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 crazy, Yvette! Grandy would kill me if she knew I was up to some foolishness like that!” Yvette was proving to be her usual difficult self. All the time I’d been sitting in Kingston and dreaming of coming to the country to see her – to see them all – I couldn’t believe I’d forgotten this side of her, the side that was always testing, pushing and challenging; the side that always needed to be in control.
She threw herself down on the grassy banking. “Well,” she said very loudly, “I guess some people are not as brave as they make themselves out to be. I thought some people from Kingston would do just about anything.”
“That anything doesn’t include getting naked so some stupid country boy can walk by and see me. What do you all say?” I turned to the other girls, seeking support.
Sophie looked down intently at something by her toes. Junie was suddenly very interested in some bush close by. Monique as always wanted a compromise.
“Well,” she said, turning to Yvette, “do we have to take off all our clothes?”
“All of them!” Yvette replied, waving her arms about like some mad magician.
The sun was strong overhead and I was hot. Too hot for all of this nonsense. I’d already been in the country for two weeks and this was my first visit to the river. I couldn’t wait to get into the cool river water and wade in up to my knees. I’d scoop some of the water up in my hands and let it fall all over my hot and tired face. Yvette with her foolishness was keeping me from that water. Of course, I could have gone in without her, and I knew that chances were the other girls would follow me in, but I didn’t want to do this. Yvette might get upset and take off, and much as she got on my nerves sometimes, I did not want that. The outing just wouldn’t be the same without her, difficult as she could be.
When I’d told Grandy I was going to the river with my friends to catch shrimps, she stopped frying the plantains for breakfast and thought about it for a moment.
“Well,” she looked in the direction of the mountains, “don’t look like we going to get any rain today so I guess it’s alright for you to go.” She gave me a wide-top tightly woven reed basket she used to catch shrimps. After telling me I should set the basket on the far side of the banking, where it was cool and dark and where the shrimp congregated, she warned me about the river.
“Now you know that river has a mind of its own,” Grandy was buttoning up the back of my dress. “If it seems unruly, don’t go in. If your mind tell you not to go in, follow your mind. Should it start raining or the river starts rising, get out fast!”
Grandy and all her instructions! It seemed my entire existence was hedged around what I should and should not do; what I should be leery of: Spirits were in the bushes; I should not throw a stone at a bird, especially if it was a very pretty bird or a black-black bird because it might not be a bird at all but some spirit in animal form; I should never answer a first call but listen for my name on two or three more calls, for it might not be a person calling me at all but a ghost pretending to be a human and appearing in human form and this ghost would take me back with her to her grave and no one would ever see me again; and, under no circumstances, should I take shelter under a silk cotton “duppy” tree.
“Pure foolishness,” Yvette said when I told her about this as we walked to the river. The sun was so hot, we often had to seek shade under a tree. I was on the look out to make sure it was not a silk cotton tree, much to Yvette’s annoyance. Like Rachel, she had no patience whatsoever for anything she considered superstitious.
“I don’t know about that,” Junie whispered fearfully. “Before I was born spirits killed my younger brother and my father’s mother. I’d be careful if I were you.”
Monique and Sophie grunted their approval.
“Diarrhea
