No Safeguards Read online

  “‘I say lock me up. Lock me up!’

  “‘It ain’t so we does do it. We does have to know what you do first. Yes? Sit down there.’ I point he to a bench ‘gainst the wall from the station counter. ‘All you preacherman hot for the young girls in all you congregation. What happen: you done rape one?’ (I imagined him grinning, his two upper gold-capped incisors glinting.) ‘You done kill your wife or what? You catch a man on top o’ she or what? Too busy with God to satisfy your wife or what? That calypso not lying at all: ‘Man can’t take butt.’ Some men sure can’t. ‘Henry,’ I turn to the constable what was sitting by a desk a little way from the counter listening to the conversation. ‘Henry, you know where Preacherman live. Right? Go by his house and see if he done kill his wife.’ To Preacherman, I say: ‘Ah sending a constable to your home to see if you done kill your wife and thing.’ I don’t think Preacherman hear me yet.

  “Boy, Henry meet your mother sprawled where Preacherman did done knock her down. She did regain consciousness and Eldica was putting ice on she cheeks. I hear is you” — he pointed to me — “that did have sense enough to run and get Eldica after your mother didn’t respond. When Henry come back to the station and give me his report, I tell Preacherman to go home and take care o’ his wife and to go easy on his fist. ‘Your wife jaw not like them stones you does break on the seashore.’ And I tell he we don’t does lock up men for beating their wife; is only in Canada and them places they does do that. But careful you don’t kill she, yes. ‘Cause then you won’t get off so easy. So tell me, nuh,’ — I couldn’t help teasing him little bit more — ‘Is what happen, Preacherman: why you knock she out? You catch another man on top o’ she or what?’

  “‘I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to go home.’ Sonny, that is how your father carry on. ‘It go be alright, man. I tell you, it go be alright.’ I tell he: ‘Things don’t does be bad as they look. Yes.’ Now I did start to feel sorry for him. I wasn’ laughing at him no more.”

  ***

  Until the day Grama came to get me, I don’t remember much of what happened. She had to do a lot of asking around, because Daddy had left the manse and moved into a shack a few metres in from the beach about two kilometres north of Georgetown. Grama met him lying on the bare floor. He came out and sat on the middle one of three planks that formed the steps to the shack. He was unshaven and his eyes were red and haunted. At first he didn’t look her in the face, and when she told him why she’d come, he said nothing. She repeated what she’d said: “Mr. Jackson, Anna left for Canada this morning. She left Paul with me. I’ve come for Jay. He’ll be better off staying with me.” For about a minute their eyes locked, then he spat, re-entered the shack, and closed the door.

  She came to get me at school. I was staying with Sister Simmons. Grama didn’t bother to pick up any of my things. “Whatever you need you’ll get from my store. We’ll make a clean start.” The following Saturday Sister Simmons brought my things to Havre and Grama told her to keep them. If she were alive today, I would ask her why.

  6

  ANNA NEVER KEPT a journal. I’ll never get to know her in the detailed sort of way I got to know Grama after her death. It’s too late now to ask Anna the questions I’ve wanted to about Caleb. I visualize Grama writing her journal — just before supper, always at the dining table, the sun setting in the harbour tinting her golden. Paul copied her habit. But I never did in any serious sort of way, and I tend to lose whatever thoughts I write down. She kept her journals in the spare bedroom. I could have read them in secret if I wished, the way I read my mother’s letters to her, but I never did until after her death. Her entries about herself, her husband, and Anna interest me most, and they are the ones I reread. The pages of the oldest journals, before she got married, are yellow and brittle. I have saved those for future reading.

  AUGUST 21, 1955

  I am pregnant for a man I don’t love. What will this mean for me and my child when it’s born? My mother agreed that Zachary Kirton offered security but not much else. It’s harder to leave when you have children.

  If I don’t die in childbirth, I must find a way not to have any others. Kirton won’t use French letters. “What I hearing here? You don’t want no pickney? Well, I have a problem with French letter. When I stop to put it on, my rod fall.” Must strike before his iron cools. Wish it would cool every time he climbs onto me. It takes that man a full hour and a half to come, and there’s no way for me to go numb, or fall asleep. How will I stop him from turning me into a brood sow? Doc Fraser says there are creams available overseas that I can put in my vagina before I have sex. But I’ll have to order them from abroad. I have no money. I have to give Kirton an accounting of every penny I spend.

  Yesterday I asked Mama how she managed to have only one child. “I kept my legs closed, Cynthie. Kept my legs closed. That was all. But you can’t do that. You have to satisfy your husband needs. ‘Bout not having children, there’s bush teas. I used to hear your grandmother talking ‘bout them, but I don’t know them. But, from what she used to say, is teas that prevent the man from rising. She used to talk ‘bout a woman who did give her husband them kind o’ teas and after that there was only six o’clock. And she used to butt him in the end. You got five, if you lucky ten, more years o’ sex from Kirton, and then some long years o’ drought. You better take what you can get now.”

  JANUARY 14, 1960

  What a help Doc Fraser is! He’s such an unusual, understanding, unpretentious man. You’d never know he’s of plantocrat stock. He has helped me work out my fertility cycle. “Now it’s up to you to fight off Kirton when he’s in heat.” Right after sex I douche with a vinegar mixture Elma has showed me how to prepare. It works for her. She has a man but no children. It stings the living daylights out of me. And I’ve just been plain lucky. Touch wood.

  The older heads saw children as riches, but they keep us enslaved to men. A sensible woman would only get pregnant when she knows she can support her child herself.

  JUNE 13, 1961

  What sort of religious education should I give Anna? I got mine from reading. It rescued me from all that foolishness. No joke about that. That book I read on religion at 16. It disappeared from the library shortly after. No surprise there. It had come in a batch of books somebody from England had sent to the Georgetown Public Library. Diverse Religious Beliefs — I think that was the title. There were many beliefs — the book said none was superior; “they are all intended to make us better human beings either through divine intervention or through our own effort. Many religions stress the afterlife, but their real purpose is to make our earthly life bearable.” But the belief I liked best, that I copied and decided to make my own, was the one that “God isn’t a being separate from human beings. Each person carries a piece of God within himself or herself. It is the total of all those pieces that comprises God. Like a plant cutting that we water and tend, so we must cultivate the divine within ourselves. That was what Christ had done, and done spectacularly. He was the son of God only in the sense that he fed, and fed off, the divine within himself. Christians on the whole are spiritually lazy. That’s why they need someone to die for them.

  “The miracles: turning water into wine, bringing the dead back to life, scenes of transfiguration, they were invented to impress illiterate, superstitious people — and most people, even the educated, are superstitious — that Christ was God. The death on the cross and the resurrection reflect the scapegoating which all Mediterranean peoples practised. As to the concepts of hell and heaven, they were invented to keep poor, hopeless, desperate people from committing suicide. Why else would a serf, whose life depended on the overlord whose land he lived on, and who could be beaten any time the overlord so desired; who was almost always cold, tired, and hungry; whose daughters could be — and frequently were — raped by the overlord and his male relatives, why would he want to go on living? Hell and heaven were invented for those reasons by religious
leaders who depended on the overlords for their sumptuous lives. Imagine what would have happened to the landlords if the serfs had decided to find heaven on earth!”

  Didn’t I get the point! The barefoot and hungry, they fill the hell-fire and brimstone churches. Going to church is a Sunday fashion parade for the Methodists, Anglicans, and Catholics: their way of showing they aren’t poor. When I ran Bentley’s and they came to shop and ran into one another, I’d hear bits and pieces of their conversations:

  “I didn’t see you on Sunday.”

  “Couldn’t come. But I have to find a way to make it up to the Lord. He gives us so much. We have to give back something.”

  “True, Sister, true. We don’t want God to withhold his blessings.”

  So bribing God is part of it. When I married Kirton, he too did the fashion thing: a three-piece suit; ushering; taking up the collection. And he made me parade at his side every Sunday, his trophy all dolled up. “You wear that dress three Sundays ago; you shouldn’t wear it again today.” Church wear was the only thing he wasn’t a skinflint about.

  When Kirton died, I stopped going, and Father Henderson — I suspect he’s about five years my elder, no more than thirty — came nosing around to find out why I’d stopped attending. In all that heat, he wore a choking white collar and a black soutane, probably to make his pale skin look white. Suffering for Jesus, to be an example to his flock? More like ‘I’m not one of you.’ “Father,” I told him, mocking him, inwardly smirking — I know he has two unacknowledged children in Havre — “Have a drink first,” and I served him from a bottle of Mr. Kirton’s best scotch, which Kirton never drank: too expensive, no doubt. I poured myself one too and told Father Henderson what I believe. He was surprised and never expected “such sophistication from a ah ah ah — you know what I mean — country girl.” The country girl knew what he meant, and translated “ah ah ah” to mean Negro. Father Henderson could never use the word black except he was describing sin.

  “You know, Cynthia” — when Kirton was alive, Father Henderson always called me Sister Kirton — “we have two sets of beliefs, one for the priests and one for the flock.”

  “You don’t say, Father Henderson!”

  “Well, it’s complicated. Ordinary people can’t understand the scriptures. We have to adapt theology to the needs of humble folk. Minister to their needs. Christ himself did that. And as Paul says in one of his epistles, some people can only digest milk; it’s wrong to feed them meat.”

  I wanted none of his milk. “Didn’t I hear a British archbishop quoted on the radio saying hell is an imaginary place, and that Mary, if she existed at all, was an out-of-wedlock mother?”

  Father Henderson’s face looked as if it had been dunked in boiling water, his eyebrows went half-way up his forehead, his grey eyes narrowed, and his hand went to his throat as if his collar had begun to choke him.

  “Are you alright, Father?” I looked at the whisky bottle on the coffee table, ready to pour him another.

  He took a deep breath and a calming pause and said: “Let’s just say, many of us would like to modernize theology. But, Sister Kirton, the human soul is old and needs no modernizing. Christian beliefs and rituals have been good for thousands of years; they have stood the test of millennia.”

  “Is that why you continue to preach about mansions in the sky for some and eternal hellfire for others? There are people inside your church . . . There’s an Anglican minister — can’t remember his name — who doubts that Christ actually lived.”

  “Vincentians must not be exposed to such opinions. We’re careful what books the Diocesan Bookstore stocks, and we check the libraries for subversive materials.”

  “Such opinions can be heard on the BBC, Father Henderson.”

  “Alas! We have no way to block it. The British have become a godless people.” He swallowed and smoothed his hair while searching for a response. “Don’t knock it, Sister Kirton, don’t. The fear of hell keeps many a sinner from straying further into sin.”

  “That includes you too, I suppose, Father?”

  He winced.

  He no longer visits, but singles me out for chit-chat when he meets me at funerals, wakes, and socials.

  JULY 14, 1962

  I wonder what sort of life I would be leading if Kirton were alive. Kirton! I still won’t use his first name. I was afraid of him. I know that now. Obsessed with wealth. At Anna’s birth, he made his will and left it with his lawyer so I wouldn’t get to know what was in it.

  “To Cynthia Kirton nee Williams, hereinafter called my wife, I bequeath the benefit of all my immoveables for as long as she shall live, with the following conditions: I grant my wife the authority to liquidate fifty percent (50%) of all my investments, should circumstances warrant. At age 65, should my wife’s economic circumstances warrant, she is authorized to dispose of another ten (10) percent of all that remains. Upon my wife’s decease all my remaining property goes to my daughter Anna and her children, should she have children. I leave it up to my wife to determine the proportions. Should Anna predecease my wife, all property remaining after my wife’s death goes to her children. Should Anna be childless, it goes to the Anglican Church.”

  What a cold-blooded lizard! Seems I signed a pact with Lucifer himself. Kirton, bits of your lectures — boasts are more like it; that’s what our “conversations” were: listening to your boasts; you were certain I had nothing to say worth listening to — come back to me.

  “Let me and you get one thing straight. You going bring into this marriage more than you take out. You is supposed to be my help meet, not wait on me to give you meat. I got a simple philosophy. It got two principles. The first one is: everybody who not crippled and who over age must earn the food that go into their belly and the roof that keep rain off their head. The second one is: always save as much money as you can. But that is only the start. In Aruba, where I used to work for the Largo Oil Company, it had this beefy man name Showalter; red like stewed conch. He was the general manager. Everybody except me, afraid o’ Showalter. Maybe ‘cause he white. My co-workers said I was licking his arse. I find out he love West Indian food. Come from a family of five. They had a West Indian maid back in New Jersey where he grew up. Father was a boss with Standard Oil in New Jersey. Father brought him into Standard Oil straight out o’ high school. Anyway I find out he love West Indian food, and if is one thing I loved to do in them days is cook. So I offer to come cook for he one Sunday as a joke. And he accept. Lived alone in this huge house in Essoville. There’s where the company big shots lived. He was the number three man at Largo. I had a room in Bachelor Quarters. My neighbour was from Barbados and he used to tempt me to go to Oranjestad on a Saturday night, but I was determined to hold on to every copper I get so that if God spare my life and I go back to St. Vincent I could be somebody and command respect.” (Kirton would straighten his shoulders with pride, stop talking, and stare me in the eyes, the smile playing over his papery walnut face saying, I achieved it.)

  “That food I cook for Showalter sweet he till he forget I was just a two-bit black man on the janitorial staff, and we become like friends kind of. So I used to go cook for he every Sunday before I go to church and he paid me for it. From what I see, he was a lonely man. Didn’t look like he was much interested in women. Of course I can’t say I did know his business, because the bosses had their private club where they use to meet, and it was for Whites only and not for Whites at the bottom neither. He really did like me, though. He make me supervisor o’ the janitorial staff. I didn’t have to do no cleaning after that, just give the orders and make sure they get carried out, and not be afraid to crack the whip if I had to, and it come with a nice raise in pay. His doings. One time he tell me, ‘Zach.’ He himself shorten my name to Zach. ‘Zach, you’re not like these other British West Indians here. You have ambition.’ Cynthia, that statement make my head swell big with pride. I was so pleased that a
White man of all people could see that. That give me the courage to ask him advice ‘bout all sorts o’ things. He give me a good piece o’ advice about investments. He tell me if I leave my money in the bank, bankers will get rich and I will die poor. He advise me to buy shares, and he offer to do it for me. When I getting ready to leave Aruba — I went there when I was 22 and I leave when I was a month short of 55, and I never work for nobody there except Largo — and he explain what was in my portfolio, and when he tell me how much I worth, I almost shit myself. Cynthia, the trouble with Black people is they think too much about heaven and ignore their welfare on earth. He say that to me, and I think is a true statement. I pay attention to both. And another thing wrong with Black people is they hobnob with the wrong kind o’ people: people like themselves who can’t do nothing for them. He didn’t say that. That is my saying.

  “So, you see, Cynthia, I live my life according to principles that pay off. I proud o’ what I accomplish in Aruba. My father, you see, was a master carpenter who couldn’t think. What should o’ stay up in his head sink down to his balls. Spend his whole life screwing and drinking. 110 acres — 110 acres o’ good grazing and farm land that my father inherited — the Vincentian government sold for unpaid taxes, while my mother and me was living hand to mouth. I is his only child. He married my mother only because she made me. I is the only child that come from all his screwing. All my mother got from him was me, a ring, and two-three weekly beatings. He spent only enough time at home to screw my mother or beat her when she refused to let him screw her. I was already some twenty years in Aruba when he got old and shaky. People used to write and beg me to send money to look after him. My mother was long dead from all the beatings and abuse and VD that he gave her. I never answered the letters. A fellow from home who worked with me at Largo use to keep me up to date with news ‘bout him. His mother used to send him news about everybody. We called him the San Nicholas Gazette. My father went to the poor home and die there and get a pauper’s burial. The way I feel about it is: how a body live so it must die. What you sows, Cynthia, is what you reaps.