Ginger beams at her. “It’s a whole lot of nothing for no reason.”
She fingers the fabric. “What did you do, rob a bank? You better’ve.” They’ve been saving for the kids for school, how could he?
He heads her off. “I got so happy, Addy, I had to go out and waste some money or else bust, because I love you. Because you are the best woman, you are the toughest, the meanest, the prettiest and I can’t believe that I got you!” He jumps her in a spinning bearhug.
“You’re crazy, you know that? You’re right nuts, and put me down, b’y!” She packs a bony wallop to his soft shoulder. “Put me down till I beat the can offa ya!”
And he does. “Come on,” he says, feinting with a right jab, and she comes at him with a left hook, wiry she is — jab, jab at his upraised forearms and dancing fists, socks him a good one right in the bread-basket, till she has to double over because she’s laughing so hard she might pee, and she can’t see to box him any more for the tears streaming down her face.
“Invite the neighbours,” he tells her. “I’m going to get Trese and Hector. Evan, honey, I want a big fire out back.”
Evan hops to it. He is the oldest at twelve.
Barbecued deer and boiled corn, enough for the neighbourhood, and the neighbourhood is there in the back yard. The sun is down, the fire is high and so is the moon. Hector sits under his blanket wide-eyed and smiling, tapping his foot in reel time to the fiddle of the very old Mr Prince Crawley. Teresa feels well for the first time since she was fired. She had forgotten the sweet joys of society, of just yacking with people, surrounded by kids and food and music. She has made a fish curry fit to cure the dead — renewing her claim to the local West Indian cooking crown — and a tub of ice-cream to cool the flames. She goes so far as to let Adelaide persuade her to sing — “Only for you, Addy, and only this once.” Teresa starts up one her mother, Clarisse, always sang for her and Ginger:
“‘Sly mongoose, Sly enough but the dog knows your ways. Sly mongoose, Sly enough but the cat is on your track —’”
And what good’s a song if you don’t dance it? Teresa is an excellent dancer when wild horses have got her up and moving. Once moving, she is nothing but happy —
“‘The mongoose went in the missus’ kitchen, Took up two of her fattest chickens, Passed them into his vestcoat pocket, Sly mongoose —
The crowd joins in, the going gets wild, Hector is laughing and clapping and the little girls have all got up to join Teresa. Her smile is a mile wide, her hips have gone saucy, fingers snapping, palms percussing, “Go girl!”
“‘You look to me like a mile and a quarter, You look to me like you require some water, You look to me like your blood’s out of order, Drink bush tea, Drinky bush tea —’”
She begins to improvise verses, and it gets hilarious because she makes up all kinds of rhyming gossip about everyone there, and people throw made-up verses back at her. At last Teresa takes the song back to the chorus and everyone sings, then shakes the firelight with appreciation. Teresa hasn’t caught her breath before she notices Adelaide alert as a cat staring at the back-yard fence. Before she can say, “What’s the matter, dear?” Adelaide has pounced — over the fence and down the alley.
Adelaide pelts after the small fleeing figure and catches it easily by the collar.
“What’s going on, eh? Why’re you hanging around my family?”
“Fuck off — ow.”
Adelaide has got the fine art of arm-twisting.
“What’s your name, girl?”
“Harriet Beecher Stowe, ha ha — ow!”
Teresa has caught up. Frances sees her. And can’t help but speak to her.
“Hi Teresa.”
Adelaide looks at Teresa. “Who is she, Trese?”
“I don’t know, Addy”
“Teresa.” Frances looks up at her. “Don’t you remember me?”
Frances forgets to lie. She forgets about Adelaide pinning her wrist behind her back, she is tempted to tell Teresa everything. Because Teresa would understand. Teresa would touch her forehead and everything would fall away, all the weight of everything Frances knows and doesn’t know. The terrible weight of her heavy heavy mind.
“Dear God,” says Teresa. She has just seen the double row of precious stones on Frances’s fingers. “Where did you get those rings, child?”
“I found them.” It’s sweet like milk — she called me “child”.
Ginger arrives but stops a little way off. Adelaide turns to him, “It’s her again, I don’t know who she is or what the hell she’s after.”
No sooner said than Adelaide has an answer to the latter question: glancing down at her prisoner, she sees Frances staring at Ginger with a cool cool look on her face.
“Who is she, Leo?” Adelaide says sharply, watching his face.
He looks back at the phony Girl Guide and Adelaide knows the next thing she hears will be a lie.
“I don’t know, Addy.”
Leo has never lied to her before. Adelaide’s talent for seeing through a lie could be called a sixth sense, but she doesn’t figure there’s anything spooky about it. To tell truth from a lie is easy as salt and sweet.
“Never mind,” she says to her husband and his sister. “Go back and enjoy yourselves, I’ll be right there.” But they hang. “Move, will ya Jesus-Christ-on-the-Cross move!” And they do.
Adelaide shifts Frances’s wrist an eighth of an inch and so gets her undivided attention. Then she leans her face close in till they are eyeball to eyeball. Quietly, and with intent, “You come around my house; you touch my babies or my husband, and I will kill you.”
“Yes ma’am.”
Adelaide lets go of Frances’s wrist and returns to her own back yard.
Teresa and Leo have told everyone that Adelaide caught a peeping Tom, a white fella, and put the fear of God into him. Everyone laughs because they pity anyone who crosses Adelaide, and when she comes through the gate looking so grim, they laugh some more. Adelaide marches straight into the house and straight back out with her mouth-organ. She plays “The Old Rugged Cross”. It’s bluesy this way, which is how it sounds best. This one always makes Teresa cry, the way “Ave Maria” does a tired Catholic. Laughing and crying all in the one night, it’s been a wonderful party.
Except for the dirty Girl Guide with Mrs Mahmoud’s rings. How on earth did she come by them? On the black market? In the gutter? The actual thief must be long gone by now. Teresa was too shocked at the sight to think what to do but now she knows there is nothing to be done. No point seizing the rings or telling Mahmoud, he would never believe her, he’s proven that much. And he doesn’t deserve the truth — forgive me, Lord, only You know what we each deserve — anyhow, why get Adelaide all het up about what can’t be fixed? “The Old Rugged Cross” reminds Teresa to turn the other cheek and not to dwell, what’s done is done. Prince Crawley joins in on fiddle, several sing and Hector hums. It ends the evening in just the right way.
Teresa wheels Hector home down the street and shakes off an unsettling question. How did the little waif know my name?
Ginger makes sure he’s in bed ahead of Adelaide. He feels ashamed to be mimicking the sound of sleep as she undresses and crawls in next to him. He’s done nothing wrong, but how could he possibly explain? A little white lie and for no reason. It doesn’t matter.
She watches him for a while, then softly calls him by his secret name — not “Ginger,” another name. It’s private. He stirs a little but doesn’t open his eyes. She kisses his shoulder and lies down next to him. She’d do anything for her family.
The next day.
Adelaide arrives home from Beel’s Grocery with an envelope of bright new buttons.