Red Jacket Page 3

  In this Wentley Park place Grace come to know from school and church that she must reverence the Most High God, she learn that the wages of sin is death, that pride goeth before a fall, that the mills of God grind slowly but they grind exceeding fine, that God is not mocked, and that she must walk in the fear of the Lord for the fiery pit is the lot of those who disobey him. They tell her too that the Lord is her shepherd and that God love her and will send his angels to bear her up — but not with quite as much conviction as they bring to the terrible sureness of the punishments to be meted out by the Almighty.

  Not Gramps, though. Gramps God is different. For one thing, he and Gramps have conversations all the time. Gramps tell her of things that God tell him, not just things that he read in the Bible. Take matters of cultivation, for example. God give Gramps special permission to grow some plants that other people are forbidden to grow. God and Gramps are often scamps together, though if you are God, you couldn’t be a scamp. But if you make the laws, you could break them if you want. It sweet Grace to think God change his mind and break his own rules, and it don’t at all surprise her that God should give Gramps leave to do things others are not allowed to do. Gramps is special. God is smart so he would know.

  There is no prospect of Grace being led astray as she growing up for daily she learn the disastrous consequences of deserting the straight and narrow path. At night, as she lying down beside the bigger ones, for they are all sleeping together in the shrinking room — Pansy and she with heads to one end of the mattress, Stewie and Edgar with heads to the other, Ma with Conrad, Sam, and Princess on the next mattress — Grace listen to a susuing waterfall of information which start tumbling out as soon as Ma is safely snoring: who (whether big-big woman or reckless young girl) thief whose man; who make who pregnant; who lucky to lose baby and who not so lucky; who gone to the other end of the island sake of the belly they carrying; and who nearly dead sake of them try to dash away the belly. Other sins too, but there is no thiefing of stray goat, no destruction of property, no maiming a intruder with machete sake of praedial larceny that can compete with the sins related to baby-making matters.

  Truth to tell, no matter what going on, Pansy and the boys are in the middle of it. Ma would say, “If is egg, those pikni into the red!” Unlike Grace, the four of them think they have a God-given right to be anywhere they choose: front bench in Zion Holiness Tabernacle and quick to examine the temple pool if there is a baptism; behind the counter at Mr. Wong shop, so make the old man get well vex sometimes; up under the window of headmistress office at the standpipe where you can drink water or pretend to drink water while you gulp the words that sail out upon the breeze, loud and clear. These are places where you can see and hear every little thing and some big ones too.

  It is the said standpipe where Stewie overhear the headmistress explaining to Grace form teacher, “The child Grace is not really the Carpenters’ blood kin, you know. Is adopt they adopt her.”

  The day Grace get that piece of information was a day that she never forget — not for that reason, though. For another reason, having to do with what Gramps call “eternal verities,” so that what Stewie say come to her at the time as no big thing. Grace remember it all clear as day, bright as the bolt of lightning.

  Behind the barracks hut is a small patch of land where Gramps plant some yam and dasheen; bok choy and cho-cho and callaloo; Scotch bonnet pepper; skellion, onion, and thyme. Ma too, have some flowering plants there that are easy to grow: cosmos and croton, puss-tail, monkey fiddle, and jump-up-and-kiss-me. Every Sunday she cut some of these flowers and put in a jam jar on the dining table.

  Gramps love to tend this patch of yard, which he refer to as his “ground,” and Grace is his willing helper from ever since. And Grace know that Gramps leave the patch now and then to walk some distance into the forest that start at the boundary of the yard and stretch out to cover the low rise behind and then continue on up to the hills as they get fat and full. Is right there behind the row of barracks huts that the round hummocks begin and spread and grow to form into karst country that bump up and down for acres and acres in the middle of which is the flat place that is Wentley Park plantation. In this forest, Grace know there is another ground, a small clearing where Gramps grow some medicine plants, or so he call them. These are the ones Gramps has permission from God to cultivate. Grace know she can’t go into the forest with Gramps when he going to tend that plot, so she always sit and read and patiently wait until Gramps find his way back.

  Sometimes he don’t come back with anything but his machete and fork, but sometimes he have bits of the plant, which he call “herbs,” and those times he would always let her watch as he carefully infuse them (so say Gramps) into a bottle of white rum, and leave them to soak.

  This particular day is only Grace and Gramps at home, for Grace is breathing with great difficulty and Ma is afraid she is heading for bronchitis and so she is to stay at home and be quiet and not stray far from her bed. But late in the morning — a morning that seem long as any day and night — she is bored, for she read every piece of old newspaper she can find, so she sneak out and walk up and down the narrow rickety back porch about fifty times. She read all the words she can cipher out in the crossword puzzle that Gramps make sure to do in the day-old paper they get from Mr. Wong, after he drink his cocoa-tea in the morning. The boys always take the paper back, for Mr. Wong use it to wrap up codfish, herring, and pig’s tail. Grace learn by looking at the puzzle after Gramps finish and trying to remember any new words and meanings she can make out.

  So, bored and daydreaming, she climb off the porch and walk over to the back fence, which is not really a fence but a line of monkey fiddle hoisting their gristly green-and-white stems and pink-red tips from out the dark red earth. As she standing near the boundary of their plot of ground, waiting for Gramps to come back, the sky get dark quick-quick, and thunder start to roll, and lightning flash, and then a trickle of fire catch the small otaheite apple tree that serve to anchor one end of the clothes line and zzzzt! pitchaw! pow! Right there as Grace is staring, the tree catch afire and start to blaze.

  Grace so frighten she pick up her two foot and take off into the forest after Gramps, never mind she not supposed to follow him. She race down the narrow track, not minding the prickly things that jook her feet nor the long branches that box her in her face. And she so glad when she see Gramps, she running, running up to him, fast as she can go, but she so frighten she can’t get any words out of her mouth to tell Gramps about the burning tree, so she only moving her jaw up and down, and hearing no sound from her mouth, and half turning and pointing back to the yard.

  And then the strangest thing, for, as soon as he hear her steps, Gramps swing round and shout at her rough-rough, “No, Grace. Not one step further. Go back into the yard. Into the house! Now!”

  Grace is wounded. Gramps has called her “Grace.” Not “Gracie,” but “Grace.” Gramps never call her that. Pa sometimes; Ma sometimes; but never, never Gramps. In her heart she is deeply grieved; in her legs she is paralyzed, for she cannot now move. Instead, she stand up stock still, stuck into the ground like a yam rooted into its hill.

  And Gramps have to turn around and shout at her again, not once but twice, before her brain reconnect with her foot, and she spin and race back into the yard quick as a mongoose, making sure to run round to the front of the house, sake of the fire, and into the bedroom and hide her head under the sheet on the nearest mattress and start one big cow-bawling.

  But she don’t turn and go before she see what is keeping Gramps in the forest: a man lying on the ground. Grace know he is dead for she see dead people before. Never one like this man, though, for the skin on his face, arms, and fingers done lift away from his body and puff up like a balloon. Grace eyes glue on to the man as she see the wind, rising now with the storm coming on, as she see it blow a piece of macca against the man’s face, and she watch the thorns pierce his skin and see it pop like a burst balloon. It is in that s
econd that Gramps spin round and shout at Grace the last time, and in that second that she find her two feet and run like her life depend on it. It is in that second, too, that her voice return to her long enough for her to scream “Fire!” at Gramps and point to the backyard.

  So when Stewie whisper to Grace late that night that “Eadmistress say is adopt Ma and Pa adopt you,” Grace just give a long suck-teeth and declare, “Eadmistress too lie.”

  Truth to tell, right that moment Grace not thinking about that. Is just the quickest way to deal with Stewie and his minor matters. Her head is full of too much other things: of how Gramps put her on his knee and laugh a soft-soft half-of-a-laugh and tell her he never know she had a voice so big that she could bawl like a bull-cow; of how he commend her for coming to tell him about the fire in the otaheite apple tree, never mind the storm was coming up and she must have been fraid-fraid of the lightning and the fire; of how Gramps explain that he sorry to shout at her, but that he never want her to come near to the dead man.

  Grace don’t let him get off so light. “But Gramps, I see dead already,” she tell him firmly.

  “Not like this dead, Gracie. Not like this dead. Don’t that’s true?”

  Grace nod, yes, but she is not yet satisfied. “But how he come to be in your ground, Gramps?”

  “I don’t know, Gracie. Maybe he came to help himself to some of the medicine plants that I grow there. Maybe he was so sick that he didn’t know where he was going.”

  “Well, that must be a bad sickness.”

  “Yes. He die from a terrible sickness that eat your flesh away. I see it when I was in the war. That is a long time ago, but they still don’t have no cure for it, and they don’t know how it spread. That’s why I make sure that we all keep far-far till the ambulance come this evening and take the corpse away.”

  Nobody else see the dead man. Only she and Gramps, and Ma and Pa from a far distance, when they reach home from work, but only the shape of the body for when she, Ma, and Pa go outside, they see that Gramps cover it with a tarpaulin to shelter it from the rain that start lashing down same time she was bawling into the mattress. When all the other children come from school, they stay inside till police come. Is police that call the ambulance and come with it to take the body away.

  So Grace don’t care when Stewie tell her that headmistress say she is not blood kin to the Carpenters for she feel deep down in her belly that by the events of that very day she is bound even more closely to Gramps, and that, never mind she not able to balance a basket on her head like Pansy and she not using no cloth like her big sister, never mind all that, she is grown up in those minutes, in the time from the lightning hit the tree till she fling herself down on the mattress and start to cry. The dark sky and the fiery branch and the balloon man in the forest are big as any Bible story, and she is brave and stalwart, like Esther and Judith.

  4

  Grace and Pansy

  25 March 1969

  My dearest little girl,

  Happy birthday! Now you are nine and so I guess you are thinking about going into high school. I don’t even know if you are in the country or in Queenstown. I think your Granny Vads perhaps knows, but she doesn’t let anything out, as though she still hopes that if she doesn’t talk about you, I will forget you. She should know better.

  I hope you are at a good school, maybe in a place like Ramble Village, which is a pretty town near to Hector’s Castle. I remember it because there was a grove of starapple trees there, and one time we went on a church picnic, and Granny Vads let us pick the starapples and bring them home and that was the first time I tasted matrimony, which is the sweetest tasting thing, made out of starapples and oranges and condensed milk. Granny Vads is not doing so well. She is up sometimes, but down so often that I worry about it.

  There are all kinds of bad things going on right here in USA but I am not going to spoil your birthday with all of that. We have a new president, Mr. Nixon. I don’t like him. He looks sneaking. Granny Vads says so too, but we will see what we will see. I have to rush off to work. God bless you for the next whole year.

  All my love,

  Your mother,

  Phyllis

  From she small, Grace don’t like to go into places with plenty people by herself, and as she grow it don’t get much better. She never know how to come into or leave a place, any place, no matter where — church, classroom, Mr. Wong shop. When it is her turn to run there to trust things, never mind that Mr. Wong look out for her and treat her specially, she is still full of such fear that she can barely say what Ma send her for. She feel people forever gazing at her, thinking she is funny looking. Try as she try, she can’t fix that. Gramps say, “You have to play the hand life deal you.” So she keep on studying and learning and hoping that in time, she will know how to play her hand. Lucky for her, she like to learn new things, so even though the work get harder, she don’t give up. When she reach Grade Six and go into the class that preparing for the General Entrance Exam, the load of hard work don’t frighten her. If she do good in the exam, maybe she can win a scholarship place in high school. A good high school, if she is lucky.

  As for Pansy, at age fifteen she is content to be in All-Age school. Ma encourage, Pa frown, and Gramps look like thunderclouds that going to rain down storm, but Pansy taking her own lazy time with her lessons. People just get too tired with Pansy. Conrad, Sam, and Princess still need plenty minding, and Ma is not well every now and then, for babies keep slipping away, and Gramps is getting older, and Pa, too.

  From Pansy start hanging round the Ital Cookshop on her way home from school, Grace know nothing good not going to come of it, but what to do? When Grace venture a comment to Gramps about how Pansy always looking for trouble, though she don’t say how, Gramps shake his head, declare, “That one own-way from she small. Your dead Granny Elsie is partly to blame. Is she mind Pansy when your Ma was still doing live-in housework, before Stewie and Edgar born. She spoil Pansy rotten. Never say ‘no’ to that chile.”

  Grace and Pansy walk home from school together from ever since Grace start going to school. Even when Grace is old enough to know the way, it continue like that. Which sometimes make her resentful.

  “Grace, it’s not that I don’t think you can walk home by yourself now you are bigger,” Ma explain. “But I prefer if you and your sister walk together. Pansy can help you if anything happen, if you fall down, or twist your foot, or anything so. You can remind her that she not to take her own sweet time — and you know she is a sweet-time miss — for she have things to do here at home.”

  The trouble start right as Mortimer arrive. The first time they see him, he is cutting lumber with a big saw on a workbench under a lignum vitae tree near to the boundary of land that used to belong to Miss-Maud-God-Bless-Her-Soul. Mortimer hang his shirt on a bush and is working with only his trousers on, his bare back looking like somebody spit on it, and buff it to a high shine. There are patches of sweat near the waist and on the rear of Mortimer’s trousers. They hold on to his body in those places. He have on a belt crocheted in Rasta colours, red, green, and gold. As he slide the saw back and forth, the muscles in his arms and back remind Grace of a picture of sand dunes in her geography book. The colour is different, but the curves and ripples is the same.

  The structure he is building is near to the boundary line of the property, with the front of it sitting near the bank side, so their journey take them straight past his workbench.

  “Peace and love, and Jah blessing, sistren,” he say, nice and polite.

  “Afternoon, sir,” Grace say.

  “You not from round here?” Pansy slow down, smile her best smile.

  Mortimer smile back, shake his head, go back to his work.

  “So what you building?” Pansy now stop to talk.

  “Come, Pansy,” Grace say soft-soft, holding onto her hand and tugging her fingers. “We not to stop.”

  “Then why you don’t go on?” Pansy hiss her reply.

  “Just a
small shop,” Mortimer answer, then he solve the problem, for he dip his head respectful-like and turn back to his saw in a way that show he done with conversation.

  After that day, Grace notice that Pansy start staying late at school one day a week, sometimes two. She tell Ma she doing extra work so she can maybe pass the Grade Nine exam and get into the senior secondary school in Cross Town. Grace don’t think that is true, but she don’t say anything, just make sure that when school done, she hurry home if Pansy not coming.

  One afternoon when she and Pansy walking home together and passing by the cookshop, which is now finished and painted in red, green, and gold, with a big sign that say “Ital Cookshop,” Pansy tell Grace to wait outside the shop, because she need to tell Mortimer something.

  “What you could have to tell him?” Grace ask.

  “None of your business!”

  St. Chris roadside shopkeepers only stay in the shop front when things are busy. The rest of the time, they are in the back tending to their cooking or cleaning or baking or stocktaking or other business, always keeping an ear out for customers. All a customer have to do is rap on the counter or ring a bell, if there is one on the counter. Pansy walk into the front of the small shop like she accustomed, but she don’t ring the bell. Instead, she knock on a door in the corner. Grace figure it must lead into the room behind, where Mortimer must be staying, for people live in their shop to keep their goods safe. Mortimer open the door, smile at Pansy, and then look up at Grace as if to give a greeting, but Pansy push him back inside and shut the door.