked at him.

‘Man, all you didn’t see the papers today?’ he went on, beaming at his audience. ‘A young boy get two bullet in he stomach point blank when he was in a wake. And the wake was for a next young boy who did get murder the week before. It have nowhere safe these days.’

Another man shook his head. ‘When you see thing like that going on it must be drugs and gang in that.’

Bea took her fresh lime juice and went to sit down. She propped her head in her hands and sipped the drink. A steady stream of silent tears rolled down her small face. She felt like a scared sad child. Her Uncle Robin, Alan’s brother, came and led her through the crowd of family and friends, introducing her to everyone. Wherever Bea went, Michael followed. Death was in the air they breathed.

During the long night, Bea accepted condolences, listened to stories about her father, and heard updates on lives she seemed to have fallen out of step with. Missing second cousins were found to have moved to Toronto. Wendy who lived two doors from the hardware had finally received her green card and migrated to New York.

‘When your father went New York last year for holiday, he went and spend a day by Wendy. I think he carry some of my homemade pepper sauce for she,’ said Aunty Doris, Uncle Robin’s wife.

Bea was quiet.

‘Everybody liked your father, Bea,’ said Aunty Doris, absently stroking the gold cross that hung on a chain around her neck. ‘He didn’t have a single bad bone in he body. Alan always had a joke to tell you. That man was a happy, happy soul.’

Michael put his arms around Bea and she sobbed aloud again, her whole body shaking. He was holding her tight when a man about their age came up and bent down to give her a hug.

Michael let go to make way for him.

‘Beezy, I’m so sorry about Uncle Alan. It’s such a shock to everybody. I can’t believe he’s gone.’

‘Charles!’ she said, looking up. ‘Michael, this is my darling cousin Charles, Aunty Doris’ son.’

‘So my uncle have to dead for me to see you, Beezy? Like you forget you have family in Trinidad?’

‘Don’t say that, Charlie. You know you’re my favourite cousin.’

Charles gave her another tight hug.

‘You don’t remember Michael, do you?’ asked Bea, holding Michael’s hand. ‘He lived next door to us on Sydenham Avenue in St. Ann’s.’

Charles’s eyes widened.

‘No way,’ he said, reaching out to shake Michael’s hand. ‘You’re the little boy from the orange house? I remember your family had one sweet Julie mango tree. How you doing, man?’

Michael smiled and chatted easily with Charles until interrupted by Aunty Doris.

‘All you see that red-skin girl over there in the tight-tight black jersey?’ asked Aunty Doris. ‘That is Kim. I think she and Alan had a little something going on right before he passed.’

Bea glanced at the woman. If it was true, then Alan had been dating a woman roughly the same age as his daughter.

‘And look over by the drinks,’ said Aunty Doris, pointing with her chin. ‘You see that old Indian lady in the blue dress talking to Mira? That is Mrs. Ramlogan, and the little girl is her granddaughter, Tina.’

She paused. ‘Town say that Alan once had a thing going with Mrs. Ramlogan daughter. But it’s real sad because the daughter died in a car accident. The little girl Tina is the dead woman daughter. If what they say is true, maybe that little girl is your half-sister, eh Bea?’

Michael gave a little laugh. ‘It sounds like your Dad had a full life.’

Bea shot him a dirty look. ‘I don’t know if I can be proud of my father being the village ram goat,’ she said, roughly wiping her eyes.

‘I didn’t mean it like that,’ said Michael.

Bea turned to look Aunty Doris in the eye. ‘You really think that little girl is related to me?’

‘I don’t think so. Is probably only old-talk. Your father never did anything that make me think is he child. I only telling you what the parish say.’ Aunty Doris turned to Michael. ‘You take a plate of food yet? It have plenty dhalpouri roti and curry goat.’

‘Thanks, Aunty,’ said Michael. ‘But I’m okay for now.’

‘Bea, is time you accept your father for what he was,’ said Aunty Doris, taking her hand. ‘Everybody here loved him and none more so than Granny Gwen. No woman was ever good enough for she son. Alan never say nothing, but I telling you this, Bea. I feel that he would still be married to your mother if it wasn’t for her interfering all the time.’

‘That’s all far in the past,’ Bea replied.

As the night progressed more stories about Alan were exchanged. A teacher from the local primary school told how Alan gave freely of his time to coach the cricket and football teams. Someone from St. Theresa’s church made a point of finding Bea to tell her that Alan never failed to give generously at Christmas time. Bea wondered if he died knowing he was so well loved. Tears laced with regret trickled down her cheeks.

It was well past midnight when an overwhelming exhaustion suddenly hit Bea. She looked at Michael and could see that he too was drained of all energy. They walked through the thick throng of people in search of Mira. A tall man who had the same straight nose as Alan and was about the same age was hugging and consoling Mira. As they approached, Mira pushed him gently aside. ‘You all look like you ready to leave,’ she said. ‘Say hello to Uncle Kevin.’

‘Hello, Bea,’ said the man. ‘My condolences.’

‘Thanks,’ said Bea. ‘Sorry, but I think we need to go. I’m really tired.’

‘Well, I will see you all tomorrow if God spare life,’ said Uncle Kevin. ‘Nite, Mira.’

He bent down and kissed Mira gently but directly on the lips.