aeroplanes and lives with an ex-monk who can’t stand children. My father’s other sister has also lived in the States from as far back as I can remember.
Actually, my Uncle ’Phonso doesn’t really live with us either – he is the youngest and, it is said, the most like his father, both in terms of his skill as a seaman and his restlessness and rebellious spirit. He took over the running of my grandmother’s sloop (which plies up and down the rivers, coasts and nearby islands, as it always has, engaged equally in a little trading and a little harmless smuggling), and always claimed he could never live under the same roof with ‘the old witch’ (his mother). So he spends most of his life on the sloop. On every long trip he takes a different female companion (‘...just to grieve me and to force me to spend all my time praying and burning candles for his wicked soul,’ my grandmother said). Once a year the sloop would be hauled up onto the river bank below our house for four or five weeks, so that Uncle Umberto could replace rotten planks and timbers and caulk and paint it. During this time Uncle ’Phonso would have his annual holiday in his section of the family home.
Uncle John, the lawyer, was the most serious of my father’s brothers – though he was not really a lawyer. From as long as I can remember he has worked in the district administrator’s office and has been ‘preparing’ to be a lawyer by wearing pin-striped shirts and conservative ties and dark suits and highly polished black shoes. His apprenticeship to the profession became an eternal dress rehearsal. Packages of books and papers would arrive for him from overseas (though less frequently in recent years) and we would all be impressed at this evidence of his scholarly intent, but as far as I know he has never sat an exam. He and Aunt Monica live very comfortably off his salary as a clerk in the district office, but they have agreed not to have any children until he is qualified. In the early years of their marriage the couple was cruelly teased about not having children. Papi would say, ‘Hey, Johnno, you sure is Monica Suarez you married, and not Rima Valenzuela?’ Rima Valenzuela was a beautiful and warm-hearted woman in town notorious for her childlessness. Since she was a teenager she has longed for children and tried to conceive with the aid of an ever-lengthening list of men (including, it was rumoured, one or two of my uncles). She was said to be close to forty now, and was beginning despairingly to accept what people had been telling her for years – that she was barren.
Every new-year’s day after mass people would say to Uncle John, ‘Well, Johnno, this is the year; don’t forget to invite me to the celebrations when they call you to the bar.’ But no one really believes any more that he will actually become a lawyer. One year Uncle ’Phonso patted him on the back and said consolingly, ‘Never mind, brother John, there’s a big sand bar two-three miles down river; I can take you there in the sloop any time you want, and you can tell all these idiots that you’ve been called to the bar, you didn’t like the look of it and you changed your mind.’
In a way, Aunt Monica was as strangely obsessive as Uncle John. Papi said it was because she had no children to occupy her and bring her to her senses. She seemed to dedicate her life to neatness and cleanliness, not only making sure that Uncle John’s lawyerly apparel was always impeccable, but every piece of cloth in their section of the house, from handkerchief to bed-sheet to window-blind, was more than regularly washed and – above all – ironed. Aunt Monica spent at least three or four hours every day making sure that every item of cloth she possessed was clean and smooth and shiny. She had ironing boards that folded out from the wall in each of the three rooms she and Uncle John occupied and kept urging the other branches of the family to install similar contraptions in their rooms. Once when my grandmother remarked: ‘All these children! The house beginning to feel crowded again. Umberto, we best think about adding on a few more rooms,’ Papi quipped: ‘Why? Just so that Monica could put in more fold-out ironing boards?’ – and everyone laughed.
* * *
One morning as we were all at the kitchen table, dressed for work and school and finishing breakfast, Uncle Umberto came into the room in his sleeping attire (short pants and an old singlet) looking restless and confused. We all looked at him, but before anyone could ask, he said: ‘You all, I didn’t sleep at all last night, because I was studying something funny that happened to me last evening.’ Everyone sensed one of his ghost stories coming and we waited expectantly. I had got up from the table to go and do some quick revision before leaving for school, but I stood my ground to listen.
‘Just as the sun was going down yesterday I went for my usual walk along the path overlooking the river – you know I does like to watch the sunset on the river and the small boats with people going home up-river from work in town. Suddenly, just as I reach that big rock overhanging the river at Mora Point, this white woman appear from nowhere on top the rock. Is like if she float up or fly up from the river and light on the rock. She was wearing a bright blue dress, shiny like one of them big blue butterflies...’
‘ Morpho,’ interrupted my brother Patrick, the know-it-all. And Papi also had to put in his little bit.
‘Shiny blue dress, eh? Take care is not Monica starch and press it for her.’ But they were both told to be quiet and let Uncle Umberto get on with his story.
‘She beckon me to come up on the rock, so I climb up and stand up there next to her and she start to ask me a whole set of questions – all kind of thing about age and occupation and how long I live in these parts and if I ever travel overseas – and she got a funny squarish black box or bag in her hand. Well, first of all, because she was white I expect her to talk foreign, like somebody from England or America, but she sound just like one of we.’ He paused and looked around. ‘Then after she had me talking for about ten or fifteen minutes, I venture to ask her about where she come from, but she laugh and say: “Oh, that’s not important, you’re the interesting subject under discussion here” – meaning me –’ and Uncle Umberto tapped his breastbone twice. ‘Then like she sensed that I start to feel a little uneasy, and she say: “Sorry, there’s no need to keep you any longer, you can continue your walk.” By then like she had me hypnotized, and I climb down from the rock onto the path and start walking away.’
‘Eh-eh, when I catch myself, two, three seconds later and look back, the woman done disappear! I hurry back up the rock and I can’t see her anywhere. I look up and down the path, I look down at the river, but no sign of her – just a big blue butterfly fluttering about the bushes on the cliff-side...’
It was vintage Umberto. Uncle John said: ‘Boy, you still got the gift – you does tell some real good ones.’
‘I swear to God,’ Umberto said, ‘I telling you exactly what happen. This isn’t no make-up story.’
Still musing about Uncle Umberto’s experience, we were all beginning to move off to resume our preparations for school and work, when Aunt Teresa began to speak in an uncharacteristically troubled voice.
‘Umberto, I don’t know who it is you see, or you think you see, but you got to be careful how you deal with strange women who want to ask a lot of questions – you say she had you hypnotized, well many a man end up losing his mind – not to mention his soul – over women like that. The day you decide to have anything personal to do with this woman, you better forget about me, because I ent having no dealings with devil women...’
This was certainly strange for Aunt Teresa, who usually shrugged off her husband’s idiosyncrasies and strange ‘experiences’ with a knowing smile and a wink at the rest of us. Aunt Teresa’s agitation seemed to be contagious among the women of the household. I noticed that Mami seemed suddenly very serious and, as Aunt Teresa continued to speak, Aunt Monica, preoccupied and fidgety, came and stood by the fridge next to me and began to unbutton my school shirt. As she reached the last button and began to pull the shirt-tails out of my pants, the talking stopped and everyone was looking at us.
Too shocked or uncertain to react to this divestiture before, I now smiled
