The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir Page 22

  Yours truly,

  Staceyann

  At night I sleep with it under my pillow. During the day I wrap it in my sheet and stuff it under the bed. By the middle of the notebook I am writing how I feel about everything and everybody, but most of the journal is about Natalia.

  October 21, 1987

  Dear Diary,

  Today Natalia came to school with a new haircut. I wish I had a hairdresser for a mother. Then I could get my hair done every week and look as stunning as Natalia. She is definitely the most beautiful girl at Mount Alvernia High School. And I am very lucky to be able to say she is one of my closest friends. I wish Natalia were a boy.

  I really wish there was a boy I liked that was half as wonderful as Natalia. Then I might consider getting married and having sex and giving him a baby.

  Until next time,

  Staceyann Chin

  On Friday, the thirtieth, I come home and the journal is missing. I hope with all my heart that Shappy or Elisha or Glen has taken it. But my stomach sinks when Auntie tells me to change out of my uniform and come to her on the veranda. It takes me forever to unbutton the white tunic and put on my house clothes. She already has the belt in her hand when I get there.

  “So you want a baby, eh?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Shut up your mouth and stop tell lie! I read what you write with me own two eyes. You can mind baby?”

  I hang my head and button my lips.

  “Answer me when I talk to you! You know how to mind baby? You know how much money it take to look after a baby? Me think you did have more sense than that! You don’t even have the good sense God give the fowl out a door. You can hardly take care of yourself. That sheet you have under the bed stink like the dog under the house. What you going to do with a baby? Answer me! What you was going to do with a baby? Live here?”

  My mouth opens of its own accord. “Auntie, I never write that I want a baby! I wrote down what conditions I would have to have before I would consider having a baby! That is very different from actually wanting a baby. If you just read the thing closely you would see the difference!”

  Auntie gets up from her chair and grabs me by the front of my dress.

  “As God is my witness, I cannot take any more!”

  She raises the belt and the blows begin. I do not utter a sound. I stand completely still until she is finished.

  “Now go inside and get that dirty sheet and wash it!”

  “Auntie, could you please give me my journal? I need it for English class at school.”

  “You will have to write another one. That is not fit to give to any teacher!”

  “So what you do with it?”

  “Get out of me face and don’t question me! If I was you, I would start making up a new one so you don’t get into trouble at school. And please to bring it to me so me can see what you write.”

  “That is not a journal if you read it. It supposed to be private. Miss Ritgard says that nobody is supposed to read it.”

  “Stacey, if you want another beating, just stay right there and keep working you mouth.”

  I head to the bedroom to get another notebook. I do not have a new one, so I tear the used leaves from my Spanish book and write three new entries. I know the handwriting is sloppy, but I don’t care.

  October 7, 1987

  My name is Staceyann Chin. I am fourteen years old and I live in Paradise Crescent with my grandaunt and her six children. Her granddaughter Elisha lives here too. She is 11 years old.

  October 9, 1987

  I go to Mount Alvernia High School. I am in grade 9. I have one brother. He lives in Mount Salem. I am five feet two inches tall. I like to read. I go to Albionview Baptist Church. I was born in a small rural district called Lottery.

  October 15, 1987

  My favorite subject in school is English literature. My second favorite is English language. I also do very well in mathematics and science. In ten years I think I will be grown up with a good job. I am not quite sure what I will be but I know I will be able to take care of myself.

  Auntie reads the entries and tosses the book back to me. “That is much better than the foolishness you write before. The writing look like crab toe, but is your business that, not mine.”

  I do not add any entries before Miss Ritgard collects the journals. She takes one look at the first entry and tells me my handwriting is trash. She tells the whole class that my penmanship is not even worth the grade for effort.

  “Staceyann Chin, I wonder if you even try when you write anything down. Your answers are always correct and the grammar is good, but all of that is of no consequence if no one can read it! Come and take it and write the entries again. And this time make sure the words are legible.”

  “Miss Ritgard, I thought we would get a grade just for doing it. I did it. It doesn’t matter how the writing is if you weren’t going to read it!”

  “Bring the journal to me! Bring it here this instant!”

  When I bring it to her she tears out the entries, folds the pages into halves, and throws them in the garbage.

  I walk up to her desk and snatch my book from her. “Miss Ritgard, you have no right to throw my things away like that!”

  I am so angry I want to hit her. But I don’t want to be expelled, so I pick up her folder, rip out five pages, and throw them on top of the pile of papers that used to be my homework. She tells me to sit at the back of the class until the end of the session. Then she walks me to the office and reports the incident to Sister Joan Claire. Sister Joan Claire pokes her head out of her office and invites me in.

  “Sit down on that chair, young lady.”

  I sit and look at the small round face in front of mine. Very quietly, she asks me why I have destroyed Miss Ritgard’s property. I tell her everything about the journal, including the fact that I had written it once before. “Miss Ritgard said that no one was supposed to read it. She said that we could write anything we wanted. But my auntie found it, took it, and then beat me because of what I wrote.”

  I am crying so hard Sister Joan Claire gets up from her chair and brings me some tissue to wipe my face. The tissue is in shreds by the time I am finished.

  “…and my mother run gone leave me, Sister, and my father don’t want to have anything to do with me! And my brother goes to school right across the street and I never see him unless I go to look for him—and everything I do is wrong and everybody just want to take advantage of me!”

  I am hanging off the side of the chair and weeping.

  “Come on, Staceyann! It cannot be all that bad. You are in school and doing very well. It is only a matter of time before you get out of the situation you are in.”

  She leaves her side of the desk to come and hug me.

  “Child! Child! God is not sleeping. He makes a way for all his creatures. You just have to have a plan of action and some faith.”

  When I am quiet she tells me to go into her private bathroom to wash my face. When I get back she tells me to go back to class.

  “But you must pass by the staff-room and apologize to Miss Ritgard. Whatever the problems you may be experiencing, that is not the way to solve them. And when you are finished saying your regrets, please ask her to come and see me when she has a moment.”

  Miss Ritgard is nicer to me after that. But she writes a bad comment on my report card at the end of that term: Staceyann is a student with unimaginable potential, but she is rude and has little concept of boundaries. She has miles to go with reference to good manners.

  Auntie reads the comment and is livid. She asks me to explain. I stand there, lips buttoned and arms folded across my chest.

  “Stacey, I am talking to you! Please to answer me when I ask you a question! Why the teacher write that you don’t have any manners?”

  I sigh and shift the position of my feet. I do not care anymore. Everything I say is rude and everything I do is wrong. I stare back at her and wait for her to finish.

  Auntie shakes her hea
d and points a finger at me. “You know, Stacey, you really getting too big for your bloomers! I don’t know what else to do with you. What you need is a strong man-voice. A man could make you listen! And if you still refuse to behave, well, he would have the strength to cut you ass for you!”

  I roll my eyes and sigh again.

  “Stop blowing down yourself when I talk to you!”

  “Auntie, I am not blowing down myself on you! I am just breathing. Just like every normal person in the world!” I sigh again.

  “Stacey, I am warning you. Do not blow down when I talk to you!”

  “Auntie, what you want me to do? Stop breathing? You want me to just stop breathing and just dead? Is that what you want?”

  I am waving my arms at her and shouting. “Everybody just want me to drop down and dead! If I was born dead it would be better for my mother and my father and everybody in this house and you!”

  Her arm snakes out and her palm lands smack across my cheek.

  The sting is sudden and surprising. My arm shoots up to prevent the next blow and the back of my arm hits hers. I am as shocked as she is.

  “No! No! No! No!” she screams as she drags me forward by the collar and then slams me against the wall. “Is either me go kill you in this house or you go kill me. I will put you out before I let you raise your hand to me!”

  “But, Auntie, it was an accident! I never mean—”

  She slams me into the wall and grabs me by the throat. “Not another word! Not one single word! Something have to change before I make you cause me to commit murder in me own house. You have the Devil living inside you! I don’t know what I have to do, but whatever it is, it will have to do something soon.”

  After school the next evening she informs me, “Your grandfather is coming over here tonight to have a talk with you. And you can form the fool and don’t show him the appropriate respect! He would take off his belt right here and strip you naked and put you in you place!”

  As I wait for him to come, I am a little afraid. But I vow to myself that I will kill him first before I let that man hit me. After how he treated Grandma, he has no right to come and say anything to me about my behavior. I put a sharp rock in my pocket and sit on the veranda, caressing the jagged edges.

  It is almost dark before my grandfather arrives. The tall skinny figure opens the gate and my jaw nearly drops off my face to see how frail he is. I am sure this is not the man in my grandmother’s stories. He carefully closes the gate and coughs a muffled howdy-do. I am disappointed in this slow carcass, bent and shuffling toward me. Then I am angry. I feel cheated. I want somebody I can fight.

  His face has the tissue wrinkles of a kindly old gentleman. He takes Elisha’s hands into his wrinkled gigantic palms, kisses her on her cheek, and I recall that Grandma once told me he liked to kiss women on the cheek and “accidentally” kiss them on the mouth. He sips the glass of water that Auntie makes me get for him. He nods at Glen and tells him he had better study hard and to take his book-learning seriously. “Otherwise you won’t be able to get a wife and children.”

  I want to ask if when he was a gambling drunk it prevented him from having a woman and children at home.

  His lanky frame is neatly clad in cream-colored serge pants. The lines are creased so sharp the legs seem to be standing up on their own. Beneath the whispering cloth I see his pointy knees wobbling as he walks toward me. His careful gait is comic. I press my lips together to keep from laughing.

  The scent of him is equally unexpected. I had expected him to smell like liquor and cigarettes. He smells like cheap cologne. His red-and-white-striped shirt might have been the rage once, but the collar is now a mass of threads that stick out when he hangs his head. It is buttoned up to the last button, exposing silver strands at the base of his throat. His head is covered with a dusting of fine hairs that look almost blond in their whiteness.

  He sits beside me and looks through the open window for about five minutes before he says anything.

  “Stacey, you auntie tell me you getting on bad, man. You getting too big now! You must stop that foolishness! Is time for you to settle down and stop all of that now.”

  He still does not look at me.

  I had played this scene over and over in my head, fantasized about how he would be so sorry when I was done with him that he would go straight to my grandmother, fall down on his knees, and beg her forgiveness. In my fantasy I would be there to ensure that she refused his pleas. But his discolored false teeth look so pitiful smiling at me, I find myself wanting to be kind to him.

  “What them tell you that me do?” I volunteer.

  His head jerks up so fast, the perfect almost-smile nearly falls out of his mouth when he speaks.

  “Well, they tell me you coming home late in the evening and reading all kind of big-people book. Them things dangerous, you know. You not ready for baby and man and all of that!”

  I don’t remind him that Grandma was not far from my age when she had her first child for him. I wish I could tell him that I am not with any boys in the evening. I wonder what he would say if I told him I only visited my brother and April and Natalia and my almost-father after school. But I say nothing about that. I know Auntie would prefer to think that I am chasing a man than visiting people who allow little girls to wear pants and have helpers and look like me.

  So I simply swallow the odd scent of his cologne, clear my tightening throat, and say, “I have never had sex with anybody in my entire life, so there’s very little chance of my ever getting pregnant. Don’t you know anything about biology?”

  His eyes light up. His borrowed teeth break into a smile and I see a sparkle of the man who used to charm the ladies with gifts he bought with my grandmother’s hard-earned money.

  “What! You don’t start them tings yet? You never do nothing with them dutty-foot bwoy from round the district here? Bless me eyes! So you is a virgin! A genuine young Jennings virgin! Well, me grampickney, Ah proud o’ you, keep it up, me chile.”

  With that, he stands up, pats my knee, and walks away with the swinging stride of a man who has accomplished the job he came to do.

  I want to shout at him. Scream my denial at the red stripes on his disappearing back. I wanted to call him back and shout in his ear until he is deaf too. I am a not a Jennings. I will never be a Jennings and have no desire to be a Jennings or a Jennings virgin. I am a Chin and even though my father doesn’t want me I am always going to be a Chin! Even if by some miracle I get married I will hold on to my name. And I am glad that it has nothing to do with a man who is only a wife-beating, rum-drinking, cheating Black man.

  I want to tell him all the things that are bouncing around in my head, but his white hair is gone before I can even open my mouth.

  With the Kisses of His Mouth

  It is summertime and there is nothing for me to do. Natalia and Sandy have both gone away for the holidays. I don’t have school, so I can’t fool Auntie with an excuse about studying and slip away to visit Delano or April. The only place I can go is church. And the only reason I go is to see Troy, but I am getting a little tired of him. He wants to kiss me all the time and I don’t know how to tell him that I don’t really like it. I am just waiting for a good excuse to break up with him.

  One day we are sitting on the wall and he tells me we have to talk about something.

  “What happen?” I asked him.

  “Well, we have been girlfriend and boyfriend now for quite a while and I think it time we make our relationship even more serious.”

  “What you mean by that?”

  He sighs and chews on a blade of grass. “Well, most men would leave already under this condition.”

  “What you mean? What condition? And who you calling a man?”

  “You know what I mean, Stacey. Why you always have to make things so difficult?”

  “Troy, I would really appreciate it if you would stop talking in parables. Leave that to Jesus. If you have something to say to me, just come right out
and say it!”

  “All right. I think is time we do something serious—something that will take our relationship to another level of seriousness.”

  “Troy Christie, are you saying you want me to have sex with you?”

  “Is not just me want it, you must be wanting it by this! You think all that kissing is just for nothing?”

  “Let me tell you something, Troy. I don’t have one living soul who really care about me or what I want out of life. The only person who can really do anything to save me from being worthless is me. Sex equals baby! And baby equals no school. And no school equals worthlessness! And I am not going to have sex with anybody and turn worthless!”

  “But you don’t have to get pregnant! We can use things like—”

  “It doesn’t matter what you say! Condoms can break. The pill is not one hundred percent safe—and my bio book says that I am too young to take the pill anyway. If you had any respect for what I want in life, you wouldn’t ask me that.”

  “Stacey—”

  “Stacey nutten! I don’t even want to talk to you anymore. I don’t want to be your girlfriend! Go find somebody who will let you do as you like with her!” I get up from the wall and go inside the church building.

  He sends letters and messages through Nellie. But I tell her to stop delivering them. Two weeks later when Nellie tells me he has another girlfriend I tell myself that she will be pregnant with three children by the time she is twenty.

  I tell Nellie I am looking for a priest to be my boyfriend. She tells me she has just the right boy.

  Randall, Nellie’s cousin, is in Montego Bay for the summer. He is a fifteen-year-old tenth-grader at Monroe College for boys. Nellie says he likes me. One afternoon he kisses me on my left ear and runs away.

  All summer he sends me sweets and flowers. I never send anything back and if he smiles at me I quickly turn away from him. On his last day in Montego Bay he slips me a letter written on pink paper and smelling like perfume.