Naomi Jackson - The Star Side of Bird Hill

Dionne leaned back into the sofa’s shallow cushions and smiled. All summer, she’d felt her mother’s life in Barbados taking shape with Hyacinth’s stories and the ones the hill women told her after they said she looked like her mother had spit her out. There was something comforting about wearing Avril’s clothes, sleeping in her bed, walking where she once walked, hearing stories about her.

“All those girls would be itching to roll up their shorts and tie their shirts around their waists, and your mother would prefer to look like those clothes were wearing her. You think your mother’s easy? She was never easy,” Hyacinth said.

Dionne stretched her legs before her, readying herself for a story, the only thing sure to ease the tension she saw pulsing her grandmother’s neck.

“One day, when your mother was about your age, she flew in here with her friend Jean like the devil himself was chasing her. And from that day forward, for about two months, all these children could talk about was the end-of-year dance. For weeks and weeks, all your mother would do was eat, sleep, go to school, and work on her dress. Your mother almost broke my bank with all the things she wanted. And the things I couldn’t afford, she paid for from her own kitty. She was funny that way, always liked to have her own things. Back then she was apprenticing to Jean’s grandmother, and so she had all of the fabric she wanted and a little pocket change Jean’s granny would throw at her when she finished piecework. So, the week before the dance, she bought these shoes at Bata, ones she had been saving up her money for. I remember now that they were red, the same color as her dress, open toe and open back with a four-inch heel. Nice shoes, you know. And her father, who was not into the idea of this dance from the beginning—”

“Father? I never heard Mommy talk about her father,” Dionne said.

“What, you think I just made your mother myself? Well, after you hear this story, you will understand why she never talked about him. Her father, my husband, said that no daughter of his was going to be parading herself about like a harlot in Jezebel shoes. Not while he was alive.”

“Jezebel shoes?” Dionne asked.

“Wait, wait,” Hyacinth said, patting Dionne’s hand to hold back the tide of questions she felt welling up in her grandchild. “So, the whole month before the dance, I had been leading the campaign for her to go, not because I cared one way or the other. I personally thought that it was a whole bunch of foolishness, that it cost too much money, and that the excitement would be over before it even really got going. But I could see it was something Avril wanted, something she was probably going to do anyway, whether we said yes or not. And I couldn’t in good faith know that she was making her dress already, and then tell her she couldn’t go. Truth be told, I actually liked the dress. It was a pretty pretty pretty shade of red, not red like Ms. Zelma’s roses, or red like a poinsettia, but red like those birds that does fly in from Trinidad. It was a beautiful color, and the whole thing was made in organza. The material was expensive, and when she was done, there was not one sliver of material she hadn’t used. The skirt was full with layers and the top fit her just so and the sleeves puffed out from her shoulders like clouds. She pinned a ring of red sequins around the neckline and at the hem. I’m telling you. You couldn’t look at your mother in this dress and say she was anything less than gorgeous.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, my child was all dressed to go, I mean, to the nines, hair, makeup, everything. And she was just about to put on her shoes when her father came out of the room where he’d been stewing. He walked into the front room just as her date was pulling up, and started taking off his belt.”

“Who was her date?”

“Oh, you know back then, Avril and Jean were thick as thieves. Jean’s father had died just a few months before the school dance, but not before spoiling that child rotten. Anything he wanted, a trip, shoes, clothes, a car, he got it. It was the car his father had bought him, a fast car the same red of Avril’s dress, that he picked her up in. But you getting me off track.”

“So Mommy went to the dance with Buller — I mean, Jean?”

“The one and the same. But child, you missing the heart of the story with all your questions. If you’d talk less, you would hear more. Anyways, your grandfather came in here pulling off his belt. And before Avril could even buckle the strap on the left shoe, much less the right, he had both shoes in his hands. And then he threw them into the cane field next door. Now, that time was before Ms. Zelma and Ms. Zelma’s house were here, and all those houses you see lined up out there were pure cane fields, and your grandfather could throw far. Your mother, as God is my witness, walked out of this house in her bare feet. I thought she was going to go into the cane to look for the shoes, but she stepped right past her father, and got into the car that was waiting for her. And from that day forward, whenever Avril and her father would see each other, it was in passing, and they never said anything to each other beyond what was strictly necessary.”

“Wow,” Dionne said. She looked at the front room’s shut louvers and tried to imagine the scene, her mother in a red dress she’d made for herself and her grandfather chucking her high heels through the window. She couldn’t really form a picture of her grandfather. It was true, Dionne had always thought of her mother as springing from Hyacinth fully formed.

“What was Granddad like?” Dionne asked.

She watched something like a curtain close over Hyacinth’s eyes. What Hyacinth didn’t say, what she couldn’t, was that the night she’d called Avril to tell her that her father died, when Phaedra answered the phone crying into the receiver and Errol was in the background demanding to know who was on the line, she knew that Avril wouldn’t come home for the funeral. Hyacinth knew it was for show when Avril begged for a few days to see if she could buy a plane ticket. She’d tried to accept the money that Avril wired to help bury her father with a joyful heart. But she wished that Avril had known that Hyacinth needed her presence more than her money. It wasn’t so much that Hyacinth wanted someone to lean on, because Hyacinth was more than capable of standing upright in the face of the most difficult things, even her husband’s death. Hyacinth just wanted to know that she could shift her weight to one side and it wouldn’t be just the air and the force of her will holding her up, but the support of her family too. Hyacinth thought life was not just easier, but sweeter with family by her side. That’s what she’d been raised up to believe, and what her heart told her was still true now. She wondered why she hadn’t been able to pass this truth on to her own daughter. She wanted to know whether and how her grandchildren might learn this for themselves.

“You don’t get enough stories for one night, child? Go to bed and don’t worry your head with all these old-time things,” Hyacinth said.

Dionne got up and felt fatigue settle over her. She offered Hyacinth a hand to get up, but she shook her head and kept looking somewhere beyond Dionne. As the time between Avril’s letters lengthened, Dionne had become accustomed to finding her grandmother asleep in the colorfully patterned living room chair, as if she wanted to be there waiting the moment Avril decided to come home.

“Night, Gran,” Dionne said. She shuffled toward her room, her mother’s letter and her grandmother’s story animating the inside of her eyelids.

PHAEDRA STOOD BESIDE her gradnmother at the bus stop at the bottom of Bird Hill, praying that no one she knew would see her in the straw sun hat Hyacinth made her wear. The white elastic string tickled her chin. She’d tried to push the string under the brim, but then a strong wind lifted it up and off her head. Hyacinth stood in the middle of the road while Phaedra scurried across after the hat; she knew what was good for her, and so kept it securely, if uncomfortably, fastened after that. It was early on a Saturday morning, market day, and Phaedra was sure that the girls most likely to make fun of her were home doing their chores. Donna was helping her mother with the new baby, and had dark circles below her eyes and a new ring of fat around her belly to show for it. Christopher was probably out with his B-team of bandits, a boy named Thomas, who was constantly digging in his nose like he was mining for gold, and his twin brother, Timothy, who was his shadow, always parroting what he said and finishing his sentences. Phaedra knew that the boys were probably shooting at fruit and birds with the slingshots Father Loving made for Christopher that summer. She was sad not to be with them, but then she remembered Christopher’s response when Phaedra pointed out that he played with other kids when she wasn’t around. He said that he had to keep his mind off Phaedra somehow, and reminded her that she would always be on his A-team. Knowing she and Christopher were a team, Phaedra found that imagining him playing with the dumbbell twins didn’t bother her so much.