Becoming Rage
Tantie Mary say that since me feel me a big woman now, to gwan and don’t comeback. The words still ring in my head three weeks later. My last image of Hibiscus Road featured the woman who raised me. Her plump arms akimbo, her pineapple braids firmly held in place by a blue and white head tie. The dust in the yard seemed to dance with the rage inher beady, dark eyes. Rage that had begun to calculate how much I owed her after she paid every school fee, made sure my homework was done and my hair was braided (as she was the ‘village plaiter’). Rage that tabulated each miscellaneous good will deed she had decorated my life with for fifteen years.
The words stuck with me because Tantie Mary does not talk a lot. She hardly ever vex. We’re alike in that way. That evening, anybody would expect to hear how I was a no good, ungrateful wretch just like me mammy. But she said no more. On the other hand, my older cousin’s tongue wagged enough for all of us. Now she go call me a wretch. Tall and slender, Neisha was nothing like Tantie Mary. She hated me. She hated me more after she read piece of what I thought was a fitting descriptive essay for a school assignment.
Her face was an eternal, hovering raincloud hovering. Her hair, a billow of night, darkened every corner of the house she chose to occupy. Sometimes, Tantie Mary would pin it up for her as she dressed up in her outdoor smiling face. She would then go off to work the graveyard shift at the hospital in her clean, crisp, ivory uniform. Maybe the blinding white from her clothes haloed her face when she sat beside her patients. She would come home boasting that the old people remembered that old time tv show, Touched by An Angel, when they saw her. Since those patients passed on days after, I was convinced that she must be the angel of death.
That was the only angel I could imagine with she miserable disposition and storm cloud hair. I know very well that Neisha always vex because she don’t want her mommy to mother me. She would love for me to disappear just like my parents. Well imagine, when the disappearing finally happen, Neisha not even there to see it. Her dark emotions still drew themselves from the corners of the house to fuel Auntie Mary’s one, rageful sentence. When I remember it, sadness and rejection knot in my belly. And something else. Anger. I was pushed around at home then pushed out of it to come here and be pushed around again. Wa kind of big woman I could be when everybody controlling me?
Tyrell like he take over from Neisha and Tantie. My shoulder seemed vex too, like it wished I fought Tyrell back last night. Some angry grumbling came from outside as if the devil heard my thoughts about him. He reach back. You would think I would be happy to see the man I left home for, but he was acting strange nowadays.
“ROLICIA!”
The alternating lines of light and shadow chased each other across my bare legs as I pulled them to my chest. Repositioning in the wooden cupboard hut up me shoulder again. It took everything not to scream.
“I tell you already to tun off the lights in this house,” he was seething. “you don’t pay no bill in here. Girl answer me!”
The voice was getting louder. I thought I could see his white socks shuffling around on the tiled bedroom floor. Maybe if I washed them clean enough, he would start to remind me of Touched by an Angel. Maybe if I – the cupboard door swung open wide.
My eyes were shut tight. I must know enough about disappearing by now to do it. He exhaled. Hot, like dragon’s breath. Hot, like rage. Rage, my now familiar friend. Rage, Tantie Mary’s parting gift to me. My body tensing body was not sure if I was frightened or angry.
“Girl.” he touched my arms and I flinched, my shoulder still on fire from the last altercation. It clearly abhorred this interaction too – affectionate or not. Think he notice? Notice wa… a next time he provoking me without reason.
“Relax nuh. Happen? You not glad to see me?”
Of all the people I wished to see again, rage was not one of them. Typical me would wish the pale stripes on my dingy house dress shone brightly enough to make me as haloed as the blessed Virgin Mary. Revered, untouchable, transcendent. Anything so. But not today. Today, wrath whelmed up in me. Today me more vex than Tantie Mary and Neisha put together. If I had to see rage again, I would see it in me. My mouth opened to my own surprise.
“You now wa play nutten happen? After you have the gall fu lash me? After me leave everything fuh dey wid you? Three time now anuh. And now yuh nearly bruk me hand Tyrell. Yuh nah geh fuh do me dat again.”
