The Heart Does Not Bend (2 page)

I nurse my cold cup of coffee. Just Ciboney, the baby and I are left sitting there. We stare out the window, oblivious to the flies swarming the table. She looks like me when I was her age: tall and willowy, molasses complexion, full lips and ackee-seed eyes. I want to fold her in my arms, tell her I love her, but it seems too late.

How could Mama do this? How? I was her only granddaughter. I was there. I was always there. Vittorio never was, and what did he know of Wigton Street?

Outside it’s bleak. It rained all night and the clouds are just hanging. I don’t know what I expected from my grandmother, but if I am not careful, I might say things I’ll regret, especially to Vittorio. But I want my daughter back and he is the only person who can get her back for me.

Early the next morning I leave the house, hire a car, take the dresses to the cousins, and then drive out to the cemetery.

I AM WEARING
your old lady’s dress today, Mama, one of the many you left behind. You asked for us to take them to the country and give them to your cousins, but I kept two for myself. One is sea-blue with white hyacinths threaded together, floating in the blue. The other is salmon-pink with white roses on a spread of green leaves. Both dresses have buttons all the way down to the hem and a pocket on each side.

I am here sitting on your grave, wearing the blue dress. It’s all washed out; it was your favourite. Your grave is only a few weeks old, and your scent is still in the dress that feels so soft on my skin. I want to take in every hint of your old lady’s smell. I didn’t wash the dress, though Grand-aunt Ruth said that every dress, every blouse, every slip, every piece of drawers had to be washed, then put away for ten days before wearing.

I wish there weren’t this concrete between us, wish I could slide right into your silver-blue coffin. We got it custom-made in your favourite colour, the lining a softer blue, folded in accordion pleats. Glory lay two
Daily Word
pamphlets inside. Ciboney and Vittorio placed a single white orchid in your hands. I lined the inside of your casket with
pepper-red hibiscus flowers. A cross of white carnations and a bouquet of blue Bengal trumpets and lavender chrysanthemums are wilting on your grave.

Your mother, Mammy, my great-grandmother, is buried in this cemetery, only a few yards from here, next to the poinciana tree; its clusters of red blossoms shade her headstone. Your father, Pappy, is buried here, too. He has no headstone, he’s covered over in crabgrass and bush.

You couldn’t have chosen a nicer place to rest. This is quiet country, peaceful, away from the posses and the city. No gunfire here, no thieves to watch out for, no one shooting up.

Here birds fly easy and butterflies drink from morning glory vines. Woodpeckers and doves chatter. The grounds are patchy with crabgrass and ferns growing between broken rocks. Flowering trees shower the dirt with their sweet blossoms.

The gravediggers are out in full force, shirtless, sweat running down their backs, pickaxes digging into the hard, dry dirt. They talk loud and laugh hard, but they take no notice of my old lady’s dress.

The land you grew up on isn’t far from here. The wooden house is gone, swept away by the sea after Mammy died. I think of when we used to go there, about the waves coming up on the sand, washing back just a bit, then coming up again, covering my little girl toes, then up my legs. I was afraid of the waves carrying me back out with them. You held me, steadied me so I could float till I wasn’t afraid anymore. I always started off in your arms, even after you had taught me how to swim. Sometimes you’d pile the rust-brown sand over me, covering me till only my face peeked out, you counting backwards from twenty as I thrashed my way free.

It’s just past noon and the gravediggers’ women come with hot cooked lunches and ice water to drink. One woman brings a bottle of white rum and five enamel mugs.

A mourning dove twitters above your grave, and the sunlight streams through the trees. Beyond them is a funeral procession. I can hear the loved ones wailing, disrupting the quiet of the graveyard. Still, seeing and hearing them is a relief. I don’t feel so alone.

Watching them, I try to figure out who died and how. The mourners are young, their clothes bright, and the women’s hair a rainbow of colours. Everyone sports dark sunglasses. I suspect they might be burying a young man, maybe around eighteen, who was gunned down. A loud screech comes from a girl no more than sixteen. I think briefly of Ciboney. The girl is wearing a black dress that fits her body tightly, the neck scooped so low I can see the dance of her breasts as she sobs and jumps toward the open grave. Three people grab and pull her away, but she is strong and they have a hard time holding her.

“Patrick, Patrick, nuh lef mi! Mi and de baby need yuh,” she wails. “Patrick!” Confusion abounds as she tries again to jump in with the coffin. All this time a video camera records the mourners’ rites to the dead.

Glory wanted one, too. She wanted us to record your funeral, Mama, but with all the confusion, we forgot. It’s just as well. What would it show us? How would it comfort us?

We dressed you and made up your face at the funeral parlour for the mourners to view—Glory wanted it that way. It was not the custom of the funeral parlour to allow relatives to dress the dead, but Glory wore the attendant down, and she
finally gave in. She stood in the doorway and watched. Uncle Peppie, Uncle Mikey, Ciboney and Vittorio were also there. Glory and I sponged you clean. We powdered you from neck to toe with Johnson’s Baby Powder, put on a brand-new white pair of drawers, then took them off because the attendant said we had to fit you in a diaper first. She said that was the way God wanted to receive the dead. We didn’t question her, though we suspected her advice, like Grand-aunt Ruth’s instructions about washing Mama’s clothes before wearing them, was an old wives’ tale. Glory had brought a lovely slip of a white dress, and we fitted it over your body, along with a pair of white silk stockings and soft, white pull-on sandals. I plaited your hair for the last time.

Ciboney and Vittorio put long white gloves on your hands. Glory applied Pond’s makeup to your face. Your lips were shut tight as a zippered purse, but with the help of some tweezers we arranged them in a half smile—that’s all you would give. Still, your face looked rested, so different from those last days in the hospital bed when you were shouting, “Tek mi out of dis iron coffin!” Glory added a bit of lipstick to your mouth, and Uncle Peppie helped me pin a flower of hibiscus in your hair. We put a touch of flowery perfume at each ear. You never wore makeup, you didn’t like lipstick, but Glory said it would be a beautiful farewell gesture.

We took photographs with a throwaway camera: you in your silver-blue coffin, me plaiting your hair, Ciboney and Vittorio each slipping on a glove, Glory and Uncle Peppie’s hands holding yours, me kissing you for the last time.

The videotape has run its course and the young mourners are gone now. All is quiet again, except for the sound of the
gravediggers’ pickaxes and their occasional laughter. The sun is beating down on me, but I don’t want to leave you. I want to crawl into the cool earth and snuggle up right next to you. A gravedigger passes by, watches me and says, “A so sun hot pon dis island, but a little ease soon come, darlin’.” The sweat pours down my face like sea water and onto my old lady’s dress.

Yes, I know this is only a holding ground—a place for the living to mourn, to remember.

My first memory is of our house on the dead-end street. I went to live with you there in 1957, two days after my birth in a Kingston hospital. My mother, Glory, was fifteen years old. She named me Marlene, Molly for short. My birth certificate reads “father unknown.” My mother left for Canada two and a half years later to seek opportunity, to get an education, to better herself. She never did come back to live here.

The house was painted sky-blue, trimmed in soft baby-pink, with steps leading up to a balcony. Some nights when the air was still, we’d climb the steps and sit on a bamboo bench, my head in your lap, counting the stars until the distant croaking of toads, the chatter of crickets and the familiar singsong voices of the neighbours lulled me to sleep. You would pick me up gently, carry me off to bed and tuck me in.

I remember our yard, a jungle of trees, sweet-smelling mangoes ripening, a rose-apple tree, banana, coconut, papaya trees, avocados, grapefruits, ackee and a great big almond tree. Magnificent beds of zinnias, crotons, spider lilies, birds-of-paradise, dwarf poinciana and roses spread in front of the verandah.
Hedges of red hibiscus lined the path to the balcony steps. Overgrown bougainvillea in flamboyant colours weighed down the barbed-wire fence that separated our yard from the neighbour’s.

The kitchen smelled of mouth-watering sweet cakes, puddings, spicy Jamaican foods. I never ever wanted to leave that house, but I mustn’t blame you.

Part One

MARIA GALLOWAY DIDN’T GO
to the Palisadoes Airport to see her son Freddie off. She never went to airports, not even when her son Peppie left in 1958 and then her daughter, Glory, in 1960.

The day Freddie left she sat on the verandah in the same chair she always sat in, a blue wicker one, smoking Craven A cigarettes, with the morning newspaper fresh in her hands. Back then she wore no old lady’s clothes. Her sleeveless, brown jersey dress made her breasts a soft mountainside, her hips rolling brown hills. She sat there, quiet, looking on as friends and family came to bid Freddie goodbye.

It was hard to know what she was thinking. Her sure calm never left her face. Freddie knelt in front of her, gave her an open smile, flashed perfect white teeth, then lowered his eyes, like a small boy reciting his prayers. But he was nineteen and leaving to find his fortune abroad.

It was 1966 and I was nine years old. He was like a big brother to me, and I knew I was going to miss him something terrible. Freddie was my grandmother’s youngest son.

“Come, nuh mek de plane lef yuh behin’. Hard-earn money buy dat ticket, and remember, nuh bodder go a white-man country and get inna any trouble. Act decent and show respect.”

Her left hand was holding her cigarette tight. I saw tears well up in her eyes, but she didn’t cry. “Gwaan, nuh mek de plane lef yuh,” she repeated.

Freddie shrugged, smiled at her and kissed her cheek. “Tek care. We will see each other again if life spare.” The December afternoon was humid, and the sun was like a yellow beach ball hanging in the sky. We crammed into cars and vans to say our final goodbyes. The smell of raw fish followed us as we raced along the seashore to the airport.

The waiting area was like Christmas morning in downtown Kingston. I kept expecting to see Junkanoos on stilts, their faces smeared in mud, horns on their heads, wire tails, dancing to drumbeats. Mothers and aunts and cousins laughed and cried, kissed their loved ones goodbye. The talk was hopeful and full of promise.

“Write mi when yuh reach.”

“Don’t forget mi.”

“Mama, ah going to send money home soon as ah can.”

“Ah hope de ackee and de fruits last de trip.”

“Lloyd, ‘member yuh have a ’oman an’ a child here, don’t tek up wid no foreign ‘oman.”

Vendors hawked their wares, selling everything from food to hair clips.

“Sweet bread, grater cake, bustamante backbone, paradise plum.”

“Fish and bammy over here.”

Uncle Freddie was all smiles and promises. “Yes, Dennis, yes man,” he said to his best friend. “As soon as mi reach, ah send dat pair of Clarke’s shoes fi yuh.”

Freddie’s girlfriend, Monica, admonished him not to forget her. “Nuh go up dere an’ feget mi yuh nuh.”

My uncle Freddie hugged and kissed her, whispered something in her ear that made her laugh. Then he smoothed his hands over her growing belly.