The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir (12 page)

“Beauty queens are for a season, love. This face is forever.”

She likes when I watch her
put on her face
. At every step of the process I tell her how pretty she is. I sit on the bed as she works. Each day I inch closer to the dressing table. By the fifth day I am leaning on the polished edge just inches from her face. It feels good to be this close to her. She is smiling and I am smiling. We look happy in the mirror. We even look a little alike, except that she is wearing lipstick. I wonder what I would look like with red lips. I reach for the plastic cylinder.

“What are you doing, touching my things?” She snatches it from me and throws it on the table. “Why are you touching my things? Didn’t I bring things from Canada for you? Why are you touching my things?”

She slaps my hand and pushes me against the chest of drawers. Her
index nail is pointed at my nose. “Don’t you ever touch my things, nothing, you hear me, nothing. What is mine is mine, and what is yours is yours; just keep your stinking little fingers off my things and we will get along just fine.”

She slaps me again for good measure.

The next day she leaves after breakfast. Elmer Fudd chases Bugs Bunny across the TV screen for most of the day. Delano is jittery and irritable. He checks the door, getting up every few minutes to look down the street. When I ask him what’s wrong, he tells me to shut my clappers and don’t ask him any questions. We hear the latch on the gate opening before we see her. As soon as she walks through the door she tells us to pack our things. She sends us to bed before seven. She warns us about talking to each other under the covers. “If I hear any whispering, you guys will be in serious trouble.”

For the first time since we left Bethel Town, I miss Grandma. I wonder if she misses us. I wish I had hugged her on the bus. I feel like crying, but I am too afraid of Mummy. Instead, I think about the things I will have in Canada. Mummy says that I will have my own room and a little garden to plant in the summertime. I wish Grandma were coming to Canada with us.

The next morning she takes more pictures of us in the front yard. She combs my hair into a big Afro and tells Delano to get dressed. As she points the camera, she tells Delano that he is going to live with his father today. She makes us stand by the flowers that line the fence while she snaps us in various poses: smiling in sunglasses, without sunglasses, my hair in a ponytail, my hair let out in an Afro—she finishes two rolls of film before she sends Delano to get our bags. The instructions she gives to Delano are clear. Go down to the supermarket. His father is expecting him. He will take him where he is supposed to be. Delano slings the bag over his shoulder and closes the front door softly behind him. I ask Mummy when I will see him again, but she tells me to get my bag and stop asking stupid questions.

When I return with the bag, she grabs me. “And where is that expensive doll I brought you? Were you planning to leave it here? Did you expect me to fetch it and bring it to you?”

The doll keeps slipping from my hands, so Mummy yanks the bag away from me. I wonder if she is taking me to my father. I wish she had
sent me with Delano. I stop in the middle of the road and tell her I want to go back to the house. She drags me onto the sidewalk and slaps me. I grab her hand and beg, “Mummy, can you please take me back to Bethel Town? Please, Mummy, I don’t want to go anywhere else! I want to go back to Grandma! Please, Mummy, please!”

She takes my hand and pulls me along. “I cannot imagine why you would want to go back there. June does not want you in her house. The people I am taking you to are happy to have you. What an ungrateful little wretch you are! Come on and stop the crying! After all I have done to convince these people to take you.”

The taxi drops us off at a place called Paradise Crescent. Across from the crowded square there is a shack painted red, green, and yellow. A tall, skinny rastaman is by the door, swaying to Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song.” I stare at him while Mummy drags me down a small side street called Blood Lane. The street narrows into a steep and rocky pathway. We are moving so fast that I keep falling down. Every time I fall, Mummy screams at me.

Finally we stop at a high wooden gate. An old yellow house with a red stairway sits on four huge concrete stilts. Its paint is peeling off the walls in large patches. The open cellar is higher than two adults standing atop one another. It is strange to see a clothesline underneath a house. The wide eyes of several children stare at me from behind the half-open doors, like little animals watching. There is a tall man looking at me and scratching his crotch. His rough beard covers a multitude of swollen yellow pimples. He winks at me like we share a secret. Behind him a dark-skinned woman in a blue dress leans over the veranda rail and grins at me. I close my eyes and ask God not to let Mummy leave me here.

A big brown dog covered in sores and frothing from the mouth ambles toward me. Another, skinny one barks. I hold Mummy’s hand and quickly step behind her. The dark-skinned woman laughs out loud. “Take you time and come up, me darlin’! Don’t look ’pon the dog them. Them not going to do anything to you.” Her voice is sturdy, like big bells in a church.

Mummy makes me promise to listen to the woman and do exactly as she says. “Remember, now, Chérie, exactly as Auntie tells you or there will be hell to pay when I come back for you!”

I hold on to her hand and press my body against hers. I don’t really
believe that I am staying until she asks Miss John to take good care of her baby. “Please do not let her father near her, he wants to take her and she is my only daughter. My heart couldn’t bear it if he got her. I will be back in two weeks,” she says, “with her passport and her ticket.”

She kisses me, then pushes me away. She hugs Miss John. “Thank you so much, Miss John. I will do everything in my power to repay you.”

She kisses me once more. “
Au revoir,
Ma Chérie. See you soon.” She waves the long red nails and follows the rocky track that leads back to Blood Lane.

M
iss John, who explains that she is my grandfather’s youngest sister, tells me that I can call her Auntie. She asks me if I am hungry. I tell her no. She says that the day is so hot I should at least have a plum or something to cool me down. Auntie has a big smile, bright eyes, and a really big bottom. She clears some cloth from a metal chair with no cushions and tells me to sit down, and sends her son, Glen, to go and find me a sweetsop. “And make sure is a nice big ripe one!”

I shift my bag away from my feet so I can take off my shoes. Auntie tells me to give the bag to her so that she can put it inside her room. She tells me not to worry about it, that it will be safe inside. Then her bottom is swinging back and forth as she ambles into her room. Glen comes back and hands me a big round sweetsop. I break the green fruit with the bumpy skin in two equal halves. Some of the seeds fall on the floor. Glen picks them up and tosses them over the rail. I hear them hit the rocky ground below. His shirt is old and torn down the front. And his nose is running. I offer him one half. He shakes his head no.

I don’t know what to say to him. He is dirty and he smells a little bit like fowls. He shows me his marbles and asks me if I want to play. Auntie shouts at him from the bedroom, “Glen, leave her alone! Girl children should not play with marbles.”

I tell him we can play with my doll. He tells me, “Only batty boy play with dolly! And me is not a batty boy. None of the boy them in this house is no batty boy.”

“What is a batty boy?”

“You don’t know what a batty boy is? A batty boy is a boy who act like him is a girl and only want to do nastiness with other boys.”

“Okay. So how many boys live in the house?”

“Is four of us, but none of we is no batty boy. Me three brother is bigger than me. Jimmy is sixteen. Andy is eighteen and Shappy is twenty. Him is the biggest one, but him is
mad, mad, mad
.”

“What happen to him? Him was mad when him was a little boy?”

Glen explains that when Shappy was younger he was the most brilliant student. He passed every exam with flying colors. Everybody expected him to do very well for himself. But something happened after he moved away for college. Some people say the studying got to him. Others believe it was witchcraft. In any case, he began talking out loud to himself, he stopped going to class, and then he stopped bathing. Eventually he was expelled and now he lives at home, where he steals money to buy weed. Glen says that these days he is obsessed with the FBI, the CIA, and the other people who work for the American government.

I ask Glen where Shappy sleeps. He tells me not to worry, that he sleeps in the back room. I wonder how far the back room is from the room in which I will sleep. No one has told me if I will sleep by myself or with other people. I have never gone to bed without Delano. I hope Mummy doesn’t take too long to come back for me. I do not see one book, so I ask Glen if there are any books inside. Aunt June used to say a house without books is like a church without God.

He goes inside and brings back a book called
Sprat Morrison.
Glen stands patiently by my chair while I read the back cover to see what the book is about.
Inside are the exciting adventures of the Jamaican boy called Sprat
.

“Is that a good one? She have other ones in there. You want me fi bring one more fi you?”

“No, man. This seems like a good one, Glen. Thank you very much for getting it for me.”

He scratches his head and smiles. There is a streak of snot under his nose. He wipes it away with his sleeve and clears his throat. Then he frowns and shifts from one foot to the next. I look away. Finally he blurts out, “Anyway, Stacey, me have to go feed the fowl them now. If Shappy come out here, just ignore him. Me soon come back, you hear?”

As soon as Glen leaves, Shappy comes up the steps. He walks right up to me. He puts his nose into my hair and inhales. He tells me I smell nice,
like perfume. He puts his hand on my shoulder. Then on my collarbone, and then he rubs. I pull my shoulder away from him and hunch down into the book. He sniffs me again.

“You smell like a real woman, but your body still small. You don’t even have no breast yet. You sure you not underdevelop? Maybe you is a spy? Is the CIA send you fi come infiltrate me?”

He stands there by the chair. The dog ambles onto the veranda. He kicks the dog in the ribs. “Get you raas outside, you dirty stinking mongrel!” The animal sniffs the ground as it slinks down the stairs. Shappy sits on the arm of my chair, sniffing my hair. I do not look up from my book. He smells like smoke.

“Shappy, move from there and leave the little girl alone!”

The tall man who winked at me earlier waves a red wash rag at Shappy and chases him away. He smiles and tells me that his name is Andy. He wipes his face with the red rag and tells me not to worry, that everything is okay now. I want to hug him when he lowers his voice and asks if Shappy really scared me. He smiles again, but something about the way he looks my body up and down makes me straighten my back and say no, I wasn’t scared. He asks me how old I am.

“Nine, but I am going to be ten next December.”

“Ten? You body small fi ten, but me can see that you very mature. You like to read? Reading is a sure sign of maturity. That book is for children who is at least twelve years old.”

He stops talking to me when another man comes up the stairs singing. Jimmy is the fourth brother. His smile is friendly, but his teeth are rotten. When Andy explains who I am, he warns me not to forget them when I get to Canada. Jimmy disappears and Andy leans in to tell me I am much prettier than all the girls in the house.

Auntie’s youngest daughter, Diana, pokes her head out to look at me. She is thirteen years old, but I am almost as big as her. She has asthma, so she doesn’t leave her room very often. Diana’s older sister, Grace, a tall, fat girl with a pretty face, opens the living room door and slips dentures into her mouth. She says a brief hello and heads down the steps. The dog crosses her path and she kicks it. It does not make a sound. Grace is so fat that when she walks her feet puff up like sausages in her high heels. Andy says she has a daughter, Elisha, who is six years old. I ask him how many people live here.

He lists them. “Lemme see. There is me, Jimmy, Shappy, Glen, Diana, Mama, Grace, and Elisha. Me biggest sister, Dawn, move out long time now. And now there is you. Pretty likkle Miss Chin with the smoothest skin on her legs.”

I place the open book over my thighs and try to read a sentence. His shoes are inches away from my bare toes. I look up when a tiny pair of feet appears. The feet belong to Grace’s daughter, Elisha. She smiles with even white teeth. Her hands are soft as she touches my bare leg.

Auntie comes out from her room and shouts at her, “Elisha, leave her alone! You don’t see her reading? Andy, go round the back and help Glen see about them fowls fi me.”

“Mama, Glen can handle the fowl them. Me was just here talking to me cousin,” Andy says.

“Andy, leave the pickney them alone and go find something to do! Elisha, get up off that red floor before you wipe off all the polish on you bottom!”

Andy winks at me again before he goes inside. Elisha tugs at my arm. “Hey, girl! You never hear me ask you what you name?”

I put the book on the chair and turn to her. “My name is Stacey. And yours is Elisha, right?”

She nods and asks if I want to go look at the chickens with her. We go through the living room. I bump into Andy standing behind the door. I quickly brush past him and follow Elisha. There is an old broken bookcase with some torn books. The kitchen counter is stacked with dirty dishes and everything is black and covered with grease. Elisha exits the back door and hops down the big concrete stairway that leads out to the backyard. I stand behind her and look into wired sections of the smelly chicken coop. Each section has chickens of a different size. Elisha says the pigeon coop belongs to Jimmy, but she and Glen have to help with looking after them. The backyard is littered with old clothes and shoes.

Elisha points out the outhouse. “This is the pit toilet. Nobody use it unless water gone.”

Then she leads me under the house. There are piles of dirty clothes and two concrete sinks. “This is where we wash we clothes.”

Underneath the house it is like a garbage dump; old clothes, pans, wires, all sorts of things line the length of the cellar. The dogs are nestled in the old clothes. Elisha throws a rock at them and they walk away.

Everybody treats me like I am an important guest. Grace changes the sheets so I can be in a clean bed with her and Elisha. I am cautious but grateful when Shappy brings me sweetsops and small tart plums from the tree next door. Auntie tells Glen that he should get anything I want from any tree in the yard. Diana offers her pile of books. “I have some good romance novels. They are just right inside the door on the floor. Just push the door and take what you want. But remember to bring them back when you done.”

The Mills & Boon love stories are more exciting than Nancy Drew mysteries. The vague description of the lovers
becoming one in the flesh
gives me goose bumps. And when Auntie combs my hair I daydream about having long, silky curls that tumble down my back. The women in the stories never have to sit while somebody pulls tangles from their big puffy hair. Everybody in the house pokes fun at me for reading all the time. I laugh when Jimmy taps my head and says, “But wait! It look like we have a big bright star in the house. You going to read every book in the world before you dead, eh?”

But his younger brother, Andy, fingers my neck and ear and whispers, “I like a young girl who read romantic books. That’s how me know that you will make your husband happy.” His hands are rough and dirty on my skin.

I wonder if my mother and father had a Mills & Boon romance. In all the stories, sparks fly whenever the lovers see each other, no matter how long ago they met. It would be wonderful if they were still in love with each other. Maybe they would
fall into each other’s arms and weep.

I begin to worry when a week passes and we have not heard anything from Mummy. A girl at church, who works at the guesthouse down on Earl Drive, tells Auntie that a Canadian tourist named Hazel is a guest there. At the end of the third week Auntie says that I should go and look for her. We take the shortcut, so the Earl Drive Guesthouse is only a short walk away. She sends the small and snot-nosed Glen with me. The whole time he walks behind me and does not say one word. His feet don’t even make a sound. I wish it were Delano here walking with me. At the guesthouse Glen motions me inside. I ask the receptionist for Hazel Jennings. I look behind me to see Glen’s shirttail disappearing into the hills.

“Hazel Jennings? No. We don’t have a guest here by that name,” she says.

“It’s my mother. And she is here from Canada. I am her daughter. I am here to see her.”

“Hazel Jennings? The only Hazel we have is a Hazel Wickham. And she is here from Canada too. Stay here and let me call her for you.”

The woman makes a phone call and tells me to walk around to the pool. I walk past the big pots of flowers and the long white chairs. There are glasses of red drinks on all the tables. People with white skin lie on the chairs in nothing but their underwear and sunglasses. I turn the corner to see my beautiful mother gliding through the large pool of clear blue water.

I clap my hands and shout, “Mummy! Mummy! It’s me, Ma Chérie! I come to look for you.”

She looks up from her stroke and jumps out of the swimming pool. My arm is almost pulled off my body as she drags me away.

In her room, she slams the door and turns to me. “Staceyann Ma Chérie Chin, what the devil are you doing here?”

I back away and say, “Miss John sent me.”

She pulls me to her and slaps me in the face. “Don’t you ever visit me here again! No matter what other people say, I am your mother! You should listen to only me! Only me!”

Tears sting my eyes and blur my vision. I have no idea what to say to her. I stand absolutely still as she rummages through her bag and then disappears into the bathroom. While I wait, I trace the raised impression of her fingers on my cheek. Minutes later, she emerges, smiling. She hugs me and apologizes for overreacting. We walk hand in hand to the guesthouse gate. Her long nails graze my palm as she slips me some money and tells me to wait for a Paradise taxi and go straight home. I don’t know which taxi goes to Paradise, but I don’t want to upset her again, so I stand by the roadside waiting.

Half an hour goes by before she comes out and asks, “What are you doing? Don’t you know that your father is looking for me? Do you want to lead him here to me? Staceyann, he wants to kidnap you! That is why I put you at Miss John’s. He would never think to look for you there. I will never let him have you! You are
my
daughter and I will do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”

I wonder why I can’t stay with her if she loves me so much. She pulls
me out of the streetlight and makes me stand behind the wall. We wait quietly there for a while. Then she hails a taxi. She tells the driver to take her baby home. I wave good-bye as the car pulls away from her. She waves at me with her right hand. Her left hand covers her mouth. I smile at her and wave harder. I feel like I am in a movie.