The Heart Does Not Bend (13 page)

“Thank you,” she said. “Sit down nuh.”

He sat down next to her, obviously pleased with himself. “My backyard,” he said proudly.

“Nice,” Mama responded, sniffing the flowers.

He came every day with daisies, and there was no doubt that Mama was flattered. She began to take more care with her hair and the way her dresses fit. Soon they settled into a comfortable routine. They didn’t talk a lot because he was Italian and did not speak English fluently. Mama had a thick Jamaican accent, and sometimes when she couldn’t find the right English word, she’d use a Jamaican one. He did the
same with his Italian. The peaceful silence between them spoke volumes.

At their second meeting Mama asked him if he knew Sophia Loren. He smiled and shook his head. Mama seemed surprised.

“Yuh don’t know Sophia Loren?”

“Italy big place,” he said with another smile.

“What ’bout movies, yuh never see her in movies?” she persisted.

He smiled again and nodded. “We go see her?”

“What him say?” Mama asked me.

“Ah think him say you and him can go see her, or maybe him mean a movie wid her,” I explained. Mama nodded back.

Throughout that summer, Paolo kept our bedroom filled with flowers. Some afternoons he’d buy us ice cream, and we’d sit and eat it as we watched the people go by. Sometimes I’d leave them to themselves and walk around the park, admiring the flowers and trying to guess their names. Paolo lived a few blocks away from us with his daughter and son-in-law. He was as new to the country as we were, and just as lonely. One day he invited Mama to dinner at his house, but she flatly refused. On our way home that afternoon I asked her why she had said no so quickly.

“Molly, yuh still young. Him is not what mi need right now.”

I didn’t understand what she was talking about. She tried to explain.

“Molly, ah need somebody to mek life wid. Him just come here, him helpless just like mi. Yuh nuh understand yet, but mi know him daughter would a laugh when him tek mi home.
Is one thing we meet at de park, hold hands and him bring flowers, even a movie would be nice fi go to wid him, but fi tek mi home?

“Mi like him, but too much obstacles. Me black, him white. Ah know you cyaan always look at things in colour, but some things just is. And as much as mi think some a dem black man can learn a thing or two from white man, like how fi treat woman, mi nah tek de chance.” She paused, wiped the sweat from her brow and added, “Molly, in life yuh will learn dat black man is a necessary evil. Mi know dat, for mi live wid dat poison all mi life.”

We were quiet on our walk home. We never said anything to Glory or Sid about meeting Paolo; they must have assumed we picked the flowers in the park. One afternoon Paolo brought a serving of pasta primavera in a Pyrex dish for us. It was the first time we had ever tasted Italian food. Mama was impressed, said she found it tasty. He gave her the recipe and she said she’d try to cook it.

“Well, ah never think ah would see de day when a man cook fi me,” she said to me, her face glowing from the attention. “Nuh man never really cook fi mi except Mikey,” she said, and I heard regret in her voice. She went quiet after that. There had been no mention of Uncle Mikey since we’d left the island. I gently touched her hand.

We stopped going to the park shortly before the end of August. Mama told me there was no point in leading Paolo on, and it would be too hard to explain to him why the relationship could go nowhere.

My fifteenth birthday was a disappointing event. Nobody remembered except Mama. She presented me with a small
birthday cake decorated with multicoloured icing and set a bottle of sparkling apple cider on the table after dinner. Glory’s beautiful face was a mixture of surprise and embarrassment, but she managed to hum a few notes of “Happy Birthday to You.” Later, Sid put an envelope in my hand and said, “Buy something special—from me and Glory.”

Just as quickly as summer came, so it ended, and fall rolled in. The weather got cooler, and it was lovely to see the leaves changing from green to banana yellow, mango orange and blood red.

I went back to school and Mama spent her days in Glory’s two-bedroom apartment. She was bored. Of course there was the cooking, the cleaning, the television and her bags of crocheting and knitting. She needed to be needed, but she also needed to show her independence. She talked longingly about the Chinese pastry shops, Grand-aunt Ruth’s restaurant and our house on the dead-end street.

“Nothing like yuh own house, wid yuh things surround yuh. Yuh own key to push in de door,” she’d often say. “Molly, mek sure yuh strive fi dat when yuh get older, for it nuh good fi stay too long a people place.” Mama and Glory argued a lot. If it wasn’t one thing, it was another, little things like whether to cook red-pea soup every Saturday, whether to clean the floors with a mop or rag, whether to use paper towels or cloth. Of course, there was also the larger problem of Mama interfering too much in her adult children’s lives. Glory and Sid had numerous arguments over whether to have a baby. It was not unusual to hear loud, angry whispers coming
through the shut bedroom door. She seemed ready to change her mind about having another baby, but Mama continued to insist that it would be a bad choice, which only made Glory resent me, too.

“Ah tell yuh, yuh can’t go and start up wid more pickney, when yuh don’t even start fi mother Molly. She need attention and love,” Mama complained.

Uncle Peppie was the only one who listened to Mama without talking back or showing any hint of resentment. She continued to offer him advice about Aunt Val: “Careful Peppie, don’t mek de woman control yuh. For she think she better and brighter than yuh, and dat is de worse thing a man can have hanging over him. Look how de blasted woman tek over mi Sunday dinners.”

Whenever Aunt Val called, she made a point of talking to Mama, inquiring about her health. My grandmother had developed a slight smoker’s cough but wouldn’t give up her cigarettes. Aunt Val even talked to her about knitting, which Aunt Val did quite well, but Mama still didn’t take to her.

“She cyaan fool mi,” she’d say to me. “She might be able to fool him, for him mek de woman turn him weak, but mi read her cards.”

I was confused by Mama’s contradictions. She told Glory to be independent, yet seemed to be irritated by Aunt Val’s independence.

That fall Mama decided, more out of boredom than strong religious feeling that we would attend one of the local churches.

“Come gal, come mek we go praise de Lord. We have too much clothes just sleeping in de closet, an’ time we air dem out.” I think my mother was glad to see us leave the apartment—it gave her more space to argue with Sid. She still hadn’t said yes to the baby, and the rift between her and Sid was widening.

We began attending an Anglican church not far from the apartment. The first Sunday, we arrived a half hour before the service, Mama wearing a well-ironed, two-piece, peacock-blue dress suit, a simple gold chain and gold earrings. Her black hair was pulled back from her face and a blue pillbox hat sat on her head. I wore a white dress and a pair of charcoal stockings. My black, pressed hair was curled around my face. We sat in the front pew and watched the congregation come in. Ours was the last pew to fill up. Mama smiled at the couple next to her and they smiled back stiffly. When the service started, Mama’s voice rose proudly among the others. We got a few surprised looks, but I attributed them to her powerful voice. As children, she and my grand-aunts had attended revival services three times a week with Mammy, and everyone said she had a beautiful singing voice.

After church she introduced herself to the minister while I shyly looked on. She didn’t seem bothered by the stuffiness of the congregation, or perhaps she was just determined to make the best of things. Our third Sunday yielded us a few smiles and inquiries as to why we had left a tropical paradise to come here to the cold. We smiled without answers. That was the extent of the conversation. We never got the closeness and the companionship that my grandmother was
seeking, and by the beginning of that winter she abandoned the idea of going to church.

We pretty much spent the winter locked up in Glory and Sid’s apartment. I’d go to school and come home. Mama spent most of her time knitting and crocheting and writing letters back home and to Aunt Joyce in America. Grand-aunt Ruth wrote and kept my grandmother up-to-date, but she didn’t have much to say about Uncle Mikey. Glory kept in touch with him, writing at least once a month. She pretended that his relationship with Frank didn’t exist.

Freddie and Joanne’s relationship began to go downhill after the baby, Kevin, was born, and Mama, of course, couldn’t stay out of it. It got to the point where Joanne stopped talking to her altogether and stayed in touch only with Glory. I was in the kitchen doing the dishes one evening when a call came from Joanne. Mama was having a shower.

“Lord, Joanne,” Glory whispered into the phone, “ah don’t know what fi tell yuh. It not right, him shouldn’t put him hands on yuh but …” She lingered on the “but,” as if she didn’t know what to say next. I told Mama the minute we were alone in bed.

“Dat blasted bwoy, him is a disgrace, him come all the way in a foreign fi beat woman. Just like him father.”

Joanne left Freddie a month later. Late one Saturday night she and Kevin took a bus to Calgary, going home to her parents’. Mama launched in on Freddie, reminding him how worthless he was and always had been.

Many evenings that winter, Mama looked out at the snow and sighed, complaining about the dampness in the apartment, conveying her disappointment in Freddie and her difficulties
with Glory. Even though she said nothing about Uncle Mikey, I knew that she harboured some animosity toward him and his relationship with Frank.

Then we got news that my grandfather had passed away. It was Saturday night, and Glory and Sid were back on good terms and out at a club with Freddie and his new girlfriend. As usual, I was at home with Mama watching television when the phone rang. Uncle Mikey was on the other end.

His voice was strained and sounded distant. He asked for Glory first, then said, “Let mi speak to Mama.”

“Mama, is Uncle Mikey,” I said.

She was surprised; they hadn’t spoken since we left the island.

“Lord God, ah hope is nutten wrong wid Ruth or Mammy.” She picked up the receiver.

“Hello, man,” she said, as though she’d spoken to him yesterday.

She was silent for a long time. I couldn’t tell what was going on because her face didn’t tell me anything. I was anxious to know the story.

“Well, Mikey, there is nutten we can do. So yuh live is so yuh die.”

There was another pause as she listened.

“Well …mek de government look after dat. Him never left no provision for dat.”

Another long pause.

“Where dem find him?”

“Oh Lord Almighty!”

“Nuh cry,” she soothed. “Stand up and face facts like a man. Him never did anything fi unnu. Is me alone carry
box pon mi head wid patties and coco-bread and pastries fi mek unnu eat, and put food on de table and roof over unnu head.”

She listened again. Then I’m sure she cut him off.

“Awright, tek care. Ah will tell dem.”

She sat in silence, just staring at the television. Then she got up as though I wasn’t in the room, went over to the glass cabinet where Sid kept a few bottles of liquor. He wasn’t a heavy drinker, only opened the cabinet when Justin or other friends came over. There was a good selection of rum, including bottles from different islands, a couple of bottles of scotch and some gin. Mama poured some rum and took a shot straight up without water. Then she poured another, filled it with ice and a touch of water. She came back and sat on the couch. The television was still going.

“Dat was about yuh grandfather. Him dead.”

It was her first rum since we’d come to Canada. I waited while she swallowed it down and lit a cigarette. Her light cough sent the smoke into my face.

“Him kill himself,” she said, rubbing her forehead. “Hang himself wid rope. Dem find him in somebody backyard under a tambrind tree.”