Annie John Read online

  It was my mother who gave me my first marbles. They had come, a pair of them, as a bonus in a box of oats, and she thought that their unusual size—they were as big as plums—and their color would amuse me. One was white with blue, the other white with a brownish yellow. They looked to me like miniature globes, the white representing the seas, the colors representing land masses. I didn’t think very much of them as I rolled them around in my palms, but my mother, taking the brownish-yellow one in her hand and holding it up in the air, said, “What a nice color! Amber.” Amber! Needless to say, when I showed the marbles to my friends at school I said, “Such a nice color, amber,” causing the desired effect among them, for on hearing me say the word “amber” they widened their eyes and shaped their mouths into tiny “o”s.

  One day, I was throwing stones at a guava tree, trying to knock down a ripe guava, when the Red Girl came along and said, “Which one do you want?” After I pointed it out, she climbed up the tree, picked the one I wanted off its branch, climbed down, and presented it to me. How my eyes did widen and my mouth form an “o” at this. I had never seen a girl do this before. All the boys climbed trees for the fruit they wanted, and all the girls threw stones to knock the fruit off the trees. But look at the way she climbed that tree: better than any boy.

  Polishing off the delicious ripe-to-perfection guava in two bites, I took a good look at the Red Girl. How right I had been to take some special notice of her the first time I had seen her. She was holding on to her mother’s skirt and I was holding on to my mother’s skirt. Our mothers waved to each other as they passed, calling out the usual greetings, making the usual inquiries. I noticed that the girl’s hair was the color of a penny fresh from the mint, and that it was so unruly it had to be forcibly twisted into corkscrews, the ends tied tightly with white thread. The corkscrews didn’t lie flat on her head, they stood straight up, and when she walked they bounced up and down as if they were something amphibian and alive. Right away to myself I called her the Red Girl. For as she passed, in my mind’s eye I could see her surrounded by flames, the house she lived in on fire, and she could not escape. I rescued her, and after that she followed me around worshipfully and took with great forbearance any and every abuse I heaped on her. I would have gone on like that for a while, but my mother tugged at me, claiming my attention; I heard her say, “Such a nice woman, to keep that girl so dirty.”

  The Red Girl and I stood under the guava tree looking each other up and down. What a beautiful thing I saw standing before me. Her face was big and round and red, like a moon—a red moon. She had big, broad, flat feet, and they were naked to the bare ground; her dress was dirty, the skirt and blouse tearing away from each other at one side; the red hair that I had first seen standing up on her head was matted and tangled; her hands were big and fat, and her fingernails held at least ten anthills of dirt under them. And on top of that, she had such an unbelievable, wonderful smell, as if she had never taken a bath in her whole life.

  I soon learned this about her: She took a bath only once a week, and that was only so that she could be admitted to her grandmother’s presence. She didn’t like to bathe, and her mother didn’t force her. She changed her dress once a week for the same reason. She preferred to wear a dress until it just couldn’t be worn anymore. Her mother didn’t mind that, either. She didn’t like to comb her hair, though on the first day of school she could put herself out for that. She didn’t like to go to Sunday school, and her mother didn’t force her. She didn’t like to brush her teeth, but occasionally her mother said it was necessary. She loved to play marbles, and was so good that only Skerritt boys now played against her. Oh, what an angel she was, and what a heaven she lived in! I, on the other hand, took a full bath every morning and a sponge bath every night. I could hardly go out on my doorstep without putting my shoes on. I was not allowed to play in the sun without a hat on my head. My mother paid a woman who lived five houses away from us sevenpence a week—a penny for each school day and twopence for Sunday—to comb my hair. On Saturday, my mother washed my hair. Before I went to sleep at night, I had to make sure my uniform was clean and creaseless and all laid out for the next day. I had to make sure that my shoes were clean and polished to a nice shine. I went to Sunday school every Sunday unless I was sick. I was not allowed to play marbles, and, as for Skerritt boys, that was hardly mentionable.

  The Red Girl and I walked to the top of the hill behind my house. At the top of the hill was an old lighthouse. It must have been a useful lighthouse at one time, but now it was just there for mothers to say to their children, “Don’t play at the lighthouse,” my own mother leading the chorus, I am sure. Whenever I did go to the lighthouse behind my mother’s back, I would have to gather up all my courage to go to the top, the height made me so dizzy. But now I marched boldly up behind the Red Girl as if at the top were my own room, with all my familiar comforts waiting for me. At the top, we stood on the balcony and looked out toward the sea. We could see some boats coming and going; we could see some children our own age coming home from games; we could see some sheep being driven home from pasture; we could see my father coming home from work.

  It went without saying between us that my mother should never know that we had become friends, that we planned to meet at the lighthouse in this way every day for the rest of our lives and beyond, that I now worshipped the ground her unwashed feet walked on. Just before we parted, she gave me three marbles; they were an ordinary kind, the kind you could buy three for a penny—glass orbs with a tear-shaped drop suspended in the center. Another secret to keep from my mother!

  * * *

  And now I started a new series of betrayals of people and things I would have sworn only minutes before to die for. There was Gweneth, whom I loved so, and who was my dearest friend in spite of the fact that she met with my mother’s complete approval, but she had such slyness and so many pleasing, to me, ways that my mother could never have imagined. There she was, waiting for me in our usual spot behind the cistern. “Oh, Gwen, wait until I tell you this,” I would begin after we had embraced and exchanged kisses. We would then bring each other up to date on all our latest triumphs and disappointments. But now, as my head rested on her shoulder, I thought how dull was the fresh pressedness of her uniform, the cleanness of her neck, the neatness of her just combed plaits. We walked into our classroom in the usual way, arm in arm—her head on my shoulder, since I was the taller—identical smiles on our faces. The Little Lovebirds, our friends called us. Who could have guessed at that moment about the new claim on my heart? Certainly not Gwen. For, of course, in bringing her up to date I never mentioned the Red Girl.

  As for the marbles! Quite by accident, in a moment when I was just fooling about, I discovered that I had a talent for playing marbles. I played a game and I won. I played another game and I won. I took winning for a sign of the perfection of my new union with the Red Girl. I devoted my spare time to playing and winning marbles. No longer could I head a side for a game of rounders; no longer could I, during a break for recess, walk over from our schoolyard into the neighboring churchyard to sit on tombstones and gather important information from the other girls on what exactly it was I should do to make my breasts begin growing. Our breasts were, to us, treasured shrubs, needing only the proper combination of water and sunlight to make them flourish. All my free time became devoted to games of marbles. And how I won! From the day I went to school with the three gifts from the Red Girl and came home that same day with twenty—enough to fill an old one-pound tin. Everyone attributed my talent to my long arms and my steady gaze. What a surprise it was to me—something about myself I had not known. Perhaps it had stuck in my mind that once my mother said to me, “I am so glad you are not one of those girls who like to play marbles,” and perhaps because I had to do exactly the opposite of whatever she desired of me, I now played and played at marbles in a way that I had never done anything. Soon I had so many marbles that I had to store them in old containers, hiding them under the
house in places where they would not be readily visible if my mother should just one day stoop down and make a sweeping search with her ever-inquisitive, ever-sharp eyes. If I had not yet come up with the trick of slamming the gate, I would surely have come up with it now. Sometimes I slammed the gate so hard that even I began to be afraid it would come off its hinges.

  * * *

  At first, the Red Girl and I met every day. Every day after I finished my chores, each chore being a small rehearsal for that faraway day, thank God, when I would be the mistress of my own house, that faraway day when I would have to abandon Gwen, the Red Girl, meetings behind cistern and at lighthouse, marbles, places under the house, and every other secret pleasure. I would say to my mother, “I think I will just go and stretch my legs a bit.” It didn’t take her very long to wonder why, after all my daily activities, I should suddenly have an urge to stretch my legs. She said to me, “Why, after all the things you do every day, the sudden urge to have your legs stretched?” I had always been extremely lazy, enjoying nothing so much as lying on my bed, my legs resting on the windowsill, to catch the hot sun, reading one of my books, stolen or otherwise, or just toying with another treasure. After my mother said this, I stopped going to the lighthouse for a few days, and I worried about how to explain this interference to the Red Girl. How convenient for me it would be, I thought, to have a mother to whom I was not a prime interest. But I found a new tack. A few days later, I told my mother that for my drawing class I had been asked to observe a field at sunset, so that in class I could reproduce it in watercolors; would it be all right, then, if I just went for a small walk up and over the hill? The question was framed in just the way I knew it would appeal to her, so eager was she to contribute to my scholarship. Of course she agreed. My feet must have had wings; in seconds, I was at the top of the lighthouse.

  All the time I had been kept prisoner under the watchful gaze of my mother, the Red Girl had faithfully gone to our meeting place every day. Every day, she went and waited for me, and every day I failed to show up. What could I say to her now? “My mother, the Nosy Parker, would kill me—or, worse, not speak to me for at least a few hours—if she knew that I met you in a secret place,” I said. For a while after I got there, we said nothing, only staring out to sea, watching the boats coming and going, watching the children our own age coming home from games, watching the sheep being driven home from pasture. Then, still without saying a word, the Red Girl began to pinch me. She pinched hard, picking up pieces of my almost nonexistent flesh and twisting it around. At first, I vowed not to cry, but it went on for so long that tears I could not control streamed down my face. I cried so much that my chest began to heave, and then, as if my heaving chest caused her to have some pity on me, she stopped pinching and began to kiss me on the same spots where shortly before I had felt the pain of her pinch. Oh, the sensation was delicious—the combination of pinches and kisses. And so wonderful we found it that, almost every time we met, pinching by her, followed by tears from me, followed by kisses from her were the order of the day. I stopped wondering why all the girls whom I had mistreated and abandoned followed me around with looks of love and adoration on their faces.

  * * *

  I now quite regularly had to observe a field or something for drawing class; collect specimens of leaves, flowers, or whole plants for botany class; gather specimens of rocks for geography class. In other words, my untruthfulness apparatus was now in full gear. My mother, keeping the usual close tabs, marveled at my industriousness and ambition. I was already first in my class, and I was first without ever really trying hard, so I had nothing much to worry about. I was such a good liar that, almost as if to prove all too true my mother’s saying “Where there’s a liar, there’s a thief,” I began to steal. But how could I not? I had no money of my own. And what a pleasure it was to bring a gift and see that red face, on receiving it, grow even redder in the light of the setting sun on the balcony at the top of the lighthouse. Reaching into my mother’s purse for the odd penny or so was easy enough to do, I had had some practice at it. But that wasn’t enough to buy two yards of multicolored grosgrain ribbon, or a pair of ring combs studded with rhinestones, or a pair of artificial rosebuds suitable for wearing at the waist of a nice dress. I hardly asked myself what use the Red Girl could really have for these gifts; I hardly cared that she only glanced at them for a moment and then placed them in a pocket of her dirty dress. I simply loved giving her things. But where did I get the money for them? I knew where my parents stored a key to a safe in which they kept what was to me a lot of money. It wasn’t long before I could get the key, unlock the safe, and remove some money, and I am sure I could have done this blindfolded. If they missed it, they must have chalked it up to a mistake. It was a pleasure to see that they didn’t know everything.

  One afternoon, after making some outlandish claim of devotion to my work at school, I told my mother that I was going off to observe or collect—it was all the same to me—one ridiculous thing or other. I was off to see the Red Girl, of course, and I was especially happy to be going on that day because my gift was an unusually beautiful marble—a marble of blue porcelain. I had never seen a marble like it before, and from the time I first saw it I wanted very much to possess it. I had played against the girl to whom it belonged for three days in a row until finally I won all her marbles—thirty-three—except for that one. Then I had to play her and win six games in a row to get the prize—the marble made of blue porcelain. Using the usual slamming-the-gate-and-quietly-creeping-back technique, I dived under the house to retrieve the marble from the special place where I had hidden it. As I came out from under the house, what should I see before me but my mother’s two enormous, canvas-clad feet. From the look on my face, she guessed immediately that I was up to something; from the look on her face, I guessed immediately that everything was over. “What do you have in your hand?” she asked, and I had no choice but to open my hand, revealing the hard-earned prize to her angrier and angrier eyes.

  My mother said, “Marbles? I had heard you played marbles, but I just couldn’t believe it. You were not off to look for plants at all, you were off to play marbles.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “Oh, no.”

  “Where are your other marbles?” said my mother. “If you have one, you have many.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “Oh, no. I don’t have marbles, because I don’t play marbles.”

  “You keep them under the house,” said my mother, completely ignoring everything I said.

  “Oh, no.”

  “I am going to find them and throw them into the deep sea,” she said.

  My mother now crawled under the house and began a furious and incredible search for my marbles. If she and I had been taking a walk in the Amazon forest, two of my steps equaling one of her strides, and after a while she noticed that I was no longer at her side, her search for me then would have equaled her search for my marbles now. On and on went her search—behind some planks my father had stored years ago for some long-forgotten use; behind some hatboxes that held old Christmas and birthday cards and old letters from my mother’s family; tearing apart my neat pile of books, which, if she had opened any one of them, would have revealed to her, stamped on the title page, these words: “Public Library, Antigua.” Of course, that would have been a whole other story, and I can’t say which would have been worse, the stolen books or playing marbles. On it went.

  “Where are the marbles?” she asked.

  “I don’t have any marbles,” I would reply. “Only this one I found one day as I was crossing the street to school.”

  Of course I thought, At any minute I am going to die. For there were the marbles staring right at me, staring right at her. Sometimes her hand was actually resting on them. I had stored them in old cans, though my most valued ones were in an old red leather handbag of hers. There they were at her feet, as she rested for a moment, her heel actually digging into the handbag. My heart could have stopped.

  My fat
her came home. My mother postponed the rest of the search. Over supper, which, in spite of everything, I was allowed to eat with them, she told him about the marbles, adding a list of things that seemed as long as two chapters from the Old Testament. I could hardly recognize myself from this list—how horrible I was—though all of it was true. But still. They talked about me as if I weren’t there sitting in front of them, as if I had boarded a boat for South America without so much as a goodbye. I couldn’t remember my mother’s being so angry with me ever before; in the meantime all thoughts of the Red Girl vanished from my mind. Trying then to swallow a piece of bread that I had first softened in my gravy, I thought, Well, that’s the end of that; if tomorrow I saw that girl on the street, I would just act as if we had never met before, as if her very presence at any time was only an annoyance. As my mother went on to my father in her angry vein, I rearranged my life: Thank God I hadn’t abandoned Gwen completely, thank God I was so good at rounders that the girls would be glad to have me head a side again, thank God my breasts hadn’t grown and I still needed some tips about them.

  * * *

  Days went by. My mother kept up the search for the marbles. How she would torment me! When I left for school, she saw me out the gate, then watched me until I was a pin on the horizon. When I came home, there she was, waiting for me. Of course, there was no longer any question of going off in the late afternoon for observations and gatherings. Not that I wanted to anyway—all that was finished. But on it would go. She would ask me for the marbles, and in my sweetest voice I would say I didn’t have any. Each of us must have secretly vowed to herself not to give in to the other. But then she tried this new tack. She told me this: When she was a girl, it was her duty to accompany her father up to ground on Saturdays. When they got there, her father would check on the plantain and banana trees, the grapefruit and lime and lemon trees, and check the mongoose traps. Before returning, they would harvest some food for the family to eat in the coming week: plantains, green figs, grapefruit, limes, lemons, coffee beans, cocoa beans, almonds, nutmegs, cloves, dasheen, cassavas, all depending on what was ripe to be harvested. On one particular day, after they had loaded up the donkeys with the provisions, there was an extra bunch of green figs, and my mother was to carry it on her head. She and her father started off for their home, and as they walked my mother noticed that the bunch of figs grew heavier and heavier—much heavier than any bunch of figs she had ever carried before. She ached, from the top of her neck to the base of her spine. The weight of the green figs caused her to walk slowly, and sometimes she lost sight of her father. She was alone on the road, and she heard all sorts of sounds that she had never heard before and sounds that she could not account for. Full of fright and in pain, she walked into her yard, very glad to get rid of the green figs. She no sooner had taken the load from her head when out of it crawled a very long black snake. She didn’t have time to shout, it crawled away so quickly into the bushes. Perhaps from fright, perhaps from the weight of the load she had just gotten rid of, she collapsed.