The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir Page 13

  He scratches his head and smiles. There is a streak of snot under his nose. He wipes it away with his sleeve and clears his throat. Then he frowns and shifts from one foot to the next. I look away. Finally he blurts out, “Anyway, Stacey, me have to go feed the fowl them now. If Shappy come out here, just ignore him. Me soon come back, you hear?”

  As soon as Glen leaves, Shappy comes up the steps. He walks right up to me. He puts his nose into my hair and inhales. He tells me I smell nice, like perfume. He puts his hand on my shoulder. Then on my collarbone, and then he rubs. I pull my shoulder away from him and hunch down into the book. He sniffs me again.

  “You smell like a real woman, but your body still small. You don’t even have no breast yet. You sure you not underdevelop? Maybe you is a spy? Is the CIA send you fi come infiltrate me?”

  He stands there by the chair. The dog ambles onto the veranda. He kicks the dog in the ribs. “Get you raas outside, you dirty stinking mongrel!” The animal sniffs the ground as it slinks down the stairs. Shappy sits on the arm of my chair, sniffing my hair. I do not look up from my book. He smells like smoke.

  “Shappy, move from there and leave the little girl alone!”

  The tall man who winked at me earlier waves a red wash rag at Shappy and chases him away. He smiles and tells me that his name is Andy. He wipes his face with the red rag and tells me not to worry, that everything is okay now. I want to hug him when he lowers his voice and asks if Shappy really scared me. He smiles again, but something about the way he looks my body up and down makes me straighten my back and say no, I wasn’t scared. He asks me how old I am.

  “Nine, but I am going to be ten next December.”

  “Ten? You body small fi ten, but me can see that you very mature. You like to read? Reading is a sure sign of maturity. That book is for children who is at least twelve years old.”

  He stops talking to me when another man comes up the stairs singing. Jimmy is the fourth brother. His smile is friendly, but his teeth are rotten. When Andy explains who I am, he warns me not to forget them when I get to Canada. Jimmy disappears and Andy leans in to tell me I am much prettier than all the girls in the house.

  Auntie’s youngest daughter, Diana, pokes her head out to look at me. She is thirteen years old, but I am almost as big as her. She has asthma, so she doesn’t leave her room very often. Diana’s older sister, Grace, a tall, fat girl with a pretty face, opens the living room door and slips dentures into her mouth. She says a brief hello and heads down the steps. The dog crosses her path and she kicks it. It does not make a sound. Grace is so fat that when she walks her feet puff up like sausages in her high heels. Andy says she has a daughter, Elisha, who is six years old. I ask him how many people live here.

  He lists them. “Lemme see. There is me, Jimmy, Shappy, Glen, Diana, Mama, Grace, and Elisha. Me biggest sister, Dawn, move out long time now. And now there is you. Pretty likkle Miss Chin with the smoothest skin on her legs.”

  I place the open book over my thighs and try to read a sentence. His shoes are inches away from my bare toes. I look up when a tiny pair of feet appears. The feet belong to Grace’s daughter, Elisha. She smiles with even white teeth. Her hands are soft as she touches my bare leg.

  Auntie comes out from her room and shouts at her, “Elisha, leave her alone! You don’t see her reading? Andy, go round the back and help Glen see about them fowls fi me.”

  “Mama, Glen can handle the fowl them. Me was just here talking to me cousin,” Andy says.

  “Andy, leave the pickney them alone and go find something to do! Elisha, get up off that red floor before you wipe off all the polish on you bottom!”

  Andy winks at me again before he goes inside. Elisha tugs at my arm. “Hey, girl! You never hear me ask you what you name?”

  I put the book on the chair and turn to her. “My name is Stacey. And yours is Elisha, right?”

  She nods and asks if I want to go look at the chickens with her. We go through the living room. I bump into Andy standing behind the door. I quickly brush past him and follow Elisha. There is an old broken bookcase with some torn books. The kitchen counter is stacked with dirty dishes and everything is black and covered with grease. Elisha exits the back door and hops down the big concrete stairway that leads out to the backyard. I stand behind her and look into wired sections of the smelly chicken coop. Each section has chickens of a different size. Elisha says the pigeon coop belongs to Jimmy, but she and Glen have to help with looking after them. The backyard is littered with old clothes and shoes.

  Elisha points out the outhouse. “This is the pit toilet. Nobody use it unless water gone.”

  Then she leads me under the house. There are piles of dirty clothes and two concrete sinks. “This is where we wash we clothes.”

  Underneath the house it is like a garbage dump; old clothes, pans, wires, all sorts of things line the length of the cellar. The dogs are nestled in the old clothes. Elisha throws a rock at them and they walk away.

  Everybody treats me like I am an important guest. Grace changes the sheets so I can be in a clean bed with her and Elisha. I am cautious but grateful when Shappy brings me sweetsops and small tart plums from the tree next door. Auntie tells Glen that he should get anything I want from any tree in the yard. Diana offers her pile of books. “I have some good romance novels. They are just right inside the door on the floor. Just push the door and take what you want. But remember to bring them back when you done.”

  The Mills & Boon love stories are more exciting than Nancy Drew mysteries. The vague description of the lovers becoming one in the flesh gives me goose bumps. And when Auntie combs my hair I daydream about having long, silky curls that tumble down my back. The women in the stories never have to sit while somebody pulls tangles from their big puffy hair. Everybody in the house pokes fun at me for reading all the time. I laugh when Jimmy taps my head and says, “But wait! It look like we have a big bright star in the house. You going to read every book in the world before you dead, eh?”

  But his younger brother, Andy, fingers my neck and ear and whispers, “I like a young girl who read romantic books. That’s how me know that you will make your husband happy.” His hands are rough and dirty on my skin.

  I wonder if my mother and father had a Mills & Boon romance. In all the stories, sparks fly whenever the lovers see each other, no matter how long ago they met. It would be wonderful if they were still in love with each other. Maybe they would fall into each other’s arms and weep.

  I begin to worry when a week passes and we have not heard anything from Mummy. A girl at church, who works at the guesthouse down on Earl Drive, tells Auntie that a Canadian tourist named Hazel is a guest there. At the end of the third week Auntie says that I should go and look for her. We take the shortcut, so the Earl Drive Guesthouse is only a short walk away. She sends the small and snot-nosed Glen with me. The whole time he walks behind me and does not say one word. His feet don’t even make a sound. I wish it were Delano here walking with me. At the guesthouse Glen motions me inside. I ask the receptionist for Hazel Jennings. I look behind me to see Glen’s shirttail disappearing into the hills.

  “Hazel Jennings? No. We don’t have a guest here by that name,” she says.

  “It’s my mother. And she is here from Canada. I am her daughter. I am here to see her.”

  “Hazel Jennings? The only Hazel we have is a Hazel Wickham. And she is here from Canada too. Stay here and let me call her for you.”

  The woman makes a phone call and tells me to walk around to the pool. I walk past the big pots of flowers and the long white chairs. There are glasses of red drinks on all the tables. People with white skin lie on the chairs in nothing but their underwear and sunglasses. I turn the corner to see my beautiful mother gliding through the large pool of clear blue water.

  I clap my hands and shout, “Mummy! Mummy! It’s me, Ma Chérie! I come to look for you.”

  She looks up from her stroke and jumps out of the swimming pool. My arm is almost pu
lled off my body as she drags me away.

  In her room, she slams the door and turns to me. “Staceyann Ma Chérie Chin, what the devil are you doing here?”

  I back away and say, “Miss John sent me.”

  She pulls me to her and slaps me in the face. “Don’t you ever visit me here again! No matter what other people say, I am your mother! You should listen to only me! Only me!”

  Tears sting my eyes and blur my vision. I have no idea what to say to her. I stand absolutely still as she rummages through her bag and then disappears into the bathroom. While I wait, I trace the raised impression of her fingers on my cheek. Minutes later, she emerges, smiling. She hugs me and apologizes for overreacting. We walk hand in hand to the guesthouse gate. Her long nails graze my palm as she slips me some money and tells me to wait for a Paradise taxi and go straight home. I don’t know which taxi goes to Paradise, but I don’t want to upset her again, so I stand by the roadside waiting.

  Half an hour goes by before she comes out and asks, “What are you doing? Don’t you know that your father is looking for me? Do you want to lead him here to me? Staceyann, he wants to kidnap you! That is why I put you at Miss John’s. He would never think to look for you there. I will never let him have you! You are my daughter and I will do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”

  I wonder why I can’t stay with her if she loves me so much. She pulls me out of the streetlight and makes me stand behind the wall. We wait quietly there for a while. Then she hails a taxi. She tells the driver to take her baby home. I wave good-bye as the car pulls away from her. She waves at me with her right hand. Her left hand covers her mouth. I smile at her and wave harder. I feel like I am in a movie.

  Like a Thief in the Night

  I hand the money over to Auntie and I tell her that Mummy says I am never to visit her there again. She slowly folds the money into a tiny square and then sends me to go and bathe.

  The drain is blocked, so the tub is caked with greasy, foamy soap scum. I wipe the stained porcelain with toilet paper, trying to ignore the sinking feeling that my mother has left me here for good. I hope Delano is better off where he is. Maybe if I find him his father would let me come to live with them. When Andy starts beating on the bathroom door, I change my mind about bathing. He taps me on my bottom as I slip past him. I kick him and he laughs. I wish I were big enough to push his pimply face into the wall and break all his big yellow teeth.

  The weeks pass and there is still no sign of Mummy. The summer holidays end and Elisha, Glen, and Diana start school. The house is lonely without them. While everybody is out for the day, I sit on the steps reading romance novels and trying to avoid Shappy and Andy. Finally, on the last day of September, Auntie calls me out onto the veranda. She lowers her face into her hands and sighs. The she tells me that it looks like my mother is not coming back for me this year. The maid at the guesthouse has told her that Hazel left Jamaica more than a month ago. The guesthouse threw her a big good-bye party. In my heart I already knew, but it makes my chest hurt to hear her say it.

  Auntie taps the floor with her foot. “And you definitely cannot stay here without going to school. Your mother woulda never forgive me if she come back here and you cannot tell the letter A from bull-foot!”

  The next morning we go to enroll me at the Chetwoood Memorial Primary School. It is the only public Catholic school in Montego Bay. Glen and Elisha are already students there. Auntie stays in the office while I follow the small Chinese nun I have to call Sister Cecile to a big classroom to take the placement test. She makes me read aloud the story of Jesus’s birth. This is the closest I have ever been to a Chinese person. I wonder if she knows my father.

  “Sister Cecile, you are Chinese, right?”

  “Yes, Staceyann, my parents did migrate to Jamaica from China.”

  “So your last name is Chin like mine?”

  “No, it used to be Lee-Young, but when I became a nun I took a name in honor of a saint I admire. And that is why my name is Sister Mary Cecile.”

  “So you have a lot of Chinese family in Montego Bay?”

  “Yes, there are many of us, but my primary family is those who belong to the Franciscan order. But come along, now. We have been here for quite a while. It is time to get you back to your aunt.”

  Sister Cecile tells Auntie that there is no more room in the grade five classes, so I will have to be with the bigger children in grade six. That means I will have to spend two years with Miss McBean. Auntie tells her that that is quite all right.

  On the first day of school Auntie combs my hair and tells me that this is the last time she will do it. She says I will also have to wash my own clothes from now on. Diana, who looks very smart in her white Mount Alvernia High School uniform, is to make sure we get into a taxi. But the first taxi that stops she hops in and rides away. We stand among the large group of people trying to get to work. Every time a taxi stops, everybody runs and pushes forward. Glen slips inside the back seat of a white Lada and rides away. Taxi after taxi pass us by. Finally one stops and the driver calls out to Elisha. She shoulders her bag and runs toward the taxi.

  The driver is Elisha’s uncle. He lectures us, “When me was a boy, five mile was nutten to me! I used to run it without shoes. Oonu children just lazy.”

  The other people in the taxi nod. A man in a red tie asks, “So, Hector, the little dark one is you niece, right? Who is the other one?”

  “Is Junior Chin daughter. You know the Chinaman who own the furniture store in front the police station on Barnett? She look like her sister, eh? When me see her first, me couldn’t believe that them have two different mother! Them is like twins! Dead stamp!” I am surprised to hear that I have a sister. And that she looks like me. I wonder how old she is.

  We get off in front of Cornwall College High School for Boys. I offer the driver coins for the fare, but he tells me his good friend drives for my father, so I can keep my money. Through the fence, I see the boys on the track and field team doing jumping jacks. I look to see if Delano is among them.

  The boys form a line and start jogging around the field. But Elisha is pulling me. “Stacey, come on! You want us to get in trouble because we late?”

  We cross the street and cut through the main gates of Mount Alvernia to get to Chetwood. I sit quietly among the bigger girls scribbling away at their sums and looking at me suspiciously. Miss McBean gives me a gold star for getting all my sums right and reciting a perfect times table on my first day. During lunch the girls corner me against the school building and tease me for speaking “too proper.”

  “Listen to how she talk speaky-spokey!” they taunt. “Listen to my China Royal voice. I should be on JBC TV! Look at my mongoose skin! Listen to my red mongoose voice!”

  “Leave me alone!” I scream. “I don’t bother any of you. If I am a red mongoose, then all of you are black like john crows and dunce as bats.”

  “All of you Black children are like Black john crows and dunce like bats! Not bright and pretty like me! Like me! Look at me! I am soooo white and soooo pretty!”

  “Hey, Cheryl, you hear how she say her times tables to Miss McBean in class? Fives times six makes a total of thirty! A total of thirty! A total of thirty! All white girls are dirty!”

  They form a circle around me, chanting, “Nasty girl! Talk-funny girl, Staceyann Chin! You red like mongoose! You red like sin!”

  The bell rings and we make our way back inside. Donna, the girl who sits behind me, pulls my hair and whispers, “Dirty, stinking, smell-bad white girl from country.” I ask Miss McBean for permission to go to the bathroom.

  I stand in a pool of yellow water on the bathroom floor and wonder if Grandma still wants me. When I get back to the classroom, someone has written in pen, Chinese people eat dead cat and dog with mange, on the front of my exercise book. I sit and try not to look at the hateful words.

  On the walk home Elisha asks when my mother is coming back for me. I don’t want her to think I have been abandoned, so I tell her
she is supposed to be coming in a few weeks. Every day somebody in the house asks about Mummy. Eventually I stop lying. “So what if my mother left me here? Everybody knows that now! Find something else to talk about or shut up your stupid mouth!”

  Diana does not tease me, but she says I shouldn’t be living in the house. “Stacey, I know it is not your fault that your mother leave you, but is not fair that my mother, who have all of we to feed, have to take up the burden of you.”

  Glen is less understanding. “Mama, why you don’t send her to live with her father? Him have whole heap of money and him house just down on Leader Avenue. You should just pack up her and the dirty things she have under the bed and send her on her way. Or better yet, tie her up under the house with the dog.”

  Andy likes to grab me and sniff my underarms. “White people smell like raw meat, eh! Come make me smell if you white, Stacey! Is that why you mother gone leave you? She couldn’t stand the smell! Is what happen to you? You allergic to water?”

  “Auntie, Andy is outside teasing me about my mother!”

  Auntie’s voice is tired as she tells them, “Lawd, oonu leave her alone, nuh! She is not responsible fi anything her mother do! Come, Stacey, come get some tea and nuh mind what them say.”

  Andy shoves me when he passes me in the kitchen. Glen trips me when I walk by him. Shappy keeps asking me if I am ready to become a woman yet. Everything they do I complain to Auntie. Every five minutes I have to complain.

  Finally, one morning Shappy steals my taxi fare and feeds my breakfast to the brown dogs hankering on the steps. I run inside to tell Auntie, who throws up her hands and tells me she has had enough. “Lawd, Stacey! How you so pestering? You must ignore them sometimes! Just give me ears a little break and leave me alone, man! One miss breakfast not going kill you and you children can walk to school.”

  If we walk to school on the road it takes about an hour. But if we take the shortcut, the journey takes less than half that time. We carefully pick our way down the stony path, down past the other colorful wooden houses. The left at the road takes us to the Earl Drive Guesthouse. I still think of my mother taking graceful strokes and smiling before she saw me standing there. Today we turn right and follow the path down past the Rastafarian family. Elisha calls out to them.