Patsy Page 3

  “I want you to grow out of dat tomboy ways of yours. Good girls keep dem self neat an’ clean. Like those Wilhampton High School girls. Dey don’t play wid boys an’ dirty up their nice white uniforms. Dey are well behaved an’ obedient. Can you promise me dat? Promise me dat you’ll—” She catches herself when she notices her daughter’s eyes fall away from hers. Patsy takes a deep breath and changes the subject. “All right. If I tell you my secret, promise me dat yuh won’t seh anyt’ing to Grandma.”

  “I promise!” Tru says, animated again, bobbing up and down in her seat with the excitement of holding a big secret.

  “Yuh sure?” Patsy asks, half smiling.

  Tru nods with such vigor that her plaits shake.

  “I don’t t’ink yuh big enough to handle secrets.” Patsy leans back and playfully folds her arms across her chest. “Only big girls keep secrets,” she says, echoing what her Uncle Curtis used to say to her when she was Tru’s age.

  “I’m a big girl!” Tru shouts.

  Patsy laughs despite the uneasiness knotting inside her stomach. “All right. I’m going to America,” Patsy says finally, crushing the napkin in her palm. “I got my visa today.”

  Tru’s eyes widen. She springs from her seat and comes around the table to hug Patsy tightly. “We going to America!” Tru shouts, drawing attention. Some grudgingly turn their heads and shrug, their voices lowering to whispers; others raise their brows and smile with admiration. Patsy allows herself to sit with her daughter’s arms around her—her daughter whose only glimpse of America is through the Walt Disney fairy tales she watches on television when Mama G is not around to talk about the Devil in cartoons—or the ones she reads in books Cicely sends her. And there was that snow globe Patsy picked up once from the Woolworth downtown—an unusual treasure amid the Virgin Mary and Jesus figurines that sit on the whatnot inside the living room. Tru, like Patsy, delighted in shaking the thing to see flurries of snow fill the glass and settle on the beautiful two-story house and the surrounding pine trees inside it. “Snow!” Tru would say, giggling while tilting her head back and fluttering her eyelids as if she could feel the snow on her face.

  One day the globe disappeared. Tru admitted to taking it to school to show her friends and somehow misplacing it. Patsy almost fell on her knees the moment her daughter confessed. She grabbed her then and gave her two big slaps on her buttocks. “Me did tell yuh to tek it to school?” But it was Patsy’s eyes that were hot with tears. “How much time me warn yuh to be careful wid it!”

  Inside the globe was the secret promise of a life without worry or care or want. When Tru lost it, Patsy felt like she lost her fairy tale—something her daughter didn’t understand. Tru’s cheeks were dry while Patsy’s were wet.

  Closing her eyes in this moment—the sun on her lids creating a yellow void inside her—Patsy regrets the scolding. She squeezes her daughter in a tight embrace, wishing she could be satisfied with the simple pleasure of feeling the sun on her eyelids and the embrace of her daughter. But as she inhales the smell of the Blue Magic hair oil she uses in Tru’s hair, which mingles with the smell of beef patties and exhaust fumes from the traffic, and as she listens to the sounds of rush hour on Half-Way Tree Road clamoring around them, Patsy only feels her secret yearning for more deepening.

  Truth be told, she never loved her daughter like she’s supposed to, or like her daughter loves her. Tru’s love for her—an unconditional love that Patsy didn’t have to earn or deserve—seems unfair. Everything Patsy does and says to Tru is taken with wide-eyed acceptance. Sometimes Patsy finds herself wanting to crush the image of herself that she sees at the center of her daughter’s eyes. The day Tru lost the snow globe, Patsy struck her hard, finding for a moment a reprieve in her daughter’s anger, and hoping the frozen image would drown in her daughter’s tears. But Tru didn’t cry, coming to Patsy moments later with those wide brown eyes that seem to take up her whole face—bottomless wells Patsy is careful not to look into for too long.

  After the loss of the snow globe she began to plan and dream without Tru, writing letters to Cicely about staying with her in Brooklyn, applying for a passport and a visa. The rest she’ll consider when she gets to America—a place where she hears jobs and opportunities are abundant. Cicely told her that they have things like job agencies to help people find work. “An’ good jobs too! Yuh can mek triple what yuh making at di Ministry in one week!” Patsy always imagines them walking hand in hand in America, trying on clothes in boutiques and zipping up each other’s dresses like they did as girls, and shopping for household items together, like real couples do, for their house—a two-story brick house. She didn’t tell Mama G or Roy, because she wanted to see if she would get the visa. The visa solidifies for Patsy that she could have a life with Cicely; that all her unhappiness would be rewarded; that all life’s mistakes would make sense in the end. Now she has to figure out a way to tell Tru that she’s going to America without her. As if Tru already knows this, she holds on to Patsy tighter. A lump rises steadily in Patsy’s throat. “God nuh ’ave no room in Him army fah di coward at heart,” Mama G always says. Patsy swallows.

  2

  PENNYFIELD WAS ONCE A MIDDLE-CLASS NEIGHBORHOOD UNTIL the original owners, with some means, fled in the 1970s thinking Jamaica was on its way to becoming a Communist country like its neighbor, Cuba. Panicked, they leaped back into the arms of Mother England. They left faded colonial houses, stripped of paint and stature. They left mango trees, pear trees, ackee trees, and guava trees susceptible to the stones of hungry children. Each house now stands weighted down by poverty and Mother Nature. Pennyfield, which is positioned under the foot of the hills and spreads all the way to the sandy gully, got its name from the Englishmen who once buried pennies in the area for good luck, according to Ras Norbert, the old Rasta man who lives in a shack down the road. He says the Englishmen buried generous amounts of gold coins. “Believe me, believe me not!” the old man would holler before beginning his tale, his one good eye roaming to find the steady pair of anyone who would listen. This supposedly happened before the upper-middle-class Jamaicans flew away like exotic birds to seek refuge, certainly way before Mama G’s gaze moved heavenward. And before trigger-happy young boys drew invisible lines across the gully, marking their turf with sanguine spray paint, their cryptic crab-toe writings scrawled across buildings and walls: PNP VERSUS JLP; ONLY BATTY MAN WEAR ORANGE; KEEP JAMAICA CLEAN, VOTE GREEN; WE WANT FREEDUM.

  During election season, politicians come to Pennyfield in BMWs with tinted windows. They carry crates of Guinness to hand out to people, as if that will fix things. To the young boys in the community—boys who don’t go to school, boys Patsy has known since they were just tots—the politicians give guns.

  Patsy and Tru pass Ras Norbert sitting on an empty D&G crate by Pete’s Bar, in the shade of the big lignum vitae tree—the one on the corner of Walker Lane that attracts so many yellow butterflies in May that it seems that the leaves themselves are yellow and fluttering. Ras Norbert is telling his tale to Miss Foster’s runny-nosed, picky-picky-head children—all of whom never seem to own a pair of shoes or ever go to school. Though the children vary in age, they are the same height and look identical. Even the girls, with their hair picked out and simple cotton dresses draped over their bony shoulders, look like the boys in their khaki shorts and torn T-shirts with names of places they would never see—France, Brazil, Italy. The children are sucking on their fingers, quietly listening to Ras Norbert. The brooms Ras Norbert makes and sells for a living are leaned up against the bark of the tree as he talks about a time when men in trousers and high socks squatted in the blazing heat at the foot of the hill to dig holes and plant gold. No one ever asks Ras Norbert how he knows such things, just like no one ever asks him how his dreadlocks, peppered with gray and matted together like a big tree’s bark made up of smaller trees, got to be so long. He has to carry it all over his shoulder like the anaconda snake at Hope Zoo so that it doesn’t sweep the ground when he
walks.

  “But if dey plant go’al, why dem call it Pennyfield?” a child, who is not one of Miss Foster’s, asks. Ras Norbert stops his story to locate the source of the small voice. It’s Miss Ida’s dundus grandson, who is hard to miss with skin as pale as a ghost and hair the color of dried-up weeds. He hides behind his grandmother’s floral skirt, which only enhances his paleness, save for the bright pink tongue he sticks out at Tru. Tru retaliates by sticking out her tongue too, both children looking like two croaking lizards sparring in a yard. Patsy pinches her daughter on the forearm. “What me tell yuh ’bout sticking out yuh tongue? Is not ladylike.” Tru folds her arms across her chest and pouts, shooting daggers with her eyes at the dundus boy. Miss Ida, a cook at the basic school on Molynes Road, doesn’t seem to notice her grandson’s antics. Like Patsy, Miss Ida has stopped to listen to Ras Norbert too.

  “Only fools t’ink a penny is jus’ a penny,” Ras Norbert says to the boy. “But a wise man know di worth of a penny. Problem is we too lazy an’ downtrodden fi stay an’ search we own backyard fi find we blessing.”

  Miss Ida and Miss Foster laugh and fan Ras Norbert away, grabbing the hands of the wide-eyed children to haul them in different directions. “Is wah di backside him talking ’bout?”

  “Come, children! Time to go! Me haffi cook dinner before di match start! Di Reggae Boyz g’wan delivah we go’al!”

  “Who yuh telling! M’dear, is foolishness di ole man talking!”

  “If go’al was really in we backyard, Nelson woulda find it by now. No treasure nor money can’t miss dat wutless brute of a landlord.”

  Patsy is the last to walk away. The other women’s cackles grow faint around her. All the elation she felt earlier is suddenly gone, replaced by sadness—a sadness she has always felt, but can never pin down. “Come,” she says to Tru in a joyless voice, averting her eyes from Ras Norbert and his reprimands.

  MAMA G’S PLANTS CROWD THE FRONT YARD ALL THE WAY UP to the veranda. The rented two-bedroom house they share is a low powder-blue box with a shingle roof, louvered windows with burglar bars, a veranda, and a TV antenna sticking out from the side. Most of the houses in Pennyfield look like that. The yards are separated by barbed-wire or zinc fences with holes bored through them, giving neighbors immediate access into each other’s business: “Dat Peggy get a new man again. Hope she can keep dis one!” Or, on days before the end-of-the-month’s paycheck when a dollar fails to stretch to the last penny, ingredients for cooking: “Beg yuh a dash a salt, nuh Jerry? Beg yuh two ginger head, Miss Berta. Come sip dis soursop an’ tell me if it taste right. It want more sugah, nuh true? Beg yuh likkle?” Children spy on each other bathing outside, laughing and pointing at their peers with outie-navels or misshapen birthmarks in odd places. Rubbing soap from their eyes, the shamed children yell, “Leave me alone! Wait till me tell yuh mother! Yuh not g’wan see di light ah day again if me evah catch yuh! G’weh!”

  But all the noise and chatter give way to sighs during quiet moments. Or sometimes, during turf wars, they give way to the sound of gunshots. From her bedroom at night Patsy hears them. But in a place like Pennyfield where these sounds are common, people are unafraid but never unprepared, sleeping with doors shut and bars on the windows. And, quiet as it’s kept, they can be at ease because of Pope. Patsy knew Pope as Peter Permell, when they were schoolmates at Pennyfield Primary—the oldest of Miss Babsy’s three sons, who grew up on Melrose Lane. Cicely dated Pope in secondary school. Patsy always thought he was bad news, though his mother gave Patsy food and invited her to their dinner table when Mama G stopped providing. He became Pope when he was deported from America. Presently, he presides like God Himself over Pennyfield, more powerful than any crooked policeman or politician. His younger brothers, Keith and Leroy, who now go by Bishop and Cardinal, are his right-hand men.

  “One day ah g’wan buy you a big house,” Patsy says to Tru, who is holding her hand. With her other hand Patsy opens the gate. From one of the plants comes a sweetish smell that reminds Patsy of something painful. She lifts the latch on the grille.

  “Will it ’ave a upstairs?” Tru asks.

  “Yes,” Patsy says.

  “Wid a balcony?”

  “Definitely wid a balcony.”

  “An’ a big yard where ah can play football an’ practice to become good like di Reggae Boyz?”

  Patsy pauses before she says, “Yes. Wid a big yard where yuh can play yuh football an’ be our first woman football star.”

  “But where will it fit?”

  “I’ll build it on di hill. Like those.” Patsy points, and Tru follows her finger toward Miss Ponchie’s ackee tree, all the way to the highest branch, above which she can spy the big houses on the hill overlooking Kingston like grand castles. “Dat’s where it’ll fit,” Patsy hears herself say in a near-whisper. “Dat’s why I’m going to America. To mek t’ings bettah fah you. Fah all ah we.” She wants to add, Suh dat yuh neva have to rely on Pope fah anyt’ing—but decides against it.

  THEY ENTER THE HOUSE, WHICH HAS NO SCENT OF COOKING OR cleaning like the rest of the houses, just a sickening smell of rosemary oil. The long pink curtains with red flower prints cover the louvered windows, which are closed. Patsy moves to let in some fresh air. Dust motes dance in the rays and settle on the Jesus figurines that crowd the whatnot and the old stereo box Mama G used to play Motown records on before she stopped listening to the “Devil’s music.” Patsy averts her eyes from the waxed faces of the Jesus figurines in the small living room. She came of age under those same frozen querying gazes, awkward with fear. Their quiet judgment seemed to sift down like the dust they collect, dulling the room, choking the life out of it and the whole house.

  “Evening, Grandma!” Tru calls out as soon as she drops her book bag on the plastic-covered couch to find Mama G.

  Exhausted, Patsy moves slow behind her, checking the mail—mostly bills piling up—on the dining table. She sifts through each of them like a stack of cards, whispering, “Dat can wait. Dat can wait. What is it dat me owe dis one again? Dem so t’ief!”

  She drops the stack and shakes her head. It’s only a matter of time before Mrs. Tyson will come knocking at the gate for the rent money. Patsy swears the old woman only leaves her house uptown in her chauffeured vehicle to assault them for rent money. She’s one of the few landlords who refuses to give up her property to Pope. Most landlords have stopped coming into the area. They end up abandoning their properties altogether, fearful of retaliation of some sort, or extortion on other properties or businesses they own. Mrs. Tyson’s father was one of the upper-class people who lived at the house when Pennyfield was a well-to-do place. He died in the late sixties and left Mrs. Tyson the house. Instead of selling it, Mrs. Tyson rented out one side to Mama G—who was then a young helper who was pregnant with Patsy—and left the other side of the house boarded up with her father’s things still there covered in dust and cobwebs. Mrs. Tyson’s body has since shrunken with years, her pale face set in a permanent scowl. She has a tendency to look around the yard, walk through the house with her cane, and peer inside cupboards and pots on the stove when she comes, her nose turned up.

  “Dat woman is Satan,” Mama G used to say when Patsy was a girl. And Patsy believed it. Mama G used to tell Patsy to tell the woman she was out—the only lie Mama G stuck to even after being saved. But there was a time when Patsy, barely eleven years old, disobeyed and let the woman inside the house. It was Mrs. Tyson who peeled off a twenty-dollar bill from a stash of rent money to give Patsy, discreetly pressing it into her open palm. “Go buy yuhself groceries wid dis.” The woman’s eyes had slid to the bare cupboards Mama G had forgotten to stock during one of her many fasting periods, which could last for days, sometimes weeks. It was a rare act of kindness displayed by Mrs. Tyson, who has yet to make repairs.

  “Ah can’t afford all dis right now,” Patsy says aloud, her eyes eventually landing on the figurines. She wants to smash each and every one of them, then crush the splinters with
her heels.

  Just fifty years old, Mama G has long since renounced her life, waiting patiently for the Day of Judgment, too caught up with scriptures and collecting these damn figurines to concern herself with bills. “Di Lawd will provide. Remembah di loaves of bread Him multiply?” Mama G always says. But it’s Patsy who has been providing, multiplying, and dividing—dwindling to a frayed thread. It’s her punishment, she tells herself, for getting pregnant by a man who already had his own family. A fact Mama G has never let her live down. Patsy constantly repents those sins by working overtime to feed not only Tru but Mama G, whom Jesus has called to testify full-time and therefore makes no money for the house.

  Mama G is now sitting on the small back porch that Uncle Curtis built before he left. He was really Patsy’s stepfather, but Mama G said to call him Uncle. She didn’t like the idea of Patsy calling him Papa, and Mr. Willoughby sounded too formal. Uncle Curtis was too much of a jealous man to put up with the idea of Mama G loving another man, even if the man in question was God Himself. Uncle Curtis continued to drink his rum and smoke his cigarettes despite Mama G’s protests. He liked to sit in his armchair in the living room at nighttime, his big feet resting on a stool, and listen to old hits on the stereo. The music drew Patsy out of bed to his side. “We use to dance to dis,” he would say when he sensed her presence. His sad, drooping eyes would find Patsy’s face hidden in the dim light. “Remember, Gloria?” The years between them evaporated like the veil of cigarette smoke when he looked at Patsy, curious about what had gone wrong, bewildered when the veil cleared and he still could not see her young face, but Mama G’s.

  Then one day he left, unable to take Mama G’s newfound religion anymore. “Me is a grown man! Nuh tell me what fi do! Me nuh tek talking to from no ’ooman!” Mama G didn’t flinch. “G’long, then!” she said. She helped him by putting out the rest of his things in the middle of the yard.