No Safeguards (5 page)

G
RAMA. SHE INTIMIDATED
me. Not like Caleb. He inflicted pain. With her it was the feeling that no matter how hard I tried I would never meet her expectations. Bizarre feelings. Totally bizarre. Other than the duties she assigned me — mostly to look after Paul during the years we attended school in Kingstown, I never knew what her expectations were.

I wanted to know more about her origins but felt uncomfortable asking her. When we went home to bury her I began to find out. A Saturday afternoon. We'd spent the morning going over details with the undertaker. Paul was out wandering. Anna and I were sitting on the back porch, in the same spot where Grama had told me about Anna. Remembering this, I asked Anna to tell me about Grama.

She spent a couple of minutes dreamily staring out at the water, and began by talking about her father. She had only vague memories of him. He died before she was four. At age 55, he'd returned from Aruba, where he'd worked at an oil refinery, and had married Grama, then aged 19.

“Grama said it was not for love,” Anna said. “She said: ‘No darling, love had nothing to do with it. The young boys that made my eyes twinkle like fireflies didn't have a thing to offer me. Nothing more than a firm body and a stiff rod. My half-paralyzed mother begged me not to. She was sure I would end up horning him, but I went ahead and married the old goat. He had a three-bedroom cement house with an indoor kitchen and two bathrooms; it didn't bother me at all if his rod never did the job.

“‘Mama might have been right, but fate worked it out so that I didn't have time to think about horning your father, because five years after we were married, he dropped dead on the beach. Went there to buy fish. Mama herself died eighteen months after the wedding. The only reason Kirton used to buy fish was that he was too damn afraid of the sea to go catch the fish himself. Nearly drowned when he was five. What a tightwad that man was! Raised his own chickens. Guess who cleaned the chicken shit? Kept goats and a cow, too. Said buying meat and milk and eggs was money going out of his pocket. His secret was to take in and not put out. Good thing he didn't take his own advice literally — or maybe he did. The day he dropped dead on the beach, a mason was up the hill outlining the spot where Kirton had hired him to build a pigpen. He had already worked it out that you and I would go and collect vegetable peelings from the neighbours to feed them. You know why, Anna: because he wanted us to earn our keep. What a miser that man was!

“‘You know, about three months after he died — I shouldn't tell you this, Anna, I saw his death as a chance to make a life of my own choosing. Anna, his death was a blessing. He'd have robbed you of your childhood and robbed me of a life. That man had already turned me into a hag. You know that I love to read, always did. Your father ignited whenever he saw me reading. Kirton would start to twitch if the light was on after eight o'clock, would come and pull the book or magazine away from me, and order me into bed.

“‘My mother used to do the laundry for the Anderson Greathouse, and I won a scholarship to Kingstown Secondary. But in my second year, barely a month after my grandmother died, my mother was walking under some coconut trees on the beach and a coconut fell and hit her on the head and brought on a stroke. She had just turned thirty. She returned from hospital half-paralysed. I, 13 years old at the time, had to take over the washing and ironing because that was what fed us. I managed to finish the second year and scraped through the third year, but I had to give up school. Mr. Bentley, a good man — he owned Bentley and Sons, a dry goods store, knew my situation and gave me a job to sell in his store. At 17 I was running it. With my pay I fed my mother and myself and had a little something for myself to buy a magazine or two and make myself look pretty.

“‘I read everything in the Georgetown library, not that there was a lot to read: two bookcases. I always hoped to finish my education. I would have gone to England to study nursing — easy in those days — and gone on to university afterwards, but I stayed home to take care of my mother, and I ended up marrying your father. So when your father died, it was a relief. If I didn't have you, I would have gone to England. In those days with a year or two in high school, you could get into nursing. Instead I married Benjamin Bradley: earthly possessions: two pairs o' drawers — one on his arse and one on the clothesline, three shirts, two trousers, and a pair of sneakers. Not even a hairbrush to take the knots out of his hair. I was in love with him when your father asked for my hand. That man wanted to spend your father's money on his harlots — until I got fed-up and put his clothes in the road. By that time, child, I was ready to live without a man, and I understood why my mother used to say that sex sweet until you find out what it cost.'

“You're frowning, Jay.”

“I'm wondering how come Grama talked to you like that.”

“Well that was Mama alright. No use telling her her speech was vulgar. She would say: ‘You understand what I'm saying?' And I would nod. And she would say: ‘Good. That is what I want. I don't know anything about foul language. I don't have feathers, I don't lay eggs, and I don't cackle.'

Next Anna described Grama's break-up with Bradley. Anna was 11. She'd gone to Kingstown to sit the entrance exam to high school and returned around 4 pm. There was a crowd in front of Grama's house. A wall of women had their backs barricading the front door. Aunt Mercy broke away from them.

“Aunt Mercy told me not to come home,” Anna said. “She said: ‘Your stepfather almost kill your mother because she put his clothes in the road. He vex worse than a rattlesnake. Go and stay by me till I come. We getting ready to take your mother to the hospital. Somebody gone to get her friend Pembroke.' At the time Pembroke, Father Henderson, and the Methodist minister owned the only cars in Havre.

“Aunt Mercy came home a little past midnight. ‘Your mother in the hospital. She been groaning and groaning. So when we feel your stepfather won't attack her again, we take her to the clinic over in Esperance. The nurse look at her left arm that swell up fatter than me leg, and red! Red and swell-up can't done. And the pain making her bawl. We carry she to Kingstown Hospital, and they keep her there.'”

Next day Anna visited Grama in the hospital.

“Grama couldn't speak,” Anna said. “Couldn't chew. Her lips were swollen and blue, like ‘jaw plums.' For four days she sucked liquid food through a straw. When Grama was discharged, her lower arm in a cast, her face white like chalk, she went to the police station to file a case, but the sergeant told her: ‘The courts not concern with domestic comess. So you throw Bradley out. He can't satisfy you or what? And he only break your arm!'

“Grama consulted a lawyer. He said that short of killing her, Bradley could have done what he wanted to her. For $200 — Jay, that was a lot of money in 1967 — he wrote to Bradley, telling him that his wife had terminated the conjugal state as of May 11, 1967 and will soon be filing for a divorce, and he was prohibited from re-entering her premises. Something like that. Three days later Bradley broke every window in our house. Mr. Morris witnessed it and gave evidence, and Bradley spent a month in prison.”

Anna grew silent for several seconds and stared thoughtfully out to sea. The wind had risen and the sea was rough and noisy. The gulls flying over it squawked loud.

“Mama was always particular about keeping documents. She kept a folder for everything and a daily journal. Peruse her papers. You will learn a lot about your grandmother. Unknown to her I used to read them over and over — until I got saved and realized it was a sin.”

Two days later, I came upon the entry that I never wanted her to read and won't let Paul read.

A
NNA'S STERTEROUS BREATHING
brings me back to the present. For a moment my eyes rest on the beads of perspiration glistening on her forehead. I get up, take a tissue from the box on the night table, and dab her brow.

Paul, where the hell are you? Why have you been doing this to us? Okay, so you're punishing Ma. But me? I sit. My hands are cold but sweating, and sweat is trickling from my armpits.

Anna's breathing is now part gurgle, part whistling rattle. Each time she exhales I smell the acetone in her breath. She's stewing internally. I lean forward and enclose her right hand in both of mine. It's glacial and limp. In the dim blue light from the tiny bulb over the head of her bed, I watch her struggling body and want to comfort her, to sing her favourite hymn: “Jesus, Saviour, pilot me / O'er life's dark tempestuous sea,” but know I'll sob if I start. Those hymns, singing them at home — about the only thing Paul's bullying didn't stop her from doing. Paul, where are you? Why are you doing this to us?

I let go of her hand and lean back into the chair, and my mind travels back to that trip that Ma and Grama took to Barbados. When Anna returned, she was constantly in tears and, one evening, not long after her return, Caleb struck her. Knocked her to the floor. He picked her up. Frightened. On occasion he'd hit her when he was beating me because she was interfering — and the bible instructed him never to spare the rod and spoil the child; and ‘He that knoweth the will and doeth it not shall be beaten with many stripes'; and God had ordained him head of the household; the bible said so: he was to give the orders, and she was to carry them out; he was man, she was woman. A woman's role was to obey her husband and fulfill the needs of her husband and her children. It was what he instructed every couple he married: “The buck must stop somewhere”; and he laid down the law in his own home to set the example for his flock.

“I'm sorry. I'm sorry,” Caleb said. “Anna, you see what you made me lose my temper and do? You had no right to do this behind my back. I'm your husband. You're under my rule. You shouldn't o' done this. Why your mother put you up to this? Why? That woman is Satan ownself. If she ever put her foot back in this house . . .” He stopped.

“Go ahead, say it, Mr. Almighty! Say it!”

He lifted his arm, ready to strike again, but checked himself. “That woman! She must never come back here. Thank God, we don't depend on her anymore.”

“Don't be so sure.”

“You still taking money from her! You're disobeying me and taking money from that . . . that . . .”

“You think the pittance you get from those stones or the nickels and dimes they give you on Sundays can feed and clothe your family? Think again.”

“You live too extravagantly!”

“Well I can't change how I was brought up.”

“Then you married the wrong man.”

She didn't answer.

“What's tied can be untied. You will have to untie them.”

She didn't answer.

“I say: you will have to untie them.” He held her by the neck with both hands and rocked her backward and forward.

She gasped, staggered, and let out a hoarse howl when he let her go.

“Shut up! You want to bring disgrace on me! Shut up, woman! Don't raise the devil in me!” He ran to the doors and windows, closed them, and pulled the curtains.

“
You
will go to hell. Stop choking Ma! You big brute!” I shouted. He sometimes called me a little brute.

“Go to your room,” he ordered. “Go to your room before . . . ” I didn't move. Caleb slumped to the floor on his knees and cried out: “Lord, how did I fail you? Lord, why are you punishing me? I am not Job. I am not Job.” He wiped his eyes with his hands and stared for a long time into vacant space.

In the rest of my conversation with Grama before I left for Canada, she told me that it was only after Caleb had knocked Anna down a second time that she'd found out about this first beating, and she hadn't known about the occasional slaps. The second and final beating came about three months after the first, and Anna asked Grama to keep Paul and to lend her some money to go to Canada. “‘Mama, I have to leave him. God alone knows how much damage he's done to Jay. I can't let him do it to Paul too. I can't, Mama. I can't. He's already hitting Paul to stop him from crying, leaving welts on his body.' Jay, your mother was sobbing so loud and hiccupping, I had to hold her to my bosom and comfort her.”

That second beating. Caleb had been in my bedroom about to beat me to “rescue my soul from the wrath to come.” Anna shouted from the kitchen: “Caleb, leave Jay alone. Rescue your own soul, Caleb. Leave Jay's alone. Hell doesn't exist. I already told him so. Leave him alone! Stop terrorizing him!” I heard her fists pounding the kitchen counter. Caleb sped to her in the kitchen. I followed. Caleb let fly both hands in quick succession. “Satan! In
my
home! Not possible.” His arms flew. The slaps swayed Anna left and right, right and left. When she fell, it was backwards. Her head struck the kitchen counter; she slid to the floor, lay on the tiles, and was unconscious. Caleb called her name several times, and when she didn't answer he dashed out of the house.

Years later I got the rest of the story. The Georgetown station sergeant who'd dealt with Caleb that evening was eventually posted to Havre. He bought supplies on credit from Grama, hung around the store sometimes, and took pleasure regaling the shoppers about colourful characters he'd arrested or dealt with. “Boy,” he would say to me, “I remember when your father Preacherman did come to the station and beg me to lock him up.” And he would enact the scene.

“Preacherman come in the police station and he say to me: ‘Sarge, lock me up.'

“‘What you do now, Preacherman? First you have to tell me what you do.'

“‘I say lock me up. Lock me up!'

“‘It ain't so we does do it. We does have to know what you do first. Yes? Sit down there.' I point he to a bench ‘gainst the wall from the station counter. ‘All you preacherman hot for the young girls in all you congregation. What happen: you done rape one?' (I imagined him grinning, his two upper gold-capped incisors glinting.) ‘You done kill your wife or what? You catch a man on top o' she or what? Too busy with God to satisfy your wife or what? That calypso not lying at all: ‘Man can't take butt.' Some men sure can't. ‘Henry,' I turn to the constable what was sitting by a desk a little way from the counter listening to the conversation. ‘Henry, you know where Preacherman live. Right? Go by his house and see if he done kill his wife.' To Preacherman, I say: ‘Ah sending a constable to your home to see if you done kill your wife and thing.' I don't think Preacherman hear me yet.

“Boy, Henry meet your mother sprawled where Preacherman did done knock her down. She did regain consciousness and Eldica was putting ice on she cheeks. I hear is you” — he pointed to me — “that did have sense enough to run and get Eldica after your mother didn't respond. When Henry come back to the station and give me his report, I tell Preacherman to go home and take care o' his wife and to go easy on his fist. ‘Your wife jaw not like them stones you does break on the seashore.' And I tell he we don't does lock up men for beating their wife; is only in Canada and them places they does do that. But careful you don't kill she, yes. ‘Cause then you won't get off so easy. So tell me, nuh,' — I couldn't help teasing him little bit more — ‘Is what happen, Preacherman: why you knock she out? You catch another man on top o' she or what?'

“‘I don't want to go home. I don't want to go home.' Sonny, that is how your father carry on. ‘It go be alright, man. I tell you, it go be alright.' I tell he: ‘Things don't does be bad as they look. Yes.' Now I did start to feel sorry for him. I wasn' laughing at him no more.”

***

Until the day Grama came to get me, I don't remember much of what happened. She had to do a lot of asking around, because Daddy had left the manse and moved into a shack a few metres in from the beach about two kilometres north of Georgetown. Grama met him lying on the bare floor. He came out and sat on the middle one of three planks that formed the steps to the shack. He was unshaven and his eyes were red and haunted. At first he didn't look her in the face, and when she told him why she'd come, he said nothing. She repeated what she'd said: “Mr. Jackson, Anna left for Canada this morning. She left Paul with me. I've come for Jay. He'll be better off staying with me.” For about a minute their eyes locked, then he spat, re-entered the shack, and closed the door.

She came to get me at school. I was staying with Sister Simmons. Grama didn't bother to pick up any of my things. “Whatever you need you'll get from my store. We'll make a clean start.” The following Saturday Sister Simmons brought my things to Havre and Grama told her to keep them. If she were alive today, I would ask her why.