The New Moon's Arms Page 3

  “It’s not a toy!” said Stanley.

  “He didn’t have it during the funeral,” Ife responded mildly. “I sent him outside to play during the reception. He would have died of boredom in there.”

  I had it. “Willow Tree.”

  Ife looked confused. “What?”

  “That plate that dropped and broke. It was the Willow Tree china pattern. I used to have one like it.”

  “Let us take you home, nuh?” Clifton said. “Ife could drive your car. Me and Stanley will follow in ours.”

  “No, no. Don’t go to all that trouble. I’m fine. Fresh as a daisy in spring!” I threaded my way through the cars in the lot. The tarmac was softening in the heat. If I ruined my stilettos, I was going to blister Egbert Paul’s ears for him.

  “You sure you don’t want us to drive you?” Ife asked again.

  “I don’t need minding. The matriarch don’t need a full-time nurse yet.” I was smiling, but the words came out harsher than I meant them.

  “Mummy, please stop it. You know I didn’t mean it that way. I just meant that you were a grandmother. In some cultures, grandmothers are honoured.”

  “And in all cultures, grandmothers are old,” I snapped. Damn. Temper again. We were at Victoria, my red rattletrap of an Austin Mini car. I hugged Ife by way of apology. “Really. I’m okay.”

  Nobody would do me a favour and steal that car. The left back window was brown paper covered with plastic wrap and held on with masking tape. A crack in the front windshield had long since walked its way from the bottom to the top of the glass. I wasn’t even going to ask the mechanic how much it would cost to replace the windshield. I still hadn’t finished paying him for when he’d fixed my brakes last year.

  Clifton was frowning at Victoria. “You should get that muffler fixed, you know, Mother. It hanging a little low.”

  Hanging low? Rusting away and falling off was more like it. I got my keys out of my purse, opened the car door so it could cool inside a bit before I put my behind on that hot seat. I rubbed my itchy hand.

  “Your hand hurting?” asked Stanley.

  I realised I had been rubbing that hand since we left the funeral home. “No,” I answered. “Allergy, maybe. Probably Gene’s punch.”

  Stanley made a “yuck” face.

  I laughed. “I see you tried it, too.” I did that little dance you had to do to get into a car wearing a pencil skirt: sit sideways on the seat first, with your legs outside the car; then knees and toes together, lift the feet into the car, swivel till you’re facing the steering wheel. Clifton closed the door after me. Such a gentleman.

  I rolled down the window. It only stuck once. “I going straight home. Promise.”

  “You have to work on Monday?” Ife asked.

  “Yeah. Shit.”

  “Grandma said ‘shit’!” burbled Stanley.

  “Stanley, you will not use such language,” his mother told him.

  “They gave me a week’s bereavement leave,” I said. “I wish it was a year.”

  “Maybe Mrs. Winter will have to be off work till her ankle get better,” said Ife.

  I rolled my eyes to the sky. “Please God.”

  “Grandma can say ‘shit,’” muttered Stanley. He crossed his arms, pushed his lips out in a sulk.

  “Grandma’s a big old woman,” Clifton told him. “She can say what she wants.”

  “I am not old!” I started the car over his apologies. Old. I called out the car window, “Men your age still soo-sooing me in the street.” I tried to remember the last time anyone had wolf-whistled me. Chuh. Probably wasn’t so long ago.

  The engine switched over to idle. “All right,” I said to them. “The old witch—excuse me, the old matriarch—is returning to her cottage in the woods now. She’s going to talk to her mongoose familiar and brew up some spells.”

  “Spells?” Stanley looked delighted.

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “Snips and snails and puppy dogs’ tails—covered in chocolate.”

  His mouth fell open.

  I put the car in gear. As they walked away, I saw Ifeoma put one arm around Clifton. Stanley took her free hand.

  Damned punch was bitter in the back of my throat.

  I was at the exit to the parking lot when I heard a car horn blowing at me. I stopped. A beige sedan pulled up alongside me. Gene got out and came to my window. “I think I upset you in there just now,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t fret,” I replied. “Wasn’t you. It’s just the strain of…everything.” Like waking up four mornings ago to find that Dadda had died in the night. The arrangements. Putting on a good face. I was tired like dog, the little bit of arthritis in my left knee aching. I couldn’t wait to get home to the peace and quiet. No more Dadda and his secrets. Just me in the empty, lonely house.

  “You could do me a favour, though,” I said to Gene.

  “Anything.”

  “I’m feeling little bit shaky. You could shadow me in your car? Just until the ferry dock? I want to be sure I get to the waterbus all right.”

  He nodded. “I’m right behind you.”

  ALEXANDER TREMAINE UNLOCKED THE DOOR that would take him to the Zooquarium’s outdoor exhibits. Not this morning, he prayed silently. I just want a normal day. Alexander hated filling out Incident Reports. Since taking this job as manager of the outdoor exhibits six months ago, it’s like he had one every few weeks. They had to be in triplicate, and Mrs. Thomas smirked whenever he handed one in. Again, Mr. Tremaine? You sure?

  If Mrs. Thomas ever set foot outside the administration office, she’d see for herself what he meant. But she was very proud of the fact that she had been through the zoo only once: on the obligatory tour they’d given her on her first day at the job. Mrs. Thomas hated animals.

  Alexander stepped out onto the cement path that snaked around the outdoor exhibits. Look like Dennis had already washed the path down with the hose this morning; the cement was dark with damp, though it hadn’t rained. Alexander checked in on the turtle rehab, the first stop. Mountain Girl was going to be okay. She was recovering from her encounter with a speedboat. She was eating well. On his way to the spoonbills, Alexander murmured a good morning at Dennis, who was using a big yard broom to sweep leaves and fallen almonds off the path. The spoonbills were happily trolling in their man-made mangrove swamp. Their colour was a little faded. Alexander made a note to ask Dennis to put some more pellets in their feed. Visitors didn’t want to see roseate spoonbills that weren’t rosy.

  Only six-thirty in the morning, but the sun was beating down already. Management was in no hurry to install shade roofing for the walkway. If the heat kept visitors moving quickly through the exhibits, the Zooquarium could funnel more of them through in a day, plus fill up the Zooquarium cafeteria with people looking to sit down and have a cool drink or some soursop ice cream after the hike through the exhibits.

  The seals were next. Alexander could smell the heavy piss scent of seal urine. He slowed down. He took his handkerchief out of his back pocket and mopped his face.

  He couldn’t put it off any longer. He left the path, walked up the grass-covered incline that led to the seals’ enclosure. He reached the waist-high cement wall and looked down into the enclosure. Monk seals were nocturnal, and asleep or sluggish during the day when the visitors came through. Disappointed children would stand at the seal pen and whine that this was boring. Not a month went by that some visitor didn’t complain that the seals weren’t moving and Something Should Be Done. Every year, Management talked about closing down the seal exhibit and putting in a dolphin show instead. But the Zooquarium was funded by the Ministry of the Environment, which had a mandate to educate the public about the protected seals, so they stayed.

  There was Henny, dozing on the bottom of the pool. Well out of Henny’s territory was Penny. She’d hauled out onto one of the “dunes” and was snoring blissfully as she basked. Crab Cake and Hippo were sleeping on the rocks, too. Vampire (he bit) was in one of the sh
eltered caves, only his rear end sticking out.

  One, two, three, four, five, Alexander counted. Six. Seven.

  But the Zooquarium owned only five seals.

  Alexander sighed. It was going to be an Incident Report morning.

  THERE WERE PARKING SPACES topside on the waterbus. I wedged my car between a beat-up old VW and a flashy new RV that was scarlet as an arac apple. Somebody was showing off that they had the money to import an expensive car from “foreign.” Dadda called cars like that “penis extensions.”

  Used to call.

  Gene had found a space for his car a few rows over. What was I doing, accepting his offer to see me all the way home? I didn’t even know him, not really. Ife and Clifton would have come home with me.

  I got a flash of Dadda’s coffin in the grave, the dull thumps of earth falling on it from the backhoe. I hugged myself to hold in the sobs threatening to shudder up from my belly.

  We were underway. A few people got out of their cars and went to the railing of the waterbus to look out. Gene was one of them. He looked around for my car. I looked away, pretended not to see him.

  Damn Gene. I had been trying to put my doubts about Dadda away. But with one sentence, he had them welling up inside me again.

  I couldn’t keep still in the car. I got out of Victoria the Rustbucket and picked my way to the back of the boat, where Gene couldn’t see me.

  Saturday evening. Peace on the water. No cargo ships taking equipment to the new salt plant. No speedboats, sport fishing boats, or glass-bottomed boats, either. Most of the pleasure boats had docked for the night. The dining rooms of the big hotels would be filling up with tourists. Later, the clubs would be filling up with locals and visitors. So long I hadn’t been out dancing.

  I stood beneath the setting sun and watched the evening exodus of bats streaming out of the towers of the harbour buildings, flitting erratically, catching insects. They looked happy, like bat school was out and now it was time to play. A few of them dipped to the surface of the water, came away with small silver fish in their claws. The waterbus started making its stops: Tingle Island, Vieille Virgèn, Creek Island. The cars thinned out as people drove off at their stops.

  “Nice evening,” came a raspy voice from behind me. I turned.

  “Oh, it’s you, Mr. Mckinley.”

  He jerked his chin at the water. “Not really evening till the little ones come out.” He was from Cayaba, made his living as a fisherman. More a white man than any other colour, from the look of him; but after a lifetime in boats in the sun, his skin was brick-ruddy, and wrinkled as a dirt road in dry season.

  “Little ones?” I asked. “The bats?”

  He leaned with his back against the railing, put his foot up on the big yellow tackle box he always had with him. “Yes. Some nights I like to go out in the rowboat, so it’s quiet. Bring a flashlight to draw them to the boat.”

  In blackness, surrounded by warm velvet skins, flapping, touching your face… I shuddered. “Don’t sound to me like a good lime.”

  “I like to hear them singing all around me in the dark.”

  “The bats sing?”

  “Well, kind of a chirp, you know? Like birds.”

  “You right! Now I remember! Used to have clouds of them in the sky come nighttime, out around Blessée. You don’t see so many any more.”

  He shook his head. “No. They used to roost on Tamany Heights. Fill up the whole cliff wall.”

  “Mm.” Tamany Heights was now the Grand Tamany Hotel. “You going to bring me some red snapper next week?” Every Saturday morning, Mr. Mckinley or one of his sons came by with the morning’s catch. “So long now you haven’t had red snapper.”

  He frowned. “Saline plant been messing up the water from since. Only few little snappers in the nets nowadays. Going to be worse now we have two plants.”

  “Or some shark. Shark would be nice.”

  “If we catch any, I bring it for you.”

  “When I was small and I would tell Dadda that the bats were chirping, he never used to believe me.”

  “Mr. Lambkin? How he doing?”

  My heart lurched. “He passed. Tuesday. I just now coming from his funeral.”

  “Awoah,” said Mr. Mckinley softly. “I see. So sorry to hear that.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Chastity? Everything all right?” It was Gene.

  “Calamity.”

  “Yes. Sorry.”

  Mr. Mckinley reached out and shook Gene’s hand. “I was just telling Mistress Lambkin how sorry I am to hear about her daddy. So many years now I know Mr. Lambkin. From before Blessée went down.” You know how some working men get tongue-tied around people who had high schooling? Not Mr. Mckinley.

  “Mr. Mckinley, I’m so sorry. If I knew you and Dadda were friends, I would have told you about the funeral.”

  He smiled. “Don’t fret yourself. Knowing somebody is one thing. Friends is something else.”

  Gene pulled a flask of white rum out of his back pocket and unscrewed the top. “I liberated it from the funeral parlour,” he said. “A drink to Mr. Lambkin?”

  “Thanks.” I took the bottle, knocked back a swig of it. “To Dadda.”

  I passed the bottle to Mr. Mckinley. He looked surprised, but he took it, drank, made his toast: “Jimmy, walk good, you hear?” To us he said, “I make the mistake one day and tell him if his wife get bored with him, she could always come to me. He never speak to me after that again.”

  “Dadda was always jealous for the women in his life.”

  “Mm-hmm. So I find out.”

  Gene made his own toast.

  Mr. Mckinley nodded to me and Gene. “Thank you for sharing your flask with me. Some people wouldn’t want to drink from the same bottle as a working class man.” He picked up his tackle box. “Well, Jimmy had a hard row to hoe. But every man will put his past mistakes behind him, one way or another. Good evening to you.”

  When he was gone, Gene said to me, “He and all?”

  “He and all what?”

  “He was talking about your mother disappearing.” He sighed. “This blasted island. Everybody always up in everybody else’s business. And nobody will forgive, nobody will forget.” We passed the bottle back and forth in silence for a bit. Then he glared at me, red-eyed. “You think Mr. Lambkin did it, too? Killed your mother?”

  “Gene, he was my father. Two years I looked after him.”

  He turned his face away from me. He knuckled at one eye. “Beg pardon. I just feeling guilty that I lost touch with him. Years now. Shouldn’t be putting that guilt on you.”

  The revving of the waterbus’s engines slowed. We were nearly at Dolorosse. “We stopping soon,” I told him. “When I drive down the ramp, just follow me.”

  “All right. I sorry, eh?”

  “I know.”

  We went back to our cars. Lots more cars getting off at Dolorosse nowadays; families moving to work at the new saline plant. There were some familiar faces, too. But I knew scarcely any of them by name. I hadn’t moved to Dolorosse to socialize.

  Dolorosse Island was the last stop on the waterbus’s run. Blessée used to be the last; the last liveable island on the arm of the Cayaba archipelago. I’d lived on Blessée for the first fifteen years of my life before moving to the big island. When I was twenty-seven, a hurricane had hit Blessée. We weren’t ready for it—Blessée was outside the hurricane zone, and we hadn’t had one in over fifty years.

  The 1987 storm pulverized Blessée in a matter of days. The survivors had been evacuated. Mr. Kite on Dolorosse had taken Dadda in, and Dadda had remained in that house till now.

  Did I think that Dadda had killed Mumma? I hadn’t answered Gene’s question. Couldn’t give him an answer I didn’t have.

  The cars drove down the waterbus ramp onto the island. The sun had taken its nightly dive headlong into the sea. In the dark, the little cement ferry house had its one yellow light on. From behind the station house window, Mr. Lee waved the in
coming cars through. I flashed my ferry pass at him and took the gravel turnoff to get to Dadda’s house. Gene followed.

  I got my cell phone out of my handbag. Speed-dialled. “Stanley? Let me talk to Ife, nuh?”

  People were yelling in Ife’s house: Clifton’s voice, and Ife’s. I thought Stanley had sounded upset.

  “Hello?”

  “Ife, what you did to make Clifton so angry?”

  “What I did? That is what you call me to say to me?”

  “Lord, what a way you harsh! I thought you wanted to know if I get home safe.”

  A sigh from the other end. “Yes. I’m sorry, Mummy. So you home now?”

  “Nearly there. I’m on Dolorosse. But tell me, nuh; why you and Clifton fighting?”

  “Our anniversary is next week. I bought us tickets to attend that speech on labour reform by Caroline Sookdeo-Grant.”

  “Not what you would call romantic.”

  “I have to see somebody to know if to trust them, you know? See if they look down and to the left when they lying—’cause you know a politician going to tell you lies—or up and to the right. My NLP teacher says—”

  I burst out laughing. “Ife, is what kind of stupidness that? You going to decide who to vote for by some kind of obeah?”

  “It’s called Neurolinguistic Programming. I’m taking a four-week course: ‘Instant Rapport Through Rapid Eye Movements.’”

  “Instant rapport with who?”

  “I was hoping with Clifton. We not getting along so good right now.”

  “Ife, don’t mess things up with that man, you know. You will suck salt before you find another one like him.”

  Silence. A sigh. Then: “Yes, Mummy. You rest good tonight, you hear?”

  And she was gone. I listened to the phone static for a second, playing the conversation back in my head, hearing where I had made it go wrong. Again.

  I kissed my teeth and snapped the phone shut. I threw it back into my handbag on the passenger seat, next to the yam I’d bought from a roadside vendor before we took the waterbus to Dolorosse. I led Gene the rest of the way home and parked in front of my house. When I started to think of Dadda’s home as mine?