“It’s not that we don’t want to, or like, to look after you, yuh know, Fraser.” Helen the Giver of Care has to try to counterbalance the crassness and make sure nothing remains harbored. “That is something I know each one of us in here feels is the least we could do to help.”
Fraser stares just how Ata is looking at her — why’s she speaking like he’s a child? He hopes she won’t go on to the helpless thing, the “how useless” his illness makes others feel in the face of it. Fraser widens his turtle eyes at Helen, she gets the message, and Pierre swiftly moves the talk along the agenda he had printed. Who is responsible for sourcing nurses, how to coordinate special food and medicine supplies, visiting, and house rules — all go smoothly. Helen and Pierre work well together and Ata sees a little glimmer of respect in her eye for him.
“Of course everybody finds it easier to follow rules. You just have to tell them and they do it, no problem, matter fix,” SC contributes, and Marriette’s brother agrees wholeheartedly.
It is true. The ones who bother to ask when would be convenient and what to bring aren’t the problem. No framework was set up for those who never ask. And loud as Marriette’s brother might be, he, like any big-skin person, really doesn’t mind being told no, yes, not now. As long as there’s a pattern. Black and white, simple and fine.
“Right, good, we done,” Brother concludes the meeting. “Now a man could get a decent drink instead’a this watery stuff. Where de aged rum? Ata, ah feel yuh hiding de fifteen year El Dorado. Fraser boy, you looking well enough to tek a drink. If you know how glad I is to see dat!”
Vernon’s chuckle breaks out through his nose like a horse sneeze. It was the only sound from him all this time. He knows where Ata keeps her old rum and is watching for her reaction. Fraser’s amused too but Ata’s mind is turning over his opening words about choices — how eloquently but bluntly he had put it. Who, in this friendsy afternoon room, knows what their choices are? Terence’s absence was noted and exclusion of parents acknowledged without words as another choice.
“How Sammy doin’?” Brother asks, and the comfy chuckles stop.
“Oh gosh, I really feel it for him. That was a horrendous thing, eh?”
“You seen him since, Vernon?”
His head snaps up in surprise. “Me? Na, eh eh…” His voice and his face tuck back into a mumble. “I don’ believe he reach back by the office yet but I don’ really deal with he much…”
“Okay, that’s enough darkness for now!” Fraser declares. Ata checks to see if he’s serious but Thomas appears, to find out if they need more ice, and Fraser promptly blows him a kiss. He blushes and hurries away and the laughter resumes. Fraser hadn’t really asked about the incident or called Sammy himself yet. Ata watches him holding court again.
“Thomas has been having a ball in the bathroom today with Ajax,” he says. “‘Ajax the Great,’ son of Telamon and King of Salamis — he was the tallest and strongest of all the Achaeans, second only to Achilles.”
“Wait nuh, ‘salami’ you say? Thomas and de King of Salami or, or Thomas, de Ajax fella and de biggest salami — inside de bathroom having a ball?”
Vernon gets this too.
“Yes, that would be the Trini version,” Fraser continues through the noise, trying to keep a straight face and educate these people a little. “Ajax was never wounded in any of the battles of the Iliad and he killed many Trojan lords…”
“Oh Gad, Ajax kill Thomas in there with de salami!”
“Odysseus and Ajax tie in a competition for the ownership of magical armor forged on Mount Olympus. Ajax argues that because of his strength and service in battle for the Greeks, he deserves the armor. But Odysseus proves the more eloquent, and the council gives him the armor.”
“Yuh mean, de Odyssey fella is a sweet-boy?”
“Hear the ending!” Fraser holds up a hand. “Ajax, ‘unconquered’ and furious, falls upon his own sword, ‘conquered by his own sorrow.’”*
The friends indulge him and try to look impressed like they reading into the borrowed words. But smallee-Indi notes, when she finished guffawing quietly, “I find our friend here ain’ truly, completely well. Because he still playing proper-proper around such a good joke.”
Fraser attempts to laugh off the comment and show his old witty self, with some comeback line, but he can’t manage. Cloudy weariness washes over him. Politely, some start rising to go and Helen helps him to his room. The meeting is over. Air cleared. And evening approaching quick. No one else seems to have noticed Fraser’s lack of care for anyone other than himself. But then Ata knows that you’re not supposed to once someone’s ill. All is excusable and forgiven. She feels worse now than before the meeting but at least a nurse was agreed on.
* * *
Ata drops Pierre off to work the next morning. Fraser’s breakfast is ready, Thomas will see when he wakes, and SC has offered to come in, since she was off from work. As Ata drives, she realizes that she misses the working-morning routine, the feeling of knowing, as you dress, the workforce is dressing too. The solid, reassuring comfort of a lot of people doing the same thing with you. Riding out the door, into the car, the street, bus, going to work. Good, hearty industriousness. Pierre’s shaven jaw, her shower-wet hair, that fresh facing-the-morning feeling can only compare, slightly, to the travel rush. No independent work at home can give you that.
They pass some little schoolchildren with their faces greased and shining, gazing away their sleepy freedom before the heat begins. Ata swerves off the Savannah and stops behind the line of cars dropping off teenage girls in blue-and-white uniforms. They step out, chatting and flinging hair and rucksacks about casually. They carry a confident ease of the bright and middle-class with them, into Bishops’ conventlike compound. These are the ones who would soon be the sharp women parking their own cars and stepping, in high heels and tight skirts, into offices close by. No doubt about it, in the way they laugh with each other. They already own the morning. Ata always notices Pierre’s reaction: he can’t resist peering at them and smiling.
“Well, at least there’s always a cheerful sight at this hour. More than I could say once I get inside the building. God, I don’t know how some of the most sour-faced, civil-servant types get a job in there.” He scrambles his bag from the backseat as Ata pulls up outside the U.N. building.
“They must be good at paperwork.”
“Of course, no shortage of that!” He pecks her cheek, tells her not to worry herself ’cause he can see she’s building up to something, and bundles himself off.
She smiles. Somehow, he has a way of carrying on with his strange gait and hunch, as if he’s still in a cold country, battling a heavy coat and blizzard. His gray furry tail disappears through the doors and she drives off, getting the hint from the security guard who always behaves as if it’s the Queen’s palace he’s guarding, with his special U.N. Security training orders.
Ata switches on the radio as she heads west against the traffic for her meeting with God of Design and the manager. The last bit of the day’s brutal headlines hits her, then soca. Both too harsh. She turns off the radio and flows with the mindless, familiar hum of the traffic and the stream of caffeine-buzzed faces, gliding behind glass. She isn’t feeling it this year. Like how some people don’t feel Christmassy until the actual day, she isn’t feeling the pre-Carnival vibes. Ata knows it’s with good reason, with all that is going on, but she’d heard about some donkey foolishness, from the camp. No mind for nonsense now. Maybe it’s time she quit, like everyone else, eventually.