The Heart Does Not Bend (24 page)

Ciboney, my hope and precious daughter, only fourteen years old, was pregnant. I didn’t find out until she was five months along, and my heart broke. I felt betrayed when I learned that she’d told Mama. Ciboney wouldn’t say who the father was. She wouldn’t confide in me at all.

Things were happening very quickly in our family, and I wasn’t seeing Rose as often as she wanted. She complained and pressured me, and I felt as though everyone was testing me.

Mama asked me to get someone to come in and clear out the basement so she could sell the house. I researched prices in the neighbourhood, discussed them with her and started contacting a few real estate agents. Uncle Peppie flew up from Atlanta to help me. We spent weeks preparing the house for sale and fixing up the yard. Uncle Peppie painted the kitchen and the hallway and had it ready for showing. The real estate agent and prospective buyers were in and out. Finally we had an offer. The day before Mama was to sign, she sent Ciboney to find Vittorio. He came almost immediately. They had a long private talk.

On the day of the signing, Mama, Uncle Peppie, Ciboney and I sat down with the agent and the buyer at the kitchen table. Vittorio was nowhere to be found. The agent explained the procedure to Mama and handed her a pen. Right there, without consulting any of us, Mama said, “Ah not selling.” Uncle Peppie and I were stunned.

“Mama?” I asked.

“Not selling,” she repeated.

We couldn’t bring her to her senses. The buyer and the agent left in frustration. I felt such rage. “Mama, what going on? Yuh know how much time I waste wid dis shit? Where yuh dearly beloved Vittorio? I’m sick and tired of this. Yuh seh Vittorio like him father and grandfather, but yuh mek him dat way,” I shrieked, near tears.

She sat there at the kitchen table and laughed at me. I was “delirious.” “Stark-raving mad.”

“Waste your time?” she shouted. “Yuh know about time? Yuh know how much mi put in you?”

Uncle Peppie got up from his chair and walked out the door. I went to my room and packed some clothes. On my way out, I heard Ciboney asking Mama if she wanted some tea and a slice of bread. On the street corner, I saw Uncle Peppie smoking a cigarette, something I’d never seen him do. He hugged me and we stood there holding on to each other for a long time. “Ah going back tomorrow,” he said, “on de first flight out.”

Rose was at her place, waiting for me. “How did it go?” I burst into tears. She led me to the kitchen and made a pot of tea. My hands shook as I held the cup. I spent that night with Rose, and the next, and the night after that, determined to leave my grandmother’s house.

Things were never the same again between Mama and me. Something was dead, but I couldn’t move on. They—she, Vittorio and Ciboney—were the family. I still did the cooking and cleaning and drove Mama to appointments. Listened to her complaints of Vittorio and her children and her lot in life while my life was tearing up like an old worn-out rag. Yet I stayed rooted.

Ciboney gave birth to a daughter. I was with her at the hospital and I stifled tears as I held my grandchild. A little miracle.
I looked into her fiery, screaming face and wondered at the cost of life.

Mama found new energy now that she had a baby in the house. She could no longer move around or make baby food herself, but she issued instructions to me and Ciboney. Vittorio showed up more often now that the baby was here. He carried her around in his arms with such tenderness that I had to stop myself from wanting to like him. Ciboney named the child Maud, Mama’s middle name. That pained me, but then, Ciboney had never been only mine.

I encouraged Ciboney to go back to school; she had dropped out during her pregnancy. She said she wasn’t ready. She wanted to take care of Maud full-time, and Mama backed her decision.

Vittorio turned up whenever Mama summoned him. Ciboney knew where he spent his time and acted as the messenger. When he came by, Mama gave him money for gas. I bought the groceries for the house without asking for a penny and paid the utility bill. My beat-up, eight-year-old car had been no gift from her.

My relationship with Rose was like a tulip bulb buried deep under snow. All I could do was wait, and hope, and believe in spring.

With renewed vigour Mama again made plans to return to Jamaica. Her church people came to see her, sang and prayed with her, and she looked forward to their visits. She talked about Uncle Mel, how much she missed him and what a good man he was. She looked so tired, and her mood was changeable and hard to live with.

One afternoon shortly after Mama had been complaining bitterly about Vittorio, he came home, bathed and put on a suit, white shirt and tie. Mama asked Ciboney to help her get dressed. She was in high spirits at the sight of Vittorio. In the afternoon light she looked the way she did back on the dead-end street, when we were getting ready to head off for the Ritz Theatre. She explained that they were going to see a lawyer. I watched them as they went through the door: mother and son.

Later that night Vittorio joined us in a family prayer. I cursed myself for sitting in with them, but I did. Tired from her own scripture readings, Mama soon fell asleep.

She was eager to leave Canada. Once again I’d become the worker bee, but this time I looked at it as buying my freedom. That was what I thought then, not knowing that I would never be free of her.

Part Four

WE’D BEEN PACKING BOXES
, barrels and suitcases for weeks. Glory came from Atlanta to help out. Grand-aunt Ruth had asked us to bring lots of food—the cost of food in the supermarkets was outrageous, she wrote—so we packed barrels with canned salmon, tuna, flour, sugar, rice, boxes of cake mix, cereal and crackers, along with detergent, paper towels, toilet paper, candles, pots, plates and clothing. We made arrangements for a shipper to pick up Mama’s bed, television set and VCR, commode chair, dresser, washing machine and dryer, a new fridge for Grand-aunt Ruth, a hairdryer for Aunt Joyce, car parts for Cousin Ivan and a new sewing machine for Cousin Icie. Glory and I would wrap and pack late into the night.

Mama couldn’t do much except sit and give orders about what was to be put in barrels. She wouldn’t listen when we begged her to go rest.

“Mi waan fi know what exactly going in de barrel,” she insisted.

As usual, Vittorio was hardly ever at home. The day before Glory left, when the barrels were full and we needed
help to lift them out of the kitchen onto the front porch, Mama complained bitterly. “Dat blasted bwoy, him should be here now helping. Instead him a walk street or a follow woman skirt. Just like him father. Him call and promise fi come and help, and up till now mi nuh see de wretch. Not even him own room him will tidy up. Rat and roach a fight fi space down dere.”

Glory gave her a piece of advice: “Yuh shoulda kick de bwoy out long time. Yuh don’t need to put up wid him shit, Mama, yuh too old fi dis.”

Mama struggled for an answer. “Ah, mi dear, it nuh so easy. Old-time people use to say, ‘What nuh dead, nuh dash way,’ and none a we know what direction life will tek, only de Lord know, and him nuh worse dan any other bwoy.”

My mother and I exchanged looks.

“Come, Molly, mek we walk down to de lake. Ah need to get some air,” Glory said.

We walked out to the street and across the bridge over Lakeshore Boulevard to Sunnyside Beach. We strolled along the shore, the July sun glittering like false gold in our faces, the lake water dull and sluggish, mirroring our mood.

“Dat Mama need fi go see a head doctor,” she started off. “For something wrong wid her head. All she do is cuss de bwoy and then in de same breath defend him.”

“Him can’t do no wrong,” I said, sighing.

“She ruin so much people life. Give out bad advice and defend people failures. She shoulda leave Vittorio in de Children’s Aid. Him mighta come out to something with adoptive parents. Just like she never have any right fi tek yuh out of mi house.”

Her last words angered me, but I didn’t say anything. It was one thing to talk about Vittorio and quite another to suggest Mama needed a psychiatrist and to compare me to Vittorio. After all, Glory had driven me from her home, and I had made something of myself, become the first in our family to go to university.

“Look pon Ciboney, pickney having pickney, and all she do every day is dress up and idle.” She paused and then asked, “Anybody know who de father is yet?”

“No,” I said in barely a whisper.

“Well, so it continue, another generation down de drain.”
Just shut up
, I thought.
You should be one to talk
.

“Yuh can vex all yuh want, but someone have to talk de truth.” She stared out at the lake. A heavy silence floated between us.

I made my face look like a stone and said coolly, “We should get back home. I have to start dinner.”