Caribbean Beat — March/April 2018 (#150)

At least four woman in the village
claim their child is John Rawlins
own, but he careful to pick the kind
of woman who, for one reason or
another, wouldn’t try and prove it
even nod at her then. She know he see her, but his eye anywhere
else — out the other window, on the road, or he turn to look at
the woman who always hook up under the arm he have stretch
out across the top of the seat. At least four woman in the village
claim their child is John Rawlins own, but he careful to pick the
kind of woman who, for one reason or another, wouldn’t try and
prove it. So he home free.
Nobody besides his mother know
the side of him Miriam is see every
Sunday. As he reach, he head for
Bally is a tailor, a widower. He have a shop that start out as a
hole in the wall, but after his wife dead, Bally throw himself
into his work so hard that he spitting out clothes fast as a
factory. Some people say that’s why Bally children so lawless, that
is their father guiding hand they missing. Bally sister come to take
care of the children, but is best she didn’t bother, because she used
to drink, and by two o’clock in the afternoon, she sleeping on the
gallery with a set of Stag bottles on the floor by her foot. Bally
send her home after seven months or so.
Bally have a plague of children: Rupert, who driving taxi;
Angie — she living with a police constable; and Bobby, the one
who win a scholarship to the university, but he selling snow cone
from a bicycle cart and wearing his hair in a ponytail, because
like he and books vex. And all the younger ones wild, especially
the boys, running through the streets like a pack of goats. All
name after Indian gods, like Bally and his wife find religion
late — Vishnu, Indra, Sita, Shiva, Krishna . . . Miriam ain’t even
sure how many.
Sometimes on a evening during the week, Bally
come “for a little breeze” by her. They sit
in the gallery and he shake his head
more than he talk. Sometimes when
the scrubbing brush. While she in the back picking tomato
and green fig, Rawlins nearby cleaning out the chicken coop.
“You can’t manage everything by yourself,” he say, as he fill
a pail of water to wash down the run. He turn off the tap and
look straight in Miriam eye. “You ain’t go believe this,” he say,
“but every Sunday I tell myself, ‘This the last weekend of your
slackness, John Rawlins. Time to stop your womanising.’ But
when Marilyn Harvey walk past me with that roll of she hipline,
or Joan Darlington sitting in the window upstairs and give me a
smile. If any of them woman pass any kind of invitation (because
even when they ain’t realise it, they’s be passing invitation), I
there with them.”
Miriam take the figs and tomato inside, and through the
window, she see Rawlins on his hands and knees scrubbing the
concrete.
“Is absolution he here for,” she say.
the night damp and the scent of jasmine reach her from the little
piece of garden she have in the front of the house, she look at
Bally. She watch the curve of his eyebrow, and his jawline, and
his hands — neat fingers clasp in his lap — and she think to
herself she might be able to calm down those children — maybe
is a woman they need. Maybe all Angie need is a woman in the
house again, and she might come back home and settle down.
So she get up and bring some tea with a mint leaf. “To soothe
your nerves,” she tell him, and he hold the cup in one hand and
rub his temple with the other one. But when he done drinking
he get to his feet and tell her he have to wake up early to finish a
waistcoat. When she open the gate for him to pass, he stand up
watching down the road.
“You see Angie lately?” he finally ask. “She scrawny and her
skin like it grey. She used to be a nice-looking girl. I tired talk,
though. I wash my hand of all of them.”
50 WWW.CARIBBEAN-BEAT.COM