Little Scarlet

28

Jackson left me on the sidewalk in front of my house. He climbed into a yellow pickup truck. I was sure that there was some story around him driving that truck but I didn’t ask. It was very late and he wanted to get home and tell Jewelle about his new job.

BONNIE WAS NAKED on top of the covers. She moved her head and gasped when I came into the room but I could tell that she was still asleep.

“Mama?” she cried.

I whispered, “It’s okay.”

“Papa?”

“Go to sleep.”

I sat down on the bed next to her and put my palm against her forehead.

I sat there looking at her body. Bonnie had a curvaceous but lean body with a great mound of pubic hair and powerful thighs that had been made strong by walking thousands of miles through her Guyanese childhood.

“I love them,” she said.

“Who?”

“Both of them.”

She could have been talking about the children or her parents, who she thought had come into the room. But my suspicious imagination jumped to another conclusion.

“Easy and Joguye?”

“I want to go fishin’,” she complained.

“Who?” I asked again.

“We can ride the big fish and go down to the seas and under the coral.”

“Who?”

“What?” she asked, still asleep. “What did you say?” she asked, and I knew she was awake.

“I didn’t mean to wake you up,” I said.

“What did you ask me, Easy?” She sat up without covering herself.

“You were talking in your sleep.”

“What did I say?”

“Something about fishing and coral at the bottom of the sea.”

Bonnie smiled.

“About my home,” she said. “Papa used to take me fishing but he stopped when I started to become a woman.”

“Why wouldn’t he take you then?”

“Because he didn’t want to make me into a boy, that’s what he said.”

I wanted to ask her if Joguye Cham had taken her fishing when they spent their holiday on Madagascar. But my courage fled when she was awake.

I stood up and took two steps toward the door.

“Are you coming to bed?” she asked.

“Not yet.”

“What time is it?”

“Late. You get back to sleep.”

I went out into the little living room. A few moments later Bonnie followed wearing her robe. I knew that Jesus must have been home because she only put on that garment to hide from his eager teenage eyes.

“You want some tea?” she asked me.

“Yeah.”

WE SAT AT the small table in the living room drinking tea, using the lemons from our own tree for spice.

I told her about Harold and Suggs and the women who were murdered but no one knew that there was a connection between them.

She asked me to come to bed but I told her to go on, that I wasn’t tired.

“But you have to sleep,” she said.

“All I have to do is die and pay taxes,” I replied.

After that we talked about all kinds of things. About how Jesus seemed to be becoming a man without all of the teenage rock and roll nonsense that was going on in every other house on the block. We talked about liquored plantains and fruitcakes and how she used to swim naked in the ocean.

“I would swim out so far that I could hardly see the shore,” she said. “I’d do that in the summer when it was hot and only very far out did the water turn cool.”

“Swimmin’ instead’a riotin’,” I said.

“I suppose we were freer then,” she agreed. “I mean inside of us. We were colonized but still our home belonged to us.”

“I wish I could have seen you way out there,” I said. “I wish I was a fisherman and you got hung up in my net. That’s a fish story right there.”

Bonnie kissed me and then turned so that she could lean against my chest.

I held her, thinking about the southern oceans surrounding her as I did with my arms.