The Heart Does Not Bend (22 page)

Try as I might, I wasn’t getting as close to Ciboney as I’d hoped. I hadn’t succeeded in freeing her from attending church services, and I had begun to see little changes in her. She and Vittorio would stay up late and watch television on weekends. One night I crept quietly downstairs to the kitchen for some water. I saw them curled up together, her head on his chest, a small blanket half covering them. It was innocent—the door was wide open and the television on, and they were asleep. I woke her and she followed me, childlike, up the stairs to her bed. Still, I couldn’t get the image out of my head. Over the weeks I kept thinking of young lovers—innocent, but lovers all the same.

That wasn’t the only time I found them like that. I tried to talk to Ciboney—after all, she was my daughter and only eleven. I approached the subject one night when we were out at a little café. Aimlessly, uneasily, I started to talk about her changing body, menstruation, the whole bit. She sat and waited for me to finish. Then she said, “Mom, I am already seeing my period—I know about all of these things.” I wanted to ask her
why she hadn’t told me, but thought better of it and said nothing. It might have been the right time to tell her about Rose, but I didn’t. Instead I asked, “Does Mama know?”

“Yes,” she answered.

“Why yuh didn’t tell me?” I asked, crushed.

“Why are you making a big deal? It’s nothing,” she said dismissively.

“It just would have been nice to know.”

She swirled the drink around in her glass.

“Vittorio know, too?”

Her ackee-seed eyes opened wide. “No, why should I tell him? That’s sick.”

I ignored her look and her tone. “I think you should be careful how you conduct yourself in front of him, especially when yuh watching television late at night.”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that …” I fumbled. “He’s a young man, and even though you are his cousin …his feelings could be misdirected …”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She stared me down.

“How is church?” I asked, eager to change the subject.

That, too, was a mistake; her response was to roll her eyes.

I spent more time at work, lost in the greenhouse. Ciboney stopped going to church, and when I asked her what brought about the change, she told me Vittorio was responsible. He no longer wanted to go to the movies with Ciboney and me,
or driving in the country, or even bicycling, the way we used to do. Many nights he stayed out late, and Mama defended him: he was a boy, it was only natural for him to want to be around others his age.

Then my things started to go missing. First, little things—a cassette tape, coins, a pair of sunglasses—but then bills, my camera, a tape recorder and a Walkman. I talked with Vittorio first, but he denied taking anything. It was hard to believe he was the same Vittorio I’d watched grow up.

When my camera disappeared, I had a talk with Mama about my suspicions, but she would hear none of it. “Check yuh room again, Molly, maybe yuh misplace it. Vittorio wouldn’t tief from yuh.” She paused, then asked, “Yuh ask Ciboney if is she?” We both knew Ciboney had been away at camp when most of my things had gone missing. After talking to Mama, my watch disappeared and then a gold chain. I decided that the only way to prove that Vittorio was stealing from me was to set him up and catch him in the act. I put a few bills in my jeans pocket and left the jeans on my bed while I pretended to take a shower. While the water was running, I returned to the bedroom and there he was, digging through my jeans pockets like a dog looking for a bone. He looked up when he heard me, and I expected to see panic in his eyes, at least embarrassment, but he stood there, cool and cocky, daring me to speak.

“What were you doing in my pockets?” I asked loudly enough for Mama to hear downstairs.

“Nothing. I wasn’t in your pockets.” His tone challenging, he looked me straight in the eye.

“You were in my pockets,” I insisted angrily.

“I was only looking for a pen.”

“Get out! I’m sick and tired of you!” I shouted, surprised at my own rage.

Mama wanted to know what the shouting was about and I ran downstairs to tell her. Vittorio came as well, and he stood there, looking smug, Ciboney beside him, watching. I wanted to choke him, shake a confession out of him, but my fury and hostility should have been aimed at Mama, who asked calmly, in front of him, if I was getting forgetful like Uncle Mel.

I was careful to lock away my things after that, but my resentment grew. Vittorio could do no wrong in Mama’s eyes, and my daughter saw that I had no power in the household. Not that Mama was unkind to me; she still encouraged me in my work and spoke of me to others with pride. I was sure that someday she would see Vittorio for what he had become.

He had long since dropped out of school and spent most nights in front of the television or in his room with the music blaring. Ciboney trailed after him like a piece of English ivy. I’d lost her. She would accompany me to the occasional flower show or movie, but he had the edge. I comforted myself by thinking that she would come to see that her smooth-talking cousin was a fake.

Whenever Vittorio was around, he’d pray with Mama, and for that she’d often give him money. Uncle Mel’s health was deteriorating, and he spent more and more time in bed or glued to his television. There was no doubt that Vittorio was being groomed to take over. Mama never said, but we both knew it.

To say that I was disappointed would be an understatement, but there was nothing I could do. The woman who
lived on her own terms, who was honest and never afraid to speak up, was turning to Vittorio for strength.

I dreamt often of Rose. In my sleep I could smell the perfume of nutmeg and other spices in the creases of her skin. Rose and I had been apart for almost a year, and it seemed like forever, even with the letters and phone calls.

Mama visited Uncle Peppie and Glory in Atlanta twice a year. They begged her to come live with them, but she wasn’t interested. “A Canada mi live. Canada is mi home, not America,” she’d say. “If mi go dere, what happen to mi church and all of yuh? Mi want to be in mi own kitchen wid mi own things. Ah don’t want to be a burden to none of dem. Mi know everything here, how to find a doctor, hospital, mi know mi way around, and besides, what dem expect mi fi do wid Mel?”

Glory had never wavered from her position on Mama and Mel. Mama had done the wrong thing in living with him, she said, first, because they weren’t married, and second, because he was Aunt Val’s uncle. Uncle Peppie was a bit more tolerant. Unlike Glory, he’d accepted years ago that Mama would do what she wanted to do.

Truth was that though I missed her warm presence in the kitchen when she was away, I was happy with the space her absence brought, happy that Vittorio strutted less while she was gone. Mama always came back with renewed spirits. She had lots to tell and lots to criticize about Glory and Aunt Val. Their every mistake and smallest regret seemed to make her happy and eager to show me that had they listened to her wisdom, their lives might have been a bit easier.

Rose returned to Toronto in the fall. She stayed with us for a few months while she looked for a job and an apartment. It was good to have her in the house. She quickly settled into the family, doing chores for Mama, who now had arthritis in both knees. She helped Ciboney with homework and was even consulted about shopping for funky, second-hand clothes. She hadn’t heard all of Uncle Mel’s stories, and she listened with the patience the rest of us, except possibly Mama, had lost.

When Rose found a job and started making plans to move, Mama wouldn’t hear of it. “Stay here and save up some money, girl. No need to rush into paying big rent, yuh like part of de family.” We had no reason to doubt Mama’s sincerity. Despite her religious fervour, she’d never demanded we get saved. For close to a year we lived happily.

Then Mama’s health began to fail rapidly. Her knees were worse and she had to be fitted with a walker. In the beginning she could still make it to church and to the West Indian shops for groceries. I bought a second-hand car to drive her and Uncle Mel to the doctor. Her blood pressure was unstable and then there were problems with her lungs; she was at the doctor’s two and sometimes three times a week. It was hard for me to drive her to so many appointments while I was working, but Rose helped out and Ciboney did her share.

One night we received a phone call. Vittorio had been arrested with three others for car theft. Mama swiftly calculated how much she’d need for bail and a lawyer. Uncle Mel’s eyes looked dull and lifeless as he agreed to take the money from his savings. “But why did he have to steal?” he asked
helplessly. “He’s our only son—all he had to do was ask.” Mama mumbled something about bad company.

I drove her to the police station, and she hobbled over to hug Vittorio. He showed no remorse and said little. In the weeks that followed, the ups and downs with his court date, the lawyer’s visits and keeping him off the street put a strain on Mama’s heart.

What made things bearable were my nights with Rose. We continued to plan our future together. Talked about saving money and getting a place of our own. We spent many weekends at Uncle Mel’s cottage in Muskoka, which became our little hideaway.

It doesn’t matter how Mama found out about my relationship with Rose. She did, and all hell broke loose. Rose and I had been away for the weekend and were coming through the door on Sunday night when I heard Mama singing loudly:

She stopped to greet us and then started up again. At first I paid no attention—she was forever singing—but now she sang the same lyrics over and over. Rose and I awoke to that hymn each morning and heard it each time we came through the door. Rose noticed a change in Mama. “I can’t really explain it, I just know what I feel.” Forever the optimist—or coward—I tried my best not to believe that anything was wrong.

The singing continued for more than two weeks. “I’m going to talk to Mama,” Rose told me one evening. “Something is definitely wrong.”

“Let’s wait for a bit, maybe she’ll say something,” I urged.

“I’m not going to stay in this place and feel like a fish cast off on the shore. If you want to wait, you wait!”

“Talk quietly,” I cautioned, but she wouldn’t have it. Ciboney came to the bedroom door to find out what the commotion was. “Nothing,” I said. She looked at me in disbelief. I was foolish, I know now, but I didn’t know how much she knew. Though music was blasting from Vittorio’s room, Mama surely heard the quarrel. Still she didn’t say anything.

The next morning, Sunday, Rose left early on an errand and stayed away all day. Mama didn’t go to church. She called me downstairs to the kitchen.

“Yuh know what ah want to talk to you about,” she began quietly. “Ah don’t have to tell yuh dat it nuh right, a Satan work. Him nuh mean yuh no good. Look pon yuh, a nice attractive girl, yuh can get any man out dere, even a husband, and yuh go tek up wid woman. It nuh right. It nuh right.”