Authors: Jamaica Kincaid
I had been speaking in this way for a while when Mariah interrupted and said, “We have such bad sex.” Those words came as a shock to me, for I had never thought of that. Bad sex. I wondered what exactly did she mean. From my mother I had gathered that the experience could leave you feeling indifferent, that during it you might make out the grocery list, pick a style of curtains, memorize a subtle but choice insult for people who imagined themselves above you. But I had never imagined the word “bad” could be applied to it, and as soon as she said it I knew what she meant: it was like wanting a sugar apple and getting a spoiled one; and while you’re eating the spoiled one, the memory of a good-tasting one will not go away. Mariah then told me of how, during the time she was my age and living away from home for a summer, she had stayed with a family, friends of her parents, and begun an affair with the husband. It was a disaster. She said, “His erection would grow limp whenever he tried to enter me.” She had blamed herself, as only Mariah would; she had thought there was something wrong with her or that she was doing something wrong altogether. She later came to understand that he was an old, impotent man and that he found it easier to blame a young girl for his condition than to face the possibility that in this area he was all washed up. The incident had left a mark, and it always took her a while with a new lover to forget herself completely. I didn’t say it, but I thought, Of course what you need right now is to forget yourself completely.
* * *
One day a letter arrived for me, and written all over the envelope in my mother’s beautiful handwriting was the word
URGENT.
To me the letter might as well have had written all over it the words “Do not open until doomsday,” because I added it to all the unopened letters I had received from home. That day I decided to go and buy a camera. Mariah had given me a book of photographs, because in the museum were some photographs I particularly liked. They were photographs of ordinary people in a countryside doing ordinary things, but for a reason that was not at all clear to me the people and the things they were doing looked extraordinary—as if these people and these things had not existed before. When I told her how much it pleased me to go and look at these pictures, she went out and bought me a book of them. Whenever I had a free moment, I would sit in my room and pore over this book. The people in the photographs reminded me of people I had known—in particular a photograph of one boy. He was wearing short pants, walking along in a jaunty way, and he carried in his arms two large bottles. He reminded me of a boy I used to know, a boy named Cuthbert. He was a distant cousin of mine who lived on another island, and so I never saw him enough to get tired of him. His breath always smelled as if it were morning and he had just got out of bed—stale and moldy. I liked that smell so much that whenever I had to talk to him I used to position myself so that the smell of his breath would come my way. From looking at this book of photographs, I decided to buy myself a camera.
And then something happened that I had not counted on at all. At the store where I bought the camera, the man who sold it to me—he and I went off and spent the rest of the day and half of that night in his bed. The moment we knew it would end up that way was when, as he was handing to me a camera that folded up like a jack-in-the-box, I looked across at his face and said, “You remind me of my father,” and he said, “In that case you should kiss me.” His reply was a joke, but it confirmed my observation. I waited two hours outside the store for him to finish his work, and then we went to his apartment. On the way, we exchanged the usual information: our names, where we were from, things we liked, things we did not like. His name was Roland; he had been born in Panama, but his parents were from Martinique; he liked the sound of rain falling on tree leaves, it made him feel soothed; he did not like snow. It was information to pass the time, information to avoid awkwardness, information of no real importance, and we knew that. We did not exchange telephone numbers.
I left Roland’s bed only because I had told Paul that I would see him later that night. Paul was used to this. Peggy could not stand to be with the two of us, and so I would spend the first part of the evening with her and then go to spend the rest of the night with Paul. Always Peggy and I quarreled before we parted, but we knew we would speak to or see each other the next day. The night was cold; there was a wind. Roland lived on the opposite side of town from Paul, so I took a taxi; it was a half hour’s ride away, enough time to bury a secret. At the door I planted a kiss on Paul’s mouth with an uncontrollable ardor that I actually did feel—a kiss of treachery, for I could still taste the other man in my mouth. The cold wind had left my lips the texture of stale toast, but he ate me up as if I were a freshly baked cake. He was glad to see me and said, “I love you,” and I thought, So that’s what that sounds like when someone really means it. I kissed him doubly hard, and instantly I knew it was a mistake, for he mistook my enthusiasm for his love returned. In the morning, he said that Peggy had called me in the early part of the evening, wanting to know if I was with him. His voice was without suspicion. I said, “She’s such a nuisance,” and flew into an attack on her character, as if that were the point. He did not know that what he wanted was an answer to the question, Where had I been if I had not been with Peggy or at home?
* * *
The children and I had gone for a walk in the park, and we returned to the apartment with the usual sounds of torment and pleasure. Lewis and Mariah were sitting in their living room, and the children ran in to greet them. I followed, carrying my camera, which I now took with me everywhere, and when I saw them, apart yet closely together, Mariah’s eyes red from tears, a crooked smile on her face as if she were a child trying to put up a brave front, I knew that the end was here, the ruin was in front of me. For a reason that will never be known to me, I said, “Say ‘cheese’” and took a picture. Lewis said, “Jesus Christ,” and he left our company in anger. Mariah held out her arms and hugged all four of her children together in a big embrace and said to me, “I’m sorry.”
I thought, Why apologize for a swine. And then I wondered when had I come to think of Lewis as a swine: I had always liked him; he had always been kind to me. And then I knew: he made Mariah cry, and I had taken her side; that was something I would always do. And I could see the manner in which Lewis had left her. It was he who was really leaving, but he would never come right out and tell her so. He was the sort of person—a cultivated man, usually—who cannot speak his mind. It wasn’t that speaking frankly had been bred out of him; it was just that a man in his position always knew exactly what he wanted, and so everything was done for him. Sometimes he and I would play a game of checkers. I was pretty good at this game, but I could never beat him. His strategy was to attack in an underhanded way; and, no matter what, I would oblige him by blundering into defeat. Afterward he was kind enough to show me where I had gone wrong. “Sorry,” he would say, “next time”; but next time was just the same. He was too clever, that man, and too used to getting his way. He would leave her, but he would make her think that it was she who was leaving him. The children were no longer in the room. Her mouth opened. I knew what she would say before she said it. She said, “I am going to ask Lewis to leave.” She looked at me with concern on her face; she put out a hand to me, offering me support. But I was fine. I would not have married a man like Lewis.
I was lying in bed one night. The children were already asleep. The house was quiet. I had draped a small square of false silk over my bedside lamp, and it made the room into a mingling of early dusk and the last remains of a faraway sunset. This reminded me of home, and a peculiar feeling came over me, a combination of happy excitement, expectation, and dread. All around me on the walls of my room were photographs I had taken, in black-and-white, of the children with Mariah, of Mariah all by herself, and of some of the things I had acquired since leaving home. I had no photographs of Lewis and no photographs of myself. I was trying to imitate the mood of the photographs in the book Mariah had given me, and though in that regard I failed completely, I was pleased with them all the same. I had a picture of the children eating toasted marshmallows; a picture of them with their bottoms facing the camera—their way of showing me how disgusted they were with requests for more smiles; a picture of Mariah in the middle of an elaborate preparation of chicken and vegetables cooked slowly in red wine; a picture of my dresser top with my dirty panties and lipstick, an unused sanitary napkin, and an open pocketbook scattered about; a picture of a necklace made of strange seeds, which I had bought from a woman on the street; a picture of a vase I had bought at the museum, a reproduction of one found at the site of a lost civilization. Why is a picture of something real eventually more exciting than the thing itself? I did not yet know the answer to that. I was lying there in a state of no state, almost as if under ether, thinking nothing, feeling nothing. It is a bad way to be—your spirit feels the void and will summon something to come in, usually something bad.
There was a knock, and the door opened. It was Mariah. Someone was there to see me. From the way she said it, I could tell it wasn’t someone she knew; I could tell it wasn’t good news. I followed Mariah into the living room and saw seated there, in a chair that had too much stuffing, a familiar face, the face of Maude Quick, only now she was a woman. She was still a bully—I could see it in her overstuffed frame, matching the chair she sat in. When she saw me, she stood, growing up and out. She said my name, and I felt as if all the earth’s gravity had been gathered and made to center only on me; I was reduced to a tiny speck that weighed a world. She said that she had been home for a few weeks and had returned only yesterday. She said, “Here,” and she gave me a blue envelope that had stamped on it
PAR AVION
, and my name and address written in my mother’s handwriting. She said, “Your mother asked me to give you this.” She said, “Your father died a month ago now.” She said, “It happened all of a sudden. His heart just gave out.” She said, “You know, his heart always gave him trouble.”
I was silent. I remained silent for a long time. I was thinking, Look at how pleased with herself this person is. I was thinking, Everything she has ever done has brought her such satisfaction: eating, especially eating, sleeping, telling me the things she has just told me.
She said, “Your mother is so sad you never answer her letters. Perhaps you never receive them.”
Mariah had not left the room; she had been standing a little bit away from where we were standing. She now came and stood beside me and placed one arm around my shoulders, and with the other she held on to my two hands; she drew me close to her. She must have known that I was about to break apart, and what she was doing was holding me together in one piece, like the series of tin bands that hold a box of goods together if it is being sent far overseas. I stood still in silence. My head ached, my eyes ached, my mouth was dry but I could not swallow, my throat ached, inside my ears was the sound of waves wanting to break free but only dashing themselves against a wall of rocks. I could not cry. I could not speak. I was trying to get the muscles in my face to do what I wanted them to do, trying to gain control over myself.
Maude laughed, a small laugh, the laugh of someone who did not even have to make an effort to be correct. She said, “You remind me of Miss Annie, you really remind me of your mother.”
I was dying, and she saved my life. I shall always be grateful to her for that. She could not have known that in one careless sentence she said the only thing that could keep me alive. I said, “I am not like my mother. She and I are not alike. She should not have married my father. She should not have had children. She should not have thrown away her intelligence. She should not have paid so little attention to mine. She should have ignored someone like you. I am not like her at all.”
It’s possible I said all of this in ancient Greek, for Maude only looked at me and smiled. Mariah left the room—to make us some tea, she said. I sat down. I said, this time in English, “You are looking very well, Maude,” and she said, “Yes, I always follow the advice my mother gave me. When I was leaving home for the first time, my mother said to me, ‘Maude, eat all your meals at the same time every day. Make sure of that.’” At that point I was beyond even silently heaping scorn on such an incredible piece of nonsense.
Of course she urged me to return home immediately. I made no reply to that, I made no reply to anything she said. She left after bestowing on me her benediction of an embrace; apart from everything else, she left behind her the smell of clove, lime, and rose oil, and this scent almost made me die of homesickness. My mother used to bathe me in water in which the leaves and flowers of these plants had been boiled; this bath was to protect me from evil spirits sent to me by some of the women who had loved my father and whom he had not loved in return.
And how did this business of not returning the love all these women showered on him get started? His mother, after asking his father to bring him up, left for England. He last heard from her when he was twelve years old. She had sent him a pair of shoes for Christmas, black with small holes that made a decorative pattern on the front; they were too big for him when he received them, and so he put them away, but when he next tried them on he had outgrown them. He still had them in his safe, where he kept his money and other private things, and every once in a while he would show them to me. He never told me what she looked like, except that she was a beautiful woman. He would also say that she was a kind woman, but even then I thought he was just speaking to a child and so couldn’t tell the real story, his real feelings; for how could a woman be called kind when she had left her own child at five years old, and gotten on a boat and sailed away? He never saw her again, and when he told me about her he had no idea if she was dead or alive. When he was seven, his father left him with his grandmother and went off to build the Panama Canal. My father never saw his father again, either. He and his grandmother slept in the same bed. She used to get up a little before he did to prepare his breakfast, the same routine my mother used to follow and must have followed until he died. One morning his grandmother didn’t awake before him, and when he finally awoke he realized that she was lying next to him dead. “She must have died in the middle of the night and I never knew,” he would say to me. He never said his grandmother was beautiful or kind, but I could see that she had been devoted to him. My mother was devoted to him. She was devoted to her duties: a clean house, delicious food for us, a clean yard, a small garden of herbs and vegetables, the washing and ironing of our clothes. He must have loved my mother, for he married her—the only woman he married. I long ago thought he married her for her youth and strength, the way someone else would marry for money. He was such a clever man.