That Dammed Beaver, page 13
I don’t have a night lamp and I don’t have Campbell and I don’t have Daddy, so I must do this alone.
I take my special book, the one book that I have left, and I tie a string around it just like Daddy taught me to tie my shoelaces, and then I tie another string around my wrist because then, even if I fall asleep, I will be able to catch them. Mummy kisses me on the forehead and she asks if I want her to read to me but I shake my head and say, “No, Mummy, I am too old for reading,” because being too old is when things stop working the way they did before. So Mummy smoothes my hair like she did when I was itsy bitsy, and she sits on the bed with me. I want to tell her not to sit on the bed, that I don’t want the twins that close to me, but Mummy is so big with all the dishwashers and book shelves and staircases and basements sticking out of her that I can’t believe she even fits on the bed.
“Are they building a house in there, Mummy?” I ask, and Mummy just laughs and shakes her head. “No, Angela Clothespin Jacket, they are not building a house, they are going to come live in our house.”
Then I am crying again, and I cry until I go to sleep.
I wake up in the middle of the night and there is a tugging at my wrist, so I look at my wrist and there is the string, and the string is pulled all the way to the book and then there is the twins. The twins are not two people, they are just one person, and they are not a person at all because, really, they are just a bunch of arms, and legs, and foreheads like in the picture.
“Why don’t you just go away?” I ask the twins. And the twins say, “Because we love you, Angela Clothespin Jacket. You know what it is like to live in the dark, just like we do. We want you to come live with us forever inside Mummy where it is safe and warm and there are night lamps and Campbell and Adie.” I think about this for a while because I don’t like the twins very much, but it is lonely here and perhaps it will be less lonely inside Mummy, in the dark, with the twins. At least then we will be all together, even if it is inside Mummy.
I say, “Okay, twins,” and then I go through the belly button with them.
The thing is that the twins are cleverer than I thought.
Adie is in here and Campbell too, and the flower fairy, but the twins have locked the belly button and it is very dark and I don’t know how to get out.
I feel around, amidst the ten-speed bikes and the sequined purses and the night lamps, and then there is a sound and it is Daddy. I am feeling very scared, so I climb over the bookshelf and the club chair until there he is, smelling like cinnamon and coffee and chocolate. I want him to hold me, but it is too crowded for holding in here.
“They are out there,” I say to Daddy. “The twins are out there.”
And he says, “Yes, peanut, honey, darling, the twins are out there, but that is where they are supposed to be. That’s the way Mummy wanted it to be.”
Daddy cannot hold me, so I hug Campbell close to me because he is small enough for holding.
“We have made some bad decisions,” I say to Daddy, and he says, “No, peanut, this is what was supposed to happen. This is what we planned for all along, it was supposed to be the twins coming out and you going back in.”
“Why?” I ask Daddy. “Because,” he says, “we wanted a baby who didn’t cry as much. We wanted a baby who didn’t have so many names as you. We wanted a baby who was real.”
“I can be a real baby,” I say. Maybe I say that. I’m crying, so it is difficult to tell.
“No, honey, that’s not the way it works. That’s why I’m down here. Now that the twins are born you have to live here forever. This is your new room.”
“Inside Mummy?” I ask.
“Yes, peanut, inside Mummy, with all the other things we don’t need anymore.”
I think about this for a while. I cannot see Daddy’s face in the darkness. All I can smell is cinnamon and coffee and chocolate, and I decide that I don’t like those things anymore. Those are just things, and they aren’t Daddy.
“No,” I say to Daddy, “I’m going to get out of here, and when I do I’m not going to take you with me.”
Daddy doesn’t like this very much, but I don’t care. I like this, and Campbell likes this, so I think we will be okay.
It is time for another plan, I say to Campbell, and Campbell also thinks it is time for another plan.
I take Campbell and I put him in Mummy’s sequined purse and I put it over my shoulder. Then I climb the bookshelf and feel along the top of Mummy’s tummy, which is big and curved like being underneath an umbrella. Daddy tells me to stop doing that but I have decided that I will not listen to Daddy anymore. I know that there is a belly button somewhere and so all I have to do is find it.
“You can’t do that,” says Daddy. “Someone must stay in here to mind the house and it won’t be me!”
“Well, Daddy,” I say, “you should have thought about that before you came in here.”
I climb from the bookshelf to the club chair to the minivan, and for a moment I wonder how on earth the twins managed to fit all of these things inside Mummy, but then I stop wondering and I keep climbing. Finally, I discover the belly button at the very top of Mummy’s tummy.
I put my ear to the belly button, and I can hear that on the outside Mummy is laughing. I think she must be laughing because the twins are doing something funny like telling jokes or aerial acrobats, and I hate the twins a little bit more for making Mummy laugh, and I hate Mummy a bit more for loving the twins like that. But at least I have Campbell, and at least Daddy has already taught me how to tie and untie knots.
I start to untie the belly button, and Daddy says to me, “You’ll never be able to get out there, you’re not a real daughter, Miss Peanut, Miss Honey, you’re not a real Angela, you’re just clothespins and jackets.”
“No,” I say to him, “I am too real. You made me because you wanted me and so I am as real as the twins and I am real as Campbell, and we are getting out of here right this very instant!”
First there is a light, and my eyes hurt because I have gotten used to the dark, but Campbell tells me to be brave, that it will be okay out there, and I say, “I love you, Campbell.” He says, “I love you, baby girl,” and I like it when Campbell calls me that, so I tug at the string and the light gets brighter and the hole gets bigger. Then I am sticking my head out and then I am staring at Mummy and she is staring at me, and I am half inside her and half outside of her so I climb out the rest of the way even though I can hear Daddy crying still from inside.
“What are you doing here?” she asks.
“I just wanted to see the sunshine,” I say. And there are the twins, and they are all the things that they were before but somehow they look more and more like people and the people they look like are Mummy and Daddy. But when I look at Mummy, Mummy looks more and more like just a mess of arms and legs and skirts and pantyhose and lipstick and eyelashes and not the thing that she was before.
“Are you going to stay?” she asks me.
“Yes,” say the twins, “please stay with us, Angela Clothes-pin Jacket! We can all be real babies together! It would be good to have a sister!”
I think about this for a bit because maybe I want to stay with Mummy and Daddy and the twins. Maybe I want to be with them, even though none of us are the things we were before. But then I take Campbell out of the purse and he whispers something in my ear.
“This has been a real object lesson,” I say to Mummy, and I am holding Campbell close to my chest because I love him so very much, “but I think we will be going now.”
And we do.
DOING RIGHT
AUSTIN CLARKE
I see him and I watch him. I see him and I watch him and I start to pray for him, ’cause I see him heading for trouble.
Making money. “In five or six years, I want to have a lotta money,” he does say. “Only when I have a lotta dollars will people respect me.”
I had to laugh. Every time he say so, I does have to laugh, ’cause I couldn’t do nothing more better than laugh.
“Look at the Rockefellers. Look at the Rothschilds. Look at the Kennedys.”
I was going-ask him if he know how they mek their money, but before I could ask, he would be off dreaming and looking up at the ceiling where there was only cobwebs and dust; and only God knows what was circulating through his head every time he put himself in these deep reveries concerning making lots o’money and talking ’bout the Rockefellers, the Rothschilds, and the Kennedys.
I was still laughing. ’Cause the present job he had, was a green hornet job. He was a man who went to work in a green suit from head to foot, except the shoes, which was black and which he never polish. His profession was to go-round the St. Clair-Oakwood area where a lotta Wessindians does-live, putting parking tickets ’pon people cars. Before he start all this foolishness with Wessindians’ cars, he uses to be on the Queen’s Park beat for green hornets.
A big man like him, over two hundred pounds, healthy and strong and black, and all he could do after eight years as a immigrant in the year 1983, is to walk-’bout with a little book to his hand, putting little yellow pieces o’ paper on people windshields. He like the job so much and thought he did doing the right thing that in the middle o’ the night. During a poker game or just dipsy-doodling and talking ’bout women, he would put back on the green uniform jacket, grabble-up the peak cap, jump in the little green motor car that the Police give him, and gone straight up by St. Clair-Oakwood, up and down Northcliffe Boulevard, swing right ’pon Eglinton, gone down Eglinton, and swing left ’pon Park Hill Road, left again on Whitmore, and all he doing is putting these yellow pieces o’ paper on decent, hard-working people cars. When he return, he does-be-laughing. I tell him he going-soon stop laughing, when a Wessindian lick-he-down with a big rock.
“I have fix them! I have ticketed one hundred and ten motto-cars today alone! And the night I leff the poker game, I ticket fifty more bastards, mainly Wessindians.”
I start to get real frighten. ’Cause I know a lotta these Wessindians living in them very streets where he does be ticketing and laughing. And all them Wessindians know who the green hornet is. And being as how they is Wessindians, I know they don’t like green hornets nor nobody who does be touching their cars. So I feel that any morning, when one o’ these Wessindians come home from a party or offa a night shift and see him doing foolishness and putting yellow tickets ’pon their motor cars, I know um is at least one hand brek.
Wessindians accustom to parking in the middle o’ the road, or on the wrong side, back home. And nobody don’t trouble them nor touch their cars. And since they come here, many o’ these Wessindians haven’t tek-on change in attitude in regards to who own the public road and who own the motor cars.
So whilst the boy still ticketing and laughing, and putting his hands on people cars which they just wash in the car wash on Bathurst, I continue worrying and watching him.
One night, just as we sit down to cut the cards, and before the cards deal, he come in grinning, and saying, “I ticket two hundred motto-cars today alone!”
“One o’ these days, boy!” I tell him.
“When I pass in the green car and I see him, I know I had him!”
“Who?”
“I see the car park by the fire hydrant. The chauffeur was leaning back in the seat. One hand outside the car window. With a cigarette in tha’ hand. The next hand over the back o’ the seat. I look in the car, and when I look in, I nearly had a fit. I recognize the pipe. I recognize the dark blue pinstripe suit. I recognize the hair. With the streak o’ grey in um. And I mek a U-turn in the middle o’ the road—”
“But a U-turn illegal!”
“I is a green hornet, man!”
“I see.”
“I size-up the car. And I see the licents plate. ONT-001! I start getting nervous now. ’Cause I know that this motto-car belongs to the big man. Or the second most biggest man in Ontario. I draw up. The chauffeur nod to me and tell me, ’Fine day, eh?’ I tell he, ‘A very fine day, sir!’ And I get out. I bend over the bonnet o’ this big, shiny, black car—”
“Limousine, man. A big car is call a limo.”
“Well, um could have been a limo, a hearse, be-Christ, or a automobile, I still bend-over the bonnet and stick-on one o’ the prettiest parking tickets in my whole career!”
“The Premier’s car?”
“He mek the law. Not me!”
“And you think you do the right thing?”
“My legal bounden duty. Afterwards, I did-feel so good, like a real police officer and not a mere green hornet. And I walk-through Queen’s Park on my two feet, looking for more official motto-cars to ticket. And when I was finish, I had stick-on five parking tickets in their arse… One belongs to the Attorney General too.”
“The same man who does-defend Wessindians?”
“I put one ’pon Larry Grossman car too.”
Well, that whole night, all the boy talking ’bout and laughing ’bout is how he stick-on tickets on these big shots’ cars, or limousines. And to make matters worse for the rest o’ we, he win all the money in the poker game too. I feel now that the boy really going-become important, maybe, even become a real police, and make pure money. Or else going-lose a hand, or a foot.
But we was feeling good, though. ’Cause the big boys in Toronto don’t particular’ notice we unless um is Caribana weekend or when election time coming and they looking for votes, or when the Star doing a feature on racism and Wessindian immigrants that be illegal, and they want a quotation. So, we feel this green hornet is our ambassador, even if he is only a’ ambassador o’ parking tickets. So we does-laugh like hell at the boy’s prowess and progress.
And we does wait til a certain time on a Friday night, nervous as hell whilst cutting and dealing the cards to see if the boy going-turn up still dress-off in the green uniform, meaning that he hasn’t get fired for ticketing the big shots’ cars. And when he does turn up, dress from head to trousers in green, we know he still have the job, and we does-laugh some more. But all the time I does-be-still nervous, as I was seeing him and watching him.
Then he start losing weight. He start biting his fingernails. He start wearing the green uniform not press, and half dirty. He start calling we “You people!”
I getting frighten now, ’cause he tell me that they tek-him-off the Queen’s Park beat.
So um is now that he up in St. Clair-Oakwood, and I feel he going-put a ticket on the wrong motor car, meaning a Wessindian car. And at least one hand brek. Or one foot. And if the particular motor car belongs to a Jamaican, not even the ones that have locks and does-wear the wool tams mek outta black, green, and red, I know um could be both foots and both hands!
I see him and I watch him.
“I have live in Trinidad, as a police,” he tell me. “But I born in Barbados. I leff Trinidad because they won’t let me ticket one hundred more cars and break the all-time record. I went to Guyana after Trinidad. I was a police in Guyana before Guyana was even Guyana and was still Demerara, or B.G. They make me leff Guyana when I get close to the record. Ten more tickets is all I had to ticket. From Guyana, I end up in Dominica. Same thing. From Dominica, I went to Antigua, and um was in Antigua that a fellow came close to licking-me-down for doing my legal duty, namely ticketing cars. But in all them countries, I ticket cars that belongs to prime ministers, ministers of guvvament, priests, civil servants, and school teachers.”
I see him and I watch him. I see him getting more older than the forty-five years he say he was born; and I see him drinking straight rums, first thing every morning lately, because he say, “The nerves bad. Not that I becoming a alcoholic. I only taking the bad taste o’ waking up so early outta my mouth. I am not a alcoholic, though. It is the pressure and the lack o’ sleep.”
But he was drunk. Cleveland was drunk-drunk-drunk early-early-early every day. He had to be really drunk after he outline his plan to make money to me.
“Remember the Rockefellers, man!” he tell me. “This is my plan. I been a green hornet for eight-nine years now. They promise me that if I ticket the most cars outta the whole group o’ hornets, they would send me to training school to be a police. First they tell me I too short. I is five-four. But most criminals is five-three. Then they tell me that my arches fallen. Jesus Christ! What you expect? After all the beats I have walk in Trinidad, Guyana, Antiqua, Dominica, and Grenada, my arches bound to fall! And eight-nine years in this damn country pounding the beat ticketing cars! But they can’t beat me. Not me. This is the plan I got for their arse. Tickets begin at five dollars. Right? There is five dollars, ten dollars, and fifteen dollars. Right? Twenty dollars for parking beside a fire hydrand or on the wrong side. Right? Now, I write-up a ten-dollar ticket. And I change the ten to a forty. The stub in my book still saying ten. But the ticket on the car that also says ten, I going-change from ten to forty. Then I rush down the vehicle registration place on Wellesley Street where they have all them computers. And I tell the fellow I know from Guyana something, anything to get him to look up the registration for me. And then I get in touch with the owner of the vehicle and subtract ten from forty and—”
“You think yougonna get thirty…?”
“You don’t like my plan?”
“I think your plan’ll get you ten years.”
“Okay. What about this other one? People don’t lock their motto-cars when they park. Right? Wessindidans is the biggest vegabonds in regards to this. Right? A fellow don’t lock his car. And um is night. And I got-on my green hornet uniform. Right? Meaning I am still operating in a official capacity…”
I see the boy start to smile, and his face spread and light-up like a new moon. The face was shining too, ’cause the heat and the sureness that the plan going-work this time make him sweat real bad. But I watching him. I know that Wessindians don’t have much money, because they does-get the worst and lowest jobs in Toronto. Only certain kinds of Wessindians does-have money in their pocket. The kind that does-work night shift, especially after midnight when everybody else sleeping; the brand o’ Wessindian who I not going-mention by name in case they accuse me of categorizing the race. And being a reverse racist. But certain Wessindians, like hairdressers, real estate salesmen, and fellows who know racehorses backwards and forwards, good-good-good, plus the unmentionable brand, namely the illegal immigrants, the illegal parkers, and them who hiding from the Police, them-so would have money to burn, inside their cars that not locked.
