That night, curled up on the floor beside Peter, Pynter realised that his uncle had not answered him. His head was a hive of questions he never got to ask – why, especially, was he always thiefin things that were never really useful?
The last time the police had come for him was after he arrived in the yard with a fridge on his head and a television under his arm, even though the whole world knew that Lower Old Hope didn’t have electricity. And it was a waste, because the chickens made their nest in the fridge and one of the policemen who came to take him went off with the television.
‘Peter, you like Birdie?’
‘Uncle Birdie,’ Peter hissed.
‘Uncle Birdie – you like ’im?’
‘Uh-huh. And you?’
‘He not well an’ he don’ know it.’
He felt Peter shifting in the dark. ‘S’not true – Tan Cee tell you so?’
‘No, I tell Tan Cee so.’
‘Which part of ’im not well?’ Peter said.
‘You say s’not true, so I not tellin you.’ He felt his brother moving towards him, felt his breath against his ear.
‘Jumbie Boy – you’z a flippin liar.’
Elena Bender was smiling when she asked Pynter to come and sit with her beneath the plum tree. That was not good. His mother never smiled so early in the day. She picked up a piece of stick and began making patterns in the dust with it. A thin film of sweat had settled among the very fine hairs on her upper lip. She glanced sideways at him, briefly, tried to smile again, but he could see that she was forcing it.
‘You goin to your father house from Sunday.’
‘My father – Manuel Forsyth?’
‘You don’ call ’im Manuel Forsyth; he’s your father.’
‘He got another name?’
‘Is the same rudeness you bring to your Uncle Birdie yesterday. You see how upset you make him? Peter know what y’all father look like. You don’t think you ought to know him too?’
He didn’t answer straight away, preferring to follow the flight of a pair of chicken hawks high on the wind above them. Their cries reminded him of bright sharp things – knives and nails and needles.
‘He a old man,’ he said. ‘Ten times older’n you. Dat’s what Miss Lizzie say. I not goin nowhere.’
‘What else Miss Lizzie say?’ She was looking at him sideways.
‘Lots o’ things.’
‘Like what?’ She was speaking but her lips were hardly moving.
A small current of uneasiness ran through him. He turned his head away from her, remembering the evening he returned from the river after Tan Cee had taken him there. During dinner, Patty the Pretty had come to sit with him. She’d asked him what had happened down there by the river. He told her, finding that he’d lowered his voice like hers. When he finished she was shaking her head and she wasn’t smiling as she did most times.
‘You must never tell your mother about these things, y’unnerstan? You talk to me or Tan Cee, but never your mother, y’hear me?’
He’d asked her why. She seemed to be making up her mind about something, then she touched his arm, ‘Know Miss Maisie?’
He nodded.
‘See that long white mark that run across she face?’
He nodded.
‘Well, one time, when y’all was little baby, Maisie say something to your mother about y’all and Manuel Forsyth. Elena put you an’ Peter down by the roadside and went fo’ her. It take four people to pull her off. She only had time to do that to her face. Imagine if she had another coupla minutes.’
He looked across at his mother, his voice a plea this time. ‘Let Peter go – I don’ like ’im, Na.’
‘You don’ like somebody you don’ know? Is you he ask for.’
‘Why?’
She looked away.
‘I wan’ to stay with Tan.’
‘What you say?’
He felt the change in her. It was as quiet as it was frightening. He jumped to his feet to run. Her hand shot out and closed around his shirt.
‘Siddown!’ The voice came from her throat. ‘Lemme teach you something. I’ll never have to do this with Peter – but you, you different. I don’ know what kind o’ child you is. You want to know who’s your modder? Well, let me,’ she shook him, ‘show you,’ she shook him again, ‘who your modder is!’
She was loosening the buttons of her bodice with the other hand. He watched as she lifted the ends of the garment. Still staring into his eyes, she took his hand and placed it on the small bulge on the left side of her stomach. He tried to pull away. She dragged him back.
‘Peter was here fo’ eight months an’ thirteen days. You,’ she pulled his hand over to the other side, ‘you was here a extra two days. This,’ she forced his finger along the lines that ran like a faint network of vines around the bulges, ‘is y’all signature. Is de writing dat y’all leave on me. Dis is Peter; dis is you. Me, Elena Bender, I’z your modder. So!’ She shook him hard. ‘Don’ get renk with me, y’hear me! I not askin you, I tellin you – next week you goin live with your father.’
She pushed his hand away, got to her feet and went inside.
A couple of mornings every week, when it was still so dark even the chickens beneath the house had not begun to stir, there came the clip-clop-clipping of his father’s donkey, the thud of a bag of provisions hitting the ground, then the voice, ‘Elen-ooy!’
Pynter would listen to his mother in the bedroom as she got up, quickly dressed and hurried down the hill to the road.
Pynter would hear the rhythm of the donkey’s hooves fading into the distance, following them in his imagination through the sea of plantation canes in the lower valleys of Old Hope, over the Déli Morne River, past the stony wastelands of Salt Fields, where they said the bamboo rose so high their branches swept the sky.
For a long time Pynter had tried to put a face to that voice.
The hands that lifted him onto the back of the donkey were big like Birdie’s. A face turned back at him – brown and smooth and hairless, the eyes resting on him almost as a hand would. And then a voice, ‘Is quiet where we going; you sure you want to come?’
He nodded. He liked the smell of the man.
His father’s house stood on a ridge that looked down on Old Hope. From there he could see the deep green scoop of the valley winding towards the Kalivini swamps where his grandfather disappeared, and the purple-dark hills that seemed to hold back the sea from spilling over onto the canes and the people who worked in them. His father’s house was smaller than his mother’s and had no yard to speak of, just the lawn he was not allowed to walk on, which belonged to Miss Maddie – a greying woman whom he’d only caught a glimpse of, and who his father called his daughter.
A window with six glass panes let light into the bedroom. It was the only room with a door that was open to the day.
His father pointed at the back room first – a lightless doorway that stood gaping like a toothless mouth, and from which came a warm and unexpected breath – the odour of musty, nameless things. ‘Don’t go in there,’ he said, without offering a reason. ‘And leave this place alone,’ he added, turning to the living room.
He’d said ‘this place’ as if the living room did not belong to the house.