Naomi Jackson - The Star Side of Bird Hill

“We can still go to Chefette,” Errol said.

“Yes!” the kids shouted, already placing their future orders for chicken and ice cream, not sure which was better, playing mas or the promise of afterward.

In the car on the way home, Phaedra took the passenger seat next to her father while Donna and Chris slept in the back. Just as they passed Miami Beach, where cars whose inhabitants thought they were parked away from prying eyes lined up facing the sunset, Phaedra turned to her father. She liked him better when it was just the two of them. She admired the ramrod posture he’d tried and failed to instill in her. “Daddy?” she said.

“Darling?” he said, turning down the radio, which was blasting one of the same five songs that played on a seemingly endless loop.

“What happened that day you came to the house?”

“What day, P.?”

“The day that you came and you were knocking down the door and Mommy wouldn’t let you in.”

A cloud settled over Errol’s face as he searched his memory. He heaved a deep breath and then spoke. “You mean, days.”

“Sorry?”

“You mean, days. It was four days that I came to see about you-all. Your mother had you locked up in there and every time I called she wouldn’t answer the phone.”

Phaedra remembered how the phone’s shrill ring filled the otherwise quiet apartment. Eventually her mother took the phone off the hook, but not before picking up and telling the person on the other line to stop harassing them, that they didn’t do anything to deserve this.

“Why wouldn’t she answer the phone?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, Phaedra. Your mother was a strange woman. She had her ways. She was always convinced that somebody or something was trying to hurt you or hurt her.”

“So you weren’t trying to hurt us?”

“Nothing could be further from the truth. All I wanted was for her to let you and your sister leave the house. I didn’t think it could be good for you girls to be cooped up in there like that.”

“And the police?”

“You know you and your mother are the same way; once you set your mind to something you’re not turning back no matter what.”

Phaedra smiled a half smile. “So, you were the one who called the police.”

“I thought that was the only way I might get her to see sense,” Errol said in a small voice. His back curled over the steering wheel like he was trying to protect his heart, or the memory.

“Did it work?”

“They came and she opened the door. You would know better than me whether it worked,” Errol said.

Phaedra’s head spun as she tried to reconcile the version of events she thought she’d known with what her father told her. She wanted to sleep, but every time she closed her eyes, all she could see was her mother and that day, the phone and the bathtub and the sirens, her father’s knocking, her mother finally caving and moving the furniture that barricaded the door. When they arrived home, Phaedra had never been happier to see her grandmother’s front porch and the question, “Why worry?” written in script at the top.

IT WAS ONE IN THE AFTERNOON, and the sun was beating down on the children from Legendary Mas Camp, who were made up to look like flowers and plants from Barbados. The heat was threatening to wilt them all. There were a few Legendary mothers who kept ginger ale and smelling salts in their fanny packs for the occasional stomachache or fainting spell. Their job was to keep the stragglers moving in time with the music, break up squabbles, and try to make sure the kids kept themselves distinct from the other bands. Donna’s mother was home taking care of the baby. So Chris’s mother kissed each of the kids good-bye, wished them good luck at the drop-off point, and promised to meet them at the north corner of the stadium when it was over.

That morning, Errol drove the children and Mrs. Loving to town and then went to find a seat with Dionne in the stadium. Some part of Phaedra leapt up, knowing that her sister and father would be watching. It was too soon to say that Phaedra trusted Errol, but he was growing on her, in no small part for having finally made good on her parents’ promise to let her play mas. Every West Indian Day parade on Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn when Errol was still around, Phaedra sat on her father’s shoulders and cried when the men dressed as blue devils came by. She wanted desperately to be one of the children masquerading with troupes like Sesame Flyers and Burrokeet. But her parents said she was too small to play mas, that she’d be tired from jumping up and dancing before the parade even got going. Once she was big enough, Errol was gone and her mother was definitely not up for that kind of thing.

The bass line and trumpets of that year’s road march blared through the speakers, and Legendary Mas Camp was called onstage. Phaedra started to dance to the music that she’d been committing to memory for this very moment. A solid month of memorizing lyrics from the radio finally paid off as she sang “Leggo I Hand” along with all the other children. She looked back at Chris, noting the way he loomed over everyone with the beanstalk height he’d grown to over the summer, carrying the weight of his royal palm tree costume with a majesty she’d never seen on him before. Phaedra and Donna chipped across the stage in their desert rose costumes, and soon their faces were covered in sweat, sequins, and glitter. They danced proudly, slowing down and then making their movements bigger when they neared the judges’ bandstand. Phaedra and Donna both looked to it as if it were the promised land because their feet were aching in the old tennis shoes they’d dyed to match their costumes. All the kids put on their best smiles and flew across the stage, and then it was over, a rumble of chat and an echo of applause filling the stadium, and offstage the sound of somebody’s child crying.

The winners of first, second, and third place were called and took their awards. No one called Legendary Mas Camp for any of the prizes. Phaedra was overcome by guilt, thinking that maybe if she had danced harder, kept her energy up, they would have won. She held her breath as they gave out the awards for best costumes, hoping her band would be called. Phaedra looked at the sea of gloating children who crowded the front of the stage, the sun’s rays bouncing off the fake gold of their trophies. Her face began to crumble in pieces so that by the time Mrs. Loving met her, Chris, and Donna, she had devolved into a full-on sob.

“But Phaedra, what happen to you?” Mrs. Loving asked.

Phaedra shook her head, hardly able to speak for the tears that flooded her mouth. “I thought we would win. We were good.”

“Of course you were good. So were the other kids. You think it matters who won?”

“It always matters,” Donna said in the knowing way of a girl who had never been inside the winner’s circle.

“I thought you-all came here to enjoy yourselves.”

“I know we did. But we should have won. It would have been better,” Phaedra said.

“I know, I know,” Mrs. Loving said, burying Phaedra’s dirty face into her skirt.

Phaedra looked up finally and asked, “Where’s my father? He said he was coming.”

“I’m not sure where he is. I haven’t seen him or Dionne since we dropped you off.”

“Why is everything so wrong today?” Phaedra said. Now she wondered whether Legendary might have won if her father had kept his promise to watch them.

“Stop worrying yourself, Phaedra. I’m sure Uncle Errol will turn up,” Chris said. He tried to put his arm around Phaedra’s shoulder, but she shrugged it off.

“Nobody ever shows up for me. Nobody. And you. Christopher. Stop calling my father Uncle Errol,” Phaedra seethed. “He’s no more your uncle than Father Loving is Donna’s father,” she blurted, and instantly wished she could take the words back.