Patsy Page 2

  The man scribbles something on a sheet of paper. “Sounds like a good job.”

  Not when is minimum wage an’ yuh have a dawta fi send to school, an’ a retired mother living undah yuh roof fah free since she give all ah har pension to di church, Patsy wants to say. But she keeps this to herself in case it might jeopardize her chances. Also, she got the job because Pastor Kirby knew someone who knew someone else who had a second cousin in HR. For at the time no one wanted a high school dropout.

  “What’s the purpose of your visit to the United States?” the man asks. He raises his head and pins her with his eyes. Aside from her wanting more out of life, and more resources to take care of her daughter, the possibility of her and Cicely together again in America looms so large in Patsy’s heart that she almost trembles, having to compose herself before she utters the first answer aloud to the interviewer. Though she has all of Cicely’s letters saved, she carries around the one she favors most in her purse. It was written months after Cicely vanished from Pennyfield. Not a word about where she went until the letter came. Patsy read it so many times that she has memorized it:

  Dear Patsy,

  I am writing from Brooklyn, New York. I was going to write sooner, but I had to get settled first. Please don’t tell anyone you heard from me. Not Roy, not Mama G, not Aunt Zelma, and especially not Pope. America is everything that we dreamed about. There is so much here. It’s cold and snows a lot in winter. If you see me again, I’ll be so light. I am more comfortable now. But I miss the sea. I miss the hills that surrounded us. I miss gazing up at the sky at nights and seeing stars so close that I could grab them. I miss the smell of breadfruit roasting and saltfish cook-up. Now I have to go to a restaurant to pay for it. But that isn’t so bad. I always pretend that you’re here too. I like to imagine us, free without your mother, my aunt, Pope, Roy, and everyone else in Pennyfield. Like I said, don’t tell a soul you heard from me. Now that I am here, my memory of you and our special friendship will live forever. You have always been my home in this world.

  Yours, Cicely

  “I’m going on vacation,” Patsy blurts out, forgetting to say she’s visiting a friend. Vacation by itself sounds idle—something white people do. Like the ones she sees on the island, lazed and sunburnt on the beaches. But before Patsy can correct herself and continue about her elaborate plans to build a house on the land she forgot to mention, the man says, “I can never understand why you Jamaicans go to America for vacation when you live in this paradise.” He chuckles to himself and shakes his head.

  “Is really for a wedding,” Patsy hurries to add. Since sickness and death are two things one can’t lie about without jinxing oneself. It isn’t what she rehearsed, but she’ll go with it. She’s stunned by the ease with which the lie flies out of her mouth. Cicely got married years ago to a man she only married for papers. “It was jus’ so-so,” Cicely said over the telephone. Normally, they would dance around each other’s dating life—Cicely never asking about Roy, and Patsy never inquiring about Cicely’s love interests or offering information about hers. Patsy had cradled the phone between her ear and shoulder, listening to Cicely above the noise of squawking fowl in the backyard and the drumming of her own heartbeat as Cicely said, “We did it at the courthouse. Before we blink it was ovah. Di hardest part was convincing di immigration officer. He wanted proof. But thanks to those acting classes we did in school, ah showed him. You woulda think our relationship was real.” She cackled. Patsy was comforted by her friend’s comedic account, picturing Cicely tongue-kissing her play-husband under the bored gaze of a white man fiddling with his pen. But there is no way that this interviewer at the embassy could possibly research this detail.

  “Wonderful,” he says. “Who is getting married?”

  “M-my best friend.”

  “When is the wedding?”

  “October.”

  “May I see the invitation?” The man asks.

  “Sah?”

  “The invitation. I need proof.”

  “Oh! Yes, yes, di invitation.”

  Patsy feels faint all of a sudden, making a production out of fumbling in her handbag for something she does not have. All the time and money and practice that went into preparation for this interview flash across her mind. Her head spins. She’s about to lose everything because of one stupid lie. She cups her mouth. In her best English she says, “Please forgive me, but I forgot my invitation.”

  “I get stories all the time,” the man says, looking away from her pleading gaze to the paperwork on his desk. He taps his pen lightly on the table. Patsy watches his fat fingers curl, holds her breath as the pen hovers. In one stroke he could write her off. Stamp DENIED on her paperwork. Quietly tell her that she can apply again next year when there’d surely be a wait-list for interviews that might take another two years to get. Patsy focuses on the pen, which is in charge of her destiny.

  “Why should I believe you?” the man says, pausing to look at her.

  “The friend who’s getting married is—” Patsy stops herself and searches for the right words. The memories of them together make her smile. Usually she reserves these thoughts for nighttime, right after everyone goes to sleep. She lowers her eyelids and dabs at the sweat on her top lip, hoping the man behind the glass cannot read her mind and see an image of Cicely lying naked in sunlight inside the house on Jackson Lane, soft and fleshy as ripe roast breadfruit. Pastor Kirby preaches against such evil, his mouth foaming like a rabid dog every time he shouts fire and brimstone on the damned souls who have such desires. Mas’ Jacobs—a slight, friendly man with a lisp who used to call Patsy Passy, was chased out of his mother’s house for it when Miss Roberta, the town crier, claimed she saw him put a little boy on his lap.

  But Patsy cannot help it. With a visa she wouldn’t have to rely on memories any longer.

  Patsy lets out a sigh that fogs the glass in front of her, “She’s like a sistah to me, sah. My dawta’s godmother, who ah haven’t seen in years.”

  She swallows, feeling all the other lies that have been stored up inside her go down with the force of a whole chicken bone in her throat. She almost chokes before the man says, “You have a daughter, you say?”

  Patsy pauses again, confused, when she notices the smile on his face. His first.

  The interviewer she had two years ago wasn’t satisfied with that answer by itself. Her having a daughter meant nothing to them then. Clearly, the embassy had begun to figure out that people would leave ailing parents, spouses, and newborn babies if they have the opportunity to live and work in America. It reminds Patsy of the Rapture. Mama G always talks about the Rapture—how Jesus will return for the good Christians, the chosen ones, leaving loved ones behind to be destroyed by cannonballs of fire. Though in Jamaica the chosen ones are the pale-skin people on the hills living in mansions. Since they’re so far away from everything, tucked up there near Heaven—away from the hot, dusty city, and black faces slicked with sweat and creased under the weight of daily burdens. They have no reason to escape.

  “Yes,” Patsy replies. “Ah have a dawta.”

  She opens her wallet to show a picture of a smiling Tru in a red plaid uniform—one taken on the first day of basic school.

  “She’s beautiful,” the man says. “How old?”

  “Five going on six in October.”

  Patsy quickly closes her wallet. Hiding the photo takes the sin out of lying, out of wanting.

  “My wife just gave birth to a girl. Our first!” the man confides, lowering his voice. “And would you know, she hired a Jamaican nanny. Nice woman.” It’s Patsy’s turn to smile. But, upon realizing she’s already doing so, smiles broader—this time feeling it touch her eyes. She leans in farther toward the glass partition to see the picture the man holds up of a sleeping, bald-headed baby. “She’s lovely, sah,” Patsy says.

  The man smiles again, reminding Patsy of a glistening penny caught in sunlight. “Thank you,” he says, flushing pink. Patsy realizes that what she sees
on the man’s face is pride—a pride that saddens her for no earthly reason, at least no reason that anyone would understand had she told them, and no reason that Patsy herself understands.

  She focuses on the man’s color, amazed how white people can change color in an instant. Cicely changes color like that too—an ability that made Patsy’s best friend the most worshipped girl in school. Teachers spoiled Cicely because of it. They made it known that girls like Cicely, the pretty ones, were worthy ones. She was quiet, an angel that had fallen, stunned and flushed by the jarring descent. Whatever she said in class or on the playground was taken, in a sense, as biblical. Never mind that the whole community knew that her mother, Miss Mabley—a peanut-colored coolie with hair so long that it touched the high mounds of her swaying backside—slept with men who paid, and that Cicely never knew the man who put white in her blood.

  They were ten years old when Cicely chose Patsy. Patsy happily took on the coveted role of Cicely’s best friend—a role that came with certain privileges, like playing with Cicely’s long, silky hair, which went past her waist and shimmied with every movement, and the bliss of confessional friendship filled with intimacy and gossip. Patsy also did Cicely’s homework, helped Cicely with math tests by scribbling answers on Wrigley’s gum wrappers, and protected Cicely from jealous bullies, who used the shame of Cicely’s mother’s death a couple years later as ammunition. Patsy’s drive to help Cicely was an impulse that was as mindless as a blood cell that spends its whole life providing oxygen to a tissue.

  You have always been my home in this world. Patsy pictures Cicely as pale as the father she never met, pale as the princesses in those fairy-tale books she sends Tru with her initials, CM, written in perfect script on the inside, her beauty preserved like a carved ice sculpture in that cold weather.

  “She’s my everything,” the interviewer at the embassy is saying to Patsy, still musing about the baby in the picture.

  “Mine too,” Patsy says.

  PATSY HURRIES TO TRU’S SCHOOL, TRYING NOT TO FALL IN THE wedge heels she wore to the interview. She’s even more aware of the weight of the promise inside the bag she carries—her stamped passport. Her lungs fill with excitement, like she has narrowly escaped something. She finds herself looking over her shoulder, half expecting the embassy representative to chase her down and take back her visa. When Patsy sees no one behind her, she slows her pace.

  The schoolyard is quiet when she gets there. The grass blows wave-like on the wide, open field that is used for PE and fetes put on by the school. Saints Basic School, which Tru attends, is on this side; and Saints Primary School, which Patsy hopes to send her when she starts first grade, is across the street. Vendors have already set up their tables full of sweets for the outpour of children as soon as the last bell rings. There are cars parked in the dusty parking lot where parents wait, some leaned back in their seats with their radios tuned to the soccer match between Italy and Cameroon or to Barry G for the latest music. The World Cup theme song, “Rise Up,” is on replay in one car, with various Jamaican singers telling other Jamaicans, “There’s a winner inside you . . . be the best that you can be.” Just like the Reggae Boyz. Patsy smiles to herself, the too-optimistic song finally resonating with her after what she just accomplished. She sings along. The man in the vehicle with the music must think she’s smiling at him, so he winks. Patsy politely nods in solidarity and turns away. The afternoon sun glistens off the top of the band shell, where the children gather for devotion each morning before streaming to their classrooms in the two-story school building, painted blue and white.

  It’s after one o’clock. When Patsy gets to Tru’s classroom, Miss Gains is standing in front, watching over the children saying their after-school prayer. Tru, who must have sensed her mother’s presence, spots Patsy and keeps her eyes open as she mouths the words to the prayer. “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name . . .”

  She’s smiling at Patsy and bouncing in her chair, unable to concentrate. Patsy mouths, Close your eyes. But Tru is already too excited, quickly forgetting her obligation to Miss Gains. Miss Gains looks up and sees Patsy. The teacher gives her a stiff smile meant to reprimand her for showing up too soon.

  “. . . forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who trespass against us . . .”

  Patsy steps aside and waits patiently by the door of the classroom for the class to finish the prayer.

  “Remember you have homework!” Miss Gains says above the chatter and screeching of chairs, bringing Patsy back to the classroom.

  Tru waves, and Patsy smiles. Miss Gains gestures to Patsy to come inside. To Tru, she says, in the practiced diction that every teacher at the Catholic school uses, “Tru, will you step outside for a second? Mommy and I need to talk.”

  Tru obeys, taking her lunch box and book bag with her. Miss Gains waits until she’s out of earshot before she says to Patsy in patois, “Dis can’t continue.”

  “I know. Ah was early.”

  “It’s not dat.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s only a mattah of time before di school look at di roster an’ see—”

  “Look,” Patsy says, a sigh escaping her. “Ah told Tru to tell you dat I’ll have di money by Tuesday.”

  “You said dat last month.”

  “Dey had a payment freeze at the Ministry. Yuh know dat. I’m trying my best.”

  “Your best is not enough when it’s har education. I’m not di one making di rules here.”

  “Yuh t’ink ah don’t know dat? We come from di same place. Yuh know how it guh.”

  Miss Gains folds her arms across her chest. She’s a handsome woman, more handsome than any woman Patsy has ever seen, with high cheekbones and a wide, square jaw. She wears her hair natural, plaiting it into two neat French braids at the sides of her head. Her dark brown skin—an anomaly in a school of nuns—is flawless, which makes it hard to guess her age. She has lived in Pennyfield on Newcastle Lane as long as Patsy can remember, with her foster mother, Miss Myrtle (God bless her soul), and her younger sister, Bernice. Miss Gains also goes to Pennyfield Church of God Assembly for the Righteous, where Mama G has been going for years. She is not Catholic, but she lives like a nun. No man or children to call her own, although it has been speculated that Bernice is really Miss Gains’s daughter given to her by her own father, since the girl is retarded. Patsy doesn’t care one bit. Not like the other women in Pennyfield—women who wrap the bones of their many children like shawls just to say they have them, unable to feed them. To those women, it’s suspect that a woman above the age of twenty-five doesn’t have a child. Either she’s tragically barren, or, to those convinced that Jamaican men are the most desirable men on earth, she’s funny—the latter impossible in a place like Pennyfield, where everyone knows your business, can look right through the veranda into your living room, peer through a side window into your bedroom or kitchen, or look over your zinc fence and see you bathing in the outdoor bathroom, naked as the day you were born. No corner for hiding in a place like that. And while people would pardon convicts, drunks, and men who fuck goats, cows, dogs, and children, they are suspicious, almost terrified, of a woman without a family and no religion. Jesus is the only viable excuse a young woman can use to deny the penis.

  “I’LL GIVE YOU TO NEXT TUESDAY,” SAYS MISS GAINS, WHOM THE elders in Pennyfield still refer to as Miss Myrtle’s foster daughter. “After that I can’t have her in my class. I could get in trouble with the school. I’m only doing dis because she’s a good student an’ you’re my neighbor—”

  “I will take care of it.”

  Miss Gains nods. “All right, then. Give yuh mother my regards.”

  Patsy turns to leave, letting Miss Gains’s last request fall between them on the deaf concrete tile of the classroom.

  “MOMMY ’AVE SOME GOOD NEWS!” PATSY SAYS TO TRU AT THE Tastees Restaurant in Cross Roads, where Patsy takes her after school. Workers from local businesses sit on benches near them, devouring beef patt
ies and cocoa bread. Tru and Patsy sit at one of the plastic tables that face the road. Tru is looking at her, blinking away the dust in her eyes from the construction work at the gas station. Her eyes are a lighter brown than her skin, bright as though the sun is at their centers. She has been studying Patsy like this lately—with the wizened observation of a woman with experience. Miss Gains has suggested that she skip the first grade when she starts primary school in September. Patsy has given it much thought, fearful that her daughter might be too small to exist among the bigger children, though her intelligence is the same as theirs, if not higher. But that is all Patsy fears. Deep down, she welcomes the idea of Tru skipping a grade. It will only make her mature faster, leapfrogging over milestones that will relieve Patsy of the burden of raising her. She’s quickly overcome by guilt for feeling this way. Her daughter’s face holds within it a conviction—a darkness and a mystery that Patsy fears, which sometimes causes her to look away or fix what doesn’t need fixing. Like now. Patsy reaches her hand across the table to wipe the patty crumbs from her daughter’s mouth. For good measure, she smooths Tru’s bushy eyebrows with a finger and tugs at the tips of her plaited pigtail held by white bubbles and clips shaped like bows. When she runs out of things to fix and touch, Patsy’s movement slows.

  “What is it yuh want to tell me, Mommy?” Tru asks, chewing with her mouth open, a space visible where her two front teeth used to be.

  “Is a surprise.”

  “Yuh got me a football to play wid so I can be like di Reggae Boyz?” Tru asks, her eyes getting larger.

  “No. Is a biggah surprise.”

  “Albino Ricky say dat nothing is biggah than di Reggae Boyz,” Tru counters.

  “Dat’s Ricky’s opinion. And how many times I tell yuh not to call di dundus boy dat? Dat’s not nice. I hope yuh don’t call him dat to him face.”

  “No, Mommy.”

  “And I hope yuh not letting nobody tell you what to think.”

  “No, Mommy.”