The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir Read online

  “Is at the foot of Mount Salem Hill—the blue house with the big veranda. Me reach home ’bout five o’clock every evening.” He fixes his epaulet again. Now he looks like he is in a hurry to get away from me. “You can come check me if you have the time. Just let me know when you coming first. All right?”

  Inside my pocket I grab a handful of my thigh. I don’t know how he expects me to let him know before I come. We do not have a telephone and I don’t know his number. I start to ask him for his phone number, but he is already walking away. I know he doesn’t really want me to come and see him. I know he is just inviting me to be nice.

  “Okay, then, I will come one day,” I shout after him.

  “All right, you better go on home before it get too late,” he shouts back, and adjusts his backpack.

  “Delano—” I walk after him.

  He stops and sighs before he turns to face me. “Yes?”

  “Nothing,” I say. “Nothing. Have a good evening.”

  “Thanks,” he tosses back. “All right, then, Stacey, take care.”

  I climb into the red hatchback Lada taxi and slam the door. I wave. He does not wave back.

  June comes and my full name is printed in the Jamaica Gleaner alongside the thousands of other children who have passed the Common Entrance Examination. I have been accepted to Mount Alvernia High School. I know I will look beautiful in my white uniform in September. I wish there was a number to call my mother and tell her. I remember how pleased she was when she found out Delano had passed.

  Auntie says she has no idea how she will manage with both Diana and me in high school. I ask her if she thinks I will be able to go. She tells me not to worry. She will find the money for me to go. She says she has a little money put away somewhere. She was saving it for a rainy day.

  “Auntie, what if I ask my father to help me?”

  “No! No! No! Your mother tell me not to allow you to go there! And she must have her reason. She tell me that that man is the living Devil. I am not sending you to beg them nutten!”

  “But what we going to do, Auntie? I know you don’t have a lot of money to send me to high school. What me must do? Me need book and uniform and shoes and—”

  “Wait, Stacey, wait! You are a young girl, yes. And you don’t have anybody. But you have a chance to get a good education. Anywhere me must get the money, me will make sure you can go. Me glad you pass. Sometimes me sit down outside on the veranda and wonder what is to become of you. Your mother going to have to answer to God for how she treat you and your brother.”

  “Me don’t care ’bout her, Auntie. She can drop down dead and me wouldn’t care! I hope she live to suffer like how she make we suffer.”

  “Stacey, you cannot talk about your mother like that. The Bible tell you to honor your mother and your father. Sometime you look at a thing and you cannot see inside of it! Your mother was a different person when she was young, you know.”

  I sit on the floor and look up at her. “What you mean, Auntie? You did know her when she was in Jamaica?”

  “Lawd, you wouldn’t like to see how she was pretty when she was small! I remember when she used to come to the market to visit me mother.”

  Auntie stops and shakes her head.

  “She used to come round to the stall and say good evening to everybody. She was such a nice little girl. She grow up same way to be a pretty young woman. Even after she have Delano she used to bring him come to see me down here in Montego Bay. Everybody wanted to hold him. He was such a white little boy. When him just born, him eye them was blue, blue, blue.”

  “She did ever carry me come to look for you, Auntie?”

  “No, man. She leave the island a little bit after you born. From she start keep company with you father, she become a change person.”

  “What happen to her, Auntie? Why she change?”

  “Cho, man, you too love old people story. Me only want to tell you not to worry. Me cannot buy the world and all its riches fi you go to school, but me will provide what me can. Now get up off the dirty floor and go inside.”

  The next morning I go to ask Sister Cecile if she has spoken to my father. She tells me that she thinks Mr. Chin might be willing to sponsor a child for high school. She suggests that I go to my father and talk to him.

  “Stacey, the Lord might just be planning something we don’t know about.”

  I can see myself standing in the sea of girls in white uniforms and speaking standard English all day long without being teased for it. The girls at Mount Alvernia do not speak the dialect to each other. All their words are said the way they are written in the dictionary.

  The sixth-graders get out earlier than everybody else because they have no end-of-year exams. That means I get home long before Glen and Elisha. Usually if I am home by myself I sit on the steps outside, but today the sun is so hot, I have to take refuge in the living room. I doze off reading. I awaken to Shappy sitting down on the couch beside me holding his erect penis. I swallow my fear and slowly close the book. I force myself to walk casually to the door. Then I dash out into the yard. Without pulling up his pants, he follows me outside and chases me around the yard until he catches me. His fingers are steel cables wrapped around my arms.

  He drags me halfway up the stairs, muttering, “You take my money and give it to the FBI. We’ll see what the president going to do about this now.”

  I grab hold of the rails and wrap my legs around the veranda gate. I cannot let him get me inside the house. Unable to budge my body, he begins to kick me. The pain shoots electric through my body. I scream and try to turn my face away from the blows. When I can’t hold on to the rails anymore, he lifts me up and tosses me over the rails. I fall into a heap on the rocky ground below. My back is cut and I am bleeding so much the blood frightens me. I wonder if anything is broken, but everywhere hurts, so I can’t tell. I struggle to get up.

  But before I can stand, he is on top of me. His hands run over my body. Then he begins to kick me again. I can hear when his foot connects with my body, but I can’t feel anything anymore. When he is done, he spits on me and says, “You tell that to the Chinese government fi me. Tell them that is what we do to traitors when them infiltrate our ranks. And don’t worry, I checked already. There are no broken bones.”

  I sit under the steps and weep. No one is home and I am afraid to go inside. When Auntie finally gets home it is almost dark. I tell her what has happened and she says, “Stacey, me sorry that him was bothering you. But you don’t see that Shappy mad? Half the time him don’t even know what him is doing. You just have to make sure you stay out of him way when you come home.”

  I spend the rest of the school year carefully avoiding being home alone and I am so relieved when Auntie tells me that Auntie Ella wants me to come to Kingston for the summer. She says that she doesn’t mind me going because she knows that Auntie Ella is a good Christian woman, plus Grandma lives there now and wants to see me.

  I am surprised to hear that Grandma lives in Kingston. I can’t imagine Grandma talking on a telephone or walking through the streets of Liguanea.

  There is no train from Kingston to Montego Bay anymore, so I have to take the bus to Auntie Ella’s. The twenty-eight-seat minibus is filled with fifty people, plus the driver and the conductor. I sit in the window seat behind the gold-toothed driver and count the number of people twice. A small Indian woman with a big black Bible sits next to me. Auntie tells the driver to please drop me all the way uptown. She gives him extra money to take me straight to Auntie Ella’s gate. He smiles at me and tells Auntie that he will be sure to take the very best care of me.

  “You don’t see how she pretty, Mammy? Me not going let anything happen to her.”

  The conductor puts a big bag of yams between my knees. The bus ride is long and jerky. Every town we pass through, the driver has to stop and let people on and off. By the time we reach Spanish Town, I am so sweaty and tired and thirsty that the driver offers to buy me a Pepsi. The old man selling the Pe
psi uses his knife to open the bottle. The cool sweet liquid bubbles in my mouth. The driver reaches back and touches my shoulder. His fingers slide over to caress the exposed flesh at my neck. He asks me if I want something to eat too.

  I pull away and say no. I finish my Pepsi and sit very close to the Indian woman with the Bible. I ask her how far she is going. She tells me she gets off at the last stop, which is downtown Kingston. I ask where she goes from there. She tells me she goes to Gordon Town.

  “Is that far from Sandhurst Terrace?”

  “No, man. I actually have to take a bus that go past Sandhurst to get to Gordon Town.”

  I tell her that my auntie paid the driver extra to drop me at Sandhurst and that she can ride with me and then take her bus from there.

  “My word! Is so the Lord always provide for his children! Thank you, Father. I will do just that! What a nice little girl! Are you saved?”

  I sort of nod because I don’t know if I am.

  “Well, that is good. Just trust in the Lord and he will take care of you.”

  When we reach Sandhurst Terrace, Grandma is waiting for me on the veranda. She looks smaller than I remember. One side of her collar is bunched under inside the neck of her dress. I am shocked to see her back bent like an old woman’s. She reaches up and opens the grille. She pulls at my arm and me tells me to come inside. “Come, come inside! You must want something to eat, eh!”

  She struggles with my bag, her feet shuffling as she slowly closes the grille. I am taller than she is, so I reach up to help her. She puts the bags in a corner and takes my face into her hands. They still smell like onions, but now they are soft like a baby. I want to stay smelling her soft hands forever.

  But she is busy smoothing my hair and straightening my blouse. “Lawd Jesus, Stacey! You grow so big! Look ’pon you hair. It long, long now, eh? Take off your shoes. Leave them there. No mind, me will take them up when me finish. Leave them there! Come, come! The journey from Montego Bay long. You must be hungry by now.”

  I am glad to see her, but she doesn’t feel like the same Grandma I knew. I follow her into the living room. I want her to stop doing things and just talk to me, tell me a story, tell me anything. I wonder if she has heard anything about Mummy.

  She opens the back grille. “Ella still at work. She don’t come in till about five thirty or six. And Annmarie gone to summer class. Lawd, you look so much like a big somebody. How you have so much bump on you face? Is teenage bumps?”

  I nod. Suddenly I am tired from the long trip.

  “Never mind. Is so you mother did have them too. You hearing from her?”

  I don’t say anything. She unwraps a block of cheese.

  “You want a cheese sandwich? With cheese and lettuce and tomato inside? Ella never make the house run out of vegetable. She say me getting old now. Me have to eat plenty fish and vegetable.”

  I sit on the back steps and force myself to eat my sandwich. Grandma brings me a glass of lemonade with ice. “So how is Montego Bay?”

  I want her to tell me I don’t have to go back to Paradise. I want to beg her to tell Auntie Ella that I have to stay with her in Kingston. But I know that Grandma can’t do anything like that, so I just nod and say everything is fine. She has more warts on her face. And more wrinkles. And her hearing is much worse. I notice that I have to say everything two or three times for her to understand me.

  “So how you do with school, Stacey? And what happen to Delano? Him still living with him father in Montego Bay?”

  I nod.

  “You see him when you go to school?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Me glad fi dat. At least oonu never separate completely. Him still going to Cornwall?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Him must be tall like a pawpaw tree now, eh?”

  I don’t answer. I wish I could go sit on the floor of the bathroom and think. I chew the fleshy red of the tomato and try hard not to cry.

  “How is Miss John? She treat you good?” Her eyes beg me to tell her that she does.

  She seems to me like a little girl. Tears brim over, but I quickly wipe them away with my sleeve. I put on my happiest face and say, “Yes, Grandma. Everybody treat me like me is them sister.”

  Her face crumples and her eyes fill up. She raises her hand to God. “Jesus Christ be praise! If you ever know how me pray fi oonu! Thank God oonu nah get no ill treatment. I woulda drop down dead if me know that nobody take disadvantage of oonu. You want more bread?”

  I shake my head no. I lift the glass to my lips, but I cannot finish my lemonade. I can’t stop the tears rolling down my face. I wish there was a way to tell Grandma about Andy and Shappy and the fish tank, but she is crying and praying and thanking God for keeping me safe in his blessed bosom.

  “You see why you have to trust God, Stacey?” I wish I could get people to call me Staceyann. “You see how Him watch over you? I don’t even want to tell you the things that could happen to a likkle girl without the protection of the Almighty! Thank you, Father, fi you grace and you mercy on me granddaughter!”

  She peels an orange and offers me half. We sit on the steps and suck the sweet juice. Her dentures make a clacking sound as she pushes the fruit against them. I don’t understand why she seems so old. It has only been two years since we left her in Westmoreland. I take the orange peel from her hands and straighten the collar of her dress. She laughs when I wipe some pulp from her chin.

  The house looks much smaller, but I know it is the same number of rooms. Everything looks like it is a less shiny version of itself. I can now reach up and pick a mango right off the tree. When I bite into it, the juice is sour. Nothing in Kingston is exactly as I remember. Everyone has changed so much. Auntie Myrtle has gray hairs now. She hugs me and says I am going to be as tall as a coconut tree. Mrs. Bremmer is still nice to me, but she keeps saying it is too bad about my acne. Chauntelle is now preoccupied with taking dance classes and they have a new baby brother named Joel, who is already walking. Only Racquel seems the same. As soon as I walk into her living room she jumps on me and knocks me to the floor. She kisses my face and asks if I know that she has started Mona Preparatory School.

  When Racquel asks if I want to play concert I tell her that I will watch if she wants to perform, but I don’t feel like singing.

  Auntie Ella comes home and heads straight for me. “Congratulations! Congratulations! Congratulations, my darling!”

  Auntie Myrtle pokes out her head from the living room. “Congratulations for what?”

  “Hasn’t my niece told you? She has passed her Common Entrance Examination! She begins high school in September.”

  “Lord have his mercy! Come here make me hug you up! Whooooi! Congratulations, girl! You Auntie Ella have to buy something special for you!”

  Grandma comes out to the veranda looking confused. “Is what happen, Myrtle? Is what she do?”

  Myrtle pulls Grandma close to her and tells her, “She pass fi go high school. She pass. She going to high school September. September. She start in September!”

  Grandma claps her hands and spins me around in a circle. “Praise the Lord! Thank you, Jesus! Hallelujah! Come here, Stacey! Why you never tell me? What a thing! You going to high school. That is nice, man. Me glad to hear you still taking the book-learning! Thank you, Jesus. Me know you was going come to something in life!”

  Mrs. Bremmer gives me a red folder with three silver rings along the spine and a package of one hundred lined folder leaves. I snap open the folder and put the new folder pages in it. Even Annmarie is happy for me. She already goes to high school. She tries to tell me what it is like.

  She is taller. And Auntie Ella has given her permission to straighten her hair. She is still very quiet, but she is definitely more grown-up. Her nails are long and she spends her time drawing on a big white notepad.

  At church, Auntie Ella tells everyone I have passed. The day is filled with good wishes and congratulations. Some of the ladies give me little
envelopes with money. And after the sermon, Pastor Lightfoot hugs me and pats me on the head and says he hopes I will be a good soldier for the Lord as I make my way into this new world of higher education. Auntie Ella confesses to him that she has no idea what will happen to me in September, because my mother has abandoned me and I do not have a father. “Pastor, the child needs so much for this stage of her schooling. My salary cannot provide for my own family and her. We need help.”

  An announcement is quickly made on the microphone. Pastor Lightfoot makes me stand in front of everyone while he says a special prayer for me. Then he tells everyone that I am in need of things for my journey. He starts listing, “Folder paper, schoolbags, shoes, uniforms—the list is endless, brothers and sisters. You know what your own children would need. If you are committed to truly serving God, make a donation. Help to meet a need. I am calling on you, brothers and sisters, dig into your pockets and place it in the collection plate going round.”

  We get so much money that Auntie Ella buys me almost everything I need for school. Shoes, a white slip, training brassieres, notebooks—she even buys me highlighters and different-colored pens. I have so many things she has to buy me a new bag to put them in. The only things Auntie has to get are my uniforms and one English literature book that Auntie Ella could not get in Kingston. Grandma cries when she sees all the things that Auntie Ella has bought. Racquel is very excited for me. We talk about my new school all the time.

  She gives me her favorite pencil case. I don’t have anything to give her, but I write her a long letter telling her how much I appreciate her friendship. When she reads the part about being my only true sister, she cries and tells me that she will keep the letter forever. I wish I lived in Kingston so I could see her whenever I want. We promise to write to each other all year. She wants to know everything about my first year at Mount Alvernia. In Kingston, everything is easier. Everybody is happy about my going to high school. In Kingston, I feel free. I wear short dresses with no shorts under them. Grandma says that I should be careful of how I sit in those short clothes, but I know that here in Kingston, nobody is trying to look up my skirt or pounce on me when I am least expecting it. All day I open my legs and laze about on the grass with Racquel. We eat mangoes from the tree until we are sick. In the evenings, I watch TV with Annmarie and Grandma. When the JBC signs off, I crawl in the bed with Grandma. The yellow sheets smell like rain. Before we go to sleep she prays for me and Delano and all her children. Then we turn off the lights and go to sleep.