I want to forgive her. But to forgive, you must first love.
I dreamt last night that there were earthworms in my belly. They shuddered and rumbled beneath my skin. Their bodies caressed, gnawing in darkness like creaking doors and loosening hinges. All the while they ate of themselves. I am making a plan to move quickly, to move before they travel the length of my throat and slide through my mouth.
I think of Ma, May’s mother, who lives in Mayaro selling her preserves — red mango, salt prunes, and cherries — from her seaside shed. She does not interact with outsiders, especially since Pa died, except for one neighbor who taught her local folklore. Douens haunt her dreams — those unbaptized souls of dead children, their heels on feet that face backwards, racing toward unsuspecting children, enticing them away.
Ma also invents her own folklore about the dead and the living. Dark nights with a full-bellied moon and barefoot walks on fish-stained sand have given her insight. When unwanted souls are born, they are born into suffering. Ma says they know their own anguish before their real misery begins. In the belly they writhe with resentment, and in the cradle they ponder vengeance. An unwanted soul will grow to destroy the hand that feeds it. She once told my mother to send me away. Three of her own children had been raised by a cousin. She warned May about my unwillingness to stop crying when my father died. She warned her about my seeming insensitivity to beatings and my stubborn resolve to grow distant.
May once nurtured my physical likeness to her, but it became clear that I had been born with his eyes and his manner. My only likeness to her was in my growing inability to be consoled. When he died I screamed for months. Now I scratch photos, dig lines into doors, and devise a plan — a plan to purge this house of the devil.
At the back of the house is an unfinished addition. Two hundred thousand dollars’ worth of concrete and wood, and an upstairs landing with no enclosing walls. May likes to climb those stairs to talk to God at night. She senses my father walking behind her, scurrying like a mouse in a box. No matter how much he hurries, he does not leave the house. I think he does it for me. May does not believe she has seen her husband. She says the devil wears many faces.
“Honey, you know I love you, baby,” May coaxes from the hall, spit moistening the crease of her lips. “Come and help Mommy, nah? If you help me I will give you something special.” When bartering, she switches with ease from scorn to affection. “Mariiiiaaa,” she coos through the cracks in the door, “you know you need to help me or you may end up with nothing, sweetie. Come on now.”
I exhale loudly and continue to scribble, continue to relish the sound of my markings.
“Maria, you fucking little ingrate! Yuh better get yuh ass out here now before I break down this door. Parker coming this evening and I have to get this place cleared up.”
It is Friday, the night before we are to surrender the house. Tomorrow morning the pudgy Indian man will arrive with his piece of paper, although unsorted boxes still line the doorway. The moment he saw the house, he said, “I’ll take it.” Crammed at the end of a flowing row of tall-stemmed houses, the oldest one, though that could be altered, it is nevertheless positioned in prestigious Palmiste.
Doesn’t he live in Port-of-Spain? Your man will mind you. And you have man? May had snorted. Why you don’t ask his parents if they will let you live there? I know where she will live. She has already purchased a three-bedroom house by the sea in Westmoorings...
I am digging in her cupboard while she is at her choir meeting. I pass my hands melancholically along the doors’ wooden panels, grieving the house... Gruesome were its stories, lonely were its nights... I imagine toppling Parker from atop the San Fernando Hill, watching him tumbling, tumbling into the city, where he becomes a barely visible dot crashing soundlessly amongst the buildings, disappearing forever.
Parker likes to roost on the unfinished upstairs landing, his face to the moon, his back to the stairs. When overstuffed, when sitting with his legs dangling over the edge, I will approach him. While he gazes at the sky, I will show him what it feels like — what it looks like when the sky is falling. He speaks to God here too, while she prepares the room.
I need to build the courage. Enough force to push him over and enough liquor to ease my fear. If he does not die, he will break his legs. Creaking doors will be replaced by creaking bones. He will only have a glimpse before he falls — the colors of her dress and the scent of her perfume.
These things I have already stolen. They sit beside the tins of tuna in my bedroom closet. She will probably blame the spirits. Insist it was the man on the stairs with the face of the devil.
My palms sweat as I begin to doubt myself. He will be arriving soon. And I will be waiting in the darkness like the many times he has waited for me. I picture him falling like a stone to the earth, the worms chewing through his ears and wriggling in his pockets.
I continue digging through her cupboard and its mess, throwing aside plastic bags and toilet paper rolls. May throws away nothing. Saving for a rainy day, that’s all. I am looking for the Coca-Cola among the groceries May hides in her bedroom. She developed this habit when I was five years old. If I did not do as she said or as well as she expected, I was left without food and given tap water to drink. Sometimes she sold me her wares at half-price — a tin of sausages for two dollars, a pack of maxi-pads for four.
I find a letter to God on her dresser. She writes messages to Him on pieces of paper and drops them into the collection pan circling the pews. While others drop money to purchase a spot in heaven, May tries for free advice. Perusing this letter, I nearly choke on the crumbs at the back of my throat. It is not a letter to God but a letter to Carol, begging her for advice. My mother knows.
She tells Carol I am pregnant, that Parker found my secret writings on pieces of paper inside the box below my bed. She says that I have always been a whore, I have always been unworthy, always been beyond the assistance she has offered me. That Parker spoke to my boyfriend about my scribbled confessions. That my boyfriend left because I had been with someone else. I realize now that May has taken Parker to see the pastor, to cleanse his unapologetic soul of what he has confessed. But May does not write this in her letter. Parker will blame it on the liquor. I will be blamed for leaving doors open.
I am nauseous. The worms are stirring.
I should have known. I have been careless. I should have settled this before it had a chance to grow. I should have settled him before he had a chance to make it happen.
I thought I was dreaming. I stirred slightly to the smell of rum on my lips and a firm grip on my wrists. Then she was there. Had come home early and found us. She beat me till I woke fully. Then she cradled his crying blubber in her steel arms, his jelly skin, his cries for help. Her victim of evil. I was left to clean my own blood. That was the day I began to see roaches, began to smell rum in corners of the house. I thought that I was crazy. That I was just like her...
May used to say that two man-rat can’t live in the same hole. She used to say the same for two women. She fears me now. That I have something inside me she could never give him. I want to leave her. I no longer want to carry her with me, nestled in my underbelly, festering below my skin.
They have returned.
May is in the kitchen singing about Jesus, and the pigeon is upstairs looking at the moon. Creeping in the shadows, I can hear him breathing, murmuring songs from choir practice, and snapping his fingers. The light from the sky glimmers on his forehead and the dust from the walls crawls onto his clothes. May’s dress itches my legs, her perfume smells like stale flowers. I am barefoot and I am armed. Clutching a razor, I hope to hurt him with one swipe.