The Heart Does Not Bend (14 page)

The image set itself in front of me and I wanted to scream. “When is the funeral?” I asked.

“Ah don’t know.” Then she got up and went to our bedroom. I stayed in the living room for a while longer, changing the channels, and then I went to join her. She was sitting on a chair looking out the window. I bent over and kissed her. She looked so vulnerable, so helpless. She squeezed me and I moved closer to her, the smell of rum enveloping the small
space we shared. I trembled and all I wanted to do was be back on our street, curled up in our mahogany bed, grandfather and her dancing in the living room, the smell of the bougainvillea rushing in through the windows, me with my own dreams fluttering in my heart.

The next day when I got up, Mama and Glory were at the dining-room table, looking solemn. I helped myself to a bowl of cornmeal porridge sprinkled with vanilla and nutmeg, and joined them. Uncle Peppie arrived soon after, then Uncle Freddie. Nobody cried. Nobody had much to say, either. Peppie left, then Freddie, each kissing Mama on the mouth. Glory went off to do chores with Sid, and Mama and I were alone.

My grandmother went back to the liquor cabinet several times that day. When Sid and Glory came home, Mama was asleep—they thought it was because she was grieving. So began Mama’s first binge in Canada.

Mama cooked early in the morning and then drank for the rest of the day. The dinners deteriorated as the days went by; one night the rice was soggy, then the green bananas were overcooked and the chicken and pork chops burnt. Sid ate quietly without complaining. I watched him gulp water after each mouthful, while Glory chewed each piece longer than usual.

Mama’s face had begun to change with the drinking, becoming slack, like a used elastic band. Her movements were loose. She talked aimlessly, as she had on the island when she
was drinking. I had almost forgotten that side of her. Now I smelled the faint sweetness of rum on her breath and clothes and wondered if Sid or Glory noticed, but no one said anything. Mama’s conversation moved from Mikey to Freddie and back to Mikey again. I watched Glory’s shoulders tighten as my grandmother spoke carelessly about Uncle Mikey and Frank ruining their lives, about Mikey’s weakness. “Mi would still be in Jamaica in mi house if it wasn’t fi him careless living. Look how de bwoy nice, could a get any woman and instead mek man bend up him heart.” Her chatter embarrassed me. Glory got up abruptly and left the table with food still on her plate. Sid earnestly ate all of his and then said he had to go help a friend with his car.

By the third day, Mama had worked her way through two bottles of rum and was on to the gin. Sid wisely stayed away as much as he could, and Glory closeted herself in their room. Once or twice she tried to talk to my grandmother, but was met with something caustic.

One afternoon Glory came back from the laundromat to find me watching television. My grandmother was dozing on and off in the bedroom.

“Mama drinking?” she asked me.

“Ah don’t know,” I replied.

She gave me a disgusted look. I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to tell on my grandmother and I felt I owed Glory nothing. She hadn’t been much of a mother or a friend to me since I’d come to Canada. And why was she asking me anyway, when it was her mother and it was obvious that she was drinking? Mama stopped cooking and took to her bed. Several times I heard Glory on the phone with Uncle Freddie, then
with Uncle Peppie, discussing their mother’s condition.

“Yuh don’t have homework?” she shouted at me as I was watching television one night.

“Is Friday, ah will do it tomorrow or Sunday.”

“Turn off de blasted television, pick up a book and go read.”

I turned it off and went to my room. I had a book in my hand, but I didn’t read. I just lay on the bed, listening to Mama snore and plotting for the day when I would leave my mother’s apartment.

Sid came home soon after with his friend Justin and another man I didn’t know. Justin was a small-boned, handsome man with chocolate-coloured skin. At the base of his neck was a coin-shaped patch of skin of a lighter shade of brown. Glory greeted them and exchanged a few pleasantries, but her voice didn’t sound welcoming. I knew she was worried that Mama might come out of the bedroom. Mama was unpredictable when she was drinking.

“What yuh having?” I heard Sid ask.

“Give mi a shot of de Martinique rum nuh,” his new friend answered.

“And gin fi me,” Justin said.

The cabinet door opened. I heard Sid suck his teeth long and hard, but he didn’t say much.

“It look like mi out of rum, yuh know. How ’bout some Scotch?”

The men teased Sid. “Man, how yuh can run outa rum? Nuh we mother milk we wean off on to rum,” Justin joked. Glory apologized for not having any food to offer—usually Mama had food on the stove just waiting to be warmed up.
Justin asked after my grandmother, and Glory mumbled that she wasn’t feeling well and was resting.

Despite the Scotch and the music on the stereo, the men didn’t stay for long. Sid left with them.

I heard the telephone ring and then Glory saying, “No, him not home. Who is it? Who is it?” She slammed the receiver down.

“Molly? Molly?” she shouted angrily. I didn’t answer. Dishes and pots banged in the sink. I didn’t feel the least bit sorry for her.

Mama’s binge lasted a full two weeks. When it ended, she tried to go on as though nothing had happened, but this wasn’t her dead-end street, this wasn’t her house. Glory made up excuses and began to cook the evening meals.

“Mama, yuh need a rest, from yuh come, yuh just a cook, cook so.”

My grandmother looked taken aback. “Okay,” was all she said.

They didn’t talk much to each other, just about the weather, a bit about work, talk that went nowhere. Sid had changed, too. He wasn’t rude, he was too polite. He’d eat his evening meal and go to his bedroom. The liquor cabinet was locked with a key. Glory kept in daily contact with Uncle Peppie and Uncle Freddie about their mother’s behaviour.

Winter dragged on, especially for Mama, who was often stuck in the house, afraid to venture out in the snow and ice, where she could slip and fall. In early spring she visited her first Canadian liquor store and went on another drinking binge, which again lasted about two weeks. Soon after, on a bright
April morning, the family met at Uncle Peppie’s house without Mama.

On her way out Glory whispered to me that they were meeting to talk about Mama’s birthday. I didn’t believe that was the real reason, and I disliked her even more for treating me like a child. When she and Sid had left, I told Mama about the meeting. She sucked her teeth.

“Dem think me is a fool? Yuh know how much mi sacrifice fi dem pickney? Yuh think a little floor mi clean fi put food in a dem mouth? And look now, dem all conspire against mi. Sometime ah wonder why ah left and come here.” She dragged on her cigarette, hawked up some phlegm and swallowed it. “But as sure as God mek apple, mi must find a way out, mi not going to allow dem fi tek any liberty wid mi.”

I wondered then whether I’d made a mistake in writing to Uncle Peppie, for I, too, felt I’d lost more than I’d gained by coming here.

“If mi did deh back home, ah would be making mi pastries and have mi little money. Now mi haffi wait fi handout. Glory don’t even give mi anything. And yet she can demand dat mi nuh work.” Her anger grew. I didn’t know what to say. I opened the kitchen curtains and cracked the windows a bit to let in some air. A bird flew by and sat for a while on the fence.

“Mama, why yuh don’t mek we go back?” I asked naively.

“We cyaan go back, girl, yuh can think ’bout de past, but yuh cyaan go back fi live in it. Too much water gone a river.”

“Mama, maybe we could find a place and move. Summer coming, ah can get a job and save some money,” I said.

“Gal, stop talk like idiot. When yuh mekking any move, yuh haffi plan it. Never you just get up one morning and
decide yuh nuh like something and want it fi change instantly. Nothing nuh go so, and it never turn out right. Look pon we now. We never plan dis trip good. You have yuh life ahead, and thank God mi deliver yuh safe to yuh mother, so she cyaan call mi wutliss—a drunk maybe, ’cause is so dem love judge. But despite mi drinking nutten never happen to yuh. From when yuh is a baby mi have yuh. If it wasn’t for mi, yuh would never see life. She have yuh when she turn fifteen. One year after mi tek her from Mammy, gal come to town and breed, an’ never even know who de father was. And mi never cuss her. Mi did hurt, yes, for is mi one daughter and mi wanted de best fi her. Dat’s why mi tek yuh, and save and scrape fi send her abroad.

“De only thing mi never do is give birth to yuh. Glory come outa hospital two days after yuh born, and day four dem had to admit her back wid complications. Is a little soft drinks bottle mi put nipple pon and feed yuh. Every night yuh sleep right under mi breast, and when she come out of hospital yuh still sleep wid mi, for as she come out and feel better, she start go de party dem again. Dat is why mi had to get her off de island—mi was afraid she would mash up herself wid baby after baby.

“Peppie was a good son …and Mikey, too, even though Satan turn him. But back den, de two of dem work and bring home dem money fi help feed yuh and Glory and Freddie. Ah use to bake more dem days, order come in from all over, every restaurant wid any name, mi bake for, sometimes mi couldn’t fill de order fast enough, an’ Peppie an’ Mikey use to help out. Dem days we all use to knot up we money together, mi and mi sons.”

Despite her anger, her face grew soft for a moment. She lit another cigarette and blew the softness away.

One damp May evening, a Friday to be exact, Uncle Peppie came to visit his mother. She still faithfully cooked his stewed red peas. Glory and Sid weren’t home. Peppie ate and was more talkative than usual. Finally he said, “Mama, from yuh come to Canada yuh don’t spend any time up at mi house. Why yuh don’t come stay wid me and Val for a few months? We would love to have yuh.”

She considered it and then asked suspiciously, “Who suggestion dis was?”

“Nobody. Ah just thought it would be nice fi yuh stay wid we, we have a house and is just Val and me alone.”

There were no further questions and to my surprise, Mama agreed.

For the first time I was away from my grandmother—we had never spent a night apart. Though we talked on the phone every day, I still felt empty. At first I had secretly hoped that Mama’s move would allow my relationship with my mother to change for the better, since there would be just the two of us, but it didn’t. When I sometimes tried to hug her, she would pull away. We didn’t do anything together. She was too busy to see a movie with me, too busy to sit in the park and admire the flowers, too busy even to watch a television program, yet she found time to go dancing with Sid and to visit her friends at their houses. I must have reminded my mother of the
father I never knew. Perhaps I reminded her of the shame she felt when she discovered she was pregnant. She found fault at my every twist and turn. My English was bad. If I expected to reach anywhere, I better learn to talk good, she said. My breasts were too big, my eyes too knowing.

I took over the cooking, a job I detested. Glory had started night school twice a week and naturally I inherited the chore. Though I loved to see my grandmother at the stove, her body moving to the clatter of pots and pans, it wasn’t the job for me. I much preferred to look after the plants scattered around the apartment. I spent more and more time in my room, writing letters and leafing through gardening books, dreaming of someday having a backyard where I could dig and plant.

Mama wasn’t happy at Uncle Peppie’s. “De woman bossy, she bossy, she cyaan done bossy,” she complained to my mother on one of our visits. “Is like she know everything ’bout dis boy dat mi give birth to. One evening mi cook some escoveitch fish wid scotch bonnet pepper and de woman nearly go mad. ‘Peppie don’t like too much pepper.’ Ah never even look pon her. What she know ’bout him? And de woman cyaan even give mi a little time wid mi son. Every conversation she have to be a part of, and always haffi show dat she have more knowledge than anybody else. But mi nuh fool, and she know it, for mi use to read mi newspaper every day in Jamaica. Sometime mi have to wonder if she lay out him underpants fi him a morning time.”