The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir Page 7

  The pride of the pack is the peel-neck fowl. Bald from the shoulders (or at least where a chicken’s shoulders are expected to be) to the beak and tiny, it squawks loudly and moves quickly. If any of us were lucky enough to hold it for a second, its cries brought the nearest adult to its rescue, or it found its way out of our grasp so fast, we could hardly boast that we had caught it.

  When everyone is in place, Samantha and I rush toward the chickens.

  “Chase wide so they will run to the left side of the house,” Delano shouts.

  He dashes across the yard and meets Shane. The chickens commence a choir of squawking and turn back toward us. The senseh fowls are in the lead. Samantha and I look at each other, then at the oncoming fowls, and take off.

  Delano screams, “Shane, circle the house and stop them before they get ’way!”

  By the time Shane gets to the other side, every fowl but the peel-neck fowl has escaped.

  “That’s why I don’t like to do anything with a bunch of fraidy-fraidy girls! Look how the both of you make the chicken them get ’way!” Delano is furious.

  “All right, Shane, pay attention and don’t make Samantha and Stacey help you.”

  They both close in on the last chicken. In a cloud of dirt and squawking, the animal flies straight up into the air. The copper swirl of dust and feathers is everywhere. I am worried it will be naked when they finally catch it. On its way down, two pairs of hands seize it. It cries out, but the boys do not let go.

  Samantha and I are jumping up and down. “Get him! Get him, Delano! Hold on to him!”

  The excitement makes my head spin. I am running around the boys as they struggle to grab the fowl. When Delano finally grabs it, I squeal and cover my eyes with my dusty hands.

  “Stacey, stop the cow bawling so I can think of something to do with it!” Delano orders.

  He holds the chicken by its spindly yellow legs. It is silent now. Its head is hung low, almost to the ground, and its eyes are blinking. It looks like it is waiting to see what will come next. We follow Delano to the back of the house. He sits on the back steps swinging the chicken by its legs. The three of us sit on the ground around him. Delano stands. The sudden movement makes the chicken cry out. We laugh. He swings the chicken back and forth. The squawking eggs him on, making him swing the chicken even harder. The cries drown our laughter as he swings harder still. He now has to stand with one arm out to keep his balance while he is swinging the chicken around in full circles above his head. He keeps swinging until his arm is tired and the squawking has stopped. The chicken is not moving anymore.

  “What happen to it?” I ask.

  “Nothing. It’s trying to trick us, so we will let it go. Swing it some more,” Shane says.

  “I’m going to tell,” Samantha blurts out.

  “Nothing is wrong with it,” Delano says. “See how the chest is still moving? It’s still alive. I’m going to make it scream again.”

  He slowly moves his arm around. This time there is only a weak cry.

  “I’m going to put him down now. Make sure him don’t run away.”

  He gently puts the chicken down. We form a circle around it. The heaving brown body lies there for a tense moment before it struggles to its feet.

  “Hold him! Don’t let him run away, Delano!” Shane is shouting.

  Delano grabs it again.

  “See, it not dead, just lazy. I bet it still strong enough to carry all of us on it back,” Shane pronounces.

  “Okay, let’s ride him, then,” Samantha suggests.

  “I don’t think we should,” I caution.

  “Why not? Shane just said it could carry us!”

  Delano says nothing.

  “Is ’fraid you ’fraid?” Samantha taunts.

  “Yes, is ’fraid you ’fraid?” Shane adds.

  The worst thing to do to Delano is call him a coward.

  “I not ’fraid of nothing! Make we ride him.”

  We sit on top of each other. Shane, the biggest, sits first. Then Delano sits on him. There is a thin cry from the chicken when Samantha settles on her brother’s lap. By the time I sit, there isn’t a sound coming from below.

  “Make him move, Shane,” Delano urges.

  “I’m trying.”

  “Hit him, like a horse,” Samantha volunteers.

  “Yuck! I think it’s having diarrhea, and it’s all over my pants.” Shane leaps to his feet.

  The rest of us tumble to the ground.

  I land on something wet and brown and warm. We scramble to our feet and look at the chicken, which is flat and oozing a dark fluid from its tail. It looks pitiful; its bruised, bald, head twisted to one side.

  One eye stares wide open. The other is closed in one-half of a blink, leaking some kind of watery stuff. It’s crying, I think, the poor little thing is crying.

  “I think it dead.” Delano’s voice is small in the big backyard.

  We all stand there uncertain of what the long pink neck—curved and elegant even in death—means. If I look at one eye, it is alive but tearful. If I look at the other, it is dead.

  “I’m telling on all of you!” Samantha breaks the silence.

  “If you tell on us, you have to tell on yourself!” Shane counters.

  “But I didn’t do anything.” Samantha is crying.

  “Yes, you did!” insists Shane. “You was the one who said to ride it. And you helped to ride it. Maybe it was your big fat batty that make the fowl dead!”

  Samantha looks at Delano and me. We both look steadily at the dusty ground. She stands there for only a second before she turns her back and stomps toward the house.

  “What we going to do with him?” Shane asks, the next adventure glimmering in his eyes.

  “I don’t care. You do what you want with it,” Delano mutters before he turns and walks away.

  I follow my brother to the ackee tree at the farthest end of the backyard. I think of the chicken blinking when it is alive. Not blinking when it is dead. I can’t get the image out of my head.

  “Delano, you saw the chicken eye? It look like it was crying, don’t? It did definitely look sad, don’t?”

  “Stacey, right now me nuh care ’bout how the chicken did look. Right now me just thinking ’bout what will happen if Aunt June find out that we kill her chicken. If she and Uncle Harold find out that we was in it, they will think that we ungrateful to them for making us live here. They might make Grandma take us to live somewhere else. Grandma don’t have nowhere else to live.”

  “We could go back to Lottery. The house not big like this one, but is our own. We could go back and go to school at Miss Sis.” I miss our old teacher. I miss the head rubs and the smell of thyme. The thought of going back makes me happy.

  “How you so stupid?” His anger surprises me. “It was never our house in the first place. We did only rent it from somebody. We can’t go back there now. Somebody else live there now.”

  I know that Grandma tells Delano things she does not tell me, but I am the one who was born in that house. My navel string is buried in that yard. I know I am only in Bethel Town because of Andrew. As soon as he gets bigger we are going to move back to our own house in Lottery. My mother had bought the bed I had been sleeping on in that house.

  “What you mean by that? Who live there now?”

  “Boy, you really don’t know anything, eh?” He takes a deep breath. “Okay, I don’t know who live there now, but I know is not our house. Grandma move us here because she retire from the police station job. She never have no money to pay rent. So we had to come.”

  “But, Delano, how you sure is not our house? Grandma could be renting it to them now, you know!” He doesn’t respond. “I don’t care what you say. It is our house, with the little blue and white folding tray and the little green veranda. It is our house in Lottery!”

  I kick the dirt and wipe the tears from my face.

  “Shut up, nuh, Stacey. Just shut up! You think because you say something it just go so al
l of a sudden? You must learn fi take things as them is. Is so it go. We have to behave or else they will put us out. Is just so it go.” He is crying too. Delano almost never cries. Not even when he is getting a beating with Uncle Harold’s police belt.

  “But Shane and Samantha help kill the chicken too. They not going to put them out,” I argue.

  “Jesus! Me have to tell you everything? People can’t put out them own children. But we don’t belong to them, only to Grandma, and not even for real. She is only our grandmother. She only have us because nobody never want us when we mother run gone lef us. Them can put us out, but them cannot put out them own children.”

  “But, Delano, you can go live with your father.”

  “Yes, but where you and Grandma going to live? You don’t even have no father. And even if somebody take in Grandma, nobody will take you in. Nobody but Grandma want you.”

  That hurts, but because he is crying so hard, I don’t say anything. “Don’t worry, Delano, nobody going to find out. None of us going say anything.” I am not so sure about Samantha, but I cross my fingers and say a prayer.

  Delano looks at me like I am the biggest idiot in the world. He turns away and covers his face with his hands and sobs. I watch Shane lift the limp carcass high above his head and toss it into the gully. The feathered missile looks like it is flying as it hurtles toward its final home. Shane’s bright blue Gator sneakers kick dust over the wet spot on the ground.

  I hate him. And Samantha. I hate their new sneakers and their new schoolbags bought for them right from the store.

  One Sunday morning in July, Aunt June muses aloud that she hasn’t seen the peel-neck fowl in a few days. Uncle Harold wrinkles his brows and says, “Mrs. Jennings, I have been telling you for months now that we need to set some poison. A rat or mongoose must have taken that fowl right from the coop.”

  “Harold, I am tired of telling you that if I set poison for the mongoose the fowls will eat it too. The children just have to make sure that each fowl is accounted for before they close the coop at night.”

  Uncle Harold turns to us at the table and says, “I hope you are taking note of what you just heard. We cannot afford to lose livestock to these rodents. Just make sure every latch is closed before each of you go to bed at night.”

  “Yes, Daddy.”

  “Yes, Uncle Harold.”

  The second week of July a letter arrives from Auntie Ella. She wants Grandma to take us to Kingston for the summer. I am excited to meet my mother’s sister. Auntie Ella is Grandma’s youngest child. And Grandma says Auntie Ella was very close to Mummy before she left for Canada.

  Aunt June doesn’t look pleased about Kingston. She bangs the pots around and says we have to make sure to take both our math workbooks and our next-year reading books with us. “I will not be held responsible for your regression when you both come back from a month in Kingston with nothing between your ears but God’s free air!”

  The evening before we leave, Grandma packs our bags. Aunt June tells her that she can use a tin of corned beef to make sandwiches to take for the long train ride. Delano picks limes and we fill a big bag with the best ones for Auntie Ella. I pick fresh mint and fever grass. Grandma uses the bruised limes to make a bottle of lemonade. When Aunt June leaves for prayer meeting she takes the other children with her. Grandma feeds Pa Larry and puts him to bed. Then she fries some chicken and roasts two breadfruits. When it is just me and Delano and Grandma, I pretend that this is our house and that we can do whatever we want in it. I wonder what it will be like at Auntie Ella’s.

  The following morning we get up at four. We do not wake anybody to say good-bye, except Uncle Harold, who takes us to the train station. We catch the first train out of Montpelier station. I didn’t believe that Aunt June would really let us go and as the train pulls away I do a little dance. Delano laughs at me. I am so happy to leave Galloway District, even if it is only for five weeks out of the long hot summer. I am not going to Canada, or America, or England, but Kingston is almost like a foreign country. Kingston is where everybody on TV lives. I ask Delano if he thinks Auntie Ella will take me to meet Fae Ellington so I can tell her how much I love when she reads the news. Delano wants to have a shoot-out, with real guns like they have in the cowboy movies.

  Grandma cannot eat anything for the whole day on the train. She is afraid she will throw up and mess up the train seats and her dress and everything. Delano says I shouldn’t eat anything either because I might throw up too, but Grandma says I cannot stay hungry all day. She puts some newspaper inside my dress and tells me it will make my stomach feel better. Then she lets me eat a little and I throw up into a plastic bag with more newspaper in it. Aunt June would be vexed with Grandma if she knew that I was eating on the train. But Grandma says, “What rat don’t tell puss, don’t harm dog.”

  I take small bites of my corned-beef sandwich and look out the window at the trees passing by. The conductor laughs loudly and makes jokes with us.

  “How are we doing there, big man?” He pounds his palms on my brother’s back, but he smiles and tips his hat at me.

  “And how is my little lady?”

  I say, “Fine, thank you, sir.”

  The candy man comes by and asks if we want cotton candy. We say yes, but Grandma has no money. He gives us one tiny piece each and keeps moving, all the while shouting, “Candy man! Sweet, sweet candy! Anybody for the candy man?” I hear him long after he has disappeared. We finally get off the train at the Six Miles stop. There are so many people getting off the train I almost forget to wave good-bye to the conductor. Grandma steps down onto the platform and tells Delano to hold on to me while she puts the bag of clothes on her head. Then she reaches for my hand.

  More people than I have ever seen pass by while we wait for the bus that will take us uptown. A pregnant lady and three little children holding on to her skirt wait with us. A man with one arm and a scar that runs from his left eye to the right side of his mouth nods at Grandma. Two old men with white beards approach us and smile at Grandma. They smell like the rum that Aunt June uses to soak Christmas fruits. Both of them are grinning and shaking their hips at Grandma. She pulls us closer to her and looks the other way. They laugh louder and tip their hats before they stumble away.

  The bus is teeming with all sorts of people carrying bags and boxes. There is no room to sit. I squeeze Grandma’s hand and press my body against her. The air is hot and heavy with sweat. Bob Marley is wailing that he shot the sheriff, but he didn’t shoot the deputy. A girl not much older than Delano has a large cardboard box with holes punched in it. She pulls herself away when Delano places his ear close to the box. He leans over to me and whispers that he heard chickens peeping inside. An old man smelling like cow dung balances a bundle of sugarcane and some yellow yams atop his head. I wonder why there are so many people on one small bus.

  In no time we are in Half Way Tree. The big bus grinds to a halt and people almost knock us over getting off. We make our way outside and stand on the sidewalk. Grandma tells us to look out for Auntie Ella. The crowd thins and we are left on the sidewalk with a woman with a giant leg. One leg is almost three times the size of the other. I search for Auntie Ella. I worry that we will miss her and be forced to sleep on the road with the old lady with the enormous leg.

  “Grandma, I don’t know who to look for. What Auntie Ella look like?”

  “Lawd, Stacey. She look like anybody. She have two foot and two eye just like everybody else. Just wait yourself and she will come and find us.”

  Auntie Ella appears in a black-and-yellow taxi. She is tall and pretty and light skinned. She covers her mouth with her two hands and laughs out loud when she sees us. Then she is kissing and hugging us and saying how big and beautiful we are. The taxi stops at a place called Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner. There is a picture of a white man called the Colonel who cooks it. I order a wing and Delano orders a breast. Grandma says she will take whatever Auntie Ella orders. I am amazed that you can order what
ever part you want to eat. I wonder what they do with the parts that nobody eats. I imagine a graveyard of chicken backs and feet and bottoms, forever searching for their missing, matching parts.

  The taxi stops in front of a very, very big house, on a street called Sandhurst Terrace. The grass is cut low and there are red and purple flowers in bloom in the garden. The tall concrete walls are painted white and the louver windows are glass. There is a big veranda enclosed with metal grilles. Plants hang from the grilles and the walls. When we get out of the car, I see that the house is even bigger than I thought. The structure is built on a piece of land that slopes. From the front of the building, it looks like a very wide single-story house, but when you peek around the sides you can see that there are two floors.

  “Jesus peace Almighty, Auntie Ella! This is where you live?”

  “Staceyann, please don’t take the Lord’s name in vain like that! But yes, this is where I live. But come, hurry up and get the things out of the gentleman’s taxi so he can go.”

  Auntie Ella pays the driver and we make our way inside. Auntie Ella opens the one on the left. I ask to use the bathroom.

  “Down the hallway. It is the first door on the left and remember to knock before you open!”

  Every part of the house is tiled. And everything inside the bathroom is blue: the toilet, the sink, the bathtub, and the shower curtain. The whole place smells like perfume. I slide my hands over everything and thank God for Auntie Ella and Kingston.

  When I come out of the bathroom there is a girl the color of sand sitting in the living room watching a small TV with everybody in the picture in real color. She smiles at me and moves over on the couch. I sit beside her, mesmerized, as I watch the national storyteller, Miss Lou, in a red-and-white plaid bandanna conducting a game of ring-around-the-rosy on the children’s show Ring Ding. The children are wearing dresses and shirts of every color. Every time Miss Lou laughs the children laugh too. I lean in toward the screen to get a better look at the people in color. Their teeth don’t look as white as they look in black and white. I can’t wait to see what complexion Fae Ellington is. The girl is looking at me like I am doing something strange. I lean back on the couch and look out the window because I don’t want her to think that I am an ignorant country bumpkin who has never seen a color TV before. When Miss Lou waves good-bye, the girl gets up and turns off the TV. We sit there for a moment before I speak.