Daddy wasn hearing me, or maybe he wasn listening, so I just came out and said it: “I don’t want to go to Jamaica again.”
He puffed out some smoke, no clean rings, just renk cigarette clouds. He’d been puffing my whole life, and I still didn understand how he could smoke in this finger-freezin weather. “How yuh mean, yuh don’ want to go Jamaica again?” he said.
The school bleachers felt cold against my bottom, but Mummy still made me wear long johns under my band uniform and they took off most of the chill. I was old enough to come to games on my own, but Grandma gave me a ride and Daddy was supposed to meet us. Minutes before halftime and he just got here, even though everybody else who came on the train from Grand Central was here long ago. I should’ve been on the field but he waved me over to the bleachers when he came. Coach said it was okay because we were only waiting, waiting for the whistle to blow, waiting for the band to go on. Daddy leaned forward, with his elbows on his knees. His face was well close to mine but he wasn looking at me. Which is good, because I didn really want to see his face squinge up again. And I meant “again” in the American way, as in “not another time,” rather than the Jamaican way, as in “not any more.” Not any more is how I felt about spending the summer in Jamaica. But Daddy didn get it.
“I don’t want to go,” I said. I bit out every word carefully, to make sure I was clear. “My friends are all going camping. In the woods. Everyone’s already talking about it.” My knee was bouncing, and I didn notice until he put his hand over my knee.
Daddy moved his hand soon as the tiktik noise of my shoelaces against the bleachers stopped. “Is what? Two years now since you don’ go home? Junior, yuh don’ miss it?”
I didn answer. Grandma pulled on my baseball cap, like she always did. It’d probably get annoying one day, but grandmas are grandmas. “Yuh didn have a good time at my house that summer?” she said.
“Yuh didn like runnin round with yuh cousins and yuh friends from before?” Daddy said, “With Denton and Dwayne and Sekou and alla dem from yuh old school?”
“I have friends here too, Daddy.” I said. “Friends I only get to see at camp.”
“Yuh don’ want to get away from New York for awhile?” he said.
Daddy always needed a break, always wanted to get away from here. He was always looking back to Jamaica. I think, to Daddy, New York was everything up here. Not just The City but all the barbecues at Bear Mountain was New York and all the visits to Wilson’s Woods pool was New York just as much as the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building and all the field trips Mummy chaperoned for us was New York. But to me, “Going camping upstate is not New York, Daddy, not New York City anyway. Up there is not like here, where we can walk five minutes to the station, jump on Metro North, and half-hour later we’re in Midtown. Camp is five hours upstate. Really upstate, not just Westchester. And we go deep into the woods. We hike for at least an hour, then we get to sleep outside and swim in the lake and go fishing and build fires and pick fruit in the middle of nowhere.”
The tiktik noise of shoelaces on metal came back, but it wasn me this time. I checked. Daddy said, “Yuh can pick fruit and build fires at your aunt’s house back home, in country. Yuh don’ remember how her cherry trees nice? Yuh didn like seeing yuh family and yuh friend dem and eatin off all the hardo bread and patties and ice cream and all that?” He always tried to convince me with food. Abi even joked that I would be Jamaican-In-Food-Only if I kept up the trend. Usually food bribes worked. Not this time.
“Abi can bring back some for me, right?” I said. I was looking at him now. He was still looking into the crowd. “Probably not the cherries. I don’t think they let us bring in cherries, even if they’re picked and frozen like Auntie does when she sends up ackee. I never understood that. Ackee’s poisonous.”
“Only if yuh don’ know how to manage it,” Grandma said. “These people can be so silly, nuh so?”
“They are really silly,” I said.
“Just can’t let people be happy,” Dad said.
I smiled, as wide as I could. Puppy dog eyes wouldn work, partly because dogs were outside animals to my Jamaican dad, not fluffy cutesy things that white people let lick off their dinner plates before they put them into dishwashers we didn have. But also because Dad would tell me I was too old for “dat sort o foolishness.” Not just getting old, fully too old now, because I’d be in high school soon. So I smiled some more and nudged my shoulder into his. “Will you let me be happy, Dad? Come on, just let me go camping again. We’ll do this year just like last year? You know you want to?”
He cracked a smile this time, same like mine, only a little smaller. For now. I knew we could get him there, if I worked him a little longer. He took another puff, blew it out, then smashed the stub on the bleacher seat.
“Yuh modda and I have to discuss it. But Junior, wi decide from longtime that yuh would travel wid Abi dis summer. From last year she have wi under heavy manners to save for it.”
“You can use the money to pay for camp. The deposit is due next week. Just the deposit, Daddy, to reserve my spot.” I pause. “Abi’s been old enough to travel on her own for awhile now,” I said, as if he didn already know. “And you know Mummy will say no.”
“Then is no,” Daddy said. “Why yuh bodda ask mi?”
“You’re the one who called me over here. You’re the one who wanted to talk. Come mek wi reason’, you said.”
“So yuh tell mi, too,” Grandma said. “Is why I came this way before work.”
Dad’s eyebrows went up. He tapped his fingers against his pack of Dunhills. “Well,” he said, “I did have something else to talk bout, but now I have to sort out how to talk to yuh daughter-in-law bout this likkle ting.”
“Mi nuh tink it so likkle. And dem sorta details is between you and she,” Grandma said. “I don’ know that is a good idea for me to get involved in business between man and wife.”
“Now yuh decide yuh don’ want get involve? Now, when I ask yuh to involve yuhself?” Daddy cut his eye at Grandma, and she actually let him get away with it.
My mouth dropped open and she cut her eye back at him, and said, “He’s only joking, Junior. Mostly. I soon leave, though.”
Daddy checked his watch and looked across the field, then into the parking lot, and back at his watch again. “Yuh not goin to stay longer, Mama? I invite somebody here to meet yuh. To meet the two o yuh.”
I knew there had to be a reason Daddy came. Sometimes he would get away from work to watch my soccer matches, but this was only the third or fourth time he came to see me march. I should have known something was up when he asked for me, instead of just waiting until after the game to take me home.
“Somebody for me to meet? Here? Now?” Grandma stared at Daddy, so long it made my skin creep. Then she looked at her wrist watch and said, “I don’ think so. I have to go work.”
Dad slapped his Dunhills against his palm. The slim, red and gold box bounced into his handmiddle a few times, til it slowed to a rhythm,
like he was counting off points inside his head. Everything changed about his body language, and in a bland English he rarely spoke outside the few PTA meetings we went to, he said, “Mama, I would really like the both of you to stay and meet mi friend. She soon reach. She’s just in the car park.”
Grandma’s hands went to her hips. She looked bigger somehow, strong and soft and hard and soft again at the same time. I’d never thought about her being soft or hard or anything at all, because she gave such comfy hugs. But this was not that. From the flat look on her face, I could tell two things: (1) that she had absolutely no desire to meet any of Dad’s “new friends” and (2) that I probably didn want to meet them either. Not these friends. Not the ones he set up for us to meet here, or anywhere anytime when Mummy would not be coming. And (3) that she didn want to talk about it anymore. It almost felt like she wanted to say these things to him too. At least some of them. Instead she just said, “Mi neva teach yuh better dan dis?”
“Mama,” he said, but he didn say anything else. He just looked at her, his lips pushing in, out, and around his whole face, like his thoughts were trying to come out but knew better. When I looked at Grandma, her lips were as still and thin as the hands on her hips.
I felt squirmy in between them staring at each other so long, so I changed the subject. “Are we settled on camp, Dad?” I asked. “Can I go?”
“Maybe I could let it pass. Your mother now… your mother had plans for you this summer. She wanted you to stay with her sister this time,” Daddy told me. “Your cousins wanted to take you to country and—”
Grandma jumped in again, “And nearly split his fore’ead in half trying to open coconut with machete?”
“Don’ remind me,” Dad said to her, but his tone was all joke. I could have laughed with him, but he wasn there with us. That memory was right below the surface, close enough that I remembered how scary it was. It frightened me to watch the dull but very narrow end of a machete nearly ram into Abi’s big forehead when she yanked it, too hard, after she’d wedged it into the big ol coconut. Also frightening to have to explain to Daddy and Mummy both that I’d failed to protect my sister from death or dismemberment. Like I was her keeper or something, just because I was the oldest, even though I was only a ten year old city kid hangin out in country, much less in a place I barely knew anymore. She had a thin scar on her forehead that didn need stitches. The doctors said it would heal into a teeny tiny line no one would notice. Eventually.
“We could tell Mummy I’ll see everyone when they come to visit,” I said. I didn want to let this drop. Partly because I didn want to talk about his new friend, and partly because it felt like I absolutely had to come away from this discussion knowing where I’d spend summer, knowing it wouldn be in Jamaica. “I’ll promise not to complain, even if she doesn let me bring any comic books to read while we’re there.”
“You know she won’ give yuh extra credit for doing what you’re already supposed to do,” Dad said, “like not complain when we visit family. Family sent any and every thing they could when we came here, same like yuh aunties who took us in and always mek sure we understand how to get you and yuh sister into good school and mek sure we have somewhere to eat and dance come holiday time.”
“So don’t say, I’ll see em when they get here.” I said. “Got it. Got it.”
Dad nudged my shoulder with his forearm. “Y’know, sometime yuh really favor me. Yuh just try a ting and tek it as it come.” I wasn sure that was the compliment, or if even he thought it was.
“Dat is my cue. Wi can talk lata, y’hear, son?” Grandma said to Daddy. “And good luck to you, Junior. Just speak your heart, you can manage. You can get through.” She stood up, tied her jacket belt round her belly, and headed to the parking lot. Each step she took, I wanted it to be in the other direction, back to help me explain things to Daddy.
The noise of a jet engine roared, distant and high above us. The football game went on, classmates and families cheering as one of the teams msde a touchdown. I didn even know if it was my team. I didn care, but staring into the parking lot gave me an idea. I just had to work up to it. I put it in my back pocket for safe keeping, and hoped it stayed there.
“We could remind Mummy that I don’t like to fly,” I said. “She hates pumping us full of drugs, and I’m definitely not getting on a plane again without Dramamine. Two doses. Each way. First thing she’ll say is, ‘you realize how much that cost?’”
Dad chuckled into the ground below the risers. He took a minute to breathe, then he finally looked at me. It was always strange to look at someone who looked like looking into the mirror, but was so clearly not me. His afro was gone, just low low now, like I had to wear my hair for school, especially with the hat for the band uniform. But he was still sporting a beard and I couldn even grow a mustache yet. He passed his hand over the beard now, tightening fingers around his chin. “Is it really the flying though, Junior? I know yuh don’ like it, but I just feel is something else.”
TikTikTikTikTikTik. My eyes found the ground. It felt so so far away, and so so close, like I was falling into a swirling pool of grass and metal and asphalt. Like when we were at the top of the Empire State for that school trip with Mummy, looking down on the big buildings and tiny cars and ant-people.
“Yuh don’ have to, but if yuh want to tell me is what, Junior, yuh can?”
“But it’s true, Dad, I really don’t like flying.” After a moment, I added, “I’m not trying to lie to Mummy.”
Dad angled his head to stare at me from his eyecorner. “Okay, son. If yuh seh so.” He put his hand on my knee again, waited for me to quiet down, and said, “But is a short flight. And is not like you can drive go home. So talk to mi. Talk di truth.”
TikTikTikTikTikTik.TikTikTikTikTikTik.
“I won’t want to come back.” Even I could hear how soft my voice was. I suppose that’s why Dad didn say anything. Not at first.
A bold buzz drowned out the sounds of the football game in front of us and swallowed up the noise of the crowd. When Daddy spoke, his voice was so low and so soft, as though he was really and truly trying to understand, like deep water tumbling in and out of river rocks til they come smooth. “Junior. Yuh just tell me that yuh don’ want to go at all. How yuh mean yuh don’ want to come back?”
TikTikTikTikTikTik. TikTikTikTikTikTik. TikTikTikTikTikTik.
My knee was bouncing. I think the whole of the bleachers were moving. I didn know how to say the next words. I didn know how to tell him what he should already know. Grandma had sorted it out months ago, or weeks at least. She said I should try to be happy. Or at least try not to hold everything inside til it hurt.
“Junior,” Dad said, “just tell me. I won’ get vex this time.”
“Dad, don’t you remember how they wouldn let me in last time?”
“Of course they let you in. If they didn let you in, yuh wouldn be here now.”
“I didn’ say didn’t. I said wouldn’t.” But I could see understanding dawn in his eyes. A sparkle was there, just not the playful look he got, the one that settled in his eyecorner when we joked around.
“Yuh mean, at the airport, don’t it?” he said, and I nodded.
Dad’s eyelids drooped, seemed to hang even lower than his nose. “But we were there, Junior. We were there with you.”
My whole body snapped forward, turned to him, still and rigid. “Not at first, Dad. Not for hours. All because of my skin.”
He clutched at his beard again. “Well, not really because of your skin, not like dat,” he said. I rolled my eyes. “Because of the mosquito bites on your skin, Junior. You had so many, and yuh had calamine lotion all over yuh.”
“You’d think they’d never seen anyone with mosquito bites before,” I said.
“They thought you were carrying in measles, Junior. Your mother only had to show them your vaccination papers and then they released you. It just took a little while for her to find the right people, for us to connect to dem.”
“No, Dad. It wasn just the measles. They thought my papers were wrong. That’s why. They thought my papers were fake.”
“How yuh mean fake? Yuh never tell me that.”
“They didn believe I was just a kid. They thought I was sixteen. Because I’m so tall. So if the papers could lie and say I was twelve, then they must be fake. That’s what they kept saying, that my papers were fake and I was illegal and I didn belong. Right up until you and Mummy came into the room.”
Daddy didn say a word. He just sat with his hands on the bleacher seats, knuckles tight and bright.
“They put me in a room, by myself, for that whole time. I think they let Abi sit outside, but she was by herself too. For hours, Daddy.”
“Come now, Junior. It was hours but maybe only bout two. Two hours is not so long.” He was silent for a moment or longer. “That’s why you don’ want to fly home again?”
TikTikTikTikTikTik.TikTikTikTikTikTik.TikTikTikTikTikTik.
“They asked a lot of questions. Big, grown men in dark uniforms. They searched our bags. They opened all the food Auntie wrapped up in foil and stuck their noses so deep in it til I don’t even want to eat fry fish and bammy anymore.”
Dad didn say anything then. Neither of us were fidgeting either. Just sitting, listening to the sounds of gameplay. I wished the half-time whistle would blow so I could grab my trumpet and line up to take the field.
“They don’t give you anything to do, Dad. I was twelve, so Abi was what, ten? They wouldn let either of us watch their television. Or listen to their radio. We had those playing cards from the stewardess, but they made me leave them on the table. No books. Not even paper and pencil to draw or doodle. Just stare at the wall in that white room. For hours. While they ask questions about every little thing they’re rifling through. Over and over again. They probably memorized all the colors of my underpants. You think I want to go through that again? Ever?”
“We got through as quickly as we could, son. We had our papers and yours, and we were calling everyone’s name, everyone I know at airport and everyone yuh Auntie know too. We got through to you as quickly as we could.” He looked up, and I wondered if there were tears filling his eyes, threatening to spill over the edges like pool water. I don’t know why, but as far as I could remember, he always looked up to cry. He leveled off and said, “Son, that was years ago. Don’t let it get to you. Don’t let that be the reason you don’t go home again.”
I tried to come up with other options, racked my brain trying to think of something more, anything, but it felt like I was fumbling and flailing and falling falling falling. He kept looking around the parking lot, and I kept hoping I wouldn have to pull anything from my pocket. I couldn play dominoes like he could, but I knew a trump when I had one. How do I make him understand that it wasn just then? That it was always there for me, and for Abi too? Wasn it like that for them too? Something old or new every single day?
“Do you remember when Abi went to Montreal or Quebec or wherever for French class?” I said.
We sat there a minute, until he realized I was waiting for him to nod.
“The whole group drove up there on a bus,” I said. “It was sixty kids and a few teachers. When they got to the Canadian border, their bus had to pull over. The teachers said the border agents would have to interview anyone who wasn a US citizen. All the green card kids got pulled off the bus and taken to some tiny shoebox office. Like one of those overflow container joints they have in crowded schools and hospitals? It was Abi and two or three other kids. A couple of them were were refugees, from Yugoslavia and Ethiopia or somewhere. Their teacher said, either way, they’d just stamp their passports and let them go. But they could have done that from the bus. Abi said they questioned all of them for an hour. She’s gotta be wrong on that, that seems so long. But it must have felt that way to her, as a kid.”
“The teachers would have done something,” Dad said. “All o them a citizen. Dem coulda step in. Dem woulda move things along.”
“Yeah, well, maybe they didn think sitting for an hour was that long.” I was trying to keep calm, but I felt my heart jumping into my ribs and sweat coating my fingers. I heard blood rushing in my ears too. “Anyway, I guess it felt like hours to Abi. Whatever. The point is that the whole bus had to wait for them. While border agents questioned three eleven- or twelve-year-old kids. They were coming back from a class trip. It should have just been a fun ten-hour bus ride, if that’s a thing. She said it felt like that time at the airport all over again, because she didn really know what the border agents were looking for or if they were going to harass her or her friends or what. And when the three of them got back on the bus, the other kids, the Americans, they needled them about it half-way back to the schoolyard. She said those kids, supposedly her friends, asked if they were smuggling things into the country. Just like when we first came, when people used to ask if we came over on a dinghy, instead of Air Jamaica. They didn get how freaked out she was, or they were, they just kept making jokes.”
TikTikTikTikTikTikTik. “She never told me about that, Junior. I don’t think she told your mother either.” Dad was staring into the field, long and hard, like he would rather let it swallow him than talk about this.
“What could you have done?” I asked. I sat on my hands, trying to keep them still. “Abi and me, we see you guys working hard. Trying. I know it doesn seem like it but we do. We never want to bring you something where you couldn do anything, or worse, where you would want to do something really bad instead.”
“I am the Daddy,” he said. “Yuh supposed to bring these things to me. To us. We are the parents. We are the ones to sort out these things.”
“It just seems like this is how it is here, Dad. It’s just how things work.”
“Then if yuh know that, yuh must know that sometimes, is so it go.”
“That doesn mean I have to like it.”
“No,” he said. “Seem like yuh want to choose it, though.” This time, Dad didn bother to look into the sky, and I wished I could just leave already. He started packing the Dunhills again, and I hoped he waited for me to leave to spark up. I saw his tears, ready to drop out, and I hoped they waited for me to leave too. “Abi still goes home. She went last year fall. That was after the bus trip.”
“You mean for GranGran’s funeral?” Everyone knew GranGran was one of Abi’s favorites. She’d probably scale the Chrysler Building for her, or at least the clock tower at school, and Abi was afraid of heights.
“Right,” Dad said. I think maybe it was fitting together. “But you neva go dat time.”
“I got lucky,” I said, staring at the field, noting that my bandmates were starting to line up. “Mummy said we could only afford two tickets. And obviously it wasn going to be you and her, and leave us kids alone. Grandma had to work. And so did Aunt Vi. And pretty much everyone else. So it had to be one of us and one of you. I got lucky.”
He blanched at that. “Junior, these things happen.”
“Okay, Dad.”
“It worked itself out. You can manage.”
“I have enough to manage here.”
“Don’t let that keep you away from home.”
“Dad, I don’t want to go,” I said, “And Mummy wouldn make me.”
I followed Dad’s glance to the parking lot and saw an unfamiliar face there. When I looked at Dad I saw an unfamiliar smile, one he hadn’t shared with us. I got up, pulled my cap down, snuggled into my jacket, and started down the bleachers.
“Wi not finished, Junior. Where yuh goin?” Dad looked in my direction but it felt like his eyes went behind me, to the parking lot. Peering over his glasses and underneath his breath he said, “Don’t be rude. Yuh modda raise yuh betta dan dat.”
“…My mother?” It was hard not to yell it at him, but I thought of everyone’s eyes turning our way, seeing everything unfold. I rolled my shoulders, reset. I sat up straight and tall like Mummy taught me, like Grandma always told me. Then I told Dad, “Don’t force me to do things I don’t want to do. Don’t make me say things I shouldn’t have to say either.”
His eyes flicked behind me and back to me again. “Mind yuhself.”
I could feel the energy of the field around me. The chatter of the teams leaving the field, debriefing the first half. The woodwinds playing a note here and there while the horn section warmed up. I should be with them, and I wondered whether it was their eyes I felt on me or someone else’s. It wasn’t Dad. No, his eyes moved between me, the woman approaching from the parking lot, and the field. I waited for him to say something, say anything, but he just stared at me, the skin under his left eye twitch twitching like it could flick out at me.
“The deposit is due next week,” I said.
“I don’t know yet, Junior. How much is it exactly?”
“The deposit secures my spot. And it’s way less than the plane ticket,” I said.
“Deposit for what?” She was here now, the unfamiliar face from the parking lot. That new friend of his, a tall, thin, brown-to-pale woman with dark hair down her back. She looked just like Mummy and nothing like her at all. I told myself I didn care bout that, didn care bout any of it. But I found myself standing, first on one foot then the other, then back to the first again.
I think they thought I stood to greet her, that I was nervous to meet her or something. I glanced at Dad.
“This is my big son. Junior, we call him.” He turned to me, saying, “This is Carmen.”
She extended her hand to me. It felt like the music stopped, like everyone from the field fixed their eyes on the three of us. “It’s nice to meet you,” she said, and sound flooded my ears, as if the crowd itself was the mouth of the largest horn section I’d ever heard. I fought to focus. I glanced at Dad, right hand creeping out of my pocket, ready but resting.
My hand hovered in the air between us, between me and this woman, as I focused on Dad. “I’m sorry, but I really have to go.”
“You’re leaving so soon?” she asked.
“Yes, he has to go down to the field,” Dad said, nodding at me with a slump in his shoulders and ice in his eyes.
“Good to meet you, I guess.” I shoved my hand back into my pocket. My shoulders slumped even more than Dad’s, like they could finally shrink from the tension they’d been gripping. “I’ll get those details to you, Dad.”
I turned back to the field and started walking.
I don’ know what Dad said next, or maybe I just didn care. I also didn care how he reacted to my decision, because I wasn asking how to get out of going anymore. I don’ know how he planned to tell Mummy and Abi and everybody else that I was not going to Jamaica this summer or any other. All I heard was the tiktiktiktiktiktiktik again, when I got past the risers. I turned back to see how he looked, to see if he was facing the sky or facing the field or chatting up his new friend. I told myself I didn care bout that either, so long as I wasn there, wasn a part of any of it. By the time the whistle blew, I was already on the field, lining up with the band.
* * *
Image by Jackie Alexander via Unsplash
