Authors: H. Nigel Thomas
No Safeguards
NO
SAFEGUARDS
H. Nigel Thomas
GUERNICA EDITIONS - ESSENTIAL PROSE SERIES 113
TORONTO ⢠BUFFALO ⢠LANCASTER (U.K.)
2015
For all the world's oppressed children.
... And thus
Was founded a sure safeguard and defence
Against the weight of meanness, selfish care,
Coarse manners, vulgar passions that beat
On all sides from the ordinary world
In which we traffic.
Wordsworth:
The Prelude, Book Eighth
ROCKY FOUNDATIONS
P
AUL, WHERE ARE
you? You said you'd be home by October. It's May
.
I'm standing at the head of Anna's bed, listening to her rattling breath. A nurse with a flashlight beamed on Anna's IV is on the other side of the bed. She leaves. I glance at my watch. 9:17. I sit in the chair beside the bed and begin tonight's watch.
Departures.
In the note Anna left me 19 years ago, she'd asked me not to cry and had promised to come and get Paul and me soon. If things didn't work out, she would return to St. Vincent to be with us. And, after Grama took us to live with her, Anna told me I must show that I loved her by being a good boy and by taking care of Paul. And I did; felt I owed it to her. A week after that phone conversation, she told me in a dream that I'd caused the breakup of her marriage.
Soon:
nine years later. Paul was nearly 12 and I almost 18.
Paul, where are you? Your last letter was in August. How did you end up hating Ma? “
One of these days you all will drive me so mad, I'll show up here with a Uzi and blow your asses to smithereens.
” I'm still surprised that you would think let alone say that.
I glance at Ma's form in the dim light, and for a moment hold my breath as she raucously expels hers. She'd fled St. Vincent; fled from Caleb's fists; ended her marriage.
My thoughts go back to the night before my seventh birthday: the night the breakup began.
I'm tossing in bed. It's October 6. Tomorrow I'll be seven. Last year I got nothing for my birthday except the clothes that Grama sent me. I cried and tried to forget about it. I'll get nothing this year. I won't remind Ma. Talk about such things vexes Daddy. He asks me questions I can't answer, usually before beating me. Last year I asked Ma if she'd forgotten my birthday. She said no. Her belly was big with Paul. (Now I know that Ma has always had trouble remembering birthdays.)
I didn't know that Daddy was nearby until I heard him say in his beating voice: “Jay, you hungry?”
“No, Daddy.”
“Come here.”
I went into the room where he was and stood facing him.
“You got a full belly. That's the best gift in the world, birthday or no birthday. Not another word about your birthday. Too much simmidimmy spoil pickney. Millions o' children the world over go to bed hungry and wake up hungry. You know that?”
I do. In the booklets the Americans send Daddy, there are pictures of naked black children with swollen bellies. “Worms and wind,” Daddy says. “Sometimes they're so hungry they eat dirt.” Why do their parents let them go hungry and naked, and let them eat dirt? I'm afraid to ask Daddy, so I ask Ma, and she says their parents are poor because they serve the wrong God, and God is angry with them, but God loves everyone and can do anything he wants. I remember that Christ multiplied five loaves and two fishes to feed thousands; Daddy says often that with God all things are possible. It's wrong for children to eat dirt but I'm afraid to tell her so.
Grama â everyone calls her Ma Kirton â sucked her teeth at Daddy one time and told him: “This religion o' yours â it's all foolishness and lies â lies, nothing but lies â to make poor people think injustice comes from God. Heaven is in my heart.” She tapped her chest. “Hell too. When I die I done.” She sucked her teeth again, grinned, and stared at Daddy.
“Get to hell out!” Daddy said, his voice trembling. “BEELZEBUB, be gone!” He balled his fists and began moving toward Grama.
Grama grabbed her handbag and scuttled. I didn't even get to kiss her.
“Zelzebub,” I asked Ma as soon as Daddy left. “Ma, who is Zelzebub?”
“Who?” she said, frowning. I sidled up to her. She folded both arms around me, pressed my back against her thighs, and rocked me gently. She can't do this when Daddy is around.
“The name that Daddy called Grama.”
“That's an evil angel that God threw out of heaven. He came with plenty others. And they go into people's souls and make them evil.”
“One is in Grama!”
“Stop looking so frightened. No. Your father said so because he hates it when anyone badtalks his religion. Grama is a good person, Jay.”
“But one time Daddy said she hates him.”
“She doesn't hate anybody, Jay.”
Tonight, I toss in bed and hear the Atlantic pounding away at the shore. In the distance dogs are barking. In the lulls, I hear the wind whistling through the fronds of the coconut palms that line the shore. Through the drawn curtains I see the land outside, silvery in the moonlight. The glare from the street lamp outside my window falls onto my bed.
Percy and Samuel â their fathers are elders in Daddy's church. Our parents and teachers tell us that we are hell-bound. We'll burn forever; will never turn to ash; we'll be like the stones campers and poor people use to build their cook fires. No, not like the stones: stones can't feel pain; all our feelings will remain.
The Holy Spirit tells Daddy to beat me. Every few days he flogs me “to curb the evil” in me â evil that everyone is born with but must control, because long ago Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate an apple; evil that only the blood of God's son can remove. They killed him long ago to get his blood. Once every month they take a tiny sip of it. They don't give me any. Every night I beg God to make me good. But I can't resist stealing candy, and I want bad things to happen to Daddy and my teachers when they scream at me or beat me. I know I'll get real bad if Daddy stops beating me, bad like Joseph who steals goats and chickens and is in prison now. He used to come with his mother to Daddy's church. And Daddy said in one of his sermons that Joseph put down praying and took up thieving, and that evil grows bigger than breadfruit trees in the hearts of those who don't obey God. I don't want a breadfruit tree to grow in my heart. Why don't they give me any of Christ's blood? God, why is it so hard to be good? Why don't you make me good? You can do anything. And you know everything.
Daddy says: “We must not question God; God's ways are past finding out.” In church we sing: “God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform; he plants his footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm”; and I imagine God as this huge giant, bigger than the one in “Jack and the Beanstalk” (which I sinned and read in school; Daddy says such stories are lies, and prevents Ma from reading them to me: “The bible is the only book to be read in
my
house;” and Grama told Ma: “Ignore the two-legged jackass and read to your child”)
â
God with legs longer than the trunks of the tallest coconut trees, legs planted in the deepest part of the Atlantic, and long arms reaching all the way up into heaven. What would it be like to see God hurtling across Georgetown in the strong winds that come off the Atlantic? I'm glad God is invisible. My heart is drumming. I catch myself suddenly. I questioned God. I blasphemed. Something bad will happen to me.
God made everything and everyone and makes everything happen. Daddy says so. A month ago Eva-Marie drowned. She was standing alone on the seashore and, all of a sudden, a huge wave came and knocked her down and dragged her out to sea. We walked behind her coffin; and Daddy said, as they put Eva-Marie's coffin into the hole: “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” And afterward, when everybody was leaving the graveside, Eva-Marie's mother threw herself on the ground, and pounded it with her head, and dirtied her clean white frock, and bawled that she wanted to be buried too. Daddy lifted her to her feet, and said: “Sister Gertrude, God do everything for the better. In his wisdom he decide heaven is the best place for Eva-Marie.”
Eva-Marie won't go to heaven. It's 32 days since she died; and Frederick, whose parents are Spiritual Baptists, says Eva-Marie's spirit must wander on earth for 40 days before it goes to heaven or hell. Eva-Marie was two years older than me. A week before she died, she pulled me into a clump of fat pork bushes on the beach, pulled down my pants, hoisted her dress, lay down on her back, and told me to lie on her and
wind
. She said it was what adults did, and it was how women got big bellies that babies come out from. In Daddy's church, women who get big bellies and don't have husbands leave. It's why Sister Celestine left. She used to sit on the front bench. Her voice was loud when we sang, and when the holy ghost filled her she cried out and jumped up and down. Then she stopped coming to church. And one Saturday I was out front watching Ma pulling up the weeds and Sister Celestine came by with a big belly. When she saw Ma she began to sing: “Christ is getting us ready for that great day. Who will be able to stand?” When she was gone I asked Ma, why she didn't tell us hello, and Ma said Daddy didn't want her to.
Eva-Marie, why did I let her tempt me? I wasn't her husband. After I'd pulled up my pants, I became afraid and wondered what we would say when Eva-Marie's belly got big. When she died a week later, I knew God had sent that wave to punish her for what we'd done. My punishment is waiting; I will die too. I don't want to burn in hell forever. One time and turn to ashes, that would be fair. Now I keep far from the beach. I want to be a good boy. Would I become better if Daddy flogged me more to remove the evil in me? Should I tell him what Eva-Marie and I did?
Today just before suppertime I was thinking how God had ordered a man called Abraham to kill his son. What would happen if God told Daddy to sacrifice me? Would God send a ram at the right moment? I don't think so: I'm bad. Daddy would have to cut off my head and burn my body on a pile of wood to please God. And after that, I'll live on in hell. God, please, if Daddy gets such a call from you, please send an angel to stop him from killing me. For my friends Samuel and Percy too. Please. I wanted to ask Ma this evening if she thought God would send an angel to stop Daddy. She was in the kitchen and had on her green plastic apron over her loose black dress that's covered with pink flowers. She was hunched over the stove stirring a pot. The clock on the wall said 4:35. Paul â he's 11 months old â was in his pram just inside the kitchen door. He banged a plastic duck on the side of the pram and kept throwing it onto the floor so I would have to pick it up and give it to him. I pulled at Ma's apron. “Stop pulling at my apron. Act your age, Jacob!” She gave me a stern stare. She only calls me Jacob when she's mad with me, and she adds Jackson when she's lost her temper. “Ma . . .” It was all I said, because I began to stutter. I could feel my beige face â people say I got it from Ma and Grama â turning maroon; my heart went: harrumph, harrumph, harrumph. I became afraid that something bad would happen to me: lightning striking me dead, for one thing. At the entrance to Georgetown, there's a mango tree that's burned black. Lightning struck it. The morning after it happened, Daddy said: “See? It's a tiny sign of God's wrath. Worse will happen to you, Jay, if you end up in hell.” But the tree didn't go to hell, because only people have souls.
Tonight I want to stop doing things that anger God. He could strike me dead with lightning, and I would go to hell because I have a soul. Why do I have to have a soul? Without a soul I wouldn't go to hell. I'll just die and rot. One time God set a whole town on fire and burned the people alive because of the bominations they were doing. Bad things. Otherwise God wouldn't burn them alive. A whole town on fire. I saw a cane field on fire once; Miss Bramble's house near ours had burned to the ground. Ma and I stood a long way off watching it. I held on to Ma tightly with my sweaty hands. The fire danced with the wind and crackled angrily, and we felt the heat from the towering blaze and had to move further back as long tongues of orange flames stretched towards us when the wind gusted, and sparks big as pennies fell in showers close to us. A baby died in the fire. Did God cause that? “Save her! Oh, God, save my child!” Miss Bramble bawled, and her big daughter Jenny held on to her to prevent her from falling â long after the baby would have been dead.
I'm sweating. I wipe my hands on my pyjamas and wipe my forehead on the pillowcase. I must not think. God, please, don't let me think. You're not listening to me because I did bomination with Eva-Marie. You turn your back on people who do bominations. Daddy said so in one of his sermons.
In Sunday school Brother Simmons said God had made a bet with Satan to tempt a man called Job, and God made Job suffer “diverse illnesses for more years than you children can count.” And I can count up to a thousand and more if I want to. Diverse. How many is diverse? “But Job thanked God for his suffering. Job was obedient and knew that God is always
right, so Satan lost the bet, and Job became a rich man afterwards.” Brother
Simmons said so with a big smile on his shiny, round, black face.
Daddy is not rich. He is minister of the Church of the Elect. He is Pastor Caleb Jackson; that's what the letters that come to him from America say. But the Catholics and Methodists and Anglicans and Spiritual Baptists call him Pastor Hallelujah. It's because he says hallelujah many times when he's on the pulpit and even when he's not on the pulpit. Sometimes Percy, Samuel, and Frederick call me Pickney Hallelujah; and I say: “Praise the Lord,” and we all laugh before falling silent and afraid. Then we do it all over again. And sometimes I preach to them, pointing my finger at them and jumping up and down like Daddy does, and they laugh, and they say: “Amen, hallelujah, praise the Lord,” and “preach to us sinners, Pickney Hallelujah, preach.” And we laugh and laugh and laugh and afterwards I feel goose bumps on my arms.
“We're poor people,” Ma told me two weeks ago when she couldn't pay for me to go on a school trip. Daddy spends every day except Sunday on the beach piling up stones and shaping them. Masons and building contractors buy the stones to build houses. One time, a man â a government inspector, Ma said â came to our house. He smelled like nutmeg. He wore a beige shirtjack and green terylene trousers, and he had on shiny black shoes that went crii-ipp crii-ip crii-ip every time his feet moved. A man a lot taller than Daddy, a man with a big pointed nose and red eyes as if he'd just finished bathing in the sea; his forehead was shining; a black-black man, blacker even than Daddy, with a belly like a barrel. He stared at Ma and me as if we were pictures in Grama's photo album. He told Daddy that taking stones from the beach was breaking the law. Daddy said: “How you expect me to feed my family?” The man did not answer. He unzipped his brown briefcase that was bulging out on both sides. He took out some papers, and he looked at the papers and didn't say anything to Daddy for a while. Then he said: “Pastor Jackson, you are a man of God.” He got up from the sofa where he was sitting and clapped Daddy on the shoulder and grinned. He had fat lips. There were wide spaces between his teeth. Daddy winced. The man sat back down. He said nothing for a while. Then he hit the sofa with both hands and shouted at Daddy: “Dammit, Pastor! You know as well as me you must not break the law. What is for Caesar you must give to Caesar, and what is for God you must give to God. Right, Pastor?”
