The bridesmaid is two girls Esther know from St Andrew High School where all of them take their GCEs together. Cambridge Examination Board just like in England. These girls so thin I can’t imagine any man managing to get hold of them. It must be like trying to pick up a glass but even after you completely close yu hand ’round it the glass still slipping through yu grasp. But both these girls already engaged so that just go to show what little I know ’bout it. They seem like they nice enough girls though, and them and Esther look like they close so that is good.
The make-up woman got a lot of tubs and tubes and bottles and jars that she spread out everywhere. She put a little cloth ’round every woman neck in case she go spill something on their chest and then she start rub little of this and that on the back of their hand so she can get the right colour and tone, so she say.
She say she going make them look perfect. That is her favourite word. Every time she finish do a little powder or rouge or whatever it is she do she stand back and she look at them and she say ‘perfect’. And she do this with Gloria and Esther and the two bridesmaid till I start think that if I hear her say the word ‘perfect’ one more time I going get up and throw the woman outta the house.
The four of them just sit there and let her carry on perfecting ’round them while they hold out their hand because some other woman is busy at the side of them filing and shaping and painting on the finger varnish.
The hairdresser do a lot of oohing and ahhing. And he like to rest him hand flat on his cheek and swing him head from left to right. I suppose he trying to take in every angle of these creations that he busy concocting on top of the heads of these four women. He is standing there with one hand on his chin and the other one on his hip, and I am sitting there with one ankle resting on the other knee and my hands in my lap, and as he is studying them I am studying them. He is looking at the side and I am looking at the side. He is looking at the back and I am looking at the back. And then I start say things like ‘Maybe it need straighten out a bit more’ or ‘Maybe you could sweep it up a little more at the side there.’ And he stop and turn ’round and look at me and then turn back and look at the hair, and then maybe the chin and hip thing again, and then maybe he say, ‘Yes, I think you are right.’
And then after a while I start to think to myself yu know maybe this not such a bad job. It artistic. You get to be with a woman and look at her. Really look. Really take her in. Most of the time a man don’t do that. He look but he don’t see nothing. But this way you get to make a woman feel cared for. Make her feel beautiful and good about herself. How many jobs is there where you get to do that? Yu get a chance to make somebody happy even if it only for a day.
When the wedding car finally turn up I feel relieved to be stepping out into the midday sun. Just as I get to the car I turn ’round and see Esther standing there on the veranda. She look beautiful, with the white frock just off the shoulder, flowing all the way down to the ground with the train that Gloria busy fetching up in case it drag over the dirty yard and the veil that Esther going pull down over her face. I never imagined I would feel so proud. I never imagined the day would come. It was almost like I never thought I would live long enough to witness a thing like this. Esther walk right up to me as I standing there holding open the car door and she say, ‘Thank you, Daddy.’
And I think to myself that is the first time she ever call me that. All these years she always manage to say what she got to without calling me anything at all. Or sometime when I hear her talking to Gloria she say ‘my father’, and the way she say it didn’t always sound too nice. So I look at her and I look at Gloria and then I look at Esther again and I think this girl really gorgeous, just like her mother.
We drive down to the Baptist church in Half Way Tree. The church not no Holy Trinity Cathedral, but it big and it beautiful with all the flowers that standing up there at the altar and hanging down the end of every pew.
This church not just no church, although it busy doing that as well, because Gloria tell me it got over eight hundred and fifty members. But the thing that Gloria like ’bout this church is that it a JAMAL adult education centre which Gloria tell me stand for Jamaican Movement for the Advancement of Literacy. It got all sorta thing going on there like a Christian education centre and a legal aid consultation service that Gloria think is a very good thing. Gloria tell me she been attending this church since 1968 when they start take an interest in social and welfare issues.
She surprise me. I just sit there in the car and look at her. I never figure Gloria for no church-going Christian. It don’t really seem to go with everything else that she do.
She say to me, ‘I used to be a regular church-goer as a child, yu know. Every Sunday morning my mother would make sure we scrub and dress and march us down the dirt road in all sorta frock with crinoline so we could go listen to the pastor pound that Bible.’ And then she stop. And then she say, ‘But it not God that I come here for. What I come here for is the chance to make a contribution and to help people change their lives.’
When me and Esther walking down the aisle I see Rajinder at the altar. And as I am getting close to him I realise that I never see a man look so happy. He look so happy it seem like him almost going to bust. Like him can’t believe this woman is actually going to marry him. Like he is waiting there in that church surrounded by all his family and such and she is coming towards him and some dream he been having for god knows how long is finally going come true. So I start fret that the man going collapse before we get there, there is that much going on in his heart. But we make it, and the pastor say, ‘Who gives this woman?’ and I done my part.
I step to the side and all the time I am standing there I try to remember how I felt on my own wedding day. Well I know for sure that when Fay was coming down the aisle on Henry’s arm I didn’t look nothing like how Rajinder look. I think I was more worried than happy. Worried that any minute now she was going stop and just turn ’round and walk out the church and I would be there looking at her back like I done a hundred times before at Lady Musgrave Road. And even after she say ‘I do’, I still didn’t believe it actually happen. That she actually marry me. The only time it seem real to me was when we was sitting in the car looking out at the cathedral and the crowd that was out there because I reckon all these people must have been bearing witness to something.
After they done with the praying and the singing and the signing we finally get to go sit down in New Kingston in the splendour of the Pegasus Hotel because Gloria take a liking to the fact that only last year the government acquire the controlling interest in the hotel and she very much in favour of the people taking over the tourist industry. But in truth there is not a lot of sitting. How much family this boy have is nobody’s business because I am shaking hand after hand of this auntie and that uncle and the niece and the nephew and the brother-in-law and sister-in-law, and first cousin and second cousin and third cousin, which I don’t know what kinda relation that is anyway, and the grandfather and grandmother and the mother and father and three brothers and six sisters. And all the time you doing it a whole army of little children running up and down the place like nobody got them under control.
I think my arm going drop off but Gloria say I must shut up complaining because it only the one chance I going get so I should enjoy it, which tell me that Gloria don’t think Mui ever going come back to Jamaica, or if she do then it after she already married.