The Girl With the Golden Shoes (7 page)

I ain’t able for them people, thought Estrella, as the
madrasitos
called to her and waved. They run me out their town already. I ain’t want to get inside no truck with them. Worst of all, they have machete. I ain’t going nowhere with them. The fellow by the market said it have a bus. I prefer to wait for that. Plus is only dirty people I seeing in them trucks. And I now just bathe myself.

The trucks were coming close together in a convoy like an army in retreat, and she kept her eyes engaged by reading so she didn’t have to look.

But when another thirty minutes passed and she hadn’t seen the bus, and the gaps between the trucks began to lengthen to the point where she would hear one engine fading out before another grunted up the hill, she changed her mind.

VII.

The truck was crowded, but not as crowded as the ones that came before. No one clung against the side or rode the cab. But those who had seats were stacked on others like jars of pickled pork. With their backs against the cab, hats aligned in humps below the glass, some were sitting on the truck’s short bed with hands around their ankles, chins against their knees, gazing at their toes. The others stood and held onto the ribbing of the missing canvas sheet.

The old blue truck groaned on. It was a Pierce-Arrow from the ’20s, with an upright cab like a telephone booth and light external fenders of the type you see on motorbikes today. It was older than the other trucks, and smaller, and rode like a carriage on weak leaf springs that creaked.

With the engine under stress, they passed a scrappy settlement and turned onto the main cross-island road.

They came upon a string of solid villages with paved streets and good houses—verandas, hedges, lattice trim—a pond below the wreckage of a white great house, then for miles, on rolling land, long rows of young banana trees just planted by United Fruit. Guards rode up and down the verge on horses—some of them with guns.

From there, the road was like a lashing whip, and the old truck rose and fell along its dips and rises, flanked by humps of land in terraced cultivation—tenant farms of beans and cabbage next to ample citrus groves whose owners had new cars and concrete villas.

The truck made frequent stops, and Estrella dropped her head each time. This way she wouldn’t feel compelled to wave.

Although she was grateful that they’d slapped their hands against the truck to make the driver stop, and had gripped her arm and helped her in, Estrella held the workers in contempt. They’d failed. They were dirty and poor, and wore their tattered clothes on bodies in decay.

In their company she felt as if her bath had been a waste. Above them hung a tender stink that slipped inside her body when she sighed or made a sharp intake of breath—as she did on seeing a man unearth a booger from his nose and crush it on his sleeve.

The stores would be closed when she got to Seville, which meant she’d be going to bed without a job, and waking up without a future in the morning, after sleeping who-knows-where.

“Which part you going?” somebody asked.

Without looking she replied, “I going town.”

By now she was the only person standing, and was staring at the road behind her as it faded into dusk.

She felt the heat of eyes on her, and when she looked she saw a woman leaning forward to reveal the man who’d asked. He was in his twenties, with a handsome face spoiled in places by a rash, and as she peered at him Estrella wondered why he didn’t hide it with a beard.

“Which part you coming from?” he asked.

The leaning woman put her elbows on her knees, and now the man looked like her bidet.

Estrella answered, “Far.”

“Far like far where? Every far has a name.”

“Farther than you’d want to go.”

“How you know that?”

“I ain’t know that. And I ain’t care that you know I ain’t know that. Worse, I ain’t care what you want to know for.”

“Suppose I have important reasons?”

“I’d say ‘good for you.’”

“Well, it must be good for me. Because I want to know so I could go and see you mother and thank her. For she made a lovely girl like you.”

When the laughter in the truck had died, he pointed at the woman in his lap and said, “Don’t worry. Me and her ain’t nothing. When she gone I’ll take you.”

“If you know where I want to go, you wouldn’t say that.”

“How you know for sure?”

“Well, you old enough. If you did want to go you’d be gone already.”

“Maybe I was waiting for you.”

“Some kind o’ things can’t cook in the same pot,” she said, annoyed but also quite amused. “Some things together is poison. Like cornmeal and rum. You ever drink that?”

“No.”

“Next time I see you, remind me, and I promise to make some for you.”

The people in the truck began to laugh again.

“You hair pretty,” he said almost shyly. “You have Indian in you?”

“No.”

“You want some?”

“You’re a blasted fool. You know that?”

“Stop acting like you vex. I can see you want to laugh.”

“It have children just like you, you know. They fill they eye before they fill they belly. They always asking for big plate o’ food and when they get it they choke.”

“I never hear a truer word,” a woman in a red bandanna said. She tapped Estrella on the arm and offered her a lighted cigarette.

Estrella sat on the tailgate, held onto the frame, crossed her legs, and smoked, the slow wind picking on her still-damp hair.

She had the nature of a gambler, and as she smoked, her lips began to clamp more tightly as she played the conversation back and forth in her mind. She felt as if she’d lost.

“Which part you want to take me to?” she asked the man directly.

“Well …”

“Don’t play jackass now. I’m interested. Tell me where you want me and you to go. Where this place is where they giving people Indian blood?” She took her deepest drag, then added, “Or is Indian baby you did say?”

As the workers chuckled, Estrella laughed and settled down to smoke again.

“Vashti, you can’t have them woman laughing so,” a man began to tease.

“What you want me do? Beat her?”

“No. It ain’t call for that. A man like you so full o’ argument should have the strength to give her back some talks.”

“You right. I going take you advice. So,” he started, looking at Estrella now, “you want to know where I going take you? That is what you want to know, right? Well, hear now where I going take you. Listen good and—”

“Vashti, cut the shit and talk nuh, man.”

“You want to know where I going take you?” he began again. “That is what I was going tell you before this eunuch interrupted me. Well, hear now where I going take you. Listen good. I going take you to a place where you not going know yourself. Where you going see yourself and wonder if is you because you never see yourself like that before…looking happy like you just finish eating a plate o’ goat stew with white yam…like when the goat stew finish and you make a belch and cut a fart you best friend give you back the money he borrow thirty years ago…with
interest
…and take you down the bar and put
your
drinks on
his
tab. But it ain’t done yet. Because after you leave the bar, you go to church and find that Jesus tell the pastor to forgive all them rudeness I could look at you and tell you like to do.” He paused to add a dash of intrigue and excitement. “You is a bad girl. I can tell. An experienced Indian ever take the time to light a fire on you tail?”

She sucked her teeth and didn’t answer.

“Eh?” he prompted.

“Sister, what you have in the basket?” someone asked her from a corner by the cab. “It have anything to eat?”

“It ain’t have no food,” she said, smirking in the dimming light. “It have book though. And soap. But if you look like you friend here who just tell me all this stupidness, then book and soap ain’t make for you.”

“Boy, the country girl have words, eh?” Vashti said.

“And you from which part?” Estrella answered. “Paris? You acting like you come from town. Man, don’t try me this evening. All you make for is one thing.”

The woman in the red bandanna fired: “That’s to burn and throw away.”

They were easing down into the flats now, where the central mountains stuttered in a taper to the Caribbean coast. Only four of them remained—three workers and Estrella, who by now knew all their names.

The naughty banter had evolved into an easy conversation, during which she’d shared with them a little of her life, and they’d shown a new regard for the
negrita
when she lit a match and grabbed a book from her basket and showed that she could read.

When the truck reached its final stop, four miles before the intersection with the coastal road, Vashti, the man who’d tried to give her talks, said, “Wait here while we see what we can do.”

The workers gathered by the driver’s door, and Vashti said, “Do me a favor, boss, and take her down the road?”

“She who?” came the sharp reply.

“The girl we pick up by the Sandy River Bridge. She going town.”

“That’s what you telling me now,” the driver said impatiently. “But I ain’t business with that. This ain’t even my truck. Rambana drive my truck and crash it last week and now I have to drive this skeleton they dig up from the boneyard. I ain’t even know if it can take them hills it have to go back home.”

“It can take it, man. It can take it. Have faith. Is a old truck, but it good. Look how it carry all o’ we from clear down Speyside to here.”

“Vashti, you can’t even drive a cow out you yard, but you want to give me advice?”

“Is far she coming from, you know, Joseph. Is not just from the bridge. Is far. From way down the Atlantic side. I ain’t asking you to take her all the way. Just down to the coast road. You ain’t even have to run the engine. You could just make it glide.”

“Have a heart nuh, Joseph,” said the woman with the red bandanna. “Have a heart. Do it, nuh. God will bless you.”

The driver cleared his throat.

“I have a heart,” he said. “I have a heart in truth. But I want to have a job too. So tell her get out o’ my truck.”

The woman in the red bandanna stepped away and looked up at the disappointed girl. “
Your
people is a funny people,” she said, enraged. “They say everybody fight them, but they love to fight themselves.”

As Estrella bit her lip and thought of what to say, the woman stepped up on the running board and shouted in the driver’s face.

“Joseph, you is a worthless nigger man! A worthless nigger man! The child trying to reach somewhere and you is the only body who could help her, and look how you going on. Down by the estate you like to talk you tripe ’bout unionize, and work together, and black and Indian must help each other. And here it is now, you wouldn’t even try to help you own kind. We is Indian and we care more than you. You is a disgrace to you blasted race. You is a damn disgrace. Listen—the next time you see me, don’t tell me nothing ’bout Marcus Garvey and all them tripe. Just don’t tell me nothing. As a matter o’ fact, don’t even drive me in you blasted truck again. If you see me in you way and you driving you truck, Joseph, just run over me to
rass
. Just run right over my head. And run over me from behind, because I ain’t want see you blasted ugly face no more.”

With this she tramped away.

“In ’35 when we strike,” the driver answered, his voice low but poised to grow into a bulging force, “I take bullet in my ass and baton in my head for ungrateful
rasses
like you. Damn coolie! You is a blight on the black man. You is a lice. They bring you here so we couldn’t get we proper pay when free paper come, ’cause the white man know
your
kind would work for rum and a bowl o’ curry rice. But when I call the strike, you wouldn’t stand with me. That’s why we don’t have any blasted union in San Carlos today, and Rawle could pay we what he want to pay we. Because o’ folks like you. Everybody in the West Indies striking those times…St. Kitts, Jamaica, St. Vincent, St. Lucia…and all o’ them get their union from that, except we. Why? Because o’ people like you. That’s why we ain’t have nothing in this country.” He paused to catch his breath. “I is a old man, trying to live out my days. And you want to pressure me to prove myself to you? To bow down to you? To do what you want me to do just because you say so? Why I should follow you? You name Gandhi?”

I ain’t want no
bangarang
because o’ me, Estrella thought. Lemme just take my things and go.

“Oyi,” she called to Vashti. “Let him go. His conscience going jam him tonight.” She came down from the truck and stood beside the disfigured man.

He put his hand on her head and mumbled, “Sorry.”

“It ain’t nothing to sorry ’bout,” she said with disappointment. “It ain’t nothing to sorry ’bout at all. I come farther than a lot o’ people think I could go. But thank you anyway.”

“You know, as long as we talking I ain’t know you name.”

“Listen it good.”

She told him with her lips against his ear. He tapped her on the shoulder with a disenchanted look on his disfigured face and said, “Don’t make anything happen to you, you hear?” and walked into the bush toward a bobbling light.

“Is not my fault,” the driver said when he and Estrella were left alone. “If it was up to me, I would take you. But I ain’t even think it have enough petrol in this thing. And if it stop with me out here on the road, how anybody going to know? Plus my wife and children waiting at home.”

Estrella placed her back against the door, her face away from him. “Is not me you have to tell,” she said as she thought of what to do. “I ain’t ask you for a thing. Is they ask you. I ain’t ask them to ask you. Is them is you friend. Is them you let down. It ain’t me.” She slammed her hands against the door and walked away. “So don’t say a goddamn thing to me.”

“I ain’t supposed to do this,” said the driver, leaning from the cab. “If they find me out, is
rass
.”

She turned around with a hand across her brow, her body silvered by the high beams, heard his work boots crunching down the grade, then saw his back-lit shadow slowly coming into view.