Chapter 9

Previous chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

It was a struggle just to feed all dem mouths.  It wasn’t easy yuh know.  Wen yuh fadder wasn’t around, his mother use to send one ah yuh uncles down to see how we was doin.  It look like de PNM party died wen dey did bury Williams, because by de time Chambers, de duncey, finished one year in office,  people was already talkin about elections. De party dat Robinson come out with was no better, talkin bout one love, wen he wouldn’t even acknowledge yuh fadder.  And de man come right in dis house one Sunday, and eat we food.  Wen NAR come into power, every livin ting went up.  It was expensive just to live in dis place.  People was losin deir little job from left to right, because dey say dat Williams and dem thief all dey oil money, and put de country in debt.  So now, all dat Robinson was doin was sellin everyting out.  And de union couldn’t do much, because de ULF did breakup.  Panday, de Indian from de sugar workers union was just lookin out for he people ah-lone.  But, I did always know yuh couldn’t trust dat Panday fellar.  Yuh cyar trust any of dem coolie and dem, because as soon as yuh turn yuh back dey go cut yuh throat.  Besides, even if dey call ah strike who goin be out dere picketin, wen most of de workers was out of ah job.  Dat is why we in de shit we in, because black people does never look out for dem own.  And yuh fadder doh care about he own flesh and blood; he givin dem fellars who get laid off money, sayin dat we doin better dan dem.  How much better could we be doin wen everyday all ah hearin is Joshua sayin he hungry, and de next red head one sayin she want she daddy?  If yuh look in Ironman’s fridge, yuh ain’t goin to see nothin but empty bottles.

Ahaia would tell her children these stories.  She would tell Njeri this story and others, during her many house-work rituals of shelling peas–her calloused hands picking apart the green shells, revealing sometimes a worm ridden pea–or during the laborious job of ironing Comrade’s shirts on Sunday evenings–the steam will rise up from the press as she cooed the heat.  Achaia would even tell them about that night their lives were spared by God himself.

The clock was ticking time away on the wall.  It was the second time the second hand pass by the number twelve, since three, and still Comrade was no where to be reached. The afternoon sun slowly faded, and that ending of yet another day made Achaia panic.  Unnerving questions came at that hour, of what to do, who to ask and where he gone?

It was a Sunday, three in the afternoon.  Comrade left them on Friday, promising to bring groceries that evening.  Five year old Joshua, still sucking on his index and middle finger, was learning how to write cursives, Comrade would put him on his lap and have him read Njeri’s old books.  Njeri, seven, if she wasn’t trying to learn how to dance and sing like Michael Jackson she was climbing the neighbors trees bare back.  Eleven year old Serena would stare at the base of whichever tree Njeri was climbing, and raising her head from her books, she would warn her sister of which branches were too weak for her weight.  And thirteen year old Wary, the man of the house when Comrade was paving the pavements red, they stood in the center of Achaia’s eye as a reminder of all she had lost.  She was 31 now.  Her want for a home had given her four children and a man, who she loved dearly.  A man who had stopped loving her the way he did when she was nineteen.  She reminisced about how beautiful she was then before all this.  Her long thick black hair, that Comrade loved to run his fingers through.  Her dark chocolate even skin, that no longer glows with youth. 

But they were interesting to look at when standing together, Comrade’s huge red Afro, round dimpled face, flat nose, hazel eyes, and yellowish brown stature, up against her narrow face, black eyes, and slender big boned figure.  She stared at the girl in the wedding pictures and remembers that night and other nights that she and Comrade danced so close together to Bob Marley’s “Turn Your Lights Down Low”.  She realizes that all she has in common with the girl in the picture was the face. 

She looks in the cupboard again and stares at the empty tin cans.  She opens the fridge, but all it has are bottles of refilled water. The bottles she refilled. “Wey he gon Jesus?  Wey he gon?”

Six in the cool Sunday evening, the children were finally asleep.  The clock, still ticking away, and Achaia forgets to play her game of watching how many times the second hand passes by the number twelve.  Instead, she sits with her hand propping her head up.  She peeps out the dusty window with dying expectations.

“Oh Jesus put ah hand.  Why me?  Why me oh God?”  She cries blowing her nose on her skirt, she then kneels to the ground with her hands extended.  Burying her head between her legs, she breaks down, never stopping for a breath.  Her agony turns into a nonsensical whimpering as gently, she pleads for mercy until her whys to God slowly die.  Wiping her nose and eyes; she gets up and wiry heads to the kitchen.  The forks, knives and spoons rattle as she pulls through the top-drawer open, finally, picking up the kitchen knife.  Holding it against her face, she stares at her puffy reflection.

She slams the drawer, and walks toward the children’s room.  Achaia tries to come in quietly, but the wooden floor creaks after each step.  Sniffling, breathing deeply, she sits on the bed and stares at their bellies rising and falling in sleep.  She wipes the sweat off of Joshua’s face, while the knife rests on her lap.

“Yes, I wanted to kill all yuh and meh self bad, bad, bad.  I was starin down at all yuh sleepin.  And ah had de knife in meh hand.  And ah just wanted to kill all yuh.  But den ah hear de doorknob turnin.  Ah knew it was yuh fadder. He say he was in negotiations all weekend with Texaco, and he couldn’t find anybody to bring us de groceries.  De mus-ah win, because he was whistlin and singin all day.”

∞

I wonder if I’m an alcoholic.  Dr. Collin Daniels–with sleepless eyes–the resident on call at St. Vincent’s psych ward, asks me in his thick British accent a list of questions I lie and say no to.

“Do you ever have withdrawal symptoms after drinking?  Such as shaking and feeling you need to drink to stop it?”

“No, I shake only after three cups of coffee.”  I say pretending to be calm, a charmer like my father.  Folding my fingers into each other, I whistle a story.  I smile, but not too much, just enough to convince Collin, the sleepless resident on call, that I’m not lying as I say, “Gary, my therapist, over-reacted,” and, “No, I’m not planning to kill myself.”

“Gary says you have been mentioning a gun.  Is this true?”

“I did mention a gun.  But, the gun I was speaking of is my father’s.  A million miles away in Trinidad.”

They keep me overnight anyway.  Thinking about the ambulance and hospital bill I’ll have to pay, just because Gary felt like he was my savior, I try not to show how angry I am.

I had a feeling I shouldn’t answer the door.  I knew it was Gary ringing the door bell.  I answered it anyway.  When I saw his balding white head, his trying to be hip lower east side mid-life crisis earring, I knew it was all over.  I tried anyway, in my semi-drunkard state to stop Gary from coming in with two larger than him EMTs.  Giving up, I let them in. 

Turning the lights on, turning my back to them, I saw how incriminating the place looked, with all the pills scattered across the floor, clothes everywhere, the empty half a pint lying capsized near the desk, the Glad bag in the kitchen, and then of course the bathroom floor covered in purple puke, I planned to clean the next day before going to work. 

“You took these pills?” One of the EMTs asked.

“No, they just fell.”

“It looks like some kind of anti-depressant.”  The other one said.

“What are you doing Gary?  Why are you here?”

“Jeri, you’re hurting yourself and you need help.  You don’t have to suffer like this.  You’re entitled to get help.”

There’s that word–entitle–that phrase I’ve heard him say over and over again in session, you’re entitled to… To what exactly?  Maybe he’s the confused one, and maybe the word to use is will.  I will it… Even then I’m lying to myself.  This false sense, entitle is, an insane reality comes into existence when I think about what it means.  Maybe I’m the fool, I’m insane to laugh, to think of this word as being worthless, unreal even, when everything around emanates importance, from the puke on the floor to the EMTs’ walkie talkies echoing static in the room. 

“Oh, so you think you can save me.  You’re a fool if you think you’re saving me.  Me saving myself, even that is bullshit.”

“We’re not leaving you here by yourself.”

“I’m not going to a hospital.  I told you this before, but you never listen do you?”

“Just calm down,” one of the EMTs say, walking too close, like I was a character from Days of Our Lives trapped in a torrential wind on top of a skyscraper.

“I can’t go.”  I said walking backwards to an icy fire escape.  I looked behind, thinking about jumping out the window.  I neared the door to the bedroom, and the fire escape, only a few feet away.  All I had to do was jump.  But like a coward, I started thinking about the glass from the window, about what would happen next. 

That one time, I was fourteen, I didn’t think about possibilities, the astonishing likely hood of waking up the next day.  But experience changes everything, lessens everything that was once ignorantly brave–aware of my stomach being pumped and the black tar I was forced to drink, leaving a distasteful stain on my tongue, I became that character from a soap opera. 

I gave up in the end, remembering the cold handcuffs on my ankles, the leather straps lacing my wrist to the gurney, the firefighter yelling at me to, “Shut the fuck up,” as her palm pressed all of her weight down on my chest.  The laughter from the two guys in the ambulance, while I begged them to shoot me in the head.  And when they rolled me in the fluorescent parade of eyes, blurry shadows, Serena later told me were medical students.  I remembered that time in Prince Georges’ Hospital.  I was twenty then.  It doesn’t feel like five years ago.  It feels more like a month I was here in this same place. 

I remembered the injection they stuck into me that night at Prince Georges’ Hospital, drugging my belligerence, giving me seizures the day after when Serena took me to Sligo Creek. 

We were walking through the bike path covered with brown, yellow leaves.  I was trying to stop my body from jerking.  I was losing control of my legs.  I couldn’t tell Serena why I couldn’t move.  My hands cramped into a claw.  My head and torso violently trembled. 

I wanted to take away the fright I saw in Serena’s eyes.  I wanted to take away that whole night she begged them to remove the restraints.  I remember the pink room they put me in.  I couldn’t go to the bathroom, because I was still laced up to the gurney, so I pissed into a bed-pan under my ass.  Nothing was more terrifying.  The humiliation of being held down against my will.  The days after was only a distorted repeat, reminding me over and over of what I should of successfully done; “If you really wanted it.  If you wasn’t a fucking coward.” 

My roommates had a secret meeting when they decided I should move out, not until I paid for the busted door the firefighters broke down.  I remember Judy as I look at one of the nurses at St. Vincent, with the same brownish curly hair; she was telling me their decision.

“You know, I’ve been through this before.  So you can talk to me about it.”  Like a zombie, I was staring into the television, flicking channels.  I said nothing.

“I just think that the whole thing was scary.”

“It’s none of your business.”

“It’s my business, because they came in my house and broke down the door.  So I have a right to know.”  I didn’t avoid her blue eyes when I thought about pulling out all of her hair.

“Well,” she said in her bubbly way of saying, Fuck you bitch, “The rest of us think that you should move out.”

And even the month after, the four thousand dollar hospital bill haunting my invisible credit, I wondered.  I wonder what stopped me, as I sit here in the emergency waiting area surrounded by thick plastic windows and computerized solid doors, guarded with orderlies in booths, St. Vincent’s psych ward.  Maybe I can do it right now, the curtained bathroom is right there.  I could use my keys.  Yeah like keys ever killed anyone.  Shut-up.  What’s keeping me?  I have to know what’s been keeping me every time.   Attachments?  Maybe if I had some kind of faith things could be different.  Like if I started going to church.  Join a faith.  Like An Unknown Denomination (AUD).  Maybe the Seven Day Adventist or maybe the Born Again Christians.  What’s the difference between the two?  Maybe I can just do it now as they’re not looking.  Right now!  They think I’m a coward.  You are a fucking coward, you should of jumped.  Whatever, I’m here now.  Attachments?  What attachments?  There’s nothing here to steal but a parasite.  Just say you have to use the bathroom.  They’re worried about that guy they just rolled in.  Maybe I can.  There’s nothing to fucking use.  The pen.  It’s in the right pocket. 

I can feel the adrenaline pumping through my sweaty fingers as I feel for the pen.

“Miss Ironside,” the St. Vincent nurse with the same brownish curls as Judy’s says, “Dr. Daniels spoke to the attending on call, and they decided to keep you over night.  Just for an evaluation in the morning.  I’m sure they won’t keep you after tomorrow honey.”

“It’s fine,” I say smiling.  I really want to scream.  “Can I use my phone? Just to tell my sister, I’m O.K.?”

“You’re not suppose to have a phone in here, but just for a minute, then turn it off.”

“Alright.”

The night I spent in Prince George’s Psych ward, five years ago, and tonight’s experience at St. Vincent’s are important.  I’ve learned you have to be completely calm.  Look them straight in the eye, and say yes, “I have in the past experienced chronic suicidal thoughts–never use your own words like killing yourself–but not lately.”  And no, the thoughts about getting a gun were faraway, unreachable dreams.  And even if they dare to ask why you want to die, don’t argue with them about their list of potential reasons you should live.  It’d only undermine their purpose.

A panic comes over the room once the desire of wanting to kill yourself leaves you.  Even if you’ve been a devil, you still have no right to such an entitlement: a demonic act of killing yourself–a destiny you’ve known since you were born because your mother told you her longing.  A parasitic longing that has lived longer, even longer than your mother’s desire one night or early one morning, when the last piece of thread, tattered and worn, broke and like a rat you follow the only thing that makes sense: the trail home. 

A breathless-ness in the center.  Something whispered even when half the room has considered it.  The reasons for living, for dying, that want that always comes from a place of selfishness, mouth off your lips: I want to…  I find humor in the most desperate, not knowing what to say question, “Why wouldn’t you want to live?”  Then the hilarious resolve, “A coward thing to do either way.”  I think I’d prefer a psychotic’s Yeah do it! Do it now!  But even that’s funny.

My therapist in Maryland made me fill out a contract, if I ever felt like killing myself I’d immediately call her, a friend, anyone.  I was naïve when I told her I couldn’t sign it.  I was a fool to try and describe why I couldn’t.  I told her I was a rat running home, and she stared at me like I was crazy and insisted I sign the contract.  I laughed at her when I should have been laughing at myself.  I signed the binding contract.  After my release from Prince George’s hospital, I had only myself to laugh at.

Chapter 8

Previous chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 

“She’s ah devil child.”  Achaia says to Miss Galerie as she sweeps the kitchen floor.  “Every Sunday is de same damn ting with dat girl.  Ah have to force she to come go to church.  All de other children doh give meh no trouble to go to church.  Everybody put on deir clothes to go, but Ms. Njeri.  She hidin in the backyard by de guava tree and won’t come wen ah call her.  Half de mornin ah spend lookin for dat red head girl.  And rude, she rude.  Tellin me  she not goin.”

“How come daddy doh go to church and I have to go?” Njeri asked.  This bothered her every Sunday at five o’clock in the morning when Achaia, briskly dragging her slippers from room to room, woke everyone.  Everyone, except Comrade.  Njeri did not understand why her father spent Sunday mornings in bed reading the paper, while they had to go hear the good news.  Her mother’s constant reminder of, “A family dat prays together stays together,” only provoked more questions.

“Maybe it’s because daddy was brought up in de Spiritual Baptist church, and besides, granddaddy John is de archdeacon.  And in mammy church, dey doh speak in tongues and catch de spirit.  He must be sayin dat dat doh make no sense to go to somebody else’s church.  But he doh even go to granddaddy church.  He just does stay in bed, read de paper and wait for mammy to come home to make him breakfast.  Maybe is shame he shame.”

“Yeah, like de time wen Ms. Rohass ask yuh wha yuh religion is, and yuh didn’t want to tell her.  Yuh keep whisperin, Baptist, Baptist.”

 
“Doh mind wha yuh fadder do.  You just put on yuh clothes and come go hear de good news.”

“Wha…?  Dat Jesus dead?  Ah done know dat ah ready,” Njeri said.

“But wha de devil is dis.  Satan with you or wha?  Yuh know dat de Lord sees and hears everyting.  Yuh better ask for forgiveness.  De Lord is good girl.”

“Yeah, ah could tell just how good he is by watchin you,” Njeri mumbled under her breath.

Achaia stops sweeping and looks at Ms. Galerie and says, “And den, wen we finally get to de damn church, you believe she vomit all over she new church clothes.  Well ah just had enough of Miss Njeri’s stupid-ness.  Ah leave her deir in Sunday school with her dirty clothes and all.  She wasn’t goin to ruin my Sunday mornin.”

From her room Njeri listens to her mother’s conversation, eventually getting up and heading to the guava tree.  She likes climbing the guava tree for its smooth, silky surface.  When Njeri climbs the guava tree, she runs her feet against the warm afternoon branches, until she feels a sensation between her legs.  Njeri rubs her feet against the guava tree until the sensation between her legs becomes wet.  After it subsides, she begins to feel dirty.  For sure now what her mother warns will come true.  The guava tree, plagued with blight, will never bloom again because of her dirty actions which incites the feeling running up from her feet to her vagina.  She wonders if she really is a devil child.

In the face of her mother’s pleadings for her to be more like her sister, and despite her own envy, Njeri knew she could never be like Serena.  Her sister was good at being a girl–a good girl with ribbons that stayed in her hair, clean hands and knees, and always in a dress with her slippers on her feet.  Njeri likes being a boy.  She’d run barefoot in Queen Victoria’s street with her chest exposed. 

When plums and mangoes came into season, Njeri, Joshua and Miss Galerie’s sons, Adesa and Danjumah, raided Mr. William’s trees.  She’d climb even in the midst of her mother’s warning about girls having the ability to blight trees and her own fear that maybe the saying is true. 

After witnessing Njeri chasing and finally catching a garden lizard in the backyard, Serena vowed never to play with her sister again.  But Njeri created her own friends whenever her mother felt hanging around the neighborhood boys might lead to more than just games.  She sometimes played with her brother, but Joshua was never fair.  When he was certain there wasn’t a chance of him wining, he’d quit. 

Usually, Njeri spent most of her time alone, pretending.  She pretended to remove the parts she hated the most.  She even pretended once that her father’s shoes were really the starship Enterprise and the little pebbles she placed on board the shoe’s sole were the ship’s crew with Captain Kirk, Dr. McCoy and Mr. Spock.  Her aunty Tia was visiting that day when she was going to the place where no man had explored.  She couldn’t understand why Njeri found her father’s shoes to be so fascinating.

“But Achaia wha dis child doin with Comrade’s shoe, and it look like she talkin to de little stone in dem.”

“Dat is how she does play.  Weird like dat.  Crazy she crazy.  Dat’s all she does do all day long.  Sit down underneath dat t.v. and play she crazy games.  She won’t pick up ah book and read or do she home work.  All she want to do is watch dat t.v. and act like she’s still a baby.” 

“So how school goin, Njeri?  Yuh doh want to talk to yuh Aunty Tia.  Come and sit on meh lap and tell meh wha yuh learn in school today.”

“Who…? Njeri learn someting.  She head too hard.  She teacher send us ah note sayin she slow.  She not like Joshua and Serena.  I doh know wha we goin to do with Miss Njeri.”

“Wha standard she in now?’

“She suppose to be goin to standard three, but de teacher say dat she not performin.  So dey might keep her back.   Comrade goin and see de teacher on Monday to talk to her, but I doh know wha he goin say.  She report book say she come last in class.”

In the section for teacher’s remarks, which Ms. Persad initially and purposely left blank, now reads in bold red print–“Promoted to Standard Three.”

Regardless of Miss Persad’s efforts–her trained teaching methods of reaching her fallen behind students–and despite Njeri’s own shame, for most of that year in Miss Persad’s standard two group B class, Njeri’s term test scores were consistently at the bottom.  Njeri never made any attempt to do better.  Even though she was afraid of being whipped for her incomplete homework, or made to kneel on the bench with her arms reaching up to the classroom’s galvanized ceiling, she did not try to change her position as the dunce in Miss Persad’s class. 

After all, the bell rang at three, signaling the end of another school day, and the Devil found out where she was living.  He cooked the inside of the house; making tempers flare and smearing a violent red upon the walls, the foreheads of everyone living in it.  The Devil controlled the shadows and made them scream at each other.  No amount of prayers to the Holy Ghost from her mother could prevent the Devil from walking around in the house like he owned it.  Not even Njeri’s Granddaddy John’s blessings above the welcome mat–the goat’s blood he used to write an unrecognizable sign covering the entrance to the house–could keep the Devil out. 

Njeri questioned whether what her mother said was true, that Comrade’s mother and father practiced obeah for the purpose of doing bad.  “But in any case dere’s no good in obeah,” Njeri said to herself.  She kept wondering though, “Why mama and granddaddy John would want to hurt us.”   She believes in her mother’s sermon, since Achaia repeatedly said that Comrade’s brothers, sisters–except for his older sister, Aunty Tia–mother and father never liked them.  It was this belief which made Njeri say to one of Comrade’s sisters, when she asked, “Njeri, why yuh doh like me, why yuh doh like yuh Aunty Sophia?”  With her eyes crossed, Njeri said, “Because you doh like my mother.”

A quiet anxiety fills the room as the class waits for Miss Persad to return the exam papers.  Some of the girls, the girls like Leslie Agastini and Patrice Lucton are excited because they already knew their papers are the first.  The rest of the girls hide behind shaking legs and withdrawn eyes. 

Her hands are making imprints upon her desk.  Her papers are at the bottom of the pile.  Occasionally, in solemn anticipation, she lifts her eyes from the cave her forearms and head makes.  She wrote gibberish on her answer sheet.  She knew she came in at the bottom.  The papers are always handed in the order of the percentage: top to bottom.  Miss Persad, with a grin on her face, holds onto Njeri’s papers for too long and Miss Persad does the unexpected.  She begins to read the contents.

“Njeri Ironside’s answer to the question–Who were the people Christopher Columbus encountered when he discovered Trinidad—Njeri’s answer– They were Gaulle Gaulle.”  Miss Persad says laughing.  Soon the entire class joins in, as Miss Persad reads all of Njeri’s made up answers.  Njeri feels their eyes exposing her.  Their sharp pointy eyes were cutting right through her skin like glass.  Even Margo, whose score was just a half point higher, laughs.

“Mr. Ironside, it’s such a pleasure to finally meet you in person.  I can’t say how thankful I am personally for the work you have done,” Miss Persad says as Comrade and Njeri enter the classroom. 

Njeri felt a sort of greatness whenever she was out with her father.  She suddenly felt important, as people greeted Comrade with a look and gave a serious nod.  To Njeri, they looked to her father as some sort of savior and the ones that didn’t were traitors to the people.  When he introduced her as his daughter, that look of greatness, also fall upon her. 

In her eyes, Comrade carried this throne well.  With a determined grace, he entered a room, folding his arms in contemplation, and knowing exactly what to say and when to say it, especially to women.  Njeri noticed.  She noticed their excitement, absolute inability to speak, when Comrade told one of his amazing stories of his boyhood adventures, growing up dirt poor and rising to greatness.  Or  he gave them the most modest of flattery about what he heard said about them.

“Thank you and it’s a pleasure to meet you Miss Persad.  Njeri has spoken so highly of you.”  Surprised by Comrade’s comment, Njeri stares up at her father, but she doesn’t give it away that she’s never mentioned Miss Persad’s name to him or Achaia, instead she smiles an approving yes.  She never told about the day Miss Persad returned the exam papers.

“She even said you are one of her favorite teachers,” Comrade says as he turns winking at Njeri.

“I understand you have been working really hard with Njeri.”

“Yes, but unfortunately, I don’t think Njeri has been giving her all, and I am considering holding her back for one more year,” Miss Persad says remorsefully.  She girlishly plays with her brown curls as she takes out Njeri’s report book and says, “If you look at her scores, they show no signs of improvement.  In fact her grades are dropping each term.  I think another year of standard two will help in the long run.  Njeri has not mastered any of the skills for a normal seven year old advancing to the next level.  She needs another year before entering standard three.”  

Njeri sits sluggish and numb.  She listens only when her name is mentioned.  Her attention has been attuned to the games happening outside.  She watches a group of girls playing hop-scotch and peecé-mash-line.  Out of all the games, peecé-mash-line is her favorite.

“I disagree Miss Perad, I think keeping her back a year will hurt her considerably.  And I must say that, I have not been diligent with regards to helping her with her home-work.  But, I assure you things are going to change.  I am personally going to help her with all her work.  Keeping her back one year will only slow her down, and she won’t be prepared for Common Entrance in the next three years.  By the end of this August vacation, I assure you that Njeri will improve for her year in standard three.  Right Njeri?” Comrade demands as he holds her forearm firmly.

Ashamed, Njeri looks down, away from Ms. Persad exposed slender gold tooth, and her father’s charming smile and says, “Yes.”

Well, this matter is off the subject,” Miss Persad says puckering her lips and fluttering her eyelids, reminding Njeri of a peacock she read about in one of the encyclopedias Comrade bought wholesale.  “But I have a nephew, Raul.  He recently graduated from St. Benedicts.  And he didn’t do so well in the CXC exam.  Right now, he’s looking for work.  Do you think you can help him? He’s a bright boy.”

“Have Raul come by my office on Tuesday, and I’ll see what I can do.  In fact, here’s the number to my direct line.”

“Thank you Mr. Ironside.”

“No, thank you Miss Persad, and please, call me Comrade.”

Chapter 7

Previous chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

They never spoke about the sudden outbursts at family gatherings.  It was when the cup was too full, and they hadn’t sort out the right way of taking out their frustrations on the other person just yet.  A minor set back made the timing impossible for them to put the moment into fulfilment.  Eventually, even the smallest one knew exactly how to hurt the larger.  They saw what made the wound widen a little more, made their victim mute with a feeling they’ve not learnt how to manipulate in their favor.

Joshua was five and Njeri seven.  Njeri heated the butter knife on the stove.  She wanted Joshua to feel the even more grief for spitting in her soup.  In scorn, she watched him sitting there, on the opposite side sipping his hot soup.  She came closer with terror streaming down her cheeks.  Joshua blocked Njeri’s hand with the heated butter knife, aiming at his chest, and instead of stabbing him, Njeri burnt Joshua’s fore-arm.  

While Achaia was beating Njeri with one of Comrade’s leather belts, Joshua was soothing his wound with a cold cloth, mocking Njeri with his laughter.  But somewhere in his smirking and Njeri’s cries, they looked at each other and  knew revenge came unexpected; taken out on the smaller side of you no one will notice.

 

A shadow darts across the hallway leading to the bedroom, and  I tell myself that there’s nothing there but a blur–the assumed distance between me, and the dim light from the room.  I continue to painstakingly write nonsensical letters to Pieta:

you pushed everything down, down, down so nothing could penetrate. i’ve watched you somany times saw you everytime. when you were about to lose it. just when you forgot how much juan luis and valencia hated me. that valencia would recognize me. my scent that nauseated your valencia on your skin in the morning. so you put the car window down, down, down. break away into your shell. ifigured all you needed was time. you’ll see how good I am for you.  foolish thing to say. to believe. but isn’t that what we’re hoping and suffering for? for them? for you?  only for you.  such nsense.  you’ll see pieta. you’ll see.

 

I relax my arm over the bathroom’s tub and let my journal drop.  I force the pen into my pocket.  I try focusing on the  painkillers I haggardly scattered across the floor.  They become unreliable.  Unable to fully sustain the forgetting, the apathy, there’ll always be seconds when a pang of memory bleeds in, distorting my eyes with rich colors.  Like her navy blue, turtle neck sweater. 

Her navy blue turtle neck sweater that she never wore, until last night.  It only made the shock of seeing her with Rickie, Rickie Hernandez paralyze my body with sharp needles.  I just stopped in the middle of the song.    I couldn’t believe it, that she would come to my show with her new lover when everything was still raw.  All I could do was stare at her as she doused my wounds with salt water.  And Rickie with his fluorescent white sneakers, and glistering gold bracelet, standing there on the side with a big smile, broadcasting how good a fuck it was.   

I couldn’t tell Pieta to fuck off, or slap her in the face when she tried to make it normal.  With a pretend normal voice, she pursed her lips.  With that, this is normal because everything is fucked up stare, So accept it; she sat next to me backstage and asked, “So, do you want to get together to look at the photos for the book?”

“I’ll call you,” was all I could say.
Now in my mind, I’ll call you runs around in circles.  The I chasing after the you. 

I try to keep my head up, sitting on the cold bathroom floor.  I let go of my embrace to the toilet bowl covered in purple puke–the fruit punch I thought would save me from the disaster of everything racing down, from my head to my stomach.

I crawl to the bookshelf, and reach for the videotape.  I blow the dust away from its rectangular spine and clumsily inspect the label written in red smudged ink.  In double vision, Rituals is what it reads.  I flip the tape on its other-side, looking at its black ribbon as a means of revenge.  The images contained–the red comforter barely covering our naked bodies, as pieces of the morning come through the shades–gives a thwarted solidity for the parts that are no longer me. 

∞

I am lost in those empty bottles I’ve been collecting in the kitchen.  After my move to New York six months ago, I started a pile.  One by one, for no particular reason, I started collecting the empty bottles in white transparent Glad bags: pints, half pints of Bacardi 151s and my favorite, twenty ounce J&Bs; all swimming in a sea of plastic Coke bottles. 

Sometimes, I feel the urge to smash them to pieces.  Melt the Coke bottles into disfigured shapes.  Then, I’d put them in the bag with the Polaroid pictures of that summer.  The pictures Pieta took of me playing chess with Bird, a homeless guy I met in Dupont Circle. 

Dark shades Bird, dressed in a dirty black trench coat even though it was 90 degrees out, busted up combat boots and a messed up afro.  I remember him like it was yesterday.  That summer, the last I would spend in D.C..  When Pieta and I were inseparable.  We spent most of our weekends in the park photographing anything that peeked our interest.  From weird graffiti to random folks we met on the streets.

We couldn’t resist taking Bird’s photograph as he won every game he played with foolish tourists, foolish enough to believe that his staggering demeanor meant that he couldn’t see the entire board.  To celebrate, he’d spend his winnings at the liquor store.

Already vulnerable, the queen eventually killed, and always, there’ll only be two pawns protecting the king.  I was cornered as Bird sipped his  brown bag of Steel Reserve.  He’d offer me some as he said checkmate. 

I’d put these pictures, these pieces of glass, and the disfigured Coke bottles into the Glad body bag and surround it with candles.

I imagine mailing the tape of Pieta and I together in bed to her parents, Juan Luis and Valencia.  It would be the next step to separation I cynically laugh to myself.  I fantasize on their reactions–their denial being burst, watching their Catholic school girl going down dirty on a girl.

But then, I think about Pieta being kicked out of the circle.  The defense her family created, a closeness which brought Juan Luis early at my door one Sunday morning asking for her. 

“Hey Jeri,” my housemate yelled and banged on my door, “Some guy name One is outside for Pie.”  The Sunday morning Pieta hurried me to put my clothes on; in the house I paid rent.  In my own room, I jumped off my bed and immediately dressed like I was being caught at something I shouldn’t be doing.

But I envied the times she had with her aunts, uncles and cousins at the park.  The habitual get together that, “If a butterfly farts they’ll have a party for,” Pieta constantly said annoyed.  I laugh a little at the memory of her frustration but it doesn’t last, as I bury my head into my hands, my muffled cry knows there’s no going back. 

I feel the emptiness now as the sounds outside, racing so loudly, fills my apartment, telling me I have nothing, that this is the only comfort I’ll feel tonight.  Not lust, happily grinning to itself in a corner, but revenge that crawls and leaves crevices on your face.  The same face the guy from The Liquor Store–two blocks away from Castle Hill’s subway station–use to card. 

He tries not to look at me whenever I’m in there.  And when he does, during the awkward exchange of money for liquor, his stare is very similar to that of the Psychiatrist’s who gives me free samples: “You’re pathetic.”

∞

I began seeing The Psychiatrist in December of last year, a month after I started seeing Gary once a week. 

It was going on my third month in the city.  I had no job, and the money I had left from the move was going solely towards the rent Pieta and I planned to split: $650, plus $40 each for electric. 

Sprint had turned my phone off, so I used the payphone at the corner store, near the apartment building, to call Serena collect.  She wanted me to find a doctor.  I didn’t sound good I guess and by the time I was convinced of something being terribly wrong, I had spent an entire week in the apartment with the blinds drawn.  I hadn’t eaten, or taken a shower in days.  I slept a lot. 

I finally woke up one morning to dry blood on the sheets and my t-shirt.  My left hand was covered with old red lines and a fresh wound that wasn’t deep enough.  I got up and went outside. 

I remember the sunlight hurting my eyes, and walking for a long time.  I didn’t know where I was going.  Finally, I stopped and walked into the public library in Parkchester.  I sat down at a computer and googled doctors.  In the haze, I remember speaking with a perky voice from the Alfred Institute.  She told me I had an appointment with Dr. Gary Sheffield the next day. 

Gary, he insisted that I call him Gary and not Dr. Sheffield, made it a rule: in order for me to continue seeing him I had to see The Psychiatrist.  And after the first visit with The Psychiatrist, I started taking a drugs cocktail.  Some of which I’ve seen annoying commercials for, where it’s obvious that the people are actors saying a script about how much happier their lives have been.  And how there’s a low risk of sexual side effects.  Then, there is the long list of disclaimers about possible seizures, dry mouth, insomnia, head-aches, weight gain and mania: a small price to pay towards my much larger goal of being functional. 

I remember when I started taking drugs.  I was fourteen and Dr. Kumar was the first to diagnosis my problem: clinical depression with acute manic tendencies, she proudly said to my parents after one hour of conference with me. 

Like all of the doctors I’ve seen, Dr. Kumar claimed to understand what the missing piece was.  She prescribed Tofranil once a day, which made me feel like I was constantly floating around in a daze.  I’d cut myself and I couldn’t feel a thing. 

My father found it ridiculous, because clinical depression with acute manic tendencies was something for the lazy white bourgeoisie to meddle in.  Even if he was in the news every night, or even if all my classmates and the teachers considered our family wealthy just because we lived in a so called mansion we didn’t own; madness was nonetheless something for the lazy white bourgeoisie to meddle in. 

He held on to this belief until he couldn’t ignore the growing number of knife teeth marks on my fore-arms–a ladder that was growing deeper with each step–and when my mother found out that I stopped swallowing the brown capsule everyday, but instead I started collecting them like treasure in my mattress.  I was planning to swallow them all as soon as I got to one hundred. 

At the end of two months of healthy supplies, I have an opportunity to visit The Psychiatrist’s.  And after going over the essential list of routine prompts, The Psychiatrist gives me boxes and boxes of free samples.  The checklist known by all the participants:

“Are you feeling hopeless…?”

“yes very hopeless.  since everyday, i still get up to go to work.”  I snidely say in a child like voice I’m disgusted by.  I don’t know what it is.  Maybe it’s the room shrinking me into that size, the black leather coach swallowing and miniaturizing my body.  Suddenly my legs are dangling as The Psychiatrist tries to come down to my presumed level of not knowing what’s good for me.

The Psychiatrist stops writing in his pad.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you.” 

“no!”

The Psychiatrist continues to scribble longer than the sound the word no makes, then, the scribbling stops,

 “On a scale of one to ten, how would you describe how you feel, ten being the most extreme?”

“i don’t know…seven to nine.”  I guessed.

“Scribble scribble.”

“Do you hear or see things?”

“a couple of nights ago,”

“Scribble scribble.”

“when it was really bad, i heard him prancing around, telling me i’m nothing.” 

“Scribble scribble.”

 “he tells me that this is a waste.”

“Scribble scribble.”

The most memorable visit was the day I was feeling more than a ten, more than an eleven plus.  Advising I increase the dosage, The Psychiatrist demanded, “You should postpone these thoughts of suicide for next month’s visit.” 

For the first time coming to The Psychiatrist’s office, I, we looked at him.  He has jet-black hair reaching the nape of his neck, with a path on the side, making his pale face lopsided.  He has a hearing aid in his left ear.  We looked straight into him.  He was suddenly the naïve one who couldn’t hold a stare.  

He began to laugh at The Psychiatrist, knowing full well what he was capable of doing, even without a plan.  The Psychiatrist wasn’t there when he convinced me that a room was too small to breathe in, or when I scratched myself asleep, because there were tiny red ants all over my body.  The nights I rode my bike in circles until morning came, or raced head-on to the speeding blue public buses coming in from Port-of-Spain at two in morning. 

I’d be close enough to the bus’s headlights to feel the panic coming into my eyes, like soon to be road kill.  And him yelling do it.

He was right, The Psychiatrist would never know of or understand these moments.  When I was old enough for my mother to call me haunted—a devil child she’d say—and nothing could appease the constant racing accusations, the burning in my skin.

Now, I wish I had told The Psychiatrist all of this.  But he was there by then and all he wanted to do was laugh.

Maybe this is how my life is suppose to be: the never-ending battle with superstition and its three dimensional faces.  For sometime I believed it and them to be true.  Maybe they are true.  I can’t remember when they weren’t, especially when I think about the so called premonitions I’d have about my future: floating between, never living beyond eighteen, or becoming a crazed homeless woman.  Maybe the premonitions began after I became conscious of the mad-woman’s murky presence: surviving, indirectly begging and performing all at the same time.

∞

It becomes clear to me now as I stare at the videotape’s ribbon, thinking about Pieta’s family, it becomes clear now that my own parents were worried about me.

For my eleventh birthday, I remember waking up to find a Singer Sewing Machine with a red bow around it.  The card said it was from my father. 

Every Saturday morning, instead of watching the cartoon marathon–which began at six and ended at noon–I took the Marabella maxi-taxi to High Street for my lessons, from a friend of my mother’s, on measurement: cut and stitch. 

In the beginning, I forced myself to be excited about learning how to sew.  Because my father kept boasting to his friends, “My little princess is going to make me a blue shirt.”  Ultimately, after seven lessons, when it was obvious I wasn’t going to make anything, we both gave up on the idea of me becoming a seamstress like his younger sister.    

It was during these rides, to and from home, I noticed the madwoman.  Standing there, dancing there on High Street–in an impenetrable trance–on one of the islands facing the morbid purple and always smelling of urine, public library. 

Whenever I looked into her wild eyes, clouded by the presence of another world, I’d see myself.  The transformation happened right there, as I watched her scream and laugh hysterically at the invisible people. 

Chapter 6

Previous chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

She is searching for herself in her father’s steps. Heavy, hard and premeditated–penetrating the wooden floor–the sound of his steps traveling through the corridors, making its way to the kitchen. In Comrade’s steps–the ones that walk over her mother, marching in time to the struggle–she tries to find herself. In her father’s words that rallied people together–one union, one struggle–she is lost in between. Words he never learned at any college, because his parents couldn’t afford the $35.00 entrance fee. “Wen Comrade Ironman speak, he talk the truth.” The people listened. They listened to Comrade Ironman’s cry to shut down the entire country, when management for the electric company, T&Tec, refused to increase worker’s wages.

“Let Trinidad stand still tonight. Let the lights from T&Tec go out tonight and management feel the might of the people.”

And for one day, just days before Carnival, the lights went out, and the streets of San Fernando and Port-of-Spain were dead. The next day the management’s negotiating team and the union returned to the table. The workers were given their wage increase. 

Njeri cannot find what she is looking for in her mother’s sighs, because her mother is the jack-ass washing and ironing Comrade’s blue skirts for tomorrow’s battle. Cooks his food and carried his babies–four alive, three dead. She cannot find herself in her mother, who drags her feet everyday singing, “Oh what a friend we have in Jesus,” since she made a pact with God, and even God had failed.

“If you make dem stop fightin, den I’ll go to church every Sunday.” Njeri waited a whole year for God to perform what to her seemed like a miracle, but the miracle took too long to come. By the time she was seven, she was estranged from and unmoved by the word every Sunday. “Dere ain’t no fuckin God, and if he real, he could hold he ass.”

She can’t imagine herself as her mother, who had to ask someone to write, A C H A I A down. And Njeri’s own name–that unconquerable name weighing down her shoulders with too many expectations and requirements–she felt foreign when she heard it in its entirety: Njeri Ironside.

All of this–Comrade’s heavy footsteps, her mother dragging her feet, God’s betrayal and that unconquerable name–in a rush they glide around her head. Now, as Njeri struggles to remember what she was like when she was unconscious; before she started school, before anything. Like the time Joshua pushed her off the hammock, and she flew–hitting her head against a large stone. For awhile there was nothing. Njeri feels she has lost something–something is missing.

Her seven year old body sits on the toilet seat. Staring at the ceramic squares, she wonders how long it will take for her dangling legs to reach the floor and her beginnings to exist. She aims to go back, but all she sees is a blinding white vacancy–lightening, flashing, fleeting moments. She remembers her first day of primary school and how prepared she was not to cry.

I remember yuh first day of school and how yuh wouldn’t stop cryin. I remember. Ah was puttin on yuh school uniform, and yuh just wouldn’t stop cryin. Yuh fadder try to make yuh feel better by takin yuh picture. He even let yuh ride in front with him wen he was droppin yuh off to school.

But as soon as her father left and seeing all the other girls were in tears, she couldn’t help herself. The teacher came back and said, “You too, I thought you’re a big girl, and look at you, crying like de rest.”

She sees a hazy image of her mother throwing a grapefruit, hitting her hard in the stomach. Then there was the time she was lost in the supermarket–the fright she felt swimming in a sea of people walking past and through her. But these memories seem unreal. She tries to remember her birth, or when she couldn’t speak, because Joshua claims that he remembers being inside their mother’s womb. But all Njeri remembers is a feeling. A feeling of fear that comes with the shadows as they thrash around in the dark: loud sudden crashes, bodies slamming against walls, the sound of out-of-breath screams, and the silence after. An eerie silence, similar to the sound the beach made early in the morning and late in the evening, when all the people were heading home. The quiet between the waves coming in, crashing into the sand; the silence that was never without sound because the walls cried every night. Her heart racing with expectations of something breaking, someone suddenly screaming, “Oh God, look at de blood, so much blood!” This is what she remembers, but it is not enough. She cannot find herself amongst any of these memories, amongst a feeling.

Njeri gets up and looks at her reflection in the medicine cabinet’s mirror, and for a quick second she cannot recognize her face.  The image grins and jeers at her. She hears something whispering, “Yuh stupid girl.” And then, she feels someone or something moving behind her, but no one is there. She turns the lights off, and feels the person or thing’s eyes were nailing her to the wall. She doesn’t know what it is, but it makes her feel the sickening sense of nausea  inside her stomach. She searches for its eyes and body but it ends when her mother comes knocking at the bathroom door.

“Wha you doin in de bathroom so long, girl? Is hide you hidin from house work so?  No man want ah woman who can’t cook and clean, so yuh better come and help meh in de kitchen. Come cut dem carrots and sweet pepper for de fry rice,” Achaia demands.

“So yuh ask yuh fadder bout goin to de beach tomorrow.”

“No.”

“Wha yuh waitin for? Yuh doh want to go on de beach?”

“Yeah.”

“Well yuh know he will do anyting for you and Serena. You and your sister are his girls. He doh listen to me, so why yuh doh ask him. We can go and get out of dis house for one day? You should ask him wen he come home tonight. O.K baby, you know dat mommy loves you.”

She is Comrade’s girl. Njeri thinks about this as she cuts the vegetables. She believes that it is true. Whenever anyone wanted anything from Comrade, they came to Serena or Njeri. Her mind wanders to the time when her picture was on the front page of the Sunday Express, holding a placard–“One Union, One Struggle, Unite”–in her hand as she marched side by side with Comrade to Fyzbad on Labor Day. Even Comrade’s friends from the union said she was the spitting image of her father, and if Comrade ever went crazy and said Njeri was not his child, they’d have to jail him.

“I have his dimples, and red hair. I’m brave just like daddy, so brave dat I doh fraid lizards and frogs like Sreena.”

It’s not enough.  She still feels like a stranger invisibly walking behind Comrade’s foot steps, stepping into his enormous black shoes that Joshua spit shined for him every Sunday evening. She can’t be a jackass as her mother called herself, cooking the food Comrade won’t touch, “This is stale food you giving me.”

Njeri wants to be as powerful as her father.  The man who could shut down the entire country if he wanted to because the people believed in him.

Chapter 5

Previous chapters here:  1, 2, 3, 4

“It ain’t look like he comin,” Achaia says to herself.   Her hands shake as she packs her clothes in cushion covers and paper-brown bags. Maybe she can get away with this impulse, this unsettling decision to leave Comrade and the children.

“He must be up in dat bitch ass. I cyar believe dis man goin call my child after dat whore.”  Even though Francesca, Achaia’s grandmother’s name, was the name on the birth certificate everyone called Achaia’s and Comrade’s first daughter by the name of Comrade’s mistress, Serena.

“Well, she could have him. I done see enough trouble with dat man. Wary! Wake up yuh sisters. Help dem put on deir clothes quick before yuh fadder come home. He go take care of all yuh good. Is only all yuh and he self he does study.”

They walk across the dark road. She’s expecting Comrade to come any minute now, stopping her from running away to her aunt’s, Lady Moore, place in Port-of -Spain. She sees no one appearing through the darkness.  She wraps baby Joshua safely between her arms and a blue blanket. Njeri hangs onto the tail of her dress, as Wary holds Serena’s hand walking ahead. They stop by the neighbor Bianca’s house. The lights are on. Achaia yells,  “Bianca!”, but no one answers. Desperately, she cries again, “Bianca! Bianca!”  Still no one answers, but the lights are on.  Bianca had agreed earlier in the day to look after the children while Achaia made her escape to Port of Spain.

She sluggishly falls to the ground and begins to cry. The children surround her, displaying their guilt for eating earlier that evening.  The KLIM powdered milk mixed with granulated sugar.

“He promise to take care of meh,” she sobs. “He go make tings all right. I so stupid to believe him. Ah should-ah just leave and go like Auntie say before all dis.”  She says waving her hands at the children.  “Ah cyar leave all yuh now, is all yuh ah stayin for.”

∞

In the family bible, her full name is printed, Bertha Achaia Sharp, but everyone calls her Achaia. It suits her better. The name itself meant grief and trouble, and she knew about grief and trouble so well she could hold in the pain, stand and continue working.

She was born in Mount George, Tobago, and spent most of her youth there before she was sent to live with her grandmother’s sister, Lady Moore in Trinidad. She is the first out of fifteen children of Njeri’s grandmother, Hilda Romeo.

I never had ah home. I never had a home dat is why I stay and put up with yuh fadder shit. Is because ah all yuh, ah stay.

Hilda couldn’t marry my fadder, Rupert Sharp, because he raped her. Is only out of shame and obligation she keep me. But Rupert did love Hilda. And seein dat she intended on havin me, he proposed, but she refused him. Dat didn’t stop Rupert from comin around lookin for Hilda. Some years later, when I was still ah baby, Rupert died of some kind of complications, sugar or something. I never really knew my fadder. I just knew of him.

I was nine when yuh grandmother was pregnant with yuh Uncle Augustus, and she decided to marry Keith Romeo. The only problem with dat was he didn’t want me to live with dem. Yuh grandmother ask she people if dey could take me in for awhile. At least until she could work someting out with Keith. But he didn’t want me to spend one more night under deir roof. It was like he couldn’t stand de sight of me. So, when ah come home from school, ah find all my clothes scattered across de front yard, and Keith sittin in de verandah with a cutlass in he hand, sayin, “Hilda ah doh want dat blasted child in meh house or else I’ll kill she. You better not step into dis yard if you want to live girl.” Some days after, ah started to shake real bad and ah tought dat ah was possessed by de Devil. But it was just bad nerves.  I’ll never forget the scorn in Keith eyes.

Meh own mother kick meh out. Ah was movin from house to house, from school to school until meh grandmother took me in and ah stay with her until she passed on. I was fifteen when Lady Moore, yuh grandmother sister, send for me.

Because of de movin around, ah never finished school and de only skill ah had was workin in ah store. Sellin. Dat is probably the first ting ah learn. Checkin money. Yeah, because ah use to work in meh grandmother’s parlor after school and on de weekends.

When ah started livin with Lady Moore, she tell meh dat ah had to help meh self. Ah was workin at Diamonds, the fabric store on High Street. It was at Diamonds dat ah meet Comrade.

At first I wasn’t interested in Comrade, but after de encouragement from Lady Moore, ah started to feel for him. Lady More was impressed by Comrade, because one ting, yuh fadder could talk. If anyting else dat man know is how to persuade people and he always have he self lookin like he could buy de world. Lady Moore at first tought dat he woulda make ah good man, but when she see where dis good man was comin from–how poor he family was–she tell meh ah should end it. Lady Moore did tell meh dat. She say dat Comrade would always be tied down by his family, but by den it was too late. I was already two months pregnant with Wary.

Yeah I was still ah young girl when ah had Wary. Ah was nineteen and yuh fadder was twenty two when we married. Lady Moore pleaded with meh to stay with her. But ah felt like ah had no other choice. I felt like ah had to say yes. In partin, Lady Moore said to me, “Mark my words Achaia, Comrade would always have to take care of his six brothers, four sisters, and his mother and father. He will never have time for you.” And believe it like we is God’s children, what she say is true.

Chapter 4

See Chapter 1, 2, 3.

When it’s not too crowded, and I actually can sit down, I like riding the trains. Especially the ride on one of those trains with the gray seats. If it’s not packed with bodies, I sit in the middle where the plastic windows are. I pretend I’m watching a movie.

I stare at the flickering red number 1 train, the blue A train, the orange B train. The steel surface lightens traveling between the beams in the tunnel. It reminds me of old black and white moving pictures–picture movies. The cars are really rooms in an apartment. It’s a play, and the people are all mimes with painted white faces.

By the end of my ride, I don’t want to get off. Since the interruption begins with the trapped doors, stiffly opening at my stop. Swiftly signaling an exit, there’s only a few seconds left to scatter into a directed destination. As the scampering memories I buried and forgot were real–each impatient and unpredictably taking their turn; all wanting to be remembered–hungrily race outside.

“So, why are you late, again? Come here and tell me why you’re late, Ms. Ironside.”

Njeri found she couldn’t speak just then, instead she stood at her first year teacher’s, Ms. Rojas, desk staring at her shoes. Her eyes, they move from the tip of her black shiny oxfords, the ones that her father bought for her during one of his trips to England, to the neighboring classroom, as she notices Miss Ali taking out her whip.  Miss Ali begins to chase after Geraldine Mitchell, the fastest girl in school, who everyday at recess time ruled the playing field. Even Geraldine, who outran the fastest runners at the Boys’ school down the hill, and who won all of the track meets at Sports and Games day, couldn’t outrun the inevitable. Cornered, Geraldine bawls, even when she hasn’t felt the whip’s sting.

“So you’re playin dumb now? Well, stand over there and play dumb,” Miss Rojas orders, and points to the far corner of the room.

Every day now, Comrade has been waking up late, then, rushing Njeri and Joshua to school: Njeri at San Fernando Girls’ Government and Joshua at the Boys’ School down the hill. But by the time they got there, the assembly had already praised God, sung the national anthem, and was heading to the classrooms. Sometimes it was a little after the hour.

As punishment, Njeri and the rest of the late-comers were made to stand in the late-line where there was never any shade from the hot sun. Not only were late-comers beaten and humiliated by Principal Huggins herself–huffing and puffing after each heavy stroke–but late-comers were forced to spend part of the morning cleaning up the trash around the playing field, singing:

He has de whooole World, in his hands
He has de whooole World, in his hands
He has de whooole World, in his hands
He has de whole World in his hands

Njeri stands in the corner of the classroom where she faces the wall with all the ants.  The corner was designated for dunce and trouble makers.

“She wasted the whole morning away, when she could have been practicing her spelling and her tables,” Ms. Rojas says to the rest of the class. Finally overcome by the boredom of re-counting how many ants were coming and going on the wall, Njeri goes to Miss Rojas’s desk and the explanation almost makes it out her mouth, “Meh fadder dat drop meh late.” Something Miss Rojas already knew, given that she and the other teachers gossiped about where Mr. Ironside acquired the money to buy a brand new 1981 Datsun, costing more than the amount of money they earned from teaching in ten years.

“People here struggling to make ends meet, and don’t have the money for big time motorcar. He must be stealing the union money. That crook,” Miss Rojas whispered to Miss Ali, as Comrade pulled up in the slick black, air conditioned–with tinted power windows–big time motorcar.

Almost sweetly, Miss Rojas says, “All you had to do was say that.” Then she removes her large ruler from the desk drawer and pulls Njeri’s tiny hand out.  Five stunning strokes on the palm.

Later, at the end of the school day, Njeri stops to watch the mini parade her school puts on for the students. It’s the Friday before Carnival.  And she’s enthralled by the festivities, the masqueraders parading on stage. In a circle they dance their best gyration–showing off the intricate designs the creators spent sleepless nights sowing together for the judges. Engulfed with the dancing– the Calypso music resonating from the large speaker boxes and the bright colored feathers from the Red Indians, trembling with each beat–Njeri forgets to wait by the school gate for her mother.

Achaia and Joshua searched the entire school for her. One of the neighbors, living on the same street as the Ironsides, sees Njeri and offers to take her home.  From Poole Street’s opening, the crowd is noticeable, standing outside on the front yard of the Ironside’s house. Njeri wonders, what could be going on?  The commotion of heads, bobbing for a better view, incites her short legs. Her navy blue socks reaching her ankles, dirtied now as she steps into puddles.

Some cover their mouths, the rest just turn away their looks. Whispering under their breaths, they move aside to let her through. Njeri begins to float aimless in this sea of half looks and bobbing heads. Someone holds her hand. Miss Galerie, the next door neighbor.  She guides Njeri nervously through the crowd, and she asks, “So how… how was school today, Njeri?”

“Whey mammy?” Njeri blurts out, forgetting about the Red Indians, the steel-band music, and the Midknight Robber’s black, broad brim hat with little bells at the rim. A feeling of responsibility for the unsettling suspense began to carve a space inside of her.

“Yuh mammy alright. Doh cry baby. Yuh mammy alright. She comin back soon. She gone to de hospital. She comin back soon. But look,” Miss Galerie says excited as Njeri begins to bawl.

“Look at wha yuh mammy leave for you. Dis toy car yuh Uncle Eustace say to give yuh.”

The next day, Njeri wakes up and runs straight to the verandah for her mother. Achaia, sitting quietly, looks out at the long road leading out of Poole Street, her left elbow resting on the banister, propping up her chin. Her sunglasses hide the swelling, the bulged eye-lid and the blood-clot pupil, from the morning’s sun. Afraid of disturbing her, Njeri returns to the room she and her sister, Serena, shares and asks,”Sreena, Sreena, wha happen to mammy? Why she wearin dark shades and it not dark yet?”

“You don’t wear dark shades in the dark,  stupid.” Serena replies annoyed.
“But she wearin it in de house. Is bad luck to wear dark shades in de house.”
“No,” Serena says rolling her eyes. “Wearing a hat or an open umbrella in the house, that does bring bad luck. Daddy bust her eye yesterday. Satisfied?”
“But why daddy bust she eye?”
“Stop asking what does not concern you.” Serena says in her most grow-up eight year old voice. She leaves the room with her books snug between her arm and waist like her teacher.

No one said a word about that evening again. They all agreed in silence that it never occurred. Njeri was unable to find the words to describe what she believed as her part in the why Comrade busted Achaia’s eye, since it was never explained or considered by anyone else. Njeri blamed herself.

∞

The neighbors unable to ignore the events taking place under the Ironsides’ roof, they gather one by one outside.

“Mammy! Yuh go kill him!!” Serena cries. Achaia slaps Serena away and grabs one of Comrade’s cutlasses.

“But you stupid or something.” Comrade yells, backing away.
“Something must be wrong in your head. You better put down that fucking cutlass before…”
“Before what, Comrade?” Achaia spits out, stamping her feet and raising the blade above her head.
“Before what? Tell me,” she yells. “Why I cyar go see my own brother.”

As Achaia glance down to pull her skirt up, Comrade leaps toward her and snatches her hand with the cutlass. He wrenches it away, and throws the blade in a corner. He quickly returns to put his hands on Achaia. They fall to the ground, and he immediately pins his weight down, restraining her upper body. He smothers her mouth until her raging scream becomes a muffled sound. She struggles to break free of his hold while he cuffs her in the eye, the face. Again and again the sound of his hand smacking her face travels, echoing through the ears of the hallway, traveling to the children’s room, pounding with each heart beat. Achaia trembles tired and slow.  With hair caked in blood and sticking to her face, she gives up. Her body lies limp on the floor.

Chapter 3

This is the third installment to Chameleon Grace.  Here’s parts 1 and 2.

∞

De moon had settled itself dat night in de middle of de sky so everybody could see it. De neighbors were comin out with dere Vat 19th and Coca Cola. Somebody with ah spoon–ah melody pulsatin on half ah bottle. De quarto player was takin another sip. Feelin de spirit, he play ah devil of ah tune. From house to house, dey moved with gaiety in deir steps, and was greeted with de smell of cloved ham, fruitcake and sweet bread. Little children yelled out to deir mothers, dat de parang players are here.

Even dough tings were as dey were–poor people still strugglin to make ends meet–dat Christmas in ’78, it seemed as dough God was lookin down on we. We still was poor, but people could at least afford some new paint for de steps, and some new curtains to replace dem old ones dat we just take down, wash, and put back up. It was all because dem white people was all of sudden interested in de oil in Fyzabad. Now dat was Christmas. Even dough tings was dare, people could taste a real apple and a pear, just like in de States. Yeah man, it was nice dat year Njeri turned two.

“Where you think you going Achaia.”
“I goin wit you.”
“What, lookin like that…”
“And who to blame for dat…” Quiet.  Brisk footsteps.
“Ah sorry…Ah didn’t mean dat Comrade.” He cuffs her down.  Quiet.

“Don’t ever talk to me so.”

She holds her belly, and withdraws into a ball.  He turns away, and lights a cigarette. She listens to his footsteps, slapping the pitch, walking hard towards his 280 C.

As the car speeds away, a boy, a skinny little boy with clapping slippers and skin-fitting khaki shorts, runs out the house. He leaves behind a room occupied with the short breaths of his sleeping sisters, Serena and Njeri. His bony arms struggle with the intention of saving his mother, and the baby inside of her. He pretends he has The Incredible Hulk arms, strong enough to carry her pregnant body to the verandah, and then to safety, his parent’s room.  Finally, he begs, “Mammy,” he begs, “per yuh hand on de gate.”

Carefully, they walk to the concrete steps where they both sit and wait in silence. He rests his arm on her shoulder. He stares at her, as she props her head, showing off her heated cheek, over her beautiful face. He stares at her tears meeting the steps’ surface, turning into red circles. And he says what he always say to her, “Mammy, doh worry, wen ah get big and rich, I go take care of you.”

Short breaths escape from the other room’s wooden walls. The sound of her hand soothing her polyester belly; buckets being filled with water, restless with splashes, chatter, giggles from women and children by the standpipe outside; and the occasional car up-heaving the dust from the road; completes the air. Lost to the ruffling of sheets, as the boy sits up and asks, “Mammy, daddy doh love you no more?” With her puffy red eyes, she says, “Wary, I doh know,” and sighs to a spawning cobweb in the wooden creases of the galvanized roof. Where God would be.

Exhausted, she pulls Wary to her chest, and says, “Look how tings change now. Ah remember wen yuh fadder wouldn’t even let a fly light on me. Huh. Now he is de fly.” She caress the burning pain, swollen across the left side of her beautiful face. “Ah, I remember, huh how he use to get on, like ah was de only one for he.  And yuh believe ah didn’t even like he damn black ass. He look like he had wife and child already. Ah remember it good, all de talk bout me runnin him down.” She says sucking her teeth, then, amused she gives a slight grin and says, “Ah remember wen he come by meh house for de first time. He make bout fifty-nine trip up and down my street lookin for meh house. Ah was laughin at him. Ah tell meh cousin Theresa, yuh see dat jackass walkin dey. He lookin for me.”

∞

I couldn’t hold her anymore, like the time Dr. Parrot–he has a funny mustache and a white coat taller than me, taller than everyone–said my mother was having a nervous break-down. I remember this, but it feels like a dream, seeing my mother drooling one sided on a white pillow, sleeping. Talking to herself, sleeping. She couldn’t recognize any of us at the hospital, and even when we brought her home. She screamed at me to stop following her, as she crashed into the corridor’s green walls. She believed I was the demon walking behind her every step.

She cried everyday then. At night, I’d keep her company. Climbing into her bed, my seven year old arms tried to reach each other as I held her. Too small for her, I still held on–with every squeeze, so she won’t fall, saying, “I’m here, so never let go.” Every time I remember this moment, I’d hold on whispering in her ears, “Forget about him.”

Taller now, walking, leaving, closing doors behind me. With long legs, running faster than words, when words are too convincing, I have long legs faster than his words, “I didn’t do anything to your mother;” and her nonsense, whispering without a body. I am faster than her slippers, dragging in the darkness. When I have long legs to outrun them both.

But how do you successfully outrun them, when you can’t even measure their volume? How do you find the circumference for their pain and speak of it? How do you measure it, as their sound is louder than your own words? I open my mouth to scream, but nothing comes out.

This hate, this want for revenge, all of it makes complete sense. Or does it? Maybe it’s still a fabrication even when I want to realize the desire. Layering with every move I make. I see it everyday setting in, troubling my eyes particularly. I feel it now illuminate the moments I wait… When no one is there, tolerating the sun dimly shining through the sheets. When each day is as identical as the last, I arrive from the hidden: blood-shot and blue velvet. Greeting another morning the Lord has so graciously made with nocturnal eyes. I’d look to the medicine cabinet’s mirror, only to shun the confused image. Haunting me from skyscraper windows trying to keep clean, trying to surpass each other, I’d struggle to refute its reflection. I’d see the patch filled gray, halfway configured shadow, behind me, reflected through the steel of the metro machine. Sharply shifting out of focus–impatiently waiting as I take too long to buy my fare card–I’d feel it wanting that closure of being numb. Being dormant for however long, only to be roused again by a variety of details my mind collected.

Drinking the last of the bottle, I suddenly know why I get up every morning: to ride the overcrowded trains, the greatest trains ever.  Even when it takes forever to come, you can’t understand the conductor announcing that it’s not the train you believe it to be, and the transfers, the circles you make to get to your destination.  When, at the end of it all, hope will outlast me. Coming to any room with a mirror, I imagine leaping out, letting hope outlast me.

The phone rings, and without looking, wanting it to be Pieta, I answer.
“Hello.”
“Jeri? It’s Gary. What happened today, I was expecting to see you at 5:00. Is everything O.K.?”
“I wass real ly ti red after the tripp. Guesss I over sslept.”
“It sounds like you’ve been drinking. What happened in D.C.? Sorry I didn’t pick up last night when you called. We could meet somewhere and talk if you like.”
“Can I call you back?”
“Why, what’s going on?”
“Leymme call you back.” I hang-up.

The phone rings, it’s him again.  I sit staring at the phone, confused by it’s urgency, about whether or not I should answer it. I get the feeling something bad will happen if I don’t.  I light another cigarette and watch the superstition float around the room in circles.

Chapter 2

This is the second installment to the novel I’m trying to write, finish… You can read the first chapter here.

In the dream, I can only see the back of her body, rocking from side to side on what looks like Serena’s bed. I suddenly realize my legs bending, shaking as a feeling of urgency runs through them. A feeling so deadly, crossing my path as I timidly approach the room. I can’t see if it’s really my mother, but somehow I know it’s her. I’ve seen her like this before, beaten down, frazzled, afraid. She’s lying there in this strange arrangement of a room, where the bed is the only furniture. I want to say something, but I can’t. I have no voice when I open my mouth, or maybe it’s because I’m a coward, afraid of what she might bawl. I just stare at her lying there like a child. And I want to cry as well, I can feel the heaving coming up as I try to force it down. “Say something,” but I can’t.

She turns to me, and I immediately close my eyes. Somehow it would all be real if I look. I won’t witness the dust she blows into my face. I’m too afraid to do anything now. So very still I stand, in midair it seems. When I finally open my eyes again, she’s still rocking from side to side. She says in a small voice, so very small, I can barely recognize those words making those sounds. They’re all jumbled like she’s speaking in tongues:

“Ahcyartakeitnomore. Ahgointogocrazy.”

I’m running now. As fast as I can, I run away, leaving her behind, running faster and faster with long legs extended. I’m running fast up this narrow corridor that never ends. It’s covered in red, in everything that came out my mother’s mouth. With long legs, I’m running so fast to the master bed-room. I know I shouldn’t look back, but I do and all that is there is a large mirror reflecting an image of what looks like the backside of my body rocking from side to side. I turn away and stare at the large wooden door before me. My fingers are long and skinny, nervously reaching for the bronze handle.

My father is resting comfortably with his newspaper covering his upper body with information. The air conditioner hums in the background. And everything that I say out of breath sounds like I’m speaking in tongues.

“Whatdidyoudotomammy?”

He removes his covering and looks at me in so much disbelief, that I wonder if I’m really alive. I’ll wake up if I could just pinch myself.

I must be alive, because I understand every word he says:

“I didn’t do anything to your mother,” His words are so clear. They’re so clear they make me ashamed. As the time when I was eight, and I couldn’t spell beach, and he said, “Big girl like you don’t know how to spell beach, your little brother can spell beach.”

Beach, big girl, beach. And Joshua was all pleased as he sang in his five year old voice, B E A C H. The door slams behind me, as I leave the room.

At the other end, down the corridor, my mother is speaking in tongues, “Ahcyartakeitnomore. Ahgointogocrazy,” a sound so quiet but still manages to shake the corridor’s walls. And I could hear him saying, “I didn’t do anything to your mother. You can’t spell beach. Spell beach. B E A C H.” Their voices compete, growing in volume; they pound against the walls, and I lose the muscles in my legs. I cover my ears and as I look down, there’s nothing but a black abyss beneath me. I begin to fall.

That’s when I wake up, when I start to fall. It happened again tonight, today. It’s been happening for weeks now. The same dream night after night. As soon as I close my eyes, I dream that she dies. My mother. I haven’t told anyone, not even Serena. It would scare her, believing that dreams can tell the future. But then again, they say when you dream of someone dying the translation is marriage. It must mean someone is about to get married. A little part of me still participates in superstition. I tell myself it’s foolishness as I feel the cold and try to remember where I am.

Yaya isn’t sleeping down by my legs, and I don’t hear the fish tank. This isn’t Regan’s apartment, I wonder about it for awhile. I wait for Yaya to come lick my feet, but she doesn’t. Everything becomes entangled as I try to readjust, and forget all that I saw in the dream. It becomes an impossible task as I listen and hear a woman singing an intoxicating song. I want her to stop her singing, but she continues:

I want to give you a dream that no one has given me

Remember when we found misery, we watched her

Watched her spread her wings and slowly fly around our room

And she asked for your gentle mind.

“I know her voice,” I say out loud. “Blonde Red Head’s Misery is a Butterfly,” I keep repeating. The song swells, and I begin to recognize shapes. I know these lifeless walls staring back at me. They’re without pictures, posters full of ideals, only white washed unmarked walls, plagued with roaches in the background. I look around and I’m startled by a pile of clothes resembling a tall man with feathers in the corner.

Nearing the song’s climax, I realize my state: lying on a ransacked mattress in my apartment. I wonder why I’m naked. The sun has already set, and I can see the deadly softness in the way the snow falls, collecting. Everything smells like ashes. As I shiver for the comforter resting at my legs, I remember waiting to board the bus at Union Station in D.C. The cold wind eating through my jeans.

I aged during the twenty-four hours. I feel it most as I try to get up off the mattress, and why it’s now difficult to walk to the kitchen without breaking down half way. I remember doing the show at the Warehouse Next Door and drinking rounds of tequila with Smurz and Regan, then, staggering onto a Greyhound at 3:30 this morning. I still see the red from the curtain from the dream, as new events that are not new at all come to mind. The shock, and I gasp, of seeing royal white feathers ruffling aggressively. I shake my head and everything becomes a messy ache of nausea, of too much unsettled on my stomach. I try to keep my head up as some of last night throbs its way back slowly.

When I open the fridge, I have to cover my eyes, blinded by Christmas lights in a darken backdrop–the Warehouse Next Door’s stage. I remember the band before us having a good set. I remember a piece, a scene I have to say shut up to more than once, running so fast, threatening to reveal itself completely like it did on the platform for the R train.

I was listening to The Streets’ “It’s Too late” on repeat, waiting for the R at Port Authority to take me to Lexington Ave for the 6. Monday morning’s rush hour, with so many crammed next to each other. Walking too far, feeling the wind gust of the train’s arrival, I found a dead end of shirts and ties that might topple over the yellow edge leading to the tracks. I began to sweat, and my dark shades fogged up. Nervously, I took another gulp of the coffee I spiked after the rest stop in Delaware–the morning’s glare, unbearable to look at, as the abandon buildings and the trees, burden with snow, raced by. Some of it spilled onto my coat. My hands were shaking from the nightmare I tried to drown: the demons coming uninvited. I tried not to argue aloud with them. With my shoulders caving in, I hid in pockets of shade as they mischievously exposed, giving a second life to, events I’d like to forget.

The 6 violently raced out of the tunnel, jagged apartment buildings urgently streaking through the glaring mirrors. My jaws tightened as I bit down hard on my lower lip, as the shock of seeing Pieta kissing someone else consumed everything.

We were playing the one ballad in the set, and I had lost control. Unbearable to look at–the memory of last night, lingering long after I have closed my red eyes. I moved to another car in the train, and all I saw was an audience staring back at me, knowing I had lost control.

I needed a distraction, an ambitious effort, trying to stop the images from walking through the plastic ads. Feeling the sharpness of the sunlight, all I saw was Pieta in the front row with Rickie Favors. I lost the timing and Smurz began her solo early. Regan glared at me why, as she began to sing:

We’d forget the love laws

for one night

for one night feel the ache

feel the pain in our curves

you’ll show me where

show where it hurts the most

I punched the car window hoping I could break the spell, embarrass myself into the present. But it was already too late, the stupid question I asked Pieta kept repeating itself, “So how was it? So how was it?” It rang in my ears, alongside Regan’s haunting vocals:

We’d forget our tongues

caught in Reason

drawing a line

drawing a rigid line

we’d refuse such a sentence

to lie down with

My walk was slanted, trying to catch myself before I fell too far down. My shoulders were lost in awkwardness, smashing into everything. I tried to outrun the memory of her full pink lips answering the stupid question. I protected my ears from the indifference in her voice. It moved with me anyway. From car to car, I heard her saying, “It was nice. It was nice.”

listen from the pit speaking

speaking a new nonsense

in a moment we’d lose

we’d lose everything

we didn’t have anything but skin

the salt from our eyes

the sadness in a kiss.

Staring at the Brita in the fridge, I remember the pieces that are meant to hurt the most. I notice a red dot on the floor. Tasting my own blood, I feel my lower lip.

I can’t remember how I found my way, walking through the after-math of the weekend’s blizzard for five blocks to my apartment building.

It’s 6:30pm. My phone beeps. I have four new messages, all of them from Gary, asking why I didn’t show for session today. I reach for my jeans covered with the crust of dirty melted snow at the legs. The liquor store will still be open.

Chapter 1

From de time you inhale de air, you get a name. De old people say yuh could name a child just by watchin how it come out de womb, but we did forget about dem simme dimme ting. Now, we just give dem wha-ever name dat come to mind: a famous athlete or movie star we see on TV. Sometimes, de child end up being de character of de name, because night after night–from de time de sun explodes into the sky to de dreariness of noontime–dey rehearsin other people’s manners, other people’s words, pronouncin other people’s voices. For wen time come to perform, dey want to be ah real person. Some of dem change deir name, because de couldn’t play de parts as if it was deir true nature. But some of dem make it look like dey is de original.

Each day, before you come, me and de moon talk all night about wey yuh fadder gone to, and who he with. Ah use to hide mehself with meh belly full like how de sky full tonight, and just drink all dat Johnny Walker. Sometimes, ah put on Al Green for company, and we would sing, “Let’s Stay Together,” and ah drink de bottle empty. Is shame dat make meh hide. Ah didn’t want nobody to know ah was drinkin while ah was havin you. Later, ah find out dey did know. Grinnin at meh. Well yuh fadder found dat to be real funny. He would laugh, and bring meh more Johnny, like if dat make up for de times he gone with dem jahmet.

Ah remember de day you come. Wednesday mornin in November, ah know yuh was comin. Ah was prayin dat ah could at least get de housework done. Ah still had to wash and put up de old curtains, paint de steps new. Send yuh brother and sister off to school, and cook yuh fadder food.

Ah tried to keep you still in meh belly so ah could put dem clothes out to dry. Ah didn’t have enough time for de curtains and steps. Ah know ah couldn’t keep yuh still no more wen de rain started to fall. Ah call out to de neighbor, Ms. Galerie, and she get one of dem boys drivin taxi to come pick meh up. Nobody could get ah-hold of yuh fadder. He was in Port of Spain, at the Red House, tryin to win de seat for dey union party.

It was trouble in dem years when I was havin you. De months before you born, I remember de big riot in Port of Spain. De people couldn’t take it no more. They was peacefully marchin, and den all of ah sudden, de police started to beat dem. It was like de heat get inside people blood. It was near Christmas time, and we want to spend it nice and buy some new tings. But we didn’t even have food to cook. And all dat was comin out yuh fadder mouth was black power dis and dat. He make meh stop usin de hot comb in meh own hair, and say not to put none ah dat white people rubberish in he child head. Yeah, I had to hide to do Serena’s hair, after I straighten it.

And dey only people you see workin in dem banks was dem fair-skin lookin girls. No black people was workin in Royal Bank. Dat is why it had to burn. Yeah, dey stoned down, and trow kerosene bottles in it. Dey did loot Woolworth. Yuh just see a yellow explosion, and people. Talk about people scamperin away like crazy ants. It was so bad, de government call ah state of emergency and put up a curfew. If police did catch yer outside, dey would ah shoot yuh down. But dat didn’t stop dem. People still come and trow big stone at de Red House, sayin dey was ready to burn dat down too.

Den de police come lookin for yuh fadder, because dey was lockin up all dem union men and black power rebels. Dey show deir papers sayin dey have ah right to search de premises for suspicious documents. Ah tell dem, dey had to wait until ah finish feed Wary and Serena. Ah wanted to see wha dey was doin. I wasn’t goin to let dem just go through my belongings. And everyting dey move, ah ask dem if dey find it dat way, wen dey just put it back anyhow, anyhow. I wasn’t afraid like dem other wives, faintin and actin stupid.

People get tired of how de government was runnin de country, and as yuh fadder say, is not like we didn’t have enough money to feed people. Trinidad is not ah poor country.

Anyway, on the day you born, we finally get in touch with Comrade, come to find out he win de seat in Parliament for de ULF party. Wen he hear you born, he tell everybody he win because ah you. He make ah big fuss about namin yuh. He say he didn’t want any of dem English names. He went and get dis book with African names, and for days he lookin for de right name. He finally say Njeri. Comrade say it means daughter of ah warrior.