Half-Way to Freedom
Of late, I have been thinking about the day that I should have gotten baptised. I was prepared for the baptism, but not ready, by far, for the commitment. It was supposed to happen one Sunday afternoon in December and I remember it was 2 o’clock in the afternoon and the clouds had piled up above the hills into a thick grey mountain, setting up for a downpour that would douse the city in a cleansing bath.
I saw the growing rain clouds because I looked beyond my friends’ shoulders and through the window from where we were standing in a church pew. I was fourth from the window end and third from the aisle end. There were eight of us to be baptised on that day and I was shivering but I was not sure if I was cold cold because my palms were damp with sweat. I wanted to rub them dry on my skirt, but I was wearing a new white satin dress with a gauzy lace material that floated over the skirt and rustled with my every move. The neckline was high, the sleeves came half way down to my elbow but the skirt completely covered my knees, even when I sat down.
The hymn that we were all supposed to be singing ended, and like everyone else I sat. Pastor Bridges walked to the side of the baptismal pool, slid off his slippers and went down into the water, standing with bare feet. The pool was usually covered by a wooden lid and over that a plush red carpet, except for the three or four times a year it was opened for baptisms. I saw his white robes billow around him. He raised his hands and the bench that I was sitting on eased slightly as Tshawn Franklin got up and went barefoot into the pool. Pastor received him, held him firmly, and with rhythm, dipped him backwards in the water and then raised him up three times. Tshawn held his hands in a tight clasp and with his eyes tightly shut, scrunched up his face. In-between each dip he heaved. After the third time, Tshawn jumped up and down in the waist deep water with his arms outstretched while the congregation gave happy clapping motions and seemed to shout with joy.
Tshawn was joyful and seemed to be singing as he climbed out and ushers with towels received him and bore him away.
I took a quick glance around the church and saw that my father was looking at me, smiling, waiting on my turn, and when I pulled away from his gaze my friend Ashalee was already walking with her head bowed to the pool. After her, it was supposed to be me and I knew then that it would not be me, but I waited until Ashalee was baptised. She was my friend, after all, and I wanted to be there to support her; but as her head emerged for the third time and she was being led to the edge of the pool I eased out of my seat, and with my back bowed, stumbled over the three pairs of legs between me and the aisle and ran away from the freedom of salvation.
I left the service - actually, I fled as if the jaws of hell was closing its fangs on me – or as if the protectors of the faith were chasing me out of the building with whips and bolts of lightning. At the church gate, I slid off my new patent leather shoes, and holding one in each hand, streaked off down Hope Road and basically jog/walked all the way to Half-Way Tree where we lived. The first drops of rain were gently pattering on the dusty road as I reached our yard, and I sat on the verandah to wait out the arrival of my father and grandmother, feeling safe while rain water streamed from the eaves and the cars and pedestrians dodged the swift-flowing river that was now running down the road.
These memories came to me as I sat in traffic and I wondered why after 26 years, I had been having them now for three months at any time of day and night. It started the day that I broke off with my boyfriend.
Naturally it was his fault. The usual story of having another woman/women. I had decided that three years was a long-enough investment in a man who could not understand that fidelity was important in a relationship and I had decided to move along without him. Easy to say, tough to do, because I – along with almost every woman that met him – am really attracted to him, really like being with him, and, infidelity aside, I know that he loves me. Lol.
The light turned green and I gassed the car off the main road and climbed the steep hill into my gated townhouse complex. As I parked my sports utility vehicle in my driveway I considered that it should not be too hard to start another relationship with a more acceptable man. After all, I was a self-reliant woman who had something to offer to a relationship besides financial independence. Sure, I already had a child from a previous alliance, but to some men that was an asset. It meant that the heat was off them to act as a sire. Also, my son lives most of the year at boarding secondary school in the country; and his father is married and lives in foreign.
I settled into another solitary evening at home. Watched a news channel while I fixed myself dinner. There was a story about a missing teenage girl and a picture of her face was on the television. My mind flashed back to my own past. I never ran away from home, physically, but for a long time my family worried about where my future was heading, and to tell you the truth, I was as bewildered as they were as to why I was deliberately doing everything wrong.
I still had a land line and it rang. I knew that it would be Evelyn, he called me every night and I tried to wipe the smile out of my voice when I answered. He was, as usual, without shame and picked up the conversation as if we saw each other each evening.
“Had a good day baby?”
“So-so. What’s up?”
“Bwoy you treat me like I do you something. You sorted out that database problem?”
I sighed not really wanting to talk about work, but was glad to speak to him. Evelyn always made the bad go away and made me feel warm and comforted. That was just one of the reasons why I found him irresistible.
“Yes, we spent most of this morning hunting for the bug, but we found it in time for the payroll to run on time.”
“Nice. Your boss knows what you are worth though? Maybe I should come up there one of these days and tell him that he better keep treating you good, cause if he even slip one time and speak rough, you will just get vex and leave.”
“Nice try Evelyn, but that is not what happened between you and me.”
“No it is not; but losing you is a painful thing. That is why I call you all the time; you are too precious to my life.”
I said nothing, and only tried to keep myself from saying something foolish like, “I am coming to look for you this weekend”. He spoke again after a few seconds.
“Look out of your back door.”
I walked with the cordless to the kitchen, flicked on the back porch light and opened the louvres of the kitchen door to look outside. I saw it immediately and smiled. He felt my smile and said.
“I don’t want you to feel alone at this time. Goodnight Miss Waterhouse. Sleep well.”
I had a Ficus tree in a pot on my back porch, and in it tonight slept a Barbary Dove. He put it there. Next to it was his gift from the week before, a climbing hibiscus shrub. In the morning its blossoms would open and reveal bright red hearts. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, picking up the nocturnal perfume of the Jasmine vine. It had rooted there two weeks before and was steadily climbing the drainpipe to my bedroom window. Since our break-up, my ex had been sending me gifts of fruit, then flowers and now it seemed as if he had started on birds. I should not be surprised, but as I took my dinner of steamed veggies and brown rice to eat in front of the television I wondered what he meant by not wanting me to be alone at this time. I yearn for solitude, and when I want company I look for it outside of my home, not in it.
That night I dreamt of my near baptism again. I was standing in the pew wearing my new dress that my mother had sent from foreign. She had left four years before to work and send back money to me and my father and her mother. She sent the most elaborate gifts and the dress and shoes were prime examples of the sort of showy items that she preferred. I noticed that the church dress, even back then when I was 15, was more suited for a large 12-year-old the age I was when she last saw me. Beside my friends – the boys wearing long ties, the girls in sweetheart necklines and boleros – I looked decidedly, childish.
This memory had more detail, now I could hear more sounds from the day and realised that it was a faint roll of thunder that caused me to look out the church window and see that a bank of dark clouds had piled up high above the Jacks Hill skyline and threatened an afternoon downpour.
The hymn that we were singing went into its final refrain and for the first time in my recurring memories, I felt myself mouthing the words.
Only a step to Jesus O why not come, and stay,
Gladly to Thee, my saviour, I give myself away.
The lyrics encouraged total surrender to someone else, and as the words went though my mind, cold shivers rippled across my skin as if someone had dropped ice cubes across my arms and down my back. The song was urging me to subject my every thought and action to censorship for the protection of my soul. I saw my father’s face smile at me and behind him was Jerome, a university student down the road who had a Saturday job at the library. I would go to the library on a Saturday afternoon and hang around until he finished working, then Jerome and I would take the bus to Devon House where he would buy me an ice cream or some pastry and we would end up kissing and hugging-up on the blind side of a tree. It was an escapade that I shared with Ashalee.
Tshawn went up to be baptised. Just before service started Tshawn told me how happy he was that I was in his baptism group. He wanted to be baptised from he was eight years old, but the elders had been encouraging him to wait until he was twelve, which made him the youngest candidate in our group. Tshawn had been preaching from he could speak, and had long accompanied the adults on evangelising missions. I had been doing everything in my power to cause him to backslide, including tricking him to write God back ways on the Sunday school wall; making him trip the breaker in the church one evening so that people though that light was gone; and teaching the younger children Jingle Bells for a Sunday school Christmas concert. He never once squealed on my participation. I watched again as he shouted his praises.
Ashalee was my best friend and it was our hobby to mock Tshawn. I told her the gory details about my library guy and she told me about similar episodes with this sixth former who was in her after-school Mathematics class. Taking our external examinations, having relations with men, and being baptised, were gateways that we expected to pass through on the way to adulthood. But unlike Ashalee, I feared God. When Ashalee joined Pastor Bridges in the pool the choir started.
Search me O God.
See if there be, some wicked way in me
I felt the prickling wash my body again and my limbs stiffened with dread. Could I go up barefaced, flaunt a promise and expect to get away with it? When Ashalee’s head rose from the water for the third time I tried to look away but my dream was not a new creation, it was a memory. So with rising panic I could only wait for what I knew would be revealed when she opened her eyes. Behind her pious submission and radiant demeanour a seething defiance lurked. I relived the panic as I bolted out of the church while I slipped into a deeper sleep.
Ashalee had never met him and she can’t believe when I tell her that he just loves people and that is why people love him back. She asked me for a photo, but I do not have one and she said that I must be mad to have this man as a boyfriend. Once I described Evelyn to her not as a person, but as an experience, and she asked me if I had given him any money, and of course I had, but only in the beginning. He said that he did not want my money. Ashalee said that when I started going out with him I was happy and content until I decided to make his other women an issue in our relationship. Ashalee said that I am lucky to be even alive because the whole affair was too….and then she stopped talking and shook her head because we had been friends since Junior Church and she did not want to hurt me or to damage our friendship.
When I told him that I was breaking our relationship off, Evelyn said that he was hurt and asked me if I was unhappy.
“Of course I am unhappy. You are cheating on me.” I also called him a creep.
“I would not look at it like that.” He had said.
“Give me a break” I spat back. “Would you tolerate me seeing other men?”
“But that’s not you.”
“You call that an excuse?”
He rubbed the wooden beads in his hands very slowly before he answered.
“I would never live in a way to spoil your happiness. You must know that. Come, let me make you relax.”
He stretched out his hands to me and I backed away.
“No! You will trick me.”
He only sighed as if I had hurt him.
“You know that I can’t give you anything that you do not want yourself. When you came to me you wanted a healing and you got it; but the healing came only because you wanted it. I can’t fool you, or anybody. What do you want right now?”
“Nothing from you. Trust me.”
“You can’t trust yourself.”
He had gone back to rubbing the beads and I sat there, sullen.
“I don’t want us to quarrel,” he said, “but you are looking for one. Why?”
I took up my handbag and got up off the floor.
“Don’t waste your time analysing me.”
As I walked through the drapes and pushed the door to get outside in the yard he said quietly.
“It is time for you to look, but don’t be afraid by who you see, you live with her. I love you.”
Evelyn spoke a lot of spirituality that was enticing as it was dangerous.
Since that afternoon I have been seeing my near baptism over and over again like a muted video loop with a lot of static. It was disconcerting at first, but a week ago the re-run was in colour, and last night sound was switched on. That development was downright scary I can tell you.
The next morning I woke up feeling nervous as if I had not rested, although the amount of water running along my avenue meant that it had rained heavily for a good portion of the night. When I went downstairs the sun was up but there was light dew on the car and the droplets formed the words, “Angel of the morning”. I happily wiped them off and wondered what other surprises my ex would have in store for me. I, like every other woman that he met, and most men, fell in love with him instantly.
Getting through the day was tough. Everything reminded me of that day in Church, and that day in Church now seemed to reflect my entire life.
As I answered emails at work, the words became distorted and swum in front of my eyes so that even a simple letter became a difficulty to write. As I keyed in a memo, the banner that was in front of the altar at my baptism waved in front of my eyes. It was made of white satin with blue pom-pom edging and the bold red letters read, “The Master Saves All Who Are Willing”. I almost sent an email that read:
This evening, the master will save all willing staff.
I managed to hit delete instead of send and quickly re-wrote the email to say: “staff must save all their work in the master file”. I went to the water cooler for a drink and the words “streams of living water”, words from another hymn that was sung that day, echoed through my head. A junior staff came to me with a fairly simple problem, but the earnest look in his eyes reminded me of Tshawn, and his simple request for me to review a task that he had done and recommend changes, became a plea for me to review my life and change. By midday I got on the phone and called Ashalee. There was a din in the background as it was lunchtime and the children were at play. She said that she was about to go teach a class, and so I had to hurry.
“Ashalee, every day now for weeks I have been thinking about that day that you were baptised. I can’t get it out of my mind.”
“Really? Maybe it’s your time.”
She was not focused on the conversation, but I pursued it.
“I don’t know. I don’t feel any more committed now than I was then; but now I am seeing the whole thing differently. Before, I wrote it off to cold feet. Now, I feel as if I need to be very careful about my soul or something.”
She almost barked into the telephone.
“Are you still talking to your ex-boyfriend?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything! From what you tell me, this man is some kind of mind control expert or hypnotist.”
“I have not seen him since we broke up.”
“You told me that he does not need to have a physical presence to affect people. The man probably has some strands of hair or something of yours over there in St. Thomas doing stuff with or…has he sent you any presents?”
“Well only plants and stuff.”
“Father Divine! You have living things that are growing in your space and breathing your air! Rip them out and burn them!”
“Ashalee, since when you so superstitious?”
“Since right now. The man is doing something to bind you to him. We need to call Tshawn and cleanse your place.”
A bell sounded in the background and immediately Ashalee became even more rushed.
“I have to go now. Listen, I will call you later. OK.”
Then she was gone, and her condemnation made me feel worse than before even though I was convinced that Ashalee had completely missed the mark.
Ashalee had always referred to Evelyn as my “obeahman boyfriend”, and I accepted that in common speech, that is what he was. He did live out in the St. Thomas bush, he did give people baths for purification reasons, he did do foretelling of people and forecasting of businesses as a trade, and he did inherit his father’s healing business. I met him because a woman from my MBA class, who was convinced that duppy was on her daughter, asked me to follow her to a balmyard. While she – the mother – was soaking in a bamboo hut, he came over and talked to me. What you saw when you looked at Evelyn was beauty. He looked young and old at the same time, and a look from his eyes made you feel good about yourself, not what I expected from an obeahman at all. We chatted where I was waiting under a mango tree, and within five minutes I felt as if we had been friends forever. Ashalee had asked me what it was that we spoke about, and I told her mangoes. I saw her struggle to stop herself from hissing her teeth. That first meeting made me want more of him, so when he invited me back for a massage, I accepted as a client. He invited me back for a meal and I went as a guest and we had been together from that time.
Like Barkis, I was willin’.
In truth, we spoke about more than mangoes that first day.
“She will be alright,” he had said about my MBA friend. “She is just very worried about her daughter, and that is probably helping to keep the girl sick.”
“Really?” I said looking for a way to ridicule him. “You mean that duppies are not really after her daughter?”
He got serious.
“Well, they are if she believes in them, so I am here to help her to get them off her mind so that she can function in her family in full health.”
“I don’t believe you! People come here because they think that you can work a kind of spiritual magic for them.”
Then he said quiet words with a gentle smile in his eyes but which plucked at the chords that kept my mind and soul together.
“And you my dearest, what do you believe?”
I gasped as I felt him strum the dishonoured convictions that were buried under the detritus of my busy life. Whether by chance, or by design, he had found my vulnerable spot, and he could have exploited it then, but he didn’t. Ashalee can’t understand that. With his skill of understanding the human psyche, Evelyn could have taken me on an emotional roller coaster, but he only reached for my hands and worked on soothing the pain in my wrists caused by too many hours at the computer. I was not dating anyone at the time and found his presence soothing so told him that I would come back the following week and that is how we started and continued for three years.
Of course, if I had been honest with myself I would have admitted to knowing about the other women all along. He told me about his children and I even met some of their mothers. We had telephone contact and sometimes he told me not to come down on some weekends, and I never questioned why. I created an artificial bubble so that our relationship could happen. I saw him when I wanted at his place, he never came to mine, he never saw my son or my friends; the matter just somehow never came up. I went for soothing and healing and something of the exotic and kept it sustainable for three years, and now, I wanted it no longer.
“Did you discard Evelyn as you discarded God?”
The question came to me when I was gazing out of my office window looking aimlessly down at traffic on the street, but the answer was obvious and it hit me like a surprise wave leaping up into shallow sand. In a near panic I slowly thought it through. At the baptismal pool, I had bolted away from a commitment to God’s laws, I did not know what the reason was for Evelyn, but the twinning of the two twisted the puzzle, confusing me.
I managed with great difficulty to get through the rest of the day. Images of the players at my near baptism - Parson Bridges, the members of the choir, the Junior Church children in the front pew – swirled into and out of my consciousness like ghosts. They were so plentiful and so present that I started to fret that I might start to treat them as real people there beside me, and then people would believe that I was going out of my mind.
I left work early and reached home while it was still daylight. I do not know how Evelyn did it, but a flock of saffron finches were sitting and singing on the Poui tree in my front yard. The tree was bare of leaves and flowers, and the bright yellow plumage of the birds and their voices made it a singing tree. They stayed there even after I parked and went inside the house.
My eyelids felt very heavy as I shut the front door and I went to bed and was released into a deep sleep, fearing that the dream would be more vivid. This time, I actually felt the chill of the Christmas breeze rolling down from Jacks Hill on my skin mixed with the warm heat rising from the baked earth and concrete outside the Church building. I could make out the individual voices that made up the Church choir. Miss Fury’s tremulous alto, Mrs Omalli’s mellow soprano, Brother Clacken and Brother Kim’s round bass voices carrying the familiar tunes. I felt the press of the new dress around my bra less breasts that were long past the stage of trainers and the rub of the patent leather shoes on my bare feet as we were not wearing stockings that day. This was no memory any longer, I had been taken back in time and was actually there hearing my thoughts and feeling my emotions as a 15 year-old.
I remembered every detail of how the church and the people looked, even anticipated the gust of breeze that would come in when Parson walked into the pool.
I was thinking, “There goes Tshawn, doing his thing, drinking from the cup of life in full. He is fully gone. Well, good for him. I am too sensible to be brainwashed like that. Me and Ashalee believe in God and all that, but some of these Church rules jus mek fi hol people dung.”
I turned my head and saw my father watching me and felt disdain rising in my chest.
“Mummy have more sense than you,” I thought, “She realised that is one life she have to live and that she could only get ahead if she left you behind and answered only to herself and did only what she wanted, exactly as she wanted. Everybody bad talked her when she left…except you. But you are really a fool.”
I loved my father anyway and looked away from him to Ashalee who was walking piously to the pool.
“Watch her nuh,” I said in my mind with annoyance. “Just for show because if she don’t go up, people will talk and ask why.”
Then another thought came to me. “But maybe Ashalee is serious, and if she is, that means that I am the odd one out.”
I felt myself tense as Ashalee went down into the water and come up with a gasp once. I remembered Tshawn’s total happiness. And as she came up twice, I admitted that I wanted that joy for her. I was sure then that the water was going to sluice away all of the impulses that interfered with our better selves and our beliefs, and I held my breath for her third rising, but when she opened her eyes it was the same Ashalee, unchanged.
I ran because I did not want my wicked ways exposed just then, it might mean that I would have to give them up. I ran because baptism that day would not mean freedom for me, but a reason for people to say of my behaviour why I could or could not. I ran because my mother, whom I loved so much, ran away from me to find her happiness. My footsteps pounded on the pavement as I ran – a shoe in each hand, skirts flying – savouring my first moments of total abandon and safety from judgement.
I woke up from this time travel in the middle of the night. In that instant I was aware of everything; the smell of the jasmine, my heart racing in my chest and the gentle rocking motion of the ceiling fan. I rubbed the sheet across my forehead and neck to dry the sweat that drenched me and rolled over on my stomach, too drugged with emotion to do anything else.
“But what does it mean?” I said aloud. “Why does it always end with me running away?”
No answer came, and I passed the night floating between the past and the present but in the morning, the wraiths of the people of the past were with me in the room. Pastor Bridges was standing in the window, the choir were sitting on the circling on the blades of the ceiling fan, the Junior Choir were bobbing up and down at the end of my bed, my father and grandmother were in the doorway, looking at me. I decided to call Evelyn.
“Listen, I don’t know what you did. But ever since we broke up I keep having the same dream over and over again. Cut it out!”
“But my love, you know that I have nothing to do with what is in people’s minds.”
“Then why are all these memories coming back now?”
“You are trying to work out something that happened in your past and that relates to what is happening to you today.”
“What does my near baptism have to do with my break-up with you?”
“Is that what you are dreaming of?”
“You jolly well know what I am dreaming, Evelyn…”
“Are you running, or trying to escape from something?”
“Don’t play with me Evelyn, just make it stop.”
“The only way to make it stop is to put things right with yourself.”
“Which, in your book, is what?”
“Darling, I can only help to point you to the way. Take time to think things through.”
Just like that I was on my own with my ghosts flitting around me. I decided to call my mother. My father had finally joined her in New York about five or so years ago. As usual she answered the telephone and when she heard my voice she was as guiltily excited as ever.
“Hi, you are up early. What’s up?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to hear your voice.”
“That’s nice. I saw a really nice evening handbag in Macy’s the other day that would suit you. I am going to watch it until they mark it down…”
“How is Daddy?”
“He’s alright as usual. You want to talk to him?”
“No, not really. Does he still talk about coming back to Jamaica?”
“You know him. All the time.”
“So why don’t you come back and spend some time with him here?”
“Jamaica irritates me after two days. I could not take the life down there then and it has gotten worse.”
“Even for him, Mummy, for a little while?”
“What sense that would make? If he wants to come down, let him. I am not interested.”
“But he wants to do it with you.”
“Well, too bad. I am not putting myself though any unnecessary stress.”
“I just called to say hi. I have to get ready for work now. Tell Daddy I called.”
As I replaced the telephone in the cradle, I thought about how selfish a woman she really was. Generous with gifts which made her look good, but mean with her time and of herself.
Running away from my baptism meant that I had made up my mind to pursue want what I wanted and not to compromise, just like my mother, and even at the expense of my spiritual growth. That also applied to Evelyn somehow, I supposed. I had not put in equity to make the relationship even resemble a serious one; then when it felt too cosy, I trumped up an excuse to leave, and left. Perhaps that was even why I sent my son away to boarding school, an act that I had dreamed of since he started kindergarten. Freedom means doing as I liked. I had financial freedom, my son was put away so my time was my own, and now that I cut myself off from a relationship I should be revelling in freedom, but I was not.
I exhaled deeply and Tshawn’s face blew out of my nostrils and floated in front of my face, his expression was frozen at the moment of his total surrender after arising from the water. His eyes bore the mark of ecstasy and freedom.
Somehow I got to work without an incident; and with the ghostly company that was in the car, that was no easy feat I can tell you. Choir members Mrs. Allman and Mrs. Trench, who were long overdue retirement from the choir, were singing in the passenger seat; Pastor Bridges was looking up at me from the steering wheel, and the baby of Lystra Olivier, the Junior Church coordinator, and whose husband Norman was an usher, was a wiggling, bawling, hood ornament.
Fortunately I work in an office with a door, so I shut it and asked my secretary to bring me some coffee. When he delivered it, I said that I was not to be disturbed under any circumstances. Then I abandoned all pretence of work and put my head on the desk and tried to hold my disintegrating mind together. After half-an-hour of failure, I called Evelyn. I was sure that I would not be able to reach him because it was the last Friday in the month, which was his busy time. During the three years that we had been together I don’t think that I ever saw him on a payday weekend. He picked up after the first ring.
“Breathe deeply and close your eyes,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“Breathe in and through your nose, count to ten, breathe out through your mouth and count to ten.”
I was looking down at the New Kingston traffic at the time.
“Close your eyes,” Evelyn ordered, so I did.
He spent about ten minutes directing my breathing and putting me at ease. After a while all I was conscious of was my own movement and that is when I gingerly opened my eyes. It was clear of all spectres and I was only aware that there were thoughts somewhere lurking in my mind.
“Come to me now.” Evelyn said.
“I shouldn’t, but I can’t work like this anyway…don’t you have clients? It is the end of the month.”
“Drive slowly, am here guiding you to me.”
So I did. Told my secretary that I was not well and would be in on Monday, then, trying to sustain my deep breaths, got in the car and headed for St. Thomas.
Evelyn lived in a district called Prudence which is between Bath and Potosi. It was a funny little district because there was a road going up a small rise that seemed to lead to nowhere; then all of a sudden you came upon clusters of plantain trees that had small houses planted in-between them, and the road continued to spiral up to the crown of the hill that was blocked by a high wall with a small opening wide enough for one car to pass through. Over the wall the tops of about 20 bamboo posts bore flags of different colours, some of them had lettering embroidered on them.
From my observation, nobody in the district seemed to work, unless it was for Evelyn. They did yard work for him, repaired his house or walls, tended his plants, cleaned his house and things, went to shop and handled his clients. The cookshops on the road leading to his compound were there to serve Evelyn’s customers, and on a busy day the cars were parked in a long line almost half way down the hill. That said, his clients almost never saw each other, because as one arrived, a greeter secreted the person to one of the many little rooms or huts that he had in his warren of a property, and they were released back into the world just as privately.
A stone blocked the road into Prudence and before I could wonder what to do next, old man appeared, looked at me carefully, and then directed a youth to move it. I realised that there were no other cars on the hill, the place was being reserved for me.
Although I could not tell, because the place was so dense with bushes and trees, I got the feeling as if none of Evelyn’s servants were around. I got out of the car and locked it wondering where to find him. Usually two or so young women showed me to a room to wait until he turned up. His house had no front door, just many entrances, some of them windows, others doors and some others just missing parts of walls. But I did not want to go into an enclosed area just yet, and just started walking down the nearest pathway.
It was a pathway of ginger lilies and the faintly sharp spicy scent soon filled my senses just as the brilliant red bracts and spear-like green leaves and stalks filled my eyes. I came to a branch in the path and aimlessly took the left one. The ginger lilies made way for bearing gungo trees and a flock of parakeets was feeding on the ripe fruit. As I approached they flew away screeching. I mused that I could go on walking around Evelyn’s yard for a couple of hours as the paths twisted and turned on themselves and generally led nowhere in particular. I stopped and spoke aloud.
“What am I doing?”
“That is not the question,” Evelyn said.
I looked behind me, but saw no-one, then took a few steps ahead on the path, but no-one was around the corner.
“OK, you want to play games Evelyn,” I challenged. “Then what is the question?”
But only the faint sound of running water, and a lizard rustling a leaf could be heard.
“Why is this happening to me?” I said quietly, and in that instant I felt a great movement inside of myself and I was blinded by the flock of spectres that were hanging around in the crevices of my head. They flowed out of my ears and nostrils and mouth and eyes to fill the narrow path around me. They not only blinded me, they came with frightening sounds repeated again and again. The splash of water churned by a drowning person, the screech of tyres on a wet road followed by the sickening thud of metal against flesh and bone, the crumpling sound of paper being eaten up by a printer, the busy signal at the end of a telephone call, the crack of a broken heart opening a spigot of burning tears, the knock of hands on a door that will not be opened. It was the knock that frightened me the most. It was an insistent but gentle knock that happened for a few seconds, stopped and then without warning or proper rhythm, started again. Almost like the erratic beating of my heart.
Every time the knocks returned they were a little louder and the other sounds decreased to the same degree, the blinding spectres of my past lost their distinct form to become blurred and then faint and then they disappeared altogether. By then, the knocking on my heart was all that I knew, and I knew that it wanted my soul.
“How can I trust you?” I whispered.
“Because you are precious to me, and I love you,” was the answer.
I was not convinced.
I forced myself to continue walking, taking any which way, only being guided by the sound of water, that competed with the knocking in my heart. At the end of a straight path was a small waterfall nearly obscured by spray and steam and the experience intensified by the smell of minerals. Beside the waterfall, a bather was sapping his joints with the heated water. When I was near enough to feel the warm spray, I spoke.
“Why didn’t you come to meet me?”
Evelyn only smiled and held out his hand for me to join him. Fully clothed I did, and closed my eyes to enjoy the warmth while staying away from the direct heat of the scalding water. Evelyn kissed me on my lips, my cheeks, my eyes and my forehead and held me close to him. I felt soothed, but the knocking in my head did not stop, I only became temporarily immune to my anxiety.
“Evelyn, why should I be weak and accept total surrender?”
“Because it is important to you. You are creating all of your own confusion.”
He slid his hands under my blouse and pulled it over my head.
He said, “Slavery is freedom.”
Then he unhooked the clasp of my trousers and the zip and slid it down over my hips and thighs.
“Control your past and you will control your future”
I closed my eyes as he tensed to pull the three hooks of my brassiere.
“Acceptance brings happiness.”
As I stepped out of my panties, I rejoined in my usual sarcastic tone.
“And I suppose that wet is dry. I’ll take half-way.”
“You have always lived in half-way.”
“I need time more. It should be a gradual process.”
Evelyn gently squeezed the water out of my locks, and said that it was time that we came out of the water as the radioactivity in the mineral spring was very high.
He pushed past some plantain tree leaves to reveal that we were actually just outside of one of the many rooms of his house. We went through a screen door made out of thatch into a dim room and silence. I don’t know how Evelyn made the room soundproof despite the waterfall just outside. There was light from a candle oven under a bowl of cocoa butter, filling the room with a comforting scent. The room was very small, about two metres by four metres had a half-open louvre window made from a redwood. In the middle was a narrow bed that was only a foot above the floor with a mattress covered with a patterned calico cloth. The floor was entirely carpeted by red hibiscus flowers.
Evelyn led me to the bed and although I was wet from the waterfall, he made me lie down on my back with my hands at my sides; it was a single bed and barely wide enough for my body. I realized that I was tense and put my hands over my eyes only to have Evelyn remove them. He placed sticks of cinnamon under my nostrils. The smell was warm and I breathed deeply enjoying it. After I took some more deep breaths, he withdrew and grated them into the cocoa butter before removing the little bowl closer to the bed. Kneeling beside me, he scooped out some of the cocoa butter and cinnamon mixture and rubbed his palms before he started to massage my feet. I gasped at the exquisite pleasure and after a few moments the knocking receded and I felt my mind join my body and begin to relax.
Evelyn slowly used his hands to touch me, working his way over my entire torso, spending time stroking my limbs. I barely knew when he turned me over and, just as slowly and thoroughly, worked the warm oily cream deep into my skin. It took effort from him to sink his hands into my flesh and work the sensation right down into the tissues, and to stroke and stretch the muscles underneath. Then he turned me over again and bent my knees so that my legs fell apart. By then I was half asleep and felt as if I was floating on a creamy cloud. Evelyn put one of his palms on my lower stomach and gently inserted his fingers into my vagina where they worked on the inside with his hand on the outside to massage my internal organs. The last thing that I remember seeing was his skin, glistening with sweat before I drifted off to a deep sleep.
I do not know how long I slept, but when I awoke, Evelyn was sitting at the head of the bed and his hands were resting on my shoulders. He felt me stir and bent over to kiss my lips, urging his tongue into my mouth. I gently sucked on it and felt a total weightless abandon as again I fell asleep.
When I woke up, it was because he was telling me to have a drink of tea. I was still aware of the sound of knocking on a hard surface, it could be wood, it could be metal, it could be pvc pipe or concrete, but it was manageable. The bush tea was sweet, but I sipped it without complaint and asked him how comes the room was silent.
“Only time can penetrate this room,” was all that he said, so I took the conversation in a different direction.
“I feel so relaxed Evelyn. You know how to give a good massage. If I had sex with you then, I think that I would have just drowned in sweet oblivion.”
“You helped because you trusted me and gave over your body to me to caress. Remember, acceptance brings happiness.”
Almost idly, I asked.
“But suppose what you accept ends up hurting you?”
“It might, that is the risk. Baby, stop treating your mind as if it is your body; try to separate your soul from your mind. A massage will make your body feel good, but when the touch is from me, it brings more than relaxation, you feel happy.”
“When you think through a problem at your work and solve it, you feel good about that achievement, but knowing that the company employees and contractors will have their pay on time to carry home to their families touches something else; it touches your soul.”
I had not spared a thought for the individuals who anxiously waited on payments for services or goods, I just wanted my payroll calculations to be correct so that my ego remained intact. I wanted to hug Evelyn, but the bed was not big enough for the both of us so I was content for him to sit on the floor and rest his head on my tummy. Finally, I whispered the question that burned on my lips.
“So how do I get the same thing with my soul?”
“To free your soul you need to become a slave to what you believe.”
I groped for his hand before I timidly allowed my mind to venture where the figures from my past were controlling my present. Could I really allow myself to interpret the past differently and allow my soul to finally participate in my life? To become a slave to belief and achieve my freedom? The knocking continued. Almost ashamed, I felt as if I had to ask Evelyn the question.
“Have you accepted?”
He moved away from the bed, but I did not feel that he was separating himself from me. Then he spoke again. “Do not try to understand with your mind. In ignorance, you will find strength.”
Could I really make the commitment to give myself over to a belief that on the surface I had mentally accepted, but had always held back spiritually? Clearly my soul thirsted for something, or I would not be re-living my point of departure just when I was distancing myself from a man that I could love, if I gave myself the chance. What was there to lose?
“I believe in God, the Father Almighty,” I said slowly and with conviction.
The visions did not disappear neither did the knocking stop; but within myself I had feelings like an unused muscle flexing, or a spurt of hormones from a gland that I never knew was there. It meant that there were places in myself still unexplored.
It was a big jump into oblivion, and although I am far from putting the questions of the past behind me, I know now that the only way to solve them will be to painstakingly put each of my fears and desires up for introspection and accept that I need to free myself by gradually surrendering my spirit. What occupied my thoughts now was if I could do it alone.
I turned on my side to face Evelyn fully. He was sitting on the petals with his back against the wall that was opposite to the bed. We were so close but not touching. His legs were stretched out and his hands rested on his lap. Not a muscle moved. I could not even see the rise and fall of his bare chest as he breathed. Evelyn’s love and caring was a part of my surrender deal, but I instinctively felt that there was an unseen hand guiding my whole spiritual experience; and I wonder if it is his.
END
Of late, I have been thinking about the day that I should have gotten baptised. I was prepared for the baptism, but not ready, by far, for the commitment. It was supposed to happen one Sunday afternoon in December and I remember it was 2 o’clock in the afternoon and the clouds had piled up above the hills into a thick grey mountain, setting up for a downpour that would douse the city in a cleansing bath.
I saw the growing rain clouds because I looked beyond my friends’ shoulders and through the window from where we were standing in a church pew. I was fourth from the window end and third from the aisle end. There were eight of us to be baptised on that day and I was shivering but I was not sure if I was cold cold because my palms were damp with sweat. I wanted to rub them dry on my skirt, but I was wearing a new white satin dress with a gauzy lace material that floated over the skirt and rustled with my every move. The neckline was high, the sleeves came half way down to my elbow but the skirt completely covered my knees, even when I sat down.
The hymn that we were all supposed to be singing ended, and like everyone else I sat. Pastor Bridges walked to the side of the baptismal pool, slid off his slippers and went down into the water, standing with bare feet. The pool was usually covered by a wooden lid and over that a plush red carpet, except for the three or four times a year it was opened for baptisms. I saw his white robes billow around him. He raised his hands and the bench that I was sitting on eased slightly as Tshawn Franklin got up and went barefoot into the pool. Pastor received him, held him firmly, and with rhythm, dipped him backwards in the water and then raised him up three times. Tshawn held his hands in a tight clasp and with his eyes tightly shut, scrunched up his face. In-between each dip he heaved. After the third time, Tshawn jumped up and down in the waist deep water with his arms outstretched while the congregation gave happy clapping motions and seemed to shout with joy.
Tshawn was joyful and seemed to be singing as he climbed out and ushers with towels received him and bore him away.
I took a quick glance around the church and saw that my father was looking at me, smiling, waiting on my turn, and when I pulled away from his gaze my friend Ashalee was already walking with her head bowed to the pool. After her, it was supposed to be me and I knew then that it would not be me, but I waited until Ashalee was baptised. She was my friend, after all, and I wanted to be there to support her; but as her head emerged for the third time and she was being led to the edge of the pool I eased out of my seat, and with my back bowed, stumbled over the three pairs of legs between me and the aisle and ran away from the freedom of salvation.
I left the service - actually, I fled as if the jaws of hell was closing its fangs on me – or as if the protectors of the faith were chasing me out of the building with whips and bolts of lightning. At the church gate, I slid off my new patent leather shoes, and holding one in each hand, streaked off down Hope Road and basically jog/walked all the way to Half-Way Tree where we lived. The first drops of rain were gently pattering on the dusty road as I reached our yard, and I sat on the verandah to wait out the arrival of my father and grandmother, feeling safe while rain water streamed from the eaves and the cars and pedestrians dodged the swift-flowing river that was now running down the road.
These memories came to me as I sat in traffic and I wondered why after 26 years, I had been having them now for three months at any time of day and night. It started the day that I broke off with my boyfriend.
Naturally it was his fault. The usual story of having another woman/women. I had decided that three years was a long-enough investment in a man who could not understand that fidelity was important in a relationship and I had decided to move along without him. Easy to say, tough to do, because I – along with almost every woman that met him – am really attracted to him, really like being with him, and, infidelity aside, I know that he loves me. Lol.
The light turned green and I gassed the car off the main road and climbed the steep hill into my gated townhouse complex. As I parked my sports utility vehicle in my driveway I considered that it should not be too hard to start another relationship with a more acceptable man. After all, I was a self-reliant woman who had something to offer to a relationship besides financial independence. Sure, I already had a child from a previous alliance, but to some men that was an asset. It meant that the heat was off them to act as a sire. Also, my son lives most of the year at boarding secondary school in the country; and his father is married and lives in foreign.
I settled into another solitary evening at home. Watched a news channel while I fixed myself dinner. There was a story about a missing teenage girl and a picture of her face was on the television. My mind flashed back to my own past. I never ran away from home, physically, but for a long time my family worried about where my future was heading, and to tell you the truth, I was as bewildered as they were as to why I was deliberately doing everything wrong.
I still had a land line and it rang. I knew that it would be Evelyn, he called me every night and I tried to wipe the smile out of my voice when I answered. He was, as usual, without shame and picked up the conversation as if we saw each other each evening.
“Had a good day baby?”
“So-so. What’s up?”
“Bwoy you treat me like I do you something. You sorted out that database problem?”
I sighed not really wanting to talk about work, but was glad to speak to him. Evelyn always made the bad go away and made me feel warm and comforted. That was just one of the reasons why I found him irresistible.
“Yes, we spent most of this morning hunting for the bug, but we found it in time for the payroll to run on time.”
“Nice. Your boss knows what you are worth though? Maybe I should come up there one of these days and tell him that he better keep treating you good, cause if he even slip one time and speak rough, you will just get vex and leave.”
“Nice try Evelyn, but that is not what happened between you and me.”
“No it is not; but losing you is a painful thing. That is why I call you all the time; you are too precious to my life.”
I said nothing, and only tried to keep myself from saying something foolish like, “I am coming to look for you this weekend”. He spoke again after a few seconds.
“Look out of your back door.”
I walked with the cordless to the kitchen, flicked on the back porch light and opened the louvres of the kitchen door to look outside. I saw it immediately and smiled. He felt my smile and said.
“I don’t want you to feel alone at this time. Goodnight Miss Waterhouse. Sleep well.”
I had a Ficus tree in a pot on my back porch, and in it tonight slept a Barbary Dove. He put it there. Next to it was his gift from the week before, a climbing hibiscus shrub. In the morning its blossoms would open and reveal bright red hearts. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, picking up the nocturnal perfume of the Jasmine vine. It had rooted there two weeks before and was steadily climbing the drainpipe to my bedroom window. Since our break-up, my ex had been sending me gifts of fruit, then flowers and now it seemed as if he had started on birds. I should not be surprised, but as I took my dinner of steamed veggies and brown rice to eat in front of the television I wondered what he meant by not wanting me to be alone at this time. I yearn for solitude, and when I want company I look for it outside of my home, not in it.
That night I dreamt of my near baptism again. I was standing in the pew wearing my new dress that my mother had sent from foreign. She had left four years before to work and send back money to me and my father and her mother. She sent the most elaborate gifts and the dress and shoes were prime examples of the sort of showy items that she preferred. I noticed that the church dress, even back then when I was 15, was more suited for a large 12-year-old the age I was when she last saw me. Beside my friends – the boys wearing long ties, the girls in sweetheart necklines and boleros – I looked decidedly, childish.
This memory had more detail, now I could hear more sounds from the day and realised that it was a faint roll of thunder that caused me to look out the church window and see that a bank of dark clouds had piled up high above the Jacks Hill skyline and threatened an afternoon downpour.
The hymn that we were singing went into its final refrain and for the first time in my recurring memories, I felt myself mouthing the words.
Only a step to Jesus O why not come, and stay,
Gladly to Thee, my saviour, I give myself away.
The lyrics encouraged total surrender to someone else, and as the words went though my mind, cold shivers rippled across my skin as if someone had dropped ice cubes across my arms and down my back. The song was urging me to subject my every thought and action to censorship for the protection of my soul. I saw my father’s face smile at me and behind him was Jerome, a university student down the road who had a Saturday job at the library. I would go to the library on a Saturday afternoon and hang around until he finished working, then Jerome and I would take the bus to Devon House where he would buy me an ice cream or some pastry and we would end up kissing and hugging-up on the blind side of a tree. It was an escapade that I shared with Ashalee.
Tshawn went up to be baptised. Just before service started Tshawn told me how happy he was that I was in his baptism group. He wanted to be baptised from he was eight years old, but the elders had been encouraging him to wait until he was twelve, which made him the youngest candidate in our group. Tshawn had been preaching from he could speak, and had long accompanied the adults on evangelising missions. I had been doing everything in my power to cause him to backslide, including tricking him to write God back ways on the Sunday school wall; making him trip the breaker in the church one evening so that people though that light was gone; and teaching the younger children Jingle Bells for a Sunday school Christmas concert. He never once squealed on my participation. I watched again as he shouted his praises.
Ashalee was my best friend and it was our hobby to mock Tshawn. I told her the gory details about my library guy and she told me about similar episodes with this sixth former who was in her after-school Mathematics class. Taking our external examinations, having relations with men, and being baptised, were gateways that we expected to pass through on the way to adulthood. But unlike Ashalee, I feared God. When Ashalee joined Pastor Bridges in the pool the choir started.
Search me O God.
See if there be, some wicked way in me
I felt the prickling wash my body again and my limbs stiffened with dread. Could I go up barefaced, flaunt a promise and expect to get away with it? When Ashalee’s head rose from the water for the third time I tried to look away but my dream was not a new creation, it was a memory. So with rising panic I could only wait for what I knew would be revealed when she opened her eyes. Behind her pious submission and radiant demeanour a seething defiance lurked. I relived the panic as I bolted out of the church while I slipped into a deeper sleep.
Ashalee had never met him and she can’t believe when I tell her that he just loves people and that is why people love him back. She asked me for a photo, but I do not have one and she said that I must be mad to have this man as a boyfriend. Once I described Evelyn to her not as a person, but as an experience, and she asked me if I had given him any money, and of course I had, but only in the beginning. He said that he did not want my money. Ashalee said that when I started going out with him I was happy and content until I decided to make his other women an issue in our relationship. Ashalee said that I am lucky to be even alive because the whole affair was too….and then she stopped talking and shook her head because we had been friends since Junior Church and she did not want to hurt me or to damage our friendship.
When I told him that I was breaking our relationship off, Evelyn said that he was hurt and asked me if I was unhappy.
“Of course I am unhappy. You are cheating on me.” I also called him a creep.
“I would not look at it like that.” He had said.
“Give me a break” I spat back. “Would you tolerate me seeing other men?”
“But that’s not you.”
“You call that an excuse?”
He rubbed the wooden beads in his hands very slowly before he answered.
“I would never live in a way to spoil your happiness. You must know that. Come, let me make you relax.”
He stretched out his hands to me and I backed away.
“No! You will trick me.”
He only sighed as if I had hurt him.
“You know that I can’t give you anything that you do not want yourself. When you came to me you wanted a healing and you got it; but the healing came only because you wanted it. I can’t fool you, or anybody. What do you want right now?”
“Nothing from you. Trust me.”
“You can’t trust yourself.”
He had gone back to rubbing the beads and I sat there, sullen.
“I don’t want us to quarrel,” he said, “but you are looking for one. Why?”
I took up my handbag and got up off the floor.
“Don’t waste your time analysing me.”
As I walked through the drapes and pushed the door to get outside in the yard he said quietly.
“It is time for you to look, but don’t be afraid by who you see, you live with her. I love you.”
Evelyn spoke a lot of spirituality that was enticing as it was dangerous.
Since that afternoon I have been seeing my near baptism over and over again like a muted video loop with a lot of static. It was disconcerting at first, but a week ago the re-run was in colour, and last night sound was switched on. That development was downright scary I can tell you.
The next morning I woke up feeling nervous as if I had not rested, although the amount of water running along my avenue meant that it had rained heavily for a good portion of the night. When I went downstairs the sun was up but there was light dew on the car and the droplets formed the words, “Angel of the morning”. I happily wiped them off and wondered what other surprises my ex would have in store for me. I, like every other woman that he met, and most men, fell in love with him instantly.
Getting through the day was tough. Everything reminded me of that day in Church, and that day in Church now seemed to reflect my entire life.
As I answered emails at work, the words became distorted and swum in front of my eyes so that even a simple letter became a difficulty to write. As I keyed in a memo, the banner that was in front of the altar at my baptism waved in front of my eyes. It was made of white satin with blue pom-pom edging and the bold red letters read, “The Master Saves All Who Are Willing”. I almost sent an email that read:
This evening, the master will save all willing staff.
I managed to hit delete instead of send and quickly re-wrote the email to say: “staff must save all their work in the master file”. I went to the water cooler for a drink and the words “streams of living water”, words from another hymn that was sung that day, echoed through my head. A junior staff came to me with a fairly simple problem, but the earnest look in his eyes reminded me of Tshawn, and his simple request for me to review a task that he had done and recommend changes, became a plea for me to review my life and change. By midday I got on the phone and called Ashalee. There was a din in the background as it was lunchtime and the children were at play. She said that she was about to go teach a class, and so I had to hurry.
“Ashalee, every day now for weeks I have been thinking about that day that you were baptised. I can’t get it out of my mind.”
“Really? Maybe it’s your time.”
She was not focused on the conversation, but I pursued it.
“I don’t know. I don’t feel any more committed now than I was then; but now I am seeing the whole thing differently. Before, I wrote it off to cold feet. Now, I feel as if I need to be very careful about my soul or something.”
She almost barked into the telephone.
“Are you still talking to your ex-boyfriend?”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything! From what you tell me, this man is some kind of mind control expert or hypnotist.”
“I have not seen him since we broke up.”
“You told me that he does not need to have a physical presence to affect people. The man probably has some strands of hair or something of yours over there in St. Thomas doing stuff with or…has he sent you any presents?”
“Well only plants and stuff.”
“Father Divine! You have living things that are growing in your space and breathing your air! Rip them out and burn them!”
“Ashalee, since when you so superstitious?”
“Since right now. The man is doing something to bind you to him. We need to call Tshawn and cleanse your place.”
A bell sounded in the background and immediately Ashalee became even more rushed.
“I have to go now. Listen, I will call you later. OK.”
Then she was gone, and her condemnation made me feel worse than before even though I was convinced that Ashalee had completely missed the mark.
Ashalee had always referred to Evelyn as my “obeahman boyfriend”, and I accepted that in common speech, that is what he was. He did live out in the St. Thomas bush, he did give people baths for purification reasons, he did do foretelling of people and forecasting of businesses as a trade, and he did inherit his father’s healing business. I met him because a woman from my MBA class, who was convinced that duppy was on her daughter, asked me to follow her to a balmyard. While she – the mother – was soaking in a bamboo hut, he came over and talked to me. What you saw when you looked at Evelyn was beauty. He looked young and old at the same time, and a look from his eyes made you feel good about yourself, not what I expected from an obeahman at all. We chatted where I was waiting under a mango tree, and within five minutes I felt as if we had been friends forever. Ashalee had asked me what it was that we spoke about, and I told her mangoes. I saw her struggle to stop herself from hissing her teeth. That first meeting made me want more of him, so when he invited me back for a massage, I accepted as a client. He invited me back for a meal and I went as a guest and we had been together from that time.
Like Barkis, I was willin’.
In truth, we spoke about more than mangoes that first day.
“She will be alright,” he had said about my MBA friend. “She is just very worried about her daughter, and that is probably helping to keep the girl sick.”
“Really?” I said looking for a way to ridicule him. “You mean that duppies are not really after her daughter?”
He got serious.
“Well, they are if she believes in them, so I am here to help her to get them off her mind so that she can function in her family in full health.”
“I don’t believe you! People come here because they think that you can work a kind of spiritual magic for them.”
Then he said quiet words with a gentle smile in his eyes but which plucked at the chords that kept my mind and soul together.
“And you my dearest, what do you believe?”
I gasped as I felt him strum the dishonoured convictions that were buried under the detritus of my busy life. Whether by chance, or by design, he had found my vulnerable spot, and he could have exploited it then, but he didn’t. Ashalee can’t understand that. With his skill of understanding the human psyche, Evelyn could have taken me on an emotional roller coaster, but he only reached for my hands and worked on soothing the pain in my wrists caused by too many hours at the computer. I was not dating anyone at the time and found his presence soothing so told him that I would come back the following week and that is how we started and continued for three years.
Of course, if I had been honest with myself I would have admitted to knowing about the other women all along. He told me about his children and I even met some of their mothers. We had telephone contact and sometimes he told me not to come down on some weekends, and I never questioned why. I created an artificial bubble so that our relationship could happen. I saw him when I wanted at his place, he never came to mine, he never saw my son or my friends; the matter just somehow never came up. I went for soothing and healing and something of the exotic and kept it sustainable for three years, and now, I wanted it no longer.
“Did you discard Evelyn as you discarded God?”
The question came to me when I was gazing out of my office window looking aimlessly down at traffic on the street, but the answer was obvious and it hit me like a surprise wave leaping up into shallow sand. In a near panic I slowly thought it through. At the baptismal pool, I had bolted away from a commitment to God’s laws, I did not know what the reason was for Evelyn, but the twinning of the two twisted the puzzle, confusing me.
I managed with great difficulty to get through the rest of the day. Images of the players at my near baptism - Parson Bridges, the members of the choir, the Junior Church children in the front pew – swirled into and out of my consciousness like ghosts. They were so plentiful and so present that I started to fret that I might start to treat them as real people there beside me, and then people would believe that I was going out of my mind.
I left work early and reached home while it was still daylight. I do not know how Evelyn did it, but a flock of saffron finches were sitting and singing on the Poui tree in my front yard. The tree was bare of leaves and flowers, and the bright yellow plumage of the birds and their voices made it a singing tree. They stayed there even after I parked and went inside the house.
My eyelids felt very heavy as I shut the front door and I went to bed and was released into a deep sleep, fearing that the dream would be more vivid. This time, I actually felt the chill of the Christmas breeze rolling down from Jacks Hill on my skin mixed with the warm heat rising from the baked earth and concrete outside the Church building. I could make out the individual voices that made up the Church choir. Miss Fury’s tremulous alto, Mrs Omalli’s mellow soprano, Brother Clacken and Brother Kim’s round bass voices carrying the familiar tunes. I felt the press of the new dress around my bra less breasts that were long past the stage of trainers and the rub of the patent leather shoes on my bare feet as we were not wearing stockings that day. This was no memory any longer, I had been taken back in time and was actually there hearing my thoughts and feeling my emotions as a 15 year-old.
I remembered every detail of how the church and the people looked, even anticipated the gust of breeze that would come in when Parson walked into the pool.
I was thinking, “There goes Tshawn, doing his thing, drinking from the cup of life in full. He is fully gone. Well, good for him. I am too sensible to be brainwashed like that. Me and Ashalee believe in God and all that, but some of these Church rules jus mek fi hol people dung.”
I turned my head and saw my father watching me and felt disdain rising in my chest.
“Mummy have more sense than you,” I thought, “She realised that is one life she have to live and that she could only get ahead if she left you behind and answered only to herself and did only what she wanted, exactly as she wanted. Everybody bad talked her when she left…except you. But you are really a fool.”
I loved my father anyway and looked away from him to Ashalee who was walking piously to the pool.
“Watch her nuh,” I said in my mind with annoyance. “Just for show because if she don’t go up, people will talk and ask why.”
Then another thought came to me. “But maybe Ashalee is serious, and if she is, that means that I am the odd one out.”
I felt myself tense as Ashalee went down into the water and come up with a gasp once. I remembered Tshawn’s total happiness. And as she came up twice, I admitted that I wanted that joy for her. I was sure then that the water was going to sluice away all of the impulses that interfered with our better selves and our beliefs, and I held my breath for her third rising, but when she opened her eyes it was the same Ashalee, unchanged.
I ran because I did not want my wicked ways exposed just then, it might mean that I would have to give them up. I ran because baptism that day would not mean freedom for me, but a reason for people to say of my behaviour why I could or could not. I ran because my mother, whom I loved so much, ran away from me to find her happiness. My footsteps pounded on the pavement as I ran – a shoe in each hand, skirts flying – savouring my first moments of total abandon and safety from judgement.
I woke up from this time travel in the middle of the night. In that instant I was aware of everything; the smell of the jasmine, my heart racing in my chest and the gentle rocking motion of the ceiling fan. I rubbed the sheet across my forehead and neck to dry the sweat that drenched me and rolled over on my stomach, too drugged with emotion to do anything else.
“But what does it mean?” I said aloud. “Why does it always end with me running away?”
No answer came, and I passed the night floating between the past and the present but in the morning, the wraiths of the people of the past were with me in the room. Pastor Bridges was standing in the window, the choir were sitting on the circling on the blades of the ceiling fan, the Junior Choir were bobbing up and down at the end of my bed, my father and grandmother were in the doorway, looking at me. I decided to call Evelyn.
“Listen, I don’t know what you did. But ever since we broke up I keep having the same dream over and over again. Cut it out!”
“But my love, you know that I have nothing to do with what is in people’s minds.”
“Then why are all these memories coming back now?”
“You are trying to work out something that happened in your past and that relates to what is happening to you today.”
“What does my near baptism have to do with my break-up with you?”
“Is that what you are dreaming of?”
“You jolly well know what I am dreaming, Evelyn…”
“Are you running, or trying to escape from something?”
“Don’t play with me Evelyn, just make it stop.”
“The only way to make it stop is to put things right with yourself.”
“Which, in your book, is what?”
“Darling, I can only help to point you to the way. Take time to think things through.”
Just like that I was on my own with my ghosts flitting around me. I decided to call my mother. My father had finally joined her in New York about five or so years ago. As usual she answered the telephone and when she heard my voice she was as guiltily excited as ever.
“Hi, you are up early. What’s up?”
“Nothing. I just wanted to hear your voice.”
“That’s nice. I saw a really nice evening handbag in Macy’s the other day that would suit you. I am going to watch it until they mark it down…”
“How is Daddy?”
“He’s alright as usual. You want to talk to him?”
“No, not really. Does he still talk about coming back to Jamaica?”
“You know him. All the time.”
“So why don’t you come back and spend some time with him here?”
“Jamaica irritates me after two days. I could not take the life down there then and it has gotten worse.”
“Even for him, Mummy, for a little while?”
“What sense that would make? If he wants to come down, let him. I am not interested.”
“But he wants to do it with you.”
“Well, too bad. I am not putting myself though any unnecessary stress.”
“I just called to say hi. I have to get ready for work now. Tell Daddy I called.”
As I replaced the telephone in the cradle, I thought about how selfish a woman she really was. Generous with gifts which made her look good, but mean with her time and of herself.
Running away from my baptism meant that I had made up my mind to pursue want what I wanted and not to compromise, just like my mother, and even at the expense of my spiritual growth. That also applied to Evelyn somehow, I supposed. I had not put in equity to make the relationship even resemble a serious one; then when it felt too cosy, I trumped up an excuse to leave, and left. Perhaps that was even why I sent my son away to boarding school, an act that I had dreamed of since he started kindergarten. Freedom means doing as I liked. I had financial freedom, my son was put away so my time was my own, and now that I cut myself off from a relationship I should be revelling in freedom, but I was not.
I exhaled deeply and Tshawn’s face blew out of my nostrils and floated in front of my face, his expression was frozen at the moment of his total surrender after arising from the water. His eyes bore the mark of ecstasy and freedom.
Somehow I got to work without an incident; and with the ghostly company that was in the car, that was no easy feat I can tell you. Choir members Mrs. Allman and Mrs. Trench, who were long overdue retirement from the choir, were singing in the passenger seat; Pastor Bridges was looking up at me from the steering wheel, and the baby of Lystra Olivier, the Junior Church coordinator, and whose husband Norman was an usher, was a wiggling, bawling, hood ornament.
Fortunately I work in an office with a door, so I shut it and asked my secretary to bring me some coffee. When he delivered it, I said that I was not to be disturbed under any circumstances. Then I abandoned all pretence of work and put my head on the desk and tried to hold my disintegrating mind together. After half-an-hour of failure, I called Evelyn. I was sure that I would not be able to reach him because it was the last Friday in the month, which was his busy time. During the three years that we had been together I don’t think that I ever saw him on a payday weekend. He picked up after the first ring.
“Breathe deeply and close your eyes,” he said.
“What?” I asked.
“Breathe in and through your nose, count to ten, breathe out through your mouth and count to ten.”
I was looking down at the New Kingston traffic at the time.
“Close your eyes,” Evelyn ordered, so I did.
He spent about ten minutes directing my breathing and putting me at ease. After a while all I was conscious of was my own movement and that is when I gingerly opened my eyes. It was clear of all spectres and I was only aware that there were thoughts somewhere lurking in my mind.
“Come to me now.” Evelyn said.
“I shouldn’t, but I can’t work like this anyway…don’t you have clients? It is the end of the month.”
“Drive slowly, am here guiding you to me.”
So I did. Told my secretary that I was not well and would be in on Monday, then, trying to sustain my deep breaths, got in the car and headed for St. Thomas.
Evelyn lived in a district called Prudence which is between Bath and Potosi. It was a funny little district because there was a road going up a small rise that seemed to lead to nowhere; then all of a sudden you came upon clusters of plantain trees that had small houses planted in-between them, and the road continued to spiral up to the crown of the hill that was blocked by a high wall with a small opening wide enough for one car to pass through. Over the wall the tops of about 20 bamboo posts bore flags of different colours, some of them had lettering embroidered on them.
From my observation, nobody in the district seemed to work, unless it was for Evelyn. They did yard work for him, repaired his house or walls, tended his plants, cleaned his house and things, went to shop and handled his clients. The cookshops on the road leading to his compound were there to serve Evelyn’s customers, and on a busy day the cars were parked in a long line almost half way down the hill. That said, his clients almost never saw each other, because as one arrived, a greeter secreted the person to one of the many little rooms or huts that he had in his warren of a property, and they were released back into the world just as privately.
A stone blocked the road into Prudence and before I could wonder what to do next, old man appeared, looked at me carefully, and then directed a youth to move it. I realised that there were no other cars on the hill, the place was being reserved for me.
Although I could not tell, because the place was so dense with bushes and trees, I got the feeling as if none of Evelyn’s servants were around. I got out of the car and locked it wondering where to find him. Usually two or so young women showed me to a room to wait until he turned up. His house had no front door, just many entrances, some of them windows, others doors and some others just missing parts of walls. But I did not want to go into an enclosed area just yet, and just started walking down the nearest pathway.
It was a pathway of ginger lilies and the faintly sharp spicy scent soon filled my senses just as the brilliant red bracts and spear-like green leaves and stalks filled my eyes. I came to a branch in the path and aimlessly took the left one. The ginger lilies made way for bearing gungo trees and a flock of parakeets was feeding on the ripe fruit. As I approached they flew away screeching. I mused that I could go on walking around Evelyn’s yard for a couple of hours as the paths twisted and turned on themselves and generally led nowhere in particular. I stopped and spoke aloud.
“What am I doing?”
“That is not the question,” Evelyn said.
I looked behind me, but saw no-one, then took a few steps ahead on the path, but no-one was around the corner.
“OK, you want to play games Evelyn,” I challenged. “Then what is the question?”
But only the faint sound of running water, and a lizard rustling a leaf could be heard.
“Why is this happening to me?” I said quietly, and in that instant I felt a great movement inside of myself and I was blinded by the flock of spectres that were hanging around in the crevices of my head. They flowed out of my ears and nostrils and mouth and eyes to fill the narrow path around me. They not only blinded me, they came with frightening sounds repeated again and again. The splash of water churned by a drowning person, the screech of tyres on a wet road followed by the sickening thud of metal against flesh and bone, the crumpling sound of paper being eaten up by a printer, the busy signal at the end of a telephone call, the crack of a broken heart opening a spigot of burning tears, the knock of hands on a door that will not be opened. It was the knock that frightened me the most. It was an insistent but gentle knock that happened for a few seconds, stopped and then without warning or proper rhythm, started again. Almost like the erratic beating of my heart.
Every time the knocks returned they were a little louder and the other sounds decreased to the same degree, the blinding spectres of my past lost their distinct form to become blurred and then faint and then they disappeared altogether. By then, the knocking on my heart was all that I knew, and I knew that it wanted my soul.
“How can I trust you?” I whispered.
“Because you are precious to me, and I love you,” was the answer.
I was not convinced.
I forced myself to continue walking, taking any which way, only being guided by the sound of water, that competed with the knocking in my heart. At the end of a straight path was a small waterfall nearly obscured by spray and steam and the experience intensified by the smell of minerals. Beside the waterfall, a bather was sapping his joints with the heated water. When I was near enough to feel the warm spray, I spoke.
“Why didn’t you come to meet me?”
Evelyn only smiled and held out his hand for me to join him. Fully clothed I did, and closed my eyes to enjoy the warmth while staying away from the direct heat of the scalding water. Evelyn kissed me on my lips, my cheeks, my eyes and my forehead and held me close to him. I felt soothed, but the knocking in my head did not stop, I only became temporarily immune to my anxiety.
“Evelyn, why should I be weak and accept total surrender?”
“Because it is important to you. You are creating all of your own confusion.”
He slid his hands under my blouse and pulled it over my head.
He said, “Slavery is freedom.”
Then he unhooked the clasp of my trousers and the zip and slid it down over my hips and thighs.
“Control your past and you will control your future”
I closed my eyes as he tensed to pull the three hooks of my brassiere.
“Acceptance brings happiness.”
As I stepped out of my panties, I rejoined in my usual sarcastic tone.
“And I suppose that wet is dry. I’ll take half-way.”
“You have always lived in half-way.”
“I need time more. It should be a gradual process.”
Evelyn gently squeezed the water out of my locks, and said that it was time that we came out of the water as the radioactivity in the mineral spring was very high.
He pushed past some plantain tree leaves to reveal that we were actually just outside of one of the many rooms of his house. We went through a screen door made out of thatch into a dim room and silence. I don’t know how Evelyn made the room soundproof despite the waterfall just outside. There was light from a candle oven under a bowl of cocoa butter, filling the room with a comforting scent. The room was very small, about two metres by four metres had a half-open louvre window made from a redwood. In the middle was a narrow bed that was only a foot above the floor with a mattress covered with a patterned calico cloth. The floor was entirely carpeted by red hibiscus flowers.
Evelyn led me to the bed and although I was wet from the waterfall, he made me lie down on my back with my hands at my sides; it was a single bed and barely wide enough for my body. I realized that I was tense and put my hands over my eyes only to have Evelyn remove them. He placed sticks of cinnamon under my nostrils. The smell was warm and I breathed deeply enjoying it. After I took some more deep breaths, he withdrew and grated them into the cocoa butter before removing the little bowl closer to the bed. Kneeling beside me, he scooped out some of the cocoa butter and cinnamon mixture and rubbed his palms before he started to massage my feet. I gasped at the exquisite pleasure and after a few moments the knocking receded and I felt my mind join my body and begin to relax.
Evelyn slowly used his hands to touch me, working his way over my entire torso, spending time stroking my limbs. I barely knew when he turned me over and, just as slowly and thoroughly, worked the warm oily cream deep into my skin. It took effort from him to sink his hands into my flesh and work the sensation right down into the tissues, and to stroke and stretch the muscles underneath. Then he turned me over again and bent my knees so that my legs fell apart. By then I was half asleep and felt as if I was floating on a creamy cloud. Evelyn put one of his palms on my lower stomach and gently inserted his fingers into my vagina where they worked on the inside with his hand on the outside to massage my internal organs. The last thing that I remember seeing was his skin, glistening with sweat before I drifted off to a deep sleep.
I do not know how long I slept, but when I awoke, Evelyn was sitting at the head of the bed and his hands were resting on my shoulders. He felt me stir and bent over to kiss my lips, urging his tongue into my mouth. I gently sucked on it and felt a total weightless abandon as again I fell asleep.
When I woke up, it was because he was telling me to have a drink of tea. I was still aware of the sound of knocking on a hard surface, it could be wood, it could be metal, it could be pvc pipe or concrete, but it was manageable. The bush tea was sweet, but I sipped it without complaint and asked him how comes the room was silent.
“Only time can penetrate this room,” was all that he said, so I took the conversation in a different direction.
“I feel so relaxed Evelyn. You know how to give a good massage. If I had sex with you then, I think that I would have just drowned in sweet oblivion.”
“You helped because you trusted me and gave over your body to me to caress. Remember, acceptance brings happiness.”
Almost idly, I asked.
“But suppose what you accept ends up hurting you?”
“It might, that is the risk. Baby, stop treating your mind as if it is your body; try to separate your soul from your mind. A massage will make your body feel good, but when the touch is from me, it brings more than relaxation, you feel happy.”
“When you think through a problem at your work and solve it, you feel good about that achievement, but knowing that the company employees and contractors will have their pay on time to carry home to their families touches something else; it touches your soul.”
I had not spared a thought for the individuals who anxiously waited on payments for services or goods, I just wanted my payroll calculations to be correct so that my ego remained intact. I wanted to hug Evelyn, but the bed was not big enough for the both of us so I was content for him to sit on the floor and rest his head on my tummy. Finally, I whispered the question that burned on my lips.
“So how do I get the same thing with my soul?”
“To free your soul you need to become a slave to what you believe.”
I groped for his hand before I timidly allowed my mind to venture where the figures from my past were controlling my present. Could I really allow myself to interpret the past differently and allow my soul to finally participate in my life? To become a slave to belief and achieve my freedom? The knocking continued. Almost ashamed, I felt as if I had to ask Evelyn the question.
“Have you accepted?”
He moved away from the bed, but I did not feel that he was separating himself from me. Then he spoke again. “Do not try to understand with your mind. In ignorance, you will find strength.”
Could I really make the commitment to give myself over to a belief that on the surface I had mentally accepted, but had always held back spiritually? Clearly my soul thirsted for something, or I would not be re-living my point of departure just when I was distancing myself from a man that I could love, if I gave myself the chance. What was there to lose?
“I believe in God, the Father Almighty,” I said slowly and with conviction.
The visions did not disappear neither did the knocking stop; but within myself I had feelings like an unused muscle flexing, or a spurt of hormones from a gland that I never knew was there. It meant that there were places in myself still unexplored.
It was a big jump into oblivion, and although I am far from putting the questions of the past behind me, I know now that the only way to solve them will be to painstakingly put each of my fears and desires up for introspection and accept that I need to free myself by gradually surrendering my spirit. What occupied my thoughts now was if I could do it alone.
I turned on my side to face Evelyn fully. He was sitting on the petals with his back against the wall that was opposite to the bed. We were so close but not touching. His legs were stretched out and his hands rested on his lap. Not a muscle moved. I could not even see the rise and fall of his bare chest as he breathed. Evelyn’s love and caring was a part of my surrender deal, but I instinctively felt that there was an unseen hand guiding my whole spiritual experience; and I wonder if it is his.
END
