“No,” Rachel said, through her teeth, “you tell your husband to leave her alone. Two ..”
Looking around her, at all the faces now turning sour, the woman dropped the butcher’s knife in the dirt and fled. I never saw her again. And I never saw my father again.
But just now there was the problem of the pink dress. Yes, I would get Grandy to take the dress. Another tug-of-war would begin. For Mama was convinced Grandy was spoiling me, and Grandy was convinced Mama didn’t know what she was doing. Mama often reminded Grandy I was her child and she had given birth to me. Grandy would laugh and say she had given birth to Mama in the first place.
“Why, for example,” Grandy wanted to know, “you have this child bathing in cold water in the mornings, I will never understand. Don’t you know she can catch chronic in her bones and die? Don’t you know you should warm the water for her to bathe in?”
“Warm water!” Mama would point to the small gas stove in the kitchen. “If she need warm water, she can warm it herself! There is the kettle! There is the stove!”
“Nonsense!” Grandy would reply. “Is something you should do for her. It was something I used to do for you, even when you were a big girl, big enough to go get yourself pregnant! Come Gloria,” Grandy would say, “I warmed this water for you. Come let me give you a bath.”
Grandy started by pouring the hot water from the kettle into the plastic basin in the bathroom. Then she added cold water, testing the water with the tip of her finger until it was just the right temperature. She then dropped a piece of bluing into the basin and watched it spread through the water, until it was the colour of the deepest parts of the ocean.
“Step in,” she would say softly.
“She not a baby, you know!” Mama would shout. “You only put bluing in the water when you trying to keep ghosts off of babies and Gloria not a baby any more!”
“Don’t pay any attention to her,” Grandy would say. We were now two half-circles coming together to form a perfect whole.
Once I was in the water Grandy began by soaping my rag into a creamy lather, then started washing down my back, my arms and chest, my legs, my fingers and toes, inside and outside of my ears. “Stand up,” she would say, and, very gently, she would wash between my legs. Often as she did this part, Grandy talked to me in a hushed voice, telling me all sorts of fanciful tales.
When she was done giving me a bath, Grandy told me to stick out my tongue. She examined it, and my teeth, rubbing my tongue with a clean rag. When she was satisfied everything was as it should be, she wrapped me up in a towel and held me in her arms. Mama’s eyes would roll up to the sky.
Yes, I would let Grandy take the dress. By the time I came back home Mama would be so happy to see me she would forgive whatever I’d done to the dress. And, I would take extra good care of the dress so as not to get any stains on it.
I got up and followed Grandy into the house, changed out of my school clothes and came back out on the verandah with two star-apples. Before long Nilda came over and sat down beside me.
“Here,” I offered her a star-apple, but she shook her head. Something was bothering her. It seemed lately something was always bothering Nilda.
“They’re at it again,” she said quietly.
“What for this time?” I could just hear Nadia’s and Jesus’ voices rising in their house.
“The usual.” Nilda was using her toes to toy with a piece of dried leaf at her feet. After a while she stopped doing this and let her head hang down in front of her. “Aren’t you happy you don’t have a father, Gloria? Aren’t you happy you don’t always have to deal with all that arguing? That you can have peace and quiet in your house? Aren’t you happy about that?” She sounded so hopeless I didn’t know what to say.
“No, you don’t want one, believe me. You don’t want a father. You don’t want that cussing and fighting every day. Believe me, you definitely don’t want that.”
Both Jesus’ and Nadia’s voices kept getting louder and louder. Everyone could tell a fight was brewing and a small crowd was forming outside their door. Furniture was being shoved back and forth and curses were flying.
“I’m tired of this life … all those women!” Nadia was shouting.
Grandy, who was preparing dinner inside, came to the door with an onion in her hand. She listened for a while, shook her head and went back in the house.
“Another one … another one pregnant for you … and you can’t even feed the ones you already have! Look at this place … look at how we living, Jesus!” There was silence for a while before Nadia spoke again. “Where you think you going? Why you putting on those clothes? I’m talking to you! Talk to me, Jesus!”
There was the sound of cloth tearing and bodies tumbling around inside the house. Nadia cried out in pain and Jesus came running out, his shirt in shreds. Nadia was close behind him with a pot of water. She threw it at him, but he dodged and ran through the gate. Her eyes were red and her bottom lip was swollen. She must have fallen and burst her lip because Jesus would never hit her. He had many faults, Jesus, but hitting women was not one of them.
“What?” she looked out at the crowd and got even more upset. “You never see a man and woman fuss in all your lives? What you all staring at?” The crowd started to disperse. She looked over to Nilda, and the sight of the girl’s misery must have enraged her even more. “Nilda,” she shouted, “get your tail into this house right now.”
Nilda rose without saying a word and went to her mother. I watched her go and realized there was a heaviness about her that hadn’t been there before. I would have to try and talk to her one of these days, that girl Nilda.
“I can’t believe they’re still living like that,” Grandy said, coming out on the verandah again. “All these years and they’re still cussing and fighting? Man is trouble own self you know, Gloria. You would never believe all the trouble man can get you into. Lie, lie, lie. Nothing lie like man. And as changeable as star-apple leaf! Why they can’t stay with only one woman, God alone knows! Now that you’re going to high school and have your whole future in front of you, you have to stay far away from them. They can blighted your future!” Her eyes moved quickly over my thin frame, stripping me of my clothes, looking beneath my skin, past my bones all the way down into my body to see if it had started to mature, to see if my body had started to betray me. Not finding any evidence of what she was looking for, she looked relieved.
“Well, anyway,” Grandy said, “you still a little girl. We still have time to work on you.”
I wasn’t sure what it meant – them working on me – but I knew it had something to do with becoming a woman. I did not know what made one a woman, I only knew that becoming one was very dangerous. Something to lead one astray. I only had to look at the women around me. The way something about their bodies had betrayed them. Rachel. Nadia. My mother. This woman thing involved something, I concluded long ago, easily lost and almost impossible to regain. I was glad I was not yet a woman. Was far, far, in fact, from becoming one – though if anyone asked me what made one a woman, I would not know what to say.
I got up and followed Grandy into the house. I went over to where the pink dress was hanging and took it out of the plastic bag knowing my grandmother would look over and see it.
“Oh!” Grandy said when she saw the dress, a gleam coming into her eyes. “ Now, isn’t that a beauty.” She came over and took the dress and felt its material. “Such a beauty. Oh, what a beauty is this sheer pink dress!”
CHAPTER 3
I knew Yvette was going to be a problem from the start. She stood at the top of the hill, looked down into the glistening river and dared us all to get naked.
“Naked? You must be