Driving up to the house I'd already sensed that there was something amiss. My mother might have been there a year ago but for me it had been more like seven or eight years. There's a phenomenon that always happens with places that remain fixed in your mind but not in time: a sad little play where the idyllic past is beaten down by the oppressive truth of what had become of it. This house that we'd come to used to be the tallest on the block. They'd all slapped him cheerfully on the back when he'd built it. And why not? What a clever idea it was. For a lawyer who was not in a partnership only really needed space for sitting small groups, about the size of a living room, and space enough for filing, which with his system (Oh, what a clever fellow hi is.) was hardly any space at all. The actual space for the office took up less than half of the house's footprint, which meant he could use the rest for ugly but effective stilts--no, pylons that raised the larger, more lavish house away from the regular threat of rising tides. The shore was only two house lots away, and at this height he could see it coming before the other houses even knew what hit them.
"Mi neighba nuh want bathe inna ih bathroom nuh muh." I remember him telling my mother once. We were at the kitchen bar; which often served as an actual bar more than it served as a breakfast bar. he had a drink in one hand and the other on the counter, and like a strange marsh bird he stood on one leg, stiffly folding the other leg around the back of his knee. I stand like this, I notice. When drinking with friends around a bar I take on the same stork stance, drink in one hands, stability borrowed from the bar in the other. I sometimes try to avoid it in public places. At times I've thought back and come to the conclusion that only a man as manly and secure enough in himself as he was can pull that off in a crowded bar. The fact that I catch myself standing like that in bars and look around to see if anyone noticed while I firmly place both feet on the ground, shoulder width apart, tells me that I have yet to achieve such.
"Yuh hea' weh ah seh, Patty?" This to my mother. He was the only person I'd ever heard call my mother by that name regularly, and the only person I would ever hear call her that name without being corrected by her. He had a smile on his face. My mother knew this smile quite well. It got her through some rough days at sixth form, when the tummult of her family life kept her bouncing through out the day. It was th e smile she would often look forward to when her eyes ghrew sore from crtying. Crying for her mother, for her brothers, for her sisters, for herself. Crying, and later worrying about how to best look after her siblings now that her mother had gone abroad. it was the smile of mischief and merriment. There was some fun at hand. There was an adventure afoot. my mother tried to ignore it at first. After all, it was also the smile that once made her realize that he simply didn't understand her. She had a child now. She had responsibilities. There had to be an eventual end to fun and games.
But she couldn't resist that smile.
"Why di neighba nuh want bath inna ih bathroom now?" she eventually relented.
"Caz when I di was mi dishes." he came back after waiting eagerly for just such a response.
"I could look down and see ah di wash ih bread!"I giggled at the joke. I was twelve and it was right up my alley. He laughed at his own joke as well, as he had for the last three people he'd told it to. My mother shook her head, but with a guilty smile on her face as she said
"Yu just horrible, Benny Ranks!"***
“No sir. Not Charlie Bogues.” He’d told the neighbor. ‘My friends call me Charlie Bogues. My friends’ children call me Mr. Bogues!” He was enflamed. I’d only ever seen him that way twice, and heard him give the same speech. It was probably something he’d rehearsed; and why not? It was very effective.
I looked up at the landing as we ascended, at the place where the memory of him stood shirtless and exasperated for the second time. He snatched the purchase contract for his home out of the hands of some dumb kid in a Guayabera with designs on becoming a real estate mogul (his description, not mine) and ripping it apart without reading it. “The name is Norman Neal!” he growled. “And I’ll never sell this fucking house!”
Standing on that landing now, I peered upward to catch sight of someone in the window of the apartment complex next door glancing down at me. She squinted, the setting sun blinding her but not deterring her curiosity. “My people…” my mother said, shaking her head as we continued on.
Now, it was only by force of habit that we didn’t stop at the first door we came to. This door, with its screened metal bars, was a stranger’s door. It had the twofold purpose of having those inside see which uninvited guest had haphazardly tried to stumble through a perpetually locked door, and also for those invited guests to peer in and see who happened to be sitting at the kitchen bar.
The people I’d seen most frequently sitting there were people I’d see or hear about almost constantly. Their comings and going were matters of national discussion. I’d turn on the radio and hear news reports about decisions they’d made that day. Morning talk shows seemed to revolve around their professional and private lives, particularly where the two met. Their faces were featured in news reports and front page headlines on city billboards and satiric cartoons. As a child, I’d struggle to separate the idea of “The Honorable so-and-so” and the man who stood at that bar having friendly arguments and telling dirty jokes. I had similar trouble trying to comprehend other people’s insistence that being friendly to one party meant being enemies with another. In fact, to this day I still can’t understand it. Not completely anyway. It’s a misconception that has taken on a life of its own. I can understand trying to sway people’s opinions and therefore putting on the affect, but what about the new ones? What about the up and comers? What about the ones who enter the inner circle of politics and see for themselves the way ostentatious enemies eat at the same table, drink from the same bottle, laugh heartily and clap on one another’s shoulders? Why don’t they get it?
Then again, I’ve never seen any of them at Charlie Bogues’ house.
The real front door was around the corner from there, where the wrap-around verandah turned to face the street and widened as it did so. There were still chairs out there. It gave me hope. If there were still chairs, still tables; if there was still cool breeze in the summer months, then surely there were still people that came to take advantage of these things acting in pleasurable unison.
I remember meeting my high school English teacher in one of those chairs having brunch and cocktails. That same day I was taught the two go hand in hand. After a brief argument about the last essay I turned it (It was also the first essay I’d turned in. The topic escapes me as I write this, but it was the first one I’d actually found interesting enough to write about. She accused me of plagiarism as a result) I remember her laughing boisterously as the two of us, joined by Charlie Bogues, but not my mother, traded dirty limericks back and forth. After that I never missed another essay again. No longer were assignments merely assignments, but opportunity for conversation; a chance to speak as an adult about adult things, and be taken seriously while doing so.
I also remember Mr. Bogues flirting with her openly. The act itself was amazing. Here was a woman, squat, fat, with a noticeable patina of hair running down the nape of her neck, under her clothes, and reappearing along her arms and feet. There were curls on her toes, for god’s sake. Toes that she dared decorate with rings when not in the classroom. And according to Charlie Bogues, they’d known one another since high school, and she ‘hadn’t changed a bit’. To my primal mind it defies logic. If we lived in the arctic, then, perhaps a lovely, robust, furry woman of that sort would be most desirable, but in Belize? It wasn’t simply that, of course. Charlie Bogues saw more. And had I been older; had I not been at an age where every heartbeat sent through me chemicals that insisted that sex was the absolute be all, end all to male-female relations, then I might have seen it. He might have been able to afford a younger, sexier, more sex driven girl. He might even have been able to charm one naturally. But eventually you run out of things to say to a girl like that and, as unbelievable as it might sound, the same body fails to ignite the senses as it once did. On the other hand, an intelligent woman is a sexy woman, always and constantly.
The first time I tasted whiskey was in one of these chairs. I remember how, after the second glass I enjoyed the look of the amber spirit in the glass reflecting the sunlight, and how this even became preferable to the taste of it. Now, I wondered if any sunlight like that even met this verandah anymore.
***
“Who’s there?” A voice called out hoarsely. Just from the cadence, from the way there was hardly a hesitation between the first and second words, I knew it was him. I’d spied through the stranger’s door, just as I had countless times before. There was no one at the bar, which had only a single dim bulb shining yellow over it. This wasn’t new. He’d long ago started losing his sight, and as he saw less and less light and shadows, the less he felt the need to change the bulb.
“Dark?” he repeated to my mother the first time she pointed it out. “Nuh man, Patty. Dis romantic!” He winked at her and took another sip of Black Label; another sip toward complete blindness. Time was, Charlie Bogus stood on the precipice of inventing a peculiar brand of Caribbean feng shui. In his old house, a cramped upstairs of a leaning wooden building, there was a constant breeze, and depending on what time of day it was, there was a regular resorting of furniture, opening and closing of windows, and even relocating of crowds of people to maintain the internal temperature and airflow at optimum. After a while he used his hands more and more while navigating his own house, which he’d built and decorated himself. That’s when he stopped moving things around. That’s also when he stopped joking about his loss of sight. We’d have to point the ins and outs to him more and more. He’d stop mid-conversation and wonder aloud “Weh dir ass…” as his hands fumbled over the sharp teet of a staple remover or the cusion mounted bristles of a woman’s hair brush, or some other thing that had no business being near the bar. Occasionally someone would walk ahead of him while he pretended that the cigarette he was lighting was the reason he was moving so slowly, feeling out the air ahead of him with his foot. Occasionally, however, they’d move a foot stool out of his way and remain silent about their good deed, and he’d spend the next half hour or so looking for it as he was certain it was around there somewhere. Once, my mother moved the foot stool. She’d found it sitting hazardously in the middle of the room and thought of her friend falling ankle over ass, flat on his face. But the stool was a landmark for the man navigating the seas of light and shadow; a physical beacon upon which he relied. When he found it again he soon after collided with a four foot shelf that held his many framed achievements. He was on his way to his bedroom after we’d all left. We’d only seen the shattered things the next day, still on the ground; still broken. Sticky, bloody footprints still led to the bed, then the bathroom, then back to the bed. My mother didn’t move a thing after that. “He’s the blind one” she’d said. “He knows best how to manage, I guess.” My mother rarely guessed at things. She always knew. When she didn’t know, it was because she was because it abandoned logic, and moved toward uncharted emotions. Guilt was one she’ was especially unfamiliar with.
That wouldn’t be a problem anymore. Once again he called out “Who is it?” and through the threadbare curtains I saw the figure of a man turning off his side and propping himself up on his elbows. He’d been asleep or perhaps just lying there; the news was on but I doubt he was listening to it; and his new bed was a lawn chair that he’d made somewhat comfortable via the liberal application of pillows and comforters.
“We’re here!” my mom declared, coming up to the front door and seeing the human nest he’d made for himself. It even smelled like somewhere a man might sleep and lie awake for weeks at a time without moving. It smelled of sweat and grimy skin and, perhaps, self pity. Or more like self loathing. My mother was thrown off by it, I could see from her face. Her smile had turned to a grimace for an instant but soon after peaked again at the corners. She’d been told minor things; small small reports that she now knew were rife with omissions. He’d lost his sight. He’d lost weight. He’d lost his family his adopted son now grown, married, with children of his own. His daughter; his real, flesh and blood daughter, was studying abroad with her mother, who was not, and had grown tired of not being, his wife. ‘We still see him from time to time’, they’d all said.
But the man who struggled to sit up wasn’t like anything anyone had described. And he certainly wasn’t anything like I remembered.
“Who’s there!” he demanded again and I could tell he was growing angry. Or, if not angry, then certainly frightened. His bony arms, absent of the lean but obvious muscle they once held, trembled under the weight of his own body as he sat up. I squeezed my mother’s shoulder and whispered again “Who is it?” She finally understood and said meekly: “Pat”. And then, with a bit of confusion and disappointment at his lack of reaction she repeated. “Its me. Its Patty.”
“Oh.” He said without much excitement. I saw him sit up and turn to the wall with the stranger’s door cut into it. In his profile I saw him moisten dry lips with his tongue and open his eyes as if it were his first time doing so in ages.
“We come pay you a lee visit.” My mother said. There was no fear in her voice this time, but she was upset about something.
“Aha”, he replied, as if still in disbelief. “You she da Patty?” he confirmed. And then, “Oh, okay.” But he had not moved. Perhaps he was unsure of his muscles, but I thought at the time that, as often happens to me, he’d awakened from a dream and was having trouble piercing through the remaining clouds of it. He was dusting away phantoms to find the solid, underlying reality.
But oh, how horrible that must be? To dream of old friends and laughing times, or even to see the faces of your enemy and the gleam of the knife in his hand; or to fly over your city, over the buildings that have swallowed up your home. And then, wake up to uncertain shades and voices in a perpetually dark room.
