V. Naipaul - Miguel Street

Hat said once, ‘Man, she like Shakespeare when it come to using words.’

Laura used to shout, ‘Alwyn, you broad-mouth brute, come here.’

And, ‘Gavin, if you don’t come here this minute, I make you fart fire, you hear.’

And, ‘Lorna, you black bow-leg bitch, why you can’t look what you doing? ’

Now, to compare Laura, the mother of eight, with Mary the Chinese, also mother of eight, doesn’t seem fair. Because Mary took really good care of her children and never spoke harshly to them. But Mary, mark you, had a husband who owned a shop, and Mary could afford to be polite and nice to her children, after stuffing them full of chop-suey and chow-min and chow-fan, and things with names like that. But who could Laura look to for money to keep her children?

The men who cycled slowly past Laura’s house in the evening, whistling for Laura, were not going to give any of their money to Laura’s children. They just wanted Laura.

I asked my mother, ‘How Laura does live?’

My mother slapped me, saying, ‘You know, you too fast for a little boy.’

I suspected the worst.

But I wouldn’t have liked that to be true.

So I asked Hat. Hat said, ‘She have a lot of friends who does sell in the market. They does give she things free, and sometimes one or two or three of she husbands does give she something too, but that not much.’

The oddest part of the whole business was Laura herself. Laura was no beauty. As Boyee said one day, ‘She have a face like the top of a motor-car battery.’ And she was a little more than plump.

I am talking now of the time when she had had only six children.

One day Hat said, ‘Laura have a new man.’

Everybody laughed, ‘Stale news. If Laura have she way, she go try every man once.’

But Hat said, ‘No, is serious. He come to live with she for good now. I see him this morning when I was taking out the cows.’

We watched and waited for this man.

We later learned that he was watching and waiting for us.

In no time at all this man, Nathaniel, had become one of the gang in Miguel Street. But it was clear that he was not really one of us. He came from the east end of Port of Spain, which we considered dirtier; and his language was really coarse.

He made out that he was a kind of terror in the east end around Piccadilly Street. He told many stories about gang-fights, and he let it be known that he had disfigured two or three people.

Hat said, ‘I think he lying like hell, you know.’

I distrusted him myself. He was a small man, and I always felt that small men were more likely to be wicked and violent.

But what really sickened us was his attitude to women. We were none of us chivalrous, but Nathaniel had a contempt for women which we couldn’t like. He would make rude remarks when women passed.

Nathaniel would say, ‘Women just like cows. Cow and they is the same thing.’

And when Miss Ricaud, the welfare woman, passed, Nathaniel would say, ‘Look at that big cow.’

Which wasn’t in good taste, for we all thought that Miss Ricaud was too fat to be laughed at, and ought instead to be pitied.

Nathaniel, in the early stages, tried to make us believe that he knew how to keep Laura in her place. He hinted that he used to beat her. He used to say, ‘Woman and them like a good dose of blows, you know. You know the calypso:

Every now and then just knock them down.

Every now and then just throw them down.

Black up their eye and bruise up their knee

And then they love you eternally.

Is gospel truth about woman.’

Hat said, ‘Woman is a funny thing, for truth, though. I don’t know what a woman like Laura see in Nathaniel.’

Eddoes said, ‘I know a helluva lot about woman. I think Nathaniel lying like hell. I think when he with Laura he got his tail between his legs all the time.’

We used to hear fights and hear the children screaming all over the place, and when we saw Nathaniel, he would just say, ‘Just been beating some sense into that woman.’

Hat said, ‘Is a funny thing. Laura don’t look any sadder.’

Nathaniel said, ‘Is only blows she really want to keep she happy.’

Nathaniel was lying, of course. It wasn’t he who was giving the blows, it was Laura. That came out the day when Nathaniel tried to wear a hat to cover up a beaten eye.

Eddoes said, ‘It look like they make up that calypso about men, not women.’

Nathaniel tried to get at Eddoes, who was small and thin. But Hat said, ‘Go try that on Laura. I know Laura. Laura just trying not to beat you up too bad just to keep you with she, but the day she start getting tired of you, you better run, boy.’

We prayed for something to happen to make Nathaniel leave Miguel Street.

Hat said, ‘We ain’t have to wait long. Laura making baby eight months now. Another month, and Nathaniel gone.’

Eddoes said, ‘That would be a real record. Seven children with seven different man.’

The baby came.

It was on a Saturday. Just the evening before I had seen Laura standing in her yard leaning on the fence.

The baby came at eight o’clock in the morning. And, like a miracle, just two hours later, Laura was calling across to my mother.

I hid and looked.

Laura was leaning on her window-sill. She was eating a mango, and the yellow juice was smeared all over her face.

She was saying to my mother, ‘The baby come this morning.’

And my mother only said, ‘Boy or girl?’

Laura said, ‘What sort of luck you think I have? It looks like I really blight. Is another girl. I just thought I would let you know, that’s all. Well, I got to go now. I have to do some sewing.’

And that very evening it looked as though what Hat said was going to come true. For that evening Laura came out to the pavement and shouted to Nathaniel, ‘Hey, Nathaniel, come here.’

Hat said, ‘But what the hell is this? Ain’t is this morning she make baby?’

Nathaniel tried to show off to us. He said to Laura, ‘I busy. I ain’t coming.’

Laura advanced, and I could see fight in her manner. She said, ‘You ain’t coming? Ain’t coming? But what is this I hearing?’

Nathaniel was worried. He tried to talk to us, but he wasn’t talking in a sensible way.

Laura said, ‘You think you is a man. But don’t try playing man with me, you hear. Yes, Nathaniel, is you I talking to, you with your bottom like two stale bread in your pants.’

This was one of Laura’s best, and we all began laughing. When she saw us laughing, Laura burst out too.

Hat said, ‘This woman is a real case.’

But even after the birth of his baby Nathaniel didn’t leave Miguel Street. We were a little worried.

Hat said, ‘If she don’t look out she go have another baby with the same man, you know.’

It wasn’t Laura’s fault that Nathaniel didn’t go. She knocked him about a lot, and did so quite openly now. Sometimes she locked him out, and then we would hear Nathaniel crying and coaxing from the pavement, ‘Laura, darling, Laura, doux-doux, just let me come in tonight. Laura, doux-doux, let me come in.’

He had dropped all pretence now of keeping Laura in her place. He no longer sought our company, and we were glad of that.

Hat used to say, ‘I don’t know why he don’t go back to the Dry River where he come from. They ain’t have any culture there, and he would be happier.’

I couldn’t understand why he stayed.

Hat said, ‘It have some man like that. They like woman to kick them around.’

And Laura was getting angrier with Nathaniel.

One day we heard her tell him, ‘You think because you give me one baby, you own me. That baby only come by accident, you hear.’