Читать книгу The River's Song - Jacqueline Bishop - Страница 8

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 killed your brother and heart attack your grandmother! Not spirits and bushes and duppy foolishness!”

“And how you know that, Miss Know-it-all Yvette?” Junie jumped to her feet, ready to fight. Junie was a good fighter, in some ways a better fighter than Yvette, despite Yvette’s mouth. “And just what was it that took your mother away?”

A fearful silence descended over the group. What would Yvette say or do? A shadow darkened Yvette’s face and her bottom lip began to tremble. For a moment it seemed she was about to cry, and if she started crying I didn’t know what we’d do. Yvette could be “hard” at times, yes, but she also spent hours and hours, crying for no immediate reason. Her mother had left for New York over three years ago and since then no one heard anything from her. Not a word. Not a letter. Nothing. No one knew if she had landed, if she had not landed, or if the plane had just been gobbled up by the infamous Bermuda triangle. Yvette’s mother simply disappeared in thin air it seemed, and the people in the district often openly speculated if she was even still alive. Sometimes I looked at Yvette, wondering how she did it, how she survived day after day, month after month without getting any information about her mother? As miserable as my mother could sometimes be, as miserable as she sometimes made me, I knew I wouldn’t be able to cope with people openly speculating whether she was alive or dead. I knew I could not live without my mother.

Yvette’s face darkened some more, but this time in anger. A sneer spread across her full dark lips and I could tell she was getting ready to say something really hurtful.

“Well,” she said to Junie, “if you or your mother could read, you’d know what it said on the death certificates.”

The joke about Junie and her mother was that even if their names were on johnny cakes in front of them, they wouldn’t know it, for neither could read. This was not exactly true. Junie wasn’t the brightest girl, but she could read a word here and there, a few sentences. She certainly knew how to spell her name, fill out forms. True, she wasn’t as bright as Yvette, but then few people were. Had Yvette taken the common entrance exam, she’d surely have passed for one of the high schools in Kingston, but she hadn’t taken the exam because her father couldn’t find her birth certificate and there was no way to verify she was of the age to sit the exam. What would become of her when she finished primary school, no one knew.

“Can’t read? Says who?” Junie asked, her hurt showing, ready to fight.

“Says me and everybody else.” Yvette’s arms were akimbo, daring Junie to touch her.

“I have a good mind to punch your stinking mouth!” Junie doubled up her fists and started getting closer and closer to Yvette. “That would teach you to keep it blasted shut!”

“Just you try it!” Yvette was trying not to show she was afraid Junie might make good on her promise. “Just you try it!”

“Alright, alright, that’s enough!” I stepped in to calm things down between the two young lionesses with fire breathing out of their nostrils. Junie and Yvette eyed each other, smelling and circling each other for quite some time...

Now as we looked down towards the river, I thought if we didn’t do something to please Yvette we’d have a miserable time. I realized if we stayed near the rushes, it wouldn’t matter much if we took our clothes off, for no one could see us from way up here on the road. There were certainly enough bushes and trees sloping down to the river to hide us. It wouldn’t be the first time we’d stripped down naked in front of each other; we’d done that dozens, perhaps hundreds of times before when we came to the river. But now that our bodies were changing …

“Look, we’ll take off as much of our clothes as we’re comfortable with.”

“Coward!” Yvette mumbled under her breath.

“Will you just shut up! Will you just for once keep your big mouth shut?” I was getting really angry now. “Do we want to go to the river or don’t we?”

“Let’s go,” Monique said, jumping up and getting ready to lead the way.

“Let’s go under the bridge,” Yvette said in yet another dare. The girl was seriously getting on my last nerve! The bridge was the place Grandy had warned me time and time again not to go near. The water under the bridge was dark and it was deep. There you could not see the bottom of the river. There were sharp stones hidden in the water under the bridge, and because it was so dark it wasn’t easy to see them. Someone could really hurt themselves on those stones. This was what the district people said all the time. People had to be careful with those stones. But that was not the worst of it. Under the bridge was ole crab and rivermumma! Yvette herself knew that. Another terrible hush fell over the group.

“Are we going or not?” Yvette was looking around her, something lit and burning bright inside her, something which looked like the bright orange-red flowers of the poinciana trees. Flame of the forest, those trees were called. As bright as any midnight fire. I looked at Yvette. She had already accused me of being a coward for refusing to take my clothes off; now I could not refuse her dare without looking even more of a coward in front of the other girls. I would give in. We would go under the bridge. I was the Kingstonian. I was the one supposedly afraid of nothing.

“Sure, we can go under the bridge,” I said, struggling to sound brave.

“Well, all right then,” she said, triumph in her eyes, “Let’s go. Let’s go under the bridge!”

We started climbing down the banking, which was rocky and steep. Trees sloped down to the river forming a heavy green canopy overhead – cocoa trees, banana trees, breadfruit and a few mango trees. When they were in season, the district boys would raid them, picking all the ripe fruits, leaving the trees as bare as the backside of a newborn baby. We stayed close to the ground, clinging onto bushes, baskets under our arms, as we gingerly made our way down. Yvette was in front, followed by Sophie, Monique, Junie and finally me.

Water rushed swiftly and thundered over the falls a little way ahead. The sound was very loud, because there was quite a drop, and the water seemed to growl going down, releasing an ever-present puff of white spray as if it were the breath of some dragon. Grandy often told me the story of the man coming home drunk one night who tumbled down the slope and over the falls. It took days to find his mangled body. The river gets hungry for companionship every now and again, Grandy said, opens its mouth wide to take someone in. Even the youngest child knew enough to be wary of the falls. This was why we always went upstream, towards the bridge.

Before long we left the trees behind and were out in the hot sunshine again. We reached the water’s edge. We hitched up our skirts above our knees and wedged the baskets carefully under our arms. Beads of sweat had formed on Yvette’s upper lip and I watched as she lifted her skirt to wipe the sweat off her face. Her chest was heaving from the effort of climbing down the mountainside.

“So,” Yvette drawled, jolting me out of my thoughts, “why you staring at me like that?”

“And what are you using to know that I’m looking at you?”

Sophie and Monique giggled, while Junie shook her head.

Yvette hissed her teeth and began wading out into the shimmering silver pool of water where it looked like someone had thrown many golden sparkles. Her clothes started to cling to her slender frame and I could not help thinking how beautiful she was. She was one of the darkest persons I knew and certainly the most striking with her hair combed into four thick plaits. Beside her, Sophie, Junie and Monique seemed like wilted hibiscus flowers. Her mother, whom I had never seen, was still talked of as a beauty, so much so people were wary of her. You could never trust so much beauty. People said this was her downfall; why, young as she had been, she was “kidnapped” by Yvette’s father. I continued looking at the girl, who suddenly turned and flashed me a smile. I looked away quickly, but all the other girls began to laugh.

Before long we were crossing over to the other side of the river to set our baskets for the shrimps in the cool dark rushes.

I was the last to step into the water and I jumped back onto the banking for I had forgotten how ice-cold it was. Every year I forgot that. I took a deep breath and stepped in again. This time I stood for a while in the water without moving, letting my ankles grow accustomed to the chill, watching the tiny green and black groupers darting around my feet, before I started wading out, the water coming up to my ankles, my knees, then my waist and finally my shoulders. I was now holding my basket overhead like the other girls, swaying every now and again in the strong pull of the current, my dress clinging, pasting itself onto my body. I spotted some bright yellow guavas bobbing by on their way down stream, dropped from a guava tree at the side of the river, and if my hands had not been holding the basket, I would have made a dash for them.

The other girls reached the other side of the river near the tall green reeds, and were busy setting their baskets.

“What’s taking you so long?” Monique called, laughing at me. I was still making my way gingerly over to them. The others did not need to say it with their mouths for I could see it in their eyes: Watch the Kingstonian who knows everything; the Kingstonian who is having such a hard time crossing the river.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” I yelled.

“Just make it this year,” Monique yelled back and everyone started laughing.

I made my way over to the reeds and set my basket, then followed the other girls who were now heading upstream to the bridge. Under the bridge, it was a relief to take off our dresses, clinging and cold, an unnecessary weight on our bodies. Junie unbuttoned my dress and I pulled it over my head. But I would not be taking off my panties, wet as they were. It was one thing to be naked with my friends in the privacy of my grandmother’s house where we took showers together, a totally different thing to be naked at the river where a complete stranger could come by. Without discussing it, all five of us kept our panties on.

Under the bridge was cool, damp and dark. Slimy green moss was everywhere. We all knew how deep the water was just by its stillness. If Grandy knew I was there, I’d get a fine beating. Every year there was some new story to tell. Did you hear what happened under the bridge the other day? Grandy, like other villagers, spoke of the water under the bridge as if it had a mind of its own.

There were cement platforms on which you could sit or stand, but these were covered with some kind of thick waxy green plant. I refused to even think about what might be hiding in there just waiting to crawl out. Then there was the huge crab living under the bridge for years and years. Every now and again, it was said, someone caught a glimpse of this crab crawling out of his hole, claws as big as a child’s arm. Grown men had supposedly lost toes, fingers, eyes or even had their stomachs gauged out by this crab. What would this monster do to us?

And what of the dreadful rivermumma? What would she do to us? Rivermumma loved children. Especially girls. And here were five of us to drag down to her watery kingdom; five new attendants to comb her long green hair and sing with her at night, luring other little girls to their deaths. I did not care who might want to laugh, I was not getting into that still dark water. The bridge started to tremble and for a moment I was confused. Was this retribution for disobeying my grandmother? My legs went weak and my breath came fast. My fear must have shown on my face because the other girls started laughing.

“Is only a vehicle passing,” Monique said.

“I guess you think that’s funny?” I was not seeing the joke.

“Verrrry funny,” Yvette replied, wrapping her arms around herself and falling backwards into the water. For a moment she disappeared under the dark surface, before emerging near the far end of the bridge. She drew my eyes to the bank behind her, where red ginger plants grew in abandon, their large clumsy banana-like leaves tearing easily in the wind. Beyond was a dense thicket of trees and bushes, home of the notorious sasabonsam, hairy monster with large blood-red eyes, sitting high in the trees dangling his long hairy legs, ready to catch whoever dared come into the bushes. Suppose sasabonsam came tearing out of those bushes right now? Just what would we do? Another shiver ran through my body.

Monique, Sophie and Junie squealed and jumped into the water, one after the other. They started doing powerful breaststrokes, sometimes diving under the water, or lazing on their backs.

“Come on, Gloria,” Sophie said. “Don’t be a chicken. Come in!”

“Yes,” Monique and Junie chimed in, “the water feels soooo good.”

“Last time I was in, it was soooo cold.”

“That’s until you get used to it!” Yvette joined in. She dived, emerging next to the other girls. All four of them treading water, looking up at me.

“Oh come on,” Junie begged, “the water’s real nice. You’ve no idea what you’re missing.”

“Look at this!” Yvette shouted. She dived and we saw her two skinny legs shoot up in the air. She remained like that for a split second before disappearing into the water. She re-emerged sputtering and laughing.

“You found it again!” Sophie shouted. “I can’t believe it! You always find the stone first!”

The stone was in the middle of the river and very difficult to find. It, too, was legendary, for it wasn’t unusual for someone to spend an entire day under the bridge and not find the stone. Like ole crab and rivermumma, the stone was said to appear only to those it wanted to stand on it. Now all the girls crowded onto the stone, held hands and started singing and shouting at the top of their voices. Every so often one or other of them would fall off the stone, because it was not large enough to hold four people.

“Let’s play a ring game,” Monique suggested.

“Yes!” Yvette agreed, arms flailing about. “A ring game! Let’s play a ring game!” She was having the time of her life.

“Which one? Which one?” Junie asked, equally excited. Anyone looking on would not have believed they were the same two girls who almost came to blows a moment before.

“Stagolee!” Sophie shouted. “I am Stagolee!”

The others chimed in: “Stagolee stole the cookie from the cookie jar.”

“Who me?” Sophie asked, bracing back and pointing a finger at herself and looking at the other girls.

“Yes, you!” they shouted back, in joy.

“Couldn’t be,” Sophie said, shaking her head and shoulders from side to side, denying the theft.

“Then who?”

“Number four,” Sophie said pointing and laughing at Yvette, “stole the cookie from the cookie jar.”

“Who me?” Yvette asked, pointing a finger back at herself and shaking her head.

“Yes you!”

“Couldn’t be!”

“Then who?”

“Number one stole the cookie from the cookie jar.”

With all the singing and rocking they were doing, the circle broke apart and they all went under the water, before coming up and joining hands in a circle again. The more I looked at them, the more fun they seemed to be having. I put my toe in the water and twirled it around, watching circles spread into larger circles in the water. I put one foot in up to my ankle and left it there. The water really did not feel that cold; perhaps I would go in after all.

“Come in! Come in!” they chorused when they noticed what I was doing.

Next I was sitting with both legs dangling in the water. I pushed off from the cement block and the water enveloped me. This time it felt warm and silky, like Grandy’s loose warm hugs and kisses. The girls made a place for me and I joined the circle in the river. Soon I was singing at the top of my lungs with them, our voices echoing loudly under the bridge.

“Seeee,” Yvette stuck out her tongue at me; “there was nothing to be afraid of!”

Nothing at all I agreed. Not Grandy; not ole crab; not sasabonsam, and certainly not rivermumma. How could she handle five girls all at once? The circle broke apart and we dived under the water, emerged, took air, blew bubbles, splashed water at each other. We felt we’d never had such a good time.

“Let’s check our baskets,” I suggested when we had been in the water for more than an hour. “They must have a lot of shrimps by now.” They agreed and we dived under the water and emerged at the far end of the bridge. It was only when we were out from under the bridge that I remembered we were almost naked. I wanted to turn back for our dresses, but the others disagreed, saying we should just check our baskets and get back quickly under the bridge. There didn’t seem to be anyone around to see us.

We waded over to our baskets; they were filling up rapidly with silver-gray shrimps. Later when we got home, we would poach them over an open fire and watch them turn a brilliant red. We would salt and pepper them and eat them with roasted breadfruit or boiled green bananas. The baskets checked, we hurried back under the bridge.

“What game shall we play now?” I asked.

“What about Mango Time?” Sophie suggested.

“That’s not a game, stupid,” Yvette said. “That’s a song.” We continued holding onto each other on the rock. By now our fingers were pale and wrinkled from being in the water so long.

“You’ve got breasts!” I said to Yvette, looking at the small mounds on her chest.

“And you too!” Yvette pointed back to me.

“Just barely.” There was just the barest hint of a rise on my chest.

“I have nothing!” Monique muttered, gathering up the skin on her flat chest.

“You know what’s going to come next,” Yvette said solemnly.

“It!!!!” we all said, letting out a shrieking cry.

“I don’t want it to happen to me,” Monique’s eyebrows crinkled up. “Everything will change. Plus, I just don’t understand certain things. Like, you know, can you still pee when it happens? And does it come all the time, non-stop?”

Not one of us could answer her questions. Neither Mama nor Grandy ever spoke to me directly about it. I only knew one day it would happen to me and after that, if I were not careful with boys, I could get pregnant. It, I knew, involved blood, and often times women were miserable and tired because of it and felt a lot of pain. It called for sanitary napkins, and sanitary napkins could be troublesome and expensive. Why did women have to have it in the first place? It was something all the women I knew wondered. After a while it went away and women could not become pregnant any more. All this information I had picked up along the way, since no one really sat me down and talked to me directly about it. Like so many other things in my life, innuendoes were supposed to suffice for direct information and somehow I was just supposed to know all these things.

Suddenly I heard bush breaking as if someone was coming towards the bridge from the hill. I stopped playing and listened intently. It might be a stray animal, in which case the sound would take no particular path, would move about from place to place, in a straggly fashion, but these sounds were different. Sure in their step and heading straight for the bridge.

“What’s that?” I asked, raising my hand to still the talking about me. For a moment everyone went quiet.

“What’s what?” Yvette asked, slightly annoyed, as if I were making things up.

“That!” I said again, panicking, for the sounds were getting louder. It was coming in our direction. Then we all heard it. Someone was coming towards the bridge.

“Good lord,” I groaned, my mind running all over the place. If it was Grandy I was dead. If it was sansabonsam, I was dead. If it was some stupid country boy… that thought I couldn’t follow to its logical conclusion. We began swimming vigorously towards the cement blocks. When we got there it was pure confusion. I could not find my dress, while Monique, Junie and Sophie were struggling over the same dress. The only one who remained in the water was Yvette. She didn’t seem the least bit concerned that someone or something was coming, and acted as though she didn’t have a care in the world. She continued treading water, stopping every now and again to stand on the stone in the middle of the river. Every once in a while she turned in the direction of the bushes to see who or what might be coming out.

Three boys appeared at the far end of the bridge. Three boys from the district. Immediately they started laughing and pointing at us. “Look at them! They naked! We see you naked!” This was terrible. No boy had ever seen me naked or near-naked before, and I had promised myself that none ever would. Here now were three boys staring at me in my underwear. Three country boys to boot! I would never live down the shame.

“Look! Monique in her panties!” one of the boys said, doubling over and laughing hard.

I could not get the dress over my head fast enough. I kept getting lost in its folds, struggling for what seemed an eternity. Finally Monique, Sophie and Junie were able to sort out their dresses and pulled them on. I managed to do the same.

The boys acted as though this was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. From the looks on their faces, they evidently thought they had something over us. Something they could use to bribe us, because we wouldn’t want anyone else to hear about this little incident.

“You dirty disgusting boys!” Monique screamed at them. “Go away! Go on, get away from here.” Her arms were akimbo. Now that we were dressed again, we found our voices and were ready to fight.

All this time Yvette remained in the water unconcerned, watching what was going on around her. She wouldn’t be cowed by anyone, least of all these three boys. She had come under the bridge to enjoy herself and this was exactly what she was going to do. Swaying and rocking in the water, in her own little world.