Jacob Ross - Pynter Bender

The days merged into each other like the lines he marked on the steps with the bits of chalk and charcoal he found inside the room. His father rarely left the house. He would sit on the long canvas chair beside the door, muttering to himself over the Bible, solid like a slab of rock on his knees, its pages spread like wings on the altar of his palms.

They hardly talked. Pynter didn’t mind. He had the room to go to.

Over the weeks, Pynter came to know the cracks that ran like little ravines in the flooring of that room, from which he’d extricate buttons, marbles, needles, rusty pins, little bits of coloured glass, a child’s gold earring, three silver coins with birds on them, a small chain of beads that slipped from the crease of his palm in a glittering liquid stream, a tiny copper buckle and bits of fingernail.

Still, he felt that even if he’d entered this room, had explored every part of it with his fingers, it had not really opened up itself to him.

‘Pa, I want to learn to read.’

The old man stopped the spoon before his lips and, without looking up, he said, ‘I been thinkin that you’ll have to soon. I’ll start you off with this.’ He nodded at the Bible.

By the time the man with the white shirt and the stick with the head of a lion came, Pynter had begun to make sense of all his mother’s writing on those leaves. Her words, he realised, were not meant for his father. Not in the way that Uncle Michael’s were meant for the boy in the photograph. She wrote them the way she talked, almost as if she were answering Miss Lizzie and the women in the river. A story which over time he slowly pieced together, ignoring the nudge of hunger in his guts, not hearing his father calling him sometimes as he sat in the gloom shuffling the leaves, sorting and re-sorting them until the words followed each other easily. A strange feeling it was too, rebuilding his and Peter’s history with those dead leaves, one he now knew began long before either of them was born.

When John Seegal walk i use to wish i went with him. i use to wish i didnt have to wait no more for him to come back home. from the time he leave all I find myself doing was just waiting. i used to like Fridays by the river fridays was quiet like you dont have nobody else in the world excepting you and the river water running over stone like it want to tell you something, and the quiet wrap itself nice and safe round you. i use to like that. It feel like if the water was my thoughts running through my head .

One morning i take the washing early. i take the long way down, through the ravine that was a road when rain didnt fall and the bottom get dry .

i come to the place i like to wash because it got a flat stone there. It was big and wide like a bed, like a place you want to sleep on. The top was bleach like a sheet from all the soap that dry on it .

i like to finish wash and leave the clothes to dry so i could watch the water turn white or get dark according to what cloud pass over it. But dat time for no reason at all i get tired of just sitting down dere and I decide to walk down the river. i was talking to myself, or maybe thinking to meself i dont remember now so I didnt notice tie-tongue Sharon and she son a little way ahead of me .

i know her. she cant talk because she tongue was sew down to she mouth. is so she born. People treat her different because of that, but i never. First time i look at her close i see how pretty she is. She got the prettiest teeth anybody ever see and she got eye that look at you as if they watchin from inside a room .

i see how she say things with she face too, if you look in she eye you understand everything she cant say with words. i did always like miss sharon .

She was standing by the end of the stretch of water in front of me, and the little boy was standing up in the middle of the water with her too. They was naked as they born and she was bathing him. It dont have no words for it. i feel sometimes that is because she cant talk words that she show so much love with them two hand she have. i remember the light too because the sun did find a place through all dem leaf and it fall on them. the little boy was shyning like if fire itself did bathing him. i could hear he voice and hear him laughing to heself sometimes and sometimes answering questions i never hear miss Sharon ask him. she was full with child, contented and full, that is what i remember. Like was them alone in the world and still them wasnt missing nobody. Not like me .

One time she rest her hand on her belly. I see the boy face. I see how perfect and happy he was. Was like if all the question I been asking ever since my father leave get answer right there, all them question I didnt even know I want a answer for. I didnt miss my fadder John Seegal no more .

I know miss Sharon know dat I was there because after a while the two of them was lookin over where I was. I wonder to meself how come they know I there on that stone behind the bush. But then seein as I know she was watching me I get up sort of guilty .

She do the funniest thing when I stand up. She laugh .

I didnt hear her laugh but I know she laugh because she whole body do it. It shift that way and this way like she koodnt keep the funniness inside of she. I didnt want her to hold it in eider because she look nice an pretty laughing like that. I get up from where I was and walk down to her because she call me with she hand and when I reach she look in my face kind of soft and deep. The little boy was pretty like her. He was slim and and smooth like guava wood .

Dat light, is de light I still remember. All dat light around dem and I was in dat light now, like if I did belong dere too .

I know she must have hear me thinking because she take my hand and rest it on she belly like i was touching the whole world with my hand or the reason for the world, or something .

I ask her how I could come like her. what I did mean was how I could be so happy and contented. She look at the boy and she understand and her body laugh. Her face and her hand tell him something dat he tell me afterwards. he say dat she say I have to be a woman first. A woman. Like that word was something that she just hand over to me .

i get impatient with de years. I get sort of fed up waitin to turn woman, sometimes. And a couple of times I try to hurry things up. I start talkin to meself too, bicause all them thoughts was running round inside my head like ants and when I couldn hold dem in, I sort of let dem roll out of me and i write dem down on anything my hand fall on. Is how they begin to think that I gone crazy. Dat my father spirit get tired of that dirty swamp down dere and seein as I was his favrite before Patty come he come back to possess me .

I know you long before you know me. I know you from de time you look down straight at me one morning, when I get up early to go to the pipe for water .

I had my bucket on my head when you reach me and I lift my eye to say Mornin Missa Manuel Forsyth. I tell myself afterwards that I shouldnt do that. I should a keep my head straight but I was remembering what Miss Sharon tell me by the river. Everything I been waitin fo ever since she tell me come back to me .