The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir Read online

  Elisha bellows for Glen. “Glen! Glen! Come quick! Stacey say we goin’ clean the fish tank.”

  Glen comes running from the bathroom holding his pants together. Elisha and I roll our eyes at each other. Glen is always in the toilet. No matter what time of the day you call him, he rushes out grasping the waist of his pants. Elisha thinks he has a permanent case of diarrhea. I think he is masturbating. But I do not say anything.

  “Glen, Stacey say we going to clean the fish tank!” Elisha is excited by the task at hand.

  “Clean which fish tank? You must drop and lick you head this morning! You see how nasty that water is?”

  “If you don’t want to help us, then go on and finish what you were doing in the bathroom. We don’t need you to help us. But remember, whatever we find in there is ours. Money, jewelry—any kind of treasure we find, you will not get any of it! You hear?”

  It takes him only a second to switch arguments. “All right. I will help, but only because me is a boy and in these kinds of work, a man can do some things that a woman can’t do.”

  “Oh, shut up your stupid mouth! You are almost two years younger than me, and I am ten times brighter than you in school, and I can beat you up anytime!” I take a threatening step toward him and he steps back. I point my finger at his chest and continue, “Yes, Mr. Glenford Mosiah Garvey, what you can do that I can’t do? Nothing! Zero! Nil!”

  I raise my finger to point it at his nose and tell him, “If you want to help, you can help, but make sure you keep your clappers shut ’bout what a man can do!”

  “All right, Miss Staceyann Marshree Chin, I going fix your business right, right now!” Glen storms inside to tell Auntie that we are outside cleaning the dirty fish tank.

  “Is about time oonu do something about that thing. It never stay like that until oonu start use it as rubbish heap. When them older ones was pickney, fish used to live in there. Is oonu mash it up so! So, yes, is oonu must clean it up!”

  Glen puffs up his chest like it was his idea. “Yes, Mama! I tell them we should clean it up so it look just like how it did look before we was born!”

  Auntie says she does not care who came up with the idea. “Just clean it as best as oonu can. Cleanliness is next to godliness, and I believe that fish tank is a gift from God!”

  The first order of business is to fish the debris from the tank. I send Glen to get wire hangers from inside the house. Elisha is dispatched to get the green and yellow buckets to bail water from the tank. The dogs are so excited they don’t know whom to follow. One stays with me while the other darts back and forth between Glen and Elisha.

  When Glen comes back, he points to the rastaman standing by the front gate. “Stacey, you don’t see you husband waiting at the gate for you?”

  The rastaman waves and calls out to me. “Hello, little princess! I see you working today. You need anything from the Dread?”

  I barely wave back. “No, no, we don’t need nutten today, Dreadie!”

  Even flattened out, the hangers are not long enough to reach in and hook anything without wetting our shoulders. We decide to bail first. We scoop bucket after bucket of fetid water and pour it into the ground at our feet. The area around the tank soon becomes a sea of red mud. After about an hour we see objects pointing out of the water.

  I push the dogs away from the tank and reach for a wire hanger. The first treasures are bountiful and without value: three blackened socks, one foot of Glen’s grade-two school shoes, Shappy’s missing tie, Grace’s old brassiere, Auntie’s broken leather belt, Elisha’s baby blanket. Then the objects we retrieve become things we have no history for: an old bicycle chain, two cowboy hats, a black doll with no head, a ratchet knife with a rabbit carved into its handle.

  Glen is quick to claim the best finds. “All of the boy-things are mine! You and Elisha can take the brassiere and the dolly! The knife and the chain and the hats is mine!” He stuffs the blade into his pocket.

  “Glen, if you know what is good for you, you put it back on the ground.” I say it so quietly, I am not sure I even spoke out loud.

  “Stacey, this house is my mother house. Anything we find here belong to me!” He picks up the chain and turns his back to us.

  I leap into the tank and scoop a bucket of the muck from the bottom. I stand ankle-deep in the stink and hold the bucket out to Elisha.

  “Elisha, hold this!”

  In one swift movement I climb over the concrete wall, take the bucket, and swing it high, emptying every drop of the slop onto Glen’s head. I grin as the green slimy dirt runs down his face and into his mouth as he bawls. I push him against the mango tree and dig into his front pocket. His screaming brings Auntie running to the veranda. She appears just as I yank the knife from his pocket. She watches as I pull the chain from his hands, shove him to the ground, and step over him. He is crying loud and hard. His open mouth inhales and spits out bits of rotten leaves and snot all over his chest.

  Auntie stares and stares and stares at me. She says nothing for a long, long time.

  Finally, she calls Glen inside. “Glen, come in here and stop the cow bawling. Is nothing, just dirty water. Meet me round the back and make me wash it off your face. Never mind, man, dirt is not like sin, a little water will wash this off. Hurry up and come.”

  I ignore the unfolding fracas and go right back to bailing. I don’t know what Auntie is going to do to me. But for the first time since I came to Paradise Crescent, I don’t care. When Glen is washed and dressed in clean clothes, Auntie leans over the veranda rail and looks at me. I tell myself that if she beats me I will not cry. No matter how hard she slaps me with the belt, I will just look at her and laugh.

  “Boy, little girl, I see today that you have the living Devil inside you. Nothing can be done with you. Just like Pontius Pilate, I wash my hands of you and release you into the hand of Jesus. While you are here, you can eat and sleep and go to school. But know from this day that I do what I can for God’s sake, not yours. Anything I do for you is duty, not love. Now you have nobody in this world but yourself and God.”

  I bail and bail and bail. I do not look up from the task at hand. I don’t want Elisha to see the tears rolling down my face. Auntie goes back inside to make lime-leaf tea for Glen. Elisha works silently beside me. When we can fish nothing else with the hanger, we bail again. The water level recedes past our ankles. We see the tops of our feet. The dogs jump in with us, but I lift them out and keep bailing. The water level drops till the buckets cannot scoop any more. I send Elisha to get condensed milk cans to scoop the water. While she is gone, I wipe my face on the sleeve of my dress. I feel like sitting down in the pool of muddy water and crying until the tank is full.

  The muck is so thick, it is almost solid. We keep scooping with the cans. Then we hit gold. Silver coins plop out of the cans of slush: copper-colored one-cent pieces, silver five-, ten-, and even some fifty-cent pieces! Elisha is bouncing up and down and singing, “Glory hallelujah, we rich, praise God Almighty, we rich!”

  I count eleven dollars and eighty-three cents. I gather every penny and lay it carefully inside the hammock I make with the tail of my dress. My steps are measured as I walk up the stairs. I swing open the veranda gate and step into the house. The door to Auntie’s bedroom is open. Auntie has Glen jammed up against her on the bed. He is eating milk crackers and drinking lime-leaf tea.

  “Excuse me, Auntie, this is the money we find in the fish tank. You can take all of it.”

  “Child, take you Devil money out of me face. I am not Judas. You will not buy me with yuh thirty pieces of silver. Take it and buy something to eat, but take care you don’t choke on it.”

  I shift my weight from one leg to the next. I can see Glen’s gaze moving back and forth between the money and Auntie’s face.

  Finally he gets up and stands next to me. “Mama, what if we take the money from her and bless it? Then it would be holy money, not Devil money. I can use it to buy icy-mints to suck on in church tomorrow.”

/>   “Glen, me boy, some kinds of money can’t come clean with all the prayer in the world. What is for Caesar, give it to Caesar! What belong to the Devil, let him keep it, me son. Now go and eat you crackers and shut up your mouth!”

  She tells me to make sure I don’t drop any of that muddy water on her clean floor. Then she drops her eyes to the Bible on her lap. As carefully as I had climbed the stairs, I make my way back to the fish tank. I walk right up to the edge of the tank and tip my shirt and watch the coins fall in.

  “Stacey, you mad? Is what you doing with we money? Is Mama tell you fi throw them back in?”

  The last coin plops into the shallow water below. Green bucket in hand, I tell her to get the yellow one and follow me. Underneath the house, I turn the tap counterclockwise and fill the bucket to the brim with clean water. I take Elisha’s bucket and set it under the pipe. When it is full, we make our way back to the tank. I scoop handfuls of mud into the buckets and tip both buckets into the tank. The top layer of mud on the ground soon disappears. We have to dig dry earth to make each bucket muddy. We keep going until the muddy water is almost up to our knees. Then I toss in the hats and the socks and the knife and the bicycle chain—everything is returned to the abyss.

  The earth around the tank is full of holes now. The brown dog is curled in the biggest one. I deliver my hardest kick into its side. It looks up at me, surprised, before it scampers off to the cellar.

  Elisha stares at me. She is covered from head to toe in mud. “Little girl,” I say, “look at yuh-self! How you manage to get so dirty? You should be ashamed of how you look. Go inside and go bathe your stinking dirty skin!”

  “Stacey, is what me do why you bawling after me so? You think is me make you throw away all that money?” She sucks her teeth and stomps away. As she slams the bathroom door, I kick the fish tank so hard my toe-nail on my big toe breaks and bleeds. I wash off the blood in the brown water. The rastaman has passed already, but I climb up onto the front gate and slowly swing back and forth, softly singing his song.

  Eillaloo, eiper, and yumpkin.

  Eillaloo, who need the eillaloo?

  Who have need of the eillaloo, eiper, and yumpkin man?

  Diana’s seventh-grade biology book says it is supposed to be “haemoglobin-red.” I peer down at the weird fluid, sitting smack in the center of my pink panties, and wonder if the brown stain, shaped like an egg, is “haemoglobin-red.”

  The glossary in the back of the book defines haemoglobin as “the iron-containing respiratory pigment in red blood cells of vertebrates, consisting of about 6 percent haeme and 94 percent globin.”

  I toss the book behind the toilet and examine the egg-shaped culprit again. I know exactly what is happening to me. I am having my first period. Every girl between the ages of ten and thirteen should get it. The book says if you do not get it, you might be a hermaphrodite. That is someone whose vagina has its own penis. The book says the proper name for my coco-bread is vagina. I don’t know if I like the word vagina. Vagina sounds like it is the name of a disease that jezebel women get. I study the book, reading and rereading everything about the “Peculiarities of the Period.” There are supposed to be “adult urges,” and dull pains, commonly known as “cramps,” and “a flow of menses that is recognizable as life force by its haemoglobin-red hue.”

  I want to talk to Auntie, but I am afraid she would box me in my mouth for asking her anything about my vagina. But I know I have to ask her for the sanitary napkins.

  I pull up my shorts and walk carefully to the veranda. I revel in the thick wetness squishing beneath me. I stand by the door and watch Auntie turn the pages of her big black Bible.

  She licks her finger and turns a page. “Is why you standing there watching me like you is a policeman so? What you want?”

  “Nothing, Auntie. Is just that—I mean—something—happened to—I think I just—”

  She frowns and looks up from the page.

  “Stacey, me don’t have all day fi listen to you hem and haw. Say what you saying and stop talking like you is a handicap!”

  I take a deep breath and blurt out in one breath, “Auntie, I think I just started menstruating and I don’t have any of the sanitary pad things to put on.”

  She sighs and looks out at the banana trees. When she does not say anything, I follow her gaze to the young fruits hugging themselves into a bunch.

  “Auntie? Should I ask Diana for some of hers?”

  “How old you be now, Stacey?”

  “Ten, Auntie. I going to be eleven the end of this year.”

  Auntie shakes her head and sighs again.

  “Auntie, what I must do about the pads?”

  “Well, Stacey, to tell you the truth, those kind of things a young lady must buy for herself. But because it happen upon you sudden, I will buy them this time.”

  I calculate how many mornings I will have to forgo car fare so I can buy the monthly sanitary napkins. I am already walking to school most mornings, and I still can’t buy much more than a box juice and banana chips for lunch.

  “Okay, Auntie, thanks very much for buying them this time.”

  “Never you mind any thanks! The only thanks I looking for is from God. I do not do anything for anybody for any reward here on earth. The Heavenly Father has my great reward. Now go inside the room and pass me my black handbag.”

  After she gives me the money, I fold the notes and head out to Miss Elaine’s shop. As I step over the rocks I try not to think about the uncertain red spreading over my favorite panties. I know the smell of Stayfree maxi-pads. I see Diana walking to the bathroom whenever she gets a visit from her red auntie from Red Hills. Stayfree is cheap, but it smells like dead flowers. I worry that people will smell the pads on me and know what is happening to my vagina. I wonder how the pad will stay inside my panties. The Stayfree pads are different from the ones in the book. The one in the book is the one you have to tie to your waist.

  At the shop, Miss Elaine stuffs the pack of pads inside a brown paper bag, and then quietly slides it across the counter.

  At home, I hand over Auntie’s change and dash into the bathroom. I lock the door behind me and rip open the plastic packaging. The flowery-sweet scent makes me gag. I hold my breath and examine the pink and white strip. There is a picture of a hand tearing off the strip. The picture also shows the pad lying lengthwise along the crotch of the panties. I quickly peel the strip off the adhesive and pull up my panties. I check to make sure everything is secure. I am no longer worried the pad will fall out of my shorts. They put a lot of glue on the pad so it can really stick. The book said there would be some pain, but the sharp pulling beneath me is unbearable. I can hardly move from the pinching of my hairs pasted to the sanitary napkin.

  “Two hours,” I tell myself. “Only two hours, Stacey. Then you can change it.”

  I carefully make my way to the back of the house. The pulling is too intense. I have to stop walking. I park myself on the back steps, but every shift of weight is agony. An hour later, I am sure something is wrong. I limp back to the bathroom, taking the bag of napkins with me.

  This time, I read the instructions on the bag: “Important: Make sure the adhesive side of the belt-less maxi-pad lays flat against the crotch of the panties.” I read the instructions again. Then I take a breath and yank the used pad from my vagina. It hurts so much everything goes black. For a few moments I am unable to make a sound. And when my vision clears I see more black hairs on the pad than on my vagina. I try to fold the pad in two. But the sticky part isn’t sticky anymore.

  Suddenly the day seems so dirty. I want to wash all of it away. I decide to take a shower. Then Auntie begins knocking violently. “Stacey! Stacey, open this door! Open it! Open it before I break it down.”

  I step out of the shower and pick up the pad before I unlock the door. I stand there naked, soiled pad in hand. Auntie looks at the brown adhesive side of the beltless maxi-pad and grabs me by the shoulder.

  “You think money grow
on mango tree? Why you wasting the pad? You never see that you put the thing on wrong?” She is shaking my shoulder so hard that everything seems to be happening in slow motion. I hear her voice from far away. “You waste the thing for nothing! For foolishness! Stacey, you believe you are big woman now, eh?”

  Her voice drops and the shaking intensifies. “These sort of things must be done secretly! Nobody don’t need to see you making a damn fool of yourself. And why you was in here naked? You was in there looking at yourself? Lord Jesus Christ! Don’t make me find out that you in here doing anything to yourself!” Her finger is in my face. “If I catch you in here looking at yourself again, I will show you how water walk go to pumpkin belly! Now wrap up that thing with newspaper and throw it outside. Nobody want to see your dirty nastiness!”

  Her voice drops to an almost imperceptible rasp. “And make sure you stop talking to those boys over the fence. You must be mad if you think I going tolerate no babies under this roof.”

  I am confused. “But, Auntie, I think you could only get a baby if a boy put his penis into your vagina.” The sentence is all the way out before I realize I should have kept my mouth shut.

  “Jesus God in heaven! This pickney have mouth, eh? Who ask you for no long argument?” She pushes me against the sink and raises her right hand to hit me.

  I duck and raise the brown pad to defend myself.

  Her arm freezes in the air and she jumps away from me. Her expression of utter horror makes me want to laugh out loud, but I am too afraid she would kill me. So I wait until she slams the door behind her before I fall to the ground laughing and crying until I can’t move anymore.

  The Evidence of Things Not Seen

  Because her wealthy father abandoned her mother when she was a baby, the stunning and red-haired Summer Delaney is simply unable to trust Blade, the man she truly loves. When she goes to confront her father, he unfolds the yellowed note he has kept for this very purpose and reveals that it was Summer’s mother who ran away from him. Everything becomes clear to her as she weeps in her father’s arms. He begs her to forgive him for being absent from all the important years of her life. She forgives him and is finally able to give herself completely to Blade.