Annie John Page 7

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  That happened when I was in the first form. Now here Miss Edward stood. Her whole face was on fire. Her eyes were bulging out of her head. I was sure that at any minute they would land at my feet and roll away. The small pimples on her face, already looking as if they were constantly irritated, now ballooned into huge, on-the-verge-of-exploding boils. Her head shook from side to side. Her strange bottom, which she carried high in the air, seemed to rise up so high that it almost touched the ceiling. Why did I not pay attention, she said. My impertinence was beyond endurance. She then found a hundred words for the different forms my impertinence took. On she went. I was just getting used to this amazing bellowing when suddenly she was speechless. In fact, everything stopped. Her eyes stopped, her bottom stopped, her pimples stopped. Yes, she had got close enough so that her eyes caught a glimpse of what I had done to my textbook. The glimpse soon led to closer inspection. It was bad enough that I had defaced my schoolbook by writing in it. That I should write under the picture of Columbus “The Great Man…” etc. was just too much. I had gone too far this time, defaming one of the great men in history, Christopher Columbus, discoverer of the island that was my home. And now look at me. I was not even hanging my head in remorse. Had my peers ever seen anyone so arrogant, so blasphemous?

  I was sent to the headmistress, Miss Moore. As punishment, I was removed from my position as prefect, and my place was taken by the odious Hilarene. As an added punishment, I was ordered to copy Books I and II of Paradise Lost, by John Milton, and to have it done a week from that day. I then couldn’t wait to get home to lunch and the comfort of my mother’s kisses and arms. I had nothing to worry about there yet; it would be a while before my mother and father heard of my bad deeds. What a terrible morning! Seeing my mother would be such a tonic—something to pick me up.

  When I got home, my mother kissed me absentmindedly. My father had got home ahead of me, and they were already deep in conversation, my father regaling her with some unusually outlandish thing the oaf Mr. Oatie had done. I washed my hands and took my place at table. My mother brought me my lunch. I took one smell of it, and I could tell that it was the much hated breadfruit. My mother said not at all, it was a new kind of rice imported from Belgium, and not breadfruit, mashed and forced through a ricer, as I thought. She went back to talking to my father. My father could hardly get a few words out of his mouth before she was a jellyfish of laughter. I sat there, putting my food in my mouth. I could not believe that she couldn’t see how miserable I was and so reach out a hand to comfort me and caress my cheek, the way she usually did when she sensed that something was amiss with me. I could not believe how she laughed at everything he said, and how bitter it made me feel to see how much she liked him. I ate my meal. The more I ate of it, the more I was sure that it was breadfruit. When I finished, my mother got up to remove my plate. As she started out the door, I said, “Tell me, really, the name of the thing I just ate.”

  My mother said, “You just ate some breadfruit. I made it look like rice so that you would eat it. It’s very good for you, filled with lots of vitamins.” As she said this, she laughed. She was standing half inside the door, half outside. Her body was in the shade of our house, but her head was in the sun. When she laughed, her mouth opened to show off big, shiny, sharp white teeth. It was as if my mother had suddenly turned into a crocodile.

  Chapter Six

  Somewhere, Belgium

  In the year I turned fifteen, I felt more unhappy than I had ever imagined anyone could be. It wasn’t the unhappiness of wanting a new dress, or the unhappiness of wanting to go to cinema on a Sunday afternoon and not being allowed to do so, or the unhappiness of being unable to solve some mystery in geometry, or the unhappiness at causing my dearest friend, Gwen, some pain. My unhappiness was something deep inside me, and when I closed my eyes I could even see it. It sat somewhere—maybe in my belly, maybe in my heart; I could not exactly tell—and it took the shape of a small black ball, all wrapped up in cobwebs. I would look at it and look at it until I had burned the cobwebs away, and then I would see that the ball was no bigger than a thimble, even though it weighed worlds. At that moment, just when I saw its size and felt its weight, I was beyond feeling sorry for myself, which is to say I was beyond tears. I could only just sit and look at myself, feeling like the oldest person who had ever lived and who had not learned a single thing. After I had sat in this way for a while, to distract myself I would count my toes; always it came out the same—I had ten of them.

  If I had been asked, I would not have been able to say exactly how it was that I got that way. It must have come on me like mist: first, I was in just a little mist and could still see everything around me, though not so clearly; then I was completely covered up and could not see even my own hand stretched out in front of me. I tried to imagine that I was like a girl in one of the books I had read—a girl who had suffered much at the hands of a cruel step-parent, or a girl who suddenly found herself without any parents at all. When reading about such a girl, I would heap even more suffering on her if I felt the author hadn’t gone far enough. In the end, of course, everything was resolved happily for the girl, and she and a companion would sail off to Zanzibar or some other very distant place, where, since they could do as they pleased, they were forever happy. But I was not in a book. I was always just sitting there with the thimble that weighed worlds fastened deep inside me, the sun beating down on me. Everything I used to care about had turned sour. I could start with the sight of the flamboyant trees in bloom, the red of the flowers causing the street on which I lived to seem on fire at sunset; seeing this sight, I would imagine myself incapable of coming to harm if I were just to walk through this inferno. I could end with my mother and me; we were now a sight to see.

  We both noticed that now if she said that something I did reminded her of her own self at my age, I would try to do it a different way, or, failing that, do it in a way that she could not stomach. She returned the blow by admiring and praising everything that she suspected had special meaning for me. I became secretive, and she said that I was in practice for becoming a liar and a thief—the only kinds of people who had secrets. My mother and I each soon grew two faces: one for my father and the rest of the world, and one for us when we found ourselves alone with each other. For my father and the world, we were politeness and kindness and love and laughter. I saw her with my old eyes, my eyes as a child, and she saw me with hers of that time. There was my mother scrubbing my back as in the old days, examining my body from limb to limb, making sure nothing unusual was taking place; there was my mother making me my favorite dessert, a blancmange—a reward for excelling at something that met her approval; there was my mother concerned about a small sniffle, wondering if soon it would develop into something major and then she would have to make me a poultice of ground camphor and eucalyptus leaves for my chest. And there I was also, letting the singsong of her voice, as it expressed love and concern, calm me into a lull; there I was fondling the strands of her thick black hair as she unraveled her braids for a daily brushing, burying my face in it and inhaling deeply, for it smelled of rose oil.

  As we were playing out these scenes from the old days, the house would swell with the sound of my father’s voice telling one story after another of his days as a famous batsman with a cricket team, and of what he did on this island and the next as he toured the Windward and the Leeward Islands with his teammates. In front of my mother’s friends also, we put on our good faces. I was obedient and nice, and she asked nothing more than that I show the good manners she had taught me. Sometimes on Sundays as we walked back from church, perhaps touched by the sermon we had just heard, we would link arms as we strolled home, step in step with each other.

  But no sooner were we alone, behind the fence, behind the closed door, than everything darkened. How to account for it I could not say. Something I could not name just came over us, and suddenly I had never loved anyone so or hated anyone so. But to say hate—what did
I mean by that? Before, if I hated someone I simply wished the person dead. But I couldn’t wish my mother dead. If my mother died, what would become of me? I couldn’t imagine my life without her. Worse than that, if my mother died I would have to die, too, and even less than I could imagine my mother dead could I imagine myself dead.

  I started to have a dream. In my dream, I walked down a smooth, unpaved road. The road was lined on either side with palm trees whose leaves spread out so wide that they met and tangled up with each other and the whole road was shaded from the sun, which was always shining. When I started to walk down the road, my steps were quick and light, and as I walked these words would go around in my head: “My mother would kill me if she got the chance. I would kill my mother if I had the courage.” At the beginning of my walk, as I chanted the words my voice had a happy note, as if the quickness and lightness of my feet signaled to me that I would never give her the chance. But as the road went on, things changed. I would say the same words, but slower and slower and in a sad way; my feet and the rest of my body became heavy. It was as if it had dawned on me that I would never have the courage with which to kill my mother, and then, since I lacked the courage, the chance would pass to her. I did not understand how it became so, but just the same it did. I had been taught by my mother to take my dreams seriously. My dreams were not unreal representations of something real; my dreams were a part of, and the same as, my real life. When I first had this dream, I became quite frightened of my mother, and I was so ashamed of it that I couldn’t bring myself to look directly at her. But after I had had the dream again and again, it became like a second view to me, and I would hold up little incidents against it to see if this was her chance or that was my courage.

  * * *

  At school, I had had a great change. I was no longer in the same class with Gwen; I was now in a class with girls two or three years older than I was. That was a shock. These girls didn’t offer the camaraderie of my friends in the second form. They didn’t have the give-and-take, the friendly pull-and-shove. They were constantly in strict competition for good marks and our teachers’ affection, and among them insults ruled the day. And how vain they were! Constantly they smoothed down their hair, making sure every strand was in place; some carried mirrors in their schoolbags, and they would hold them at an angle to see if the pleats in the backs of their uniforms were in place. They actually practiced walking with their hips swinging from side to side. They were always sticking out their bosoms, and, what was worse, they actually did have bosoms to stick out. Before I got to see these girls close up—when I was just observing them as they walked to and fro, going about their business—I envied the way the air seemed to part for them, freeing itself of any obstacle so that they wouldn’t have to make an effort. Now I could see that the air just parted itself quickly so that it wouldn’t have to bear their company for long. For what a dull bunch they were! They had no different ideas of how to be in the world; they certainly didn’t think that the world was a strange place to be caught living in.

  I was at first slowed down in my usual climb to the top by the new subjects put before me, but I soon mastered them, and only one other girl was my match. Sometimes we tied for first place, sometimes she was first and I second, and sometimes it was the other way around. I tried to get to know her, feeling that we had this much in common, but she was so dull a person, completely unable to hold so much as a simple conversation, and, to boot, smelled so of old rubber and blue ink, that I made myself unable to remember her name. I could see the kind of grownup person she would be—just the kind who would take one look at me and put every effort into making my life a hardship. Already her mouth was turned down permanently at the corners, as if to show that she had been born realizing that nobody else behaved properly, and as if also she had been born knowing that everything in life was a disappointment and her face was all set to meet it.

  Gwen and I walked home from school in the usual way and did the usual things, but just the sight of her was no longer a thrill to me, though I did my best not to let her know. It was as if I had grown a new skin over the old skin and the new skin had a completely different set of nerve endings. But what could I say to poor Gwen? How to explain to her about the thimble that weighed worlds, and the dark cloud that was like an envelope in which my mother and I were sealed? If I said to Gwen, “Does your mother always watch you out of the corner of her eye?” her reply was most likely to be “My mother has a knack for keeping her eye on everything at the same time.” And if I said, “I don’t mean in that way, I mean—” But what would have been the use of going on? We no longer lived on the same plane. Sometimes, just hearing her voice as she ran on and on, bringing me up to date on the doings of my old group, would put me in such a state that I felt I would explode; and then I remembered that it was the same voice that used to be, for me, some sort of music. How small she now looked in my eyes: a bundle of who said what and who did what.

  One day when we were walking home, taking the lane with the big houses hidden behind the high hedges, Gwen said to me that her brother Rowan had mentioned how much he liked the way I had conducted myself when I was asked to read the lesson in church one Sunday. She then launched into a long speech about him, and I did what was fast becoming a habit when we were together: I started to daydream. My most frequent daydream now involved scenes of me living alone in Belgium, a place I had picked when I read in one of my books that Charlotte Brontë, the author of my favorite novel, Jane Eyre, had spent a year or so there. I had also picked it because I imagined that it would be a place my mother would find difficult to travel to and so would have to write me letters addressed in this way:

  To: Miss Annie Victoria John

  Somewhere,

  Belgium

  I was walking down a street in Belgium, wearing a skirt that came down to my ankles and carrying a bag filled with books that at last I could understand, when suddenly I heard these words come out of Gwen’s mouth: “I think it would be so nice if you married Rowan. Then, you see, that way we could be together always.”

  I was brought back to the present, and I stopped and stood still for a moment; then my mouth fell open and my whole self started to tremble. All this was in disbelief, of course, but, to show how far apart we were, she thought that my mouth fell open and my whole self trembled in complete joy at what she had said to me. And when I said, “What did you just say?” she said, “Oh, I knew you would like the idea.” I felt so alone; the last person left on earth couldn’t feel more alone than I. I looked at Gwen. Could this really be Gwen? It was Gwen. The same person I had always known. Everything was in place. But at the same time something terrible had happened, and I couldn’t tell what it was.

  It was then that I began avoiding Gwen and our daily walks home. I tried not to do it so much that she would notice, but about every three or four days I would say that being in my new class was so demanding and, what with one thing and another, I had things to clear up here and there. I would walk her to the school gate, where we would kiss goodbye, and then, after some proper time had passed, I would leave school. One afternoon, I took another way home, a way that brought me through Market Street. Market Street was where all the stores were, and I passed by slowly, staring into the shop windows, though I wasn’t at all interested in the merchandise on display. What I was really looking at was my own reflection in the glass, though it was a while before I knew that. I saw myself just hanging there among bolts of cloth, among Sunday hats and shoes, among men’s and women’s undergarments, among pots and pans, among brooms and household soap, among notebooks and pens and ink, among medicines for curing headache and medicines for curing colds. I saw myself among all these things, but I didn’t know that it was I, for I had got so strange. My whole head was so big, and my eyes, which were big, too, sat in my big head wide open, as if I had just had a sudden fright. My skin was black in a way I had not noticed before, as if someone had thrown a lot of soot out of a window just when I was passing by and it had
all fallen on me. On my forehead, on my cheeks were little bumps, each with a perfect, round white point. My plaits stuck out in every direction from under my hat; my long, thin neck stuck out from the blouse of my uniform. Altogether, I looked old and miserable. Not long before, I had seen a picture of a painting entitled The Young Lucifer. It showed Satan just recently cast out of heaven for all his bad deeds, and he was standing on a black rock all alone and naked. Everything around him was charred and black, as if a great fire had just roared through. His skin was coarse, and so were all his features. His hair was made up of live snakes, and they were in a position to strike. Satan was wearing a smile, but it was one of those smiles that you could see through, one of those smiles that make you know the person is just putting up a good front. At heart, you could see, he was really lonely and miserable at the way things had turned out. I was standing there surprised at this change in myself, when all this came to mind, and suddenly I felt so sorry for myself that I was about to sit down on the sidewalk and weep, already tasting the salty bitterness of my tears.

  I was about to do this when I noticed four boys standing across the street from me; they were looking at me and bowing as they said, in an exaggerated tone of voice, pretending to be grownup gentlemen living in Victorian times, “Hallo, Madame. How are you this afternoon?” and “What a pleasant thing, our running into each other like this,” and “We meet again after all this time,” and “Ah, the sun, it shines and shines only on you.” The words were no sooner out of their mouths than they would bend over laughing. Even though nothing like this had ever happened to me before, I knew instantly that it was malicious and that I had done nothing to deserve it other than standing there all alone. They were older than I, and from their uniforms I could tell that they were students of the boys’ branch of my own school. I looked at their faces. I didn’t recognize the first, I didn’t recognize the second, I didn’t recognize the third, but I knew the face of the fourth one; it was a face from my ancient history. A long time ago, when we were little children, our mothers were best friends, and he and I used to play together. His name was Mineu, and I felt pleased that he, a boy older than I by three years, would play with me. Of course, in all the games we played I was always given the lesser part. If we played knight and dragon, I was the dragon; if we played discovering Africa, he discovered Africa; he was also the leader of the savage tribes that tried to get in the way of the discovery, and I played his servant, and a not very bright servant at that; if we played prodigal son, he was the prodigal son and the prodigal son’s father and the jealous brother, while I played a person who fetched things.