Every new-year’s day after mass people would say to Uncle John, ‘Well, Johnno, this is the year; don’t forget to invite me to the celebrations when they call you to the bar.’ But no one really believes any more that he will actually become a lawyer. One year Uncle ’Phonso patted him on the back and said consolingly, ‘Never mind, brother John, there’s a big sand bar two-three miles down river; I can take you there in the sloop any time you want, and you can tell all these idiots that you’ve been called to the bar, you didn’t like the look of it and you changed your mind.’
In a way, Aunt Monica was as strangely obsessive as Uncle John. Papi said it was because she had no children to occupy her and bring her to her senses. She seemed to dedicate her life to neatness and cleanliness, not only making sure that Uncle John’s lawyerly apparel was always impeccable, but every piece of cloth in their section of the house, from handkerchief to bed-sheet to window-blind, was more than regularly washed and – above all – ironed. Aunt Monica spent at least three or four hours every day making sure that every item of cloth she possessed was clean and smooth and shiny. She had ironing boards that folded out from the wall in each of the three rooms she and Uncle John occupied and kept urging the other branches of the family to install similar contraptions in their rooms. Once when my grandmother remarked: ‘All these children! The house beginning to feel crowded again. Umberto, we best think about adding on a few more rooms,’ Papi quipped: ‘Why? Just so that Monica could put in more fold-out ironing boards?’ – and everyone laughed.
* * *
One morning as we were all at the kitchen table, dressed for work and school and finishing breakfast, Uncle Umberto came into the room in his sleeping attire (short pants and an old singlet) looking restless and confused. We all looked at him, but before anyone could ask, he said: ‘You all, I didn’t sleep at all last night, because I was studying something funny that happened to me last evening.’ Everyone sensed one of his ghost stories coming and we waited expectantly. I had got up from the table to go and do some quick revision before leaving for school, but I stood my ground to listen.
‘Just as the sun was going down yesterday I went for my usual walk along the path overlooking the river – you know I does like to watch the sunset on the river and the small boats with people going home up-river from work in town. Suddenly, just as I reach that big rock overhanging the river at Mora Point, this white woman appear from nowhere on top the rock. Is like if she float up or fly up from the river and light on the rock. She was wearing a bright blue dress, shiny like one of them big blue butterflies...’
‘ Morpho,’ interrupted my brother Patrick, the know-it-all. And Papi also had to put in his little bit.
‘Shiny blue dress, eh? Take care is not Monica starch and press it for her.’ But they were both told to be quiet and let Uncle Umberto get on with his story.
‘She beckon me to come up on the rock, so I climb up and stand up there next to her and she start to ask me a whole set of questions – all kind of thing about age and occupation and how long I live in these parts and if I ever travel overseas – and she got a funny squarish black box or bag in her hand. Well, first of all, because she was white I expect her to talk foreign, like somebody from England or America, but she sound just like one of we.’ He paused and looked around. ‘Then after she had me talking for about ten or fifteen minutes, I venture to ask her about where she come from, but she laugh and say: “Oh, that’s not important, you’re the interesting subject under discussion here” – meaning me –’ and Uncle Umberto tapped his breastbone twice. ‘Then like she sensed that I start to feel a little uneasy, and she say: “Sorry, there’s no need to keep you any longer, you can continue your walk.” By then like she had me hypnotized, and I climb down from the rock onto the path and start walking away.’
‘Eh-eh, when I catch myself, two, three seconds later and look back, the woman done disappear! I hurry back up the rock and I can’t see her anywhere. I look up and down the path, I look down at the river, but no sign of her – just a big blue butterfly fluttering about the bushes on the cliff-side...’
It was vintage Umberto. Uncle John said: ‘Boy, you still got the gift – you does tell some real good ones.’
‘I swear to God,’ Umberto said, ‘I telling you exactly what happen. This isn’t no make-up story.’
Still musing about Uncle Umberto’s experience, we were all beginning to move off to resume our preparations for school and work, when Aunt Teresa began to speak in an uncharacteristically troubled voice.
‘Umberto, I don’t know who it is you see, or you think you see, but you got to be careful how you deal with strange women who want to ask a lot of questions – you say she had you hypnotized, well many a man end up losing his mind – not to mention his soul – over women like that. The day you decide to have anything personal to do with this woman, you better forget about me, because I ent having no dealings with devil women...’
This was certainly strange for Aunt Teresa, who usually shrugged off her husband’s idiosyncrasies and strange ‘experiences’ with a knowing smile and a wink at the rest of us. Aunt Teresa’s agitation seemed to be contagious among the women of the household. I noticed that Mami seemed suddenly very serious and, as Aunt Teresa continued to speak, Aunt Monica, preoccupied and fidgety, came and stood by the fridge next to me and began to unbutton my school shirt. As she reached the last button and began to pull the shirt-tails out of my pants, the talking stopped and everyone was looking at us.
Too shocked or uncertain to react to this divestiture before, I now smiled nervously and said: ‘Hey, Aunty, I’m not too sure what we’re supposed to be doing here, but should we be doing it in front of all these others?’
There was a general uproar of laughter and Aunt Monica removed her hands from my shirt as if stung; but she quickly recovered, gave me a swift slap on the cheek, and said, ‘Don’t fool around with me, boy, I could be your mother. Besides, everybody knows that I’m just taking off this crushed-up excuse for a school shirt to give it a quick press with the steam iron and see if I can’t get you to look a little more decent. If your mother can’t make sure you all children go to school looking presentable (and you, Mr. Nickie, are the worst of the lot), then somebody else will have to do it, for the sake of the good name of the family you represent...’ By the time she’d finished saying this, she was traipsing out of the kitchen waving my shirt behind her like a flag.
We did not realize it at the time, but Uncle Umberto’s story was the beginning of a strange sequence of events that was to befall him and to haunt the rest of us for a very long time.
No one was surprised when he revealed, a few days later, that he had met the woman again, and that she had walked up and down the riverside path with him, but the mystery of the woman was solved for me when she came into my classroom at school one day, along with our teacher, Mr. Fitzpatrick, who introduced her as Miss Pauline Vyfhuis, a graduate student who was doing fieldwork for her thesis in Applied Linguistics. She carried a tape-recorder in a black leather case and told us that Professor Rickford at the university had sent her up here to record the people’s speech for her research. When I went home and announced this to the family, they all accepted that Miss Vyfhuis must be Uncle Umberto’s blue butterfly lady – all except Uncle Umberto himself; he claimed to have spoken at length to his lady and she’d confirmed that she could appear and disappear at will; that she could fly or float in the air and that one day he (Uncle Umberto) would be able to accompany her – floating off the cliff to places unimagined by the rest of us.