At the Bottom of the River Read online

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT NOTICE

  DEDICATION

  GIRL

  IN THE NIGHT

  AT LAST

  WINGLESS

  HOLIDAYS

  THE LETTER FROM HOME

  WHAT I HAVE BEEN DOING LATELY

  BLACKNESS

  MY MOTHER

  AT THE BOTTOM OF THE RIVER

  ALSO BY JAMAICA KINCAID

  PRAISE FOR JAMAICA KINCAID’S AT THE BOTTOM OF THE RIVER

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  For my mother, Annie, with love, and for Mr. Shawn, with gratitude and love

  GIRL

  Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; don’t walk barehead in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil; soak your little cloths right after you take them off; when buying cotton to make yourself a nice blouse, be sure that it doesn’t have gum on it, because that way it won’t hold up well after a wash; soak salt fish overnight before you cook it; is it true that you sing benna in Sunday school?; always eat your food in such a way that it won’t turn someone else’s stomach; on Sundays try to walk like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming; don’t sing benna in Sunday school; you mustn’t speak to wharf-rat boys, not even to give directions; don’t eat fruits on the street—flies will follow you; but I don’t sing benna on Sundays at all and never in Sunday school; this is how to sew on a button; this is how to make a buttonhole for the button you have just sewed on; this is how to hem a dress when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut I know you are so bent on becoming; this is how you iron your father’s khaki shirt so that it doesn’t have a crease; this is how you iron your father’s khaki pants so that they don’t have a crease; this is how you grow okra—far from the house, because okra tree harbors red ants; when you are growing dasheen, make sure it gets plenty of water or else it makes your throat itch when you are eating it; this is how you sweep a corner; this is how you sweep a whole house; this is how you sweep a yard; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like too much; this is how you smile to someone you don’t like at all; this is how you smile to someone you like completely; this is how you set a table for tea; this is how you set a table for dinner; this is how you set a table for dinner with an important guest; this is how you set a table for lunch; this is how you set a table for breakfast; this is how to behave in the presence of men who don’t know you very well, and this way they won’t recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against becoming; be sure to wash every day, even if it is with your own spit; don’t squat down to play marbles—you are not a boy, you know; don’t pick people’s flowers—you might catch something; don’t throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not be a blackbird at all; this is how to make a bread pudding; this is how to make doukona; this is how to make pepper pot; this is how to make a good medicine for a cold; this is how to make a good medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child; this is how to catch a fish; this is how to throw back a fish you don’t like, and that way something bad won’t fall on you; this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man, and if this doesn’t work there are other ways, and if they don’t work don’t feel too bad about giving up; this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move quick so that it doesn’t fall on you; this is how to make ends meet; always squeeze bread to make sure it’s fresh; but what if the baker won’t let me feel the bread?; you mean to say that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won’t let near the bread?

  IN THE NIGHT

  In the night, way into the middle of the night, when the night isn’t divided like a sweet drink into little sips, when there is no just before midnight, midnight, or just after midnight, when the night is round in some places, flat in some places, and in some places like a deep hole, blue at the edge, black inside, the night-soil men come.

  They come and go, walking on the damp ground in straw shoes. Their feet in the straw shoes make a scratchy sound. They say nothing.

  The night-soil men can see a bird walking in trees. It isn’t a bird. It is a woman who has removed her skin and is on her way to drink the blood of her secret enemies. It is a woman who has left her skin in a corner of a house made out of wood. It is a woman who is reasonable and admires honeybees in the hibiscus. It is a woman who, as a joke, brays like a donkey when he is thirsty.

  There is the sound of a cricket, there is the sound of a church bell, there is the sound of this house creaking, that house creaking, and the other house creaking as they settle into the ground. There is the sound of a radio in the distance—a fisherman listening to merengue music. There is the sound of a man groaning in his sleep; there is the sound of a woman disgusted at the man groaning. There is the sound of the man stabbing the woman, the sound of her blood as it hits the floor, the sound of Mr. Straffee, the undertaker, taking her body away. There is the sound of her spirit back from the dead, looking at the man who used to groan; he is running a fever forever. There is the sound of a woman writing a letter; there is the sound of her pen nib on the white writing paper; there is the sound of the kerosene lamp dimming; there is the sound of her head aching.

  The rain falls on the tin roofs, on the leaves in the trees, on the stones in the yard, on sand, on the ground. The night is wet in some places, warm in some places.

  There is Mr. Gishard, standing under a cedar tree which is in full bloom, wearing that nice white suit, which is as fresh as the day he was buried in it. The white suit came from England in a brown package: “To: Mr. John Gishard,” and so on and so on. Mr. Gishard is standing under the tree, wearing his nice suit and holding a glass full of rum in his hand—the same glass full of rum that he had in his hand shortly before he died—and looking at the house in which he used to live. The people who now live in the house walk through the door backward when they see Mr. Gishard standing under the tree, wearing his nice white suit. Mr. Gishard misses his accordion; you can tell by the way he keeps tapping his foot.

  * * *

  In my dream I can hear a baby being born. I can see its face, a pointy little face—so nice. I can see its hands—so nice, again. Its eyes are closed. It’s breathing, the little baby. It’s breathing. It’s bleating, the little baby. It’s bleating. The baby and I are now walking to pasture. The baby is eating green grass with its soft and pink lips. My mother is shaking me by the shoulders. My mother says, “Little Miss, Little Miss.” I say to my mother, “But it’s still night.” My mother says, “Yes, but you have wet your bed again.” And my mother, who is still young, and still beautiful, and still has pink lips, removes my wet nightgown, removes my wet sheets from my bed. My mother can change everything. In my dream I am in the night.

  “What are the lights in the mountains?”

  “The lights in the mountains? Oh, it’s a jablesse.”

  “A jablesse! But why? What’s a jablesse?”

  “It’s a person who can turn into anything. But you can tell they aren’t real because of their eyes. Their eyes shine like lamps, so bright that you can’t look. That’s how you can tell it’s a jablesse. They like to go up in the mountains and gallivant. Take good care when you see a beautiful woman. A jable
sse always tries to look like a beautiful woman.”

  * * *

  No one has ever said to me, “My father, a night-soil man, is very nice and very kind. When he passes a dog, he gives a pat and not a kick. He likes all the parts of a fish but especially the head. He goes to church quite regularly and is always glad when the minister calls out, ‘A Mighty Fortress Is Our God,’ his favorite hymn. He would like to wear pink shirts and pink pants but knows that this color isn’t very becoming to a man, so instead he wears navy blue and brown, colors he does not like at all. He met my mother on what masquerades as a bus around here, a long time ago, and he still likes to whistle. Once, while running to catch a bus, he fell and broke his ankle and had to spend a week in hospital. This made him miserable, but he cheered up quite a bit when he saw my mother and me, standing over his white cot, holding bunches of yellow roses and smiling down at him. Then he said, ‘Oh, my. Oh, my.’ What he likes to do most, my father the night-soil man, is to sit on a big stone under a mahogany tree and watch small children playing play-cricket while he eats the intestines of animals stuffed with blood and rice and drinks ginger beer. He has told me this many times: ‘My dear, what I like to do most,’ and so on. He is always reading botany books and knows a lot about rubber plantations and rubber trees; but this is an interest I can’t explain, since the only rubber tree he has ever seen is a specially raised one in the botanic gardens. He sees to it that my school shoes fit comfortably. I love my father the night-soil man. My mother loves my father the night-soil man. Everybody loves him and waves to him whenever they see him. He is very handsome, you know, and I have seen women look at him twice. On special days he wears a brown felt hat, which he orders from England, and brown leather shoes, which he also orders from England. On ordinary days he goes barehead. When he calls me, I say, ‘Yes, sir.’ On my mother’s birthday he always buys her some nice cloth for a new dress as a present. He makes us happy, my father the night-soil man, and has promised that one day he will take us to see something he has read about called the circus.”

  * * *

  In the night, the flowers close up and thicken. The hibiscus flowers, the flamboyant flowers, the bachelor’s buttons, the irises, the marigolds, the whitehead-bush flowers, the lilies, the flowers on the daggerbush, the flowers on the turtleberry bush, the flowers on the soursop tree, the flowers on the sugar-apple tree, the flowers on the mango tree, the flowers on the guava tree, the flowers on the cedar tree, the flowers on the stinking-toe tree, the flowers on the dumps tree, the flowers on the papaw tree, the flowers everywhere close up and thicken. The flowers are vexed.

  Someone is making a basket, someone is making a girl a dress or a boy a shirt, someone is making her husband a soup with cassava so that he can take it to the cane field tomorrow, someone is making his wife a beautiful mahogany chest, someone is sprinkling a colorless powder outside a closed door so that someone else’s child will be stillborn, someone is praying that a bad child who is living prosperously abroad will be good and send a package filled with new clothes, someone is sleeping.

  * * *

  Now I am a girl, but one day I will marry a woman—a red-skin woman with black bramblebush hair and brown eyes, who wears skirts that are so big I can easily bury my head in them. I would like to marry this woman and live with her in a mud hut near the sea. In the mud hut will be two chairs and one table, a lamp that burns kerosene, a medicine chest, a pot, one bed, two pillows, two sheets, one looking glass, two cups, two saucers, two dinner plates, two forks, two drinking-water glasses, one china pot, two fishing strings, two straw hats to ward the hot sun off our heads, two trunks for things we have very little use for, one basket, one book of plain paper, one box filled with twelve crayons of different colors, one loaf of bread wrapped in a piece of brown paper, one coal pot, one picture of two women standing on a jetty, one picture of the same two women embracing, one picture of the same two women waving goodbye, one box of matches. Every day this red-skin woman and I will eat bread and milk for breakfast, hide in bushes and throw hardened cow dung at people we don’t like, climb coconut trees, pick coconuts, eat and drink the food and water from the coconuts we have picked, throw stones in the sea, put on John Bull masks and frighten defenseless little children on their way home from school, go fishing and catch only our favorite fishes to roast and have for dinner, steal green figs to eat for dinner with the roast fish. Every day we would do this. Every night I would sing this woman a song; the words I don’t know yet, but the tune is in my head. This woman I would like to marry knows many things, but to me she will only tell about things that would never dream of making me cry; and every night, over and over, she will tell me something that begins, “Before you were born.” I will marry a woman like this, and every night, every night, I will be completely happy.

  AT LAST

  THE HOUSE

  I lived in this house with you: the wood shingles, unpainted, weather-beaten, fraying; the piano, a piece of furniture now, collecting dust; the bed in which all the children were born; a bowl of flowers, alive, then dead; a bowl of fruit, but then all eaten. (What was that light?) My hairbrush is full of dead hair. Where are the letters that brought the bad news? Where are they? These glasses commemorate a coronation. What are you now? A young woman. But what are you really? A young woman. I know how hard that is. If only everything would talk. The floorboards made a nice pattern when the sun came in. (Was that the light again?) At night, after cleaning the soot from the lampshade, I lighted the lamp and, before preparing for bed, planned another day. So many things I forgot, though. I hid something under the bed, but then I forgot, and it spawned a feathery white moss, so beautiful; it stank, and that’s how I remembered it was there. Now I am looking at you; your lips are soft and parted.

  Are they?

  I saw the cat open its jaws wide and I saw the roof of its mouth, which was pink with black shading, and its teeth looked white and sharp and dangerous. I had no shells from the sea, which was minutes away. This beautifully carved shelf: you can touch it now. Why did I not let you eat with your bare hands when you wanted to?

  Why were all the doors closed so tight shut?

  But they weren’t closed.

  I saw them closed.

  What passed between us then? You asked me if it was always the way it is now. But I don’t know. I wasn’t always here. I wasn’t here in the beginning. We held hands once and were beautiful. But what followed? Sleepless nights, oh, sleepless nights. A baby was born on Thursday and was almost eaten, eyes first, by red ants, on Friday. (But the light, where does it come from, the light?) I’ve walked the length of this room so many times, by now I have traveled a desert.

  With me?

  With you. Speak in a whisper. I like the way your lips purse when you whisper. You are a woman. Stand over there near the dead flowers. I can see your reflection in the glass bowl. You are soft and curved like an arch. Your limbs are large and unknotted, your feet unsnared. (It’s the light again, now in flashes.)

  Was it like a carcass? Did you feed on it?

  Yes.

  Or was it like a skeleton? Did you live in it?

  Yes, that too. We prayed. But what did we pray for? We prayed to be saved. We prayed to be blessed. We prayed for long and happy lives for our children. And always we prayed to see the morning light. Were we saved? I don’t know. To this day I don’t know. We filled the rooms; I filled the rooms. Eggs boiled violently in that pot. When the hurricane came, we hid in this corner until the wind passed; the rain that time, the rain that time. The foundation of this house shook and the earth washed away. My skin grew hot and damp; then I shivered with excitement.

  What did you say to me? What did I not hear?

  The mattress was stuffed with coconut fiber. It was our first mattress. It made our skin raw. It harbored bedbugs. I used to stand here, at this window, looking out at the shadows of people passing—and they were real people—and I would run my hand over the pattern of ridges in the cover belonging to the kettle
. I used to stand over here too, in front of this mirror, and I would run my hands across the stitches in a new tablecloth. And again I would stand here, in front of the cold stove, and run my fingers through a small bag of green coffee beans. In this cage lived a hummingbird. He died after a few days, homesick for the jungle. I tried to take everything one day at a time, just as it was coming up.

  And then?

  I felt sick. Always I felt sick. I sat in this rocking chair with you on my lap. Let me calm her, I thought, let me calm her. But in my breast my milk soured.

  So I was loved?

  Yes. You wore your clothes wrapped tight around your body, keeping your warmth to yourself. What greed! But how could you know? A yellow liquid left a stain here.

  Is that blood?

  Yes, but who bled? That picture of an asphalt lake. He visited an asphalt lake once. He loved me then. I was beautiful. I built a fire. The coals glowed so. Bitter. Bitter. Bitter. There was music, there was dancing. Again and again we touched, and again and again we were beautiful. I could see that. I could see some things. I cried. I could not see everything. What illness was it that caused the worm to crawl out of his leg the day he died? Someone laughed here. I heard that, and just then I was made happy. Look. You were dry and warm and solid and small. I was soft and curved like an arch. I wore blue, bird blue, and at night I would shine in the dark.

  The children?

  They weren’t here yet, the children. I could hear their hearts beating, but they weren’t here yet. They were beautiful, but not the way you are. Sometimes I appeared as a man. Sometimes I appeared as a hoofed animal, stroking my own brown, shiny back. Then I left no corner unturned. Nothing frightened me. A blind bird dashed its head against this closed window. I heard that. I crossed the open sea alone at night on a steamer. What was my name—I mean the name my mother gave to me—and where did I come from? My skin is now coarse. What pity. What sorrow. I have made a list. I have measured everything. I have not lied.