May says the taller the building, the closer to God. The landing is high enough. If I can catch Parker off-guard and squirming, I can push him without resistance. I hope he topples with his face to the soil. The rum is settling. I feel the dirt between my toes, underneath my nails. Between my fingers. Buried in the ground beneath his swinging feet are shards of glass and bits of galvanized steel. Hidden amongst the splintered wood and bits of concrete scattered in the backyard.
Wisps of melody float from the kitchen window below. “Jesus reigns, Jesus saves... Jesus is there for you always.”
I sneak behind his silhouette propped upright by bulky arms and coarse fingers. My hands shake as I get closer. Doubts swim through my mind. I can’t do this. What if he hears me? What if he grabs me? The wishy-washy feeling of seasickness, the buzzing of rum fluttering through my eyelids is dragging downwards in my throat. If I can do this, I can mute the voice pacing the stairs of my mind at night. I can bury her forever. I hover over the unmoving figure; he does not sense me.
In a flash, I drop forward. I slice his right arm. He jolts upright, gurgling and slobbering. Before he can scream, I kick the back of his neck. There is blood on May’s dress now, red spilling onto yellow printed flowers. Falling to my knees, I slam my body against his back and push, push. He squawks frantically, arms flapping, “Maaaaay! M-m-maaaaaaaaaay.”
“What de ass you making so much noise for, man?” Then, “Jesus Christ, ah coming up now.”
I grow hysterical, my shins grazing the floor until they sting. Only seconds have passed. He turns and is somehow on his feet. He smiles with sick certainty and swings to kick me in the stomach. I skirt backwards on my bottom, wooden splinters scraping my thighs.
“Marie, what you really think you doing?” he asks calmly. Edging closer, he staggers. Enough for me to spring forward. I hear footsteps. Elbows to chest — “What the fuck?” hurling from May’s throat — I push and push. He falls backwards, his head hitting the floor.
May lunges at me. She claws like someone drowning just beneath the surface. Nails scrape through flesh. She draws blood. I feel teeth. And just like that, I fall.
The sky turns for a long time, and I feel a frenzied kicking inside me. Then I lie watching the sky, the frenzy subsiding to a fluttery squirming. I close my eyes as blood fills my mouth, remembering when I called her Mommy, the times I loved her as a child...
Something heavy thuds against my chest. Parker, coughing blood. Everything blurs.
I sense her beside me, hugging his trembling blubber in her plastic arms. I can barely hear her, vaguely bawling, tearing at the flimsy dress with bloodied flowers, a hovering shadow as the black of the night fades to gray. I think she says she loves me.
Standing on thin skin
by Oonya Kempadoo
Maracas
Trinidad never promised me anything. And I never trusted the confused strutting. From the time I came to visit as a shy child and them lovely Maracas waves chewed me up and spat me out — when I saw teenagers dressing like big people, rich homes flashing TV-style; everybody rushing, buying food, driving and eating and drinking, talk flying, pecong — I told myself, Is a place for adults. I promised I would come back. But it never invited me. No, not once. No matter how many times I came. That’s because it’s always busy keeping up with itself, getting on, carrying on at a rate. Horrendous rates. From Piarco Airport to Port-of-Spain, every time, I could see the mess’a the place right there. All along the road, without shame or design. Ignoring my arrival.
The Customs man looks at my mixed race and says casually, “Yuh come back home?” after Immigration just finished giving me hell. And then the Indian taxi driver is asking if where I’m going is up a hill. “Because my car does cut out on steep hill, like it have something wrong with it, but I don’t like asking my customer too much’a question before they get in my car.” Business as usual. Down the highway. Shopping malls and disaster housing schemes stretching, factories, fast food chains, mosques, and the Hindu Girls School. It’s always a bad time for traffic. Island of oil, pothole roads packed with cars crawling like lice, under an asphalt sun. At the junction by Nestlé’s compound, diesel dark — skinned vendors comb through heat waves of glittering cars, dripping red pommeracs. Air-conditioned windows roll down, hands exchange cool bills for hot fruit. None for the limping polio beggar, or his black cracked palm. A neutral radio voice offers, “Four victims were murdered in the country’s latest fatality... A seven-year-old who survived by hiding under a bed reports that his father and brother were tied up, while his mother and sister were brutally raped by three men and chopped with cutlasses in front of them. All were then shot several times... Police say...”
The big Indian-style homes with concrete balustrades, lots of sliding doors, fancy wrought-iron and designer “features,” keep their eyes on the road, untrusting. And the patches of farmlands, bordered by Gramoxone-dead grass, lie low. While the white-teeth smiling billboards want to chat. But I never like talking with them — too fake and clever with themselves. To fool them sometimes, I might wave back at Miss World, dressed in her airline uniform welcoming me; cheers with the multirace bunch’a happy people drinking Orchard juice. The rest of it though — from the La Basse dump, leaking human scavengers and smoldering black clouds of corbeau vultures, the shantytown stretching up to Laventille, the marketplace in Sea Lots, to the ex — railway terminal — the place doesn’t give a shit. But, you see the hills behind all of this? Ranging along the north, behind Barataria, Tunapuna, Arima — they are the ones you have to watch. Blue-gray soft in the rainy season, hard and fire-scarred in the dry season, they talk to you. Fanning, waving, calling you. They laugh, spread out, and mock the radio, echoing whatever they hear. They are part of it. The plumage. Trinidad.
“What’s the use of it?” my sister asked.
“What’s the use of it?” the hills laughed.
After all the bacchanal done, the mating season. After the Carnival flu run down your body and left you with a hollow cough. Mas camps collapsed, not a soca on the airwaves. Port-of-Spain is back to its normal self, going about doing the same things again. Post-Carnival sales for shoppers now. Headlines return to the killings and scandal after the feast of colorful, fleshy photos and aphrodisiac ads. Bank workers finished talking about who they saw in what costume, in what condition — gone back to comparing their children’s school passes.
Port-of-Spain is trying to tell me now — anything you want you can find here. Selling itself. This is the New York of the Caribbean, or at least a Miami. Look, there’s arts and entertainment, nightlife and a whole range of people — cosmopolitan. Get a job or something. Work to buy a car to go to the mall is what you should do. But the Savannah trees and the hills know more about me than that. “You can’t stay,” they say. “You can’t take it in town. Go. But you will come back. Go and learn how your heart walks and the earth talks. But we will see you again. Closer.”
“Don’t worry,” my sister said.
I am back with my child.
“Sheba! Sheba!” The Alsatian doesn’t stop. Play-wrestling with my baby boy, a paw across his chest and his whole little arm in her mouth. But Oliver is laughing and dribbling, pulling one ear. Fur stuck all over his sweaty skin, dog saliva pasting down a patch of hair. A big tongue licks his cheek, slathering. He squeals, little hands fly up to his squeezed-shut laughing face. He grabs Sheba’s mouth and pries it open, trying to shove his whole head inside.