The horse drawn bread cart came down the road I lived on when I was a child, very early, every day. By six o’clock each morning you would hear the clip clop of the mule’s shoe, on the asphalt. The animal always looked sad, as if it did not like its job. It looked the same way the horses that pulled the hearses looked. I could be wrong but I did not think these animals enjoyed what they were doing.

This story is not about horses, mules, bread carts nor hearses; it is about a Saturday night dance when I was a young adult, and the problem it caused, or maybe did not cause. The year was 1975. The dance was held in Rae Town where the people had a particular culture and a different way of speaking. Come with me and listen as I tell you what happened, the way I recalled it.

                                         BAD BOY BOYSIE.

                                         Boysie did not love Merceline, he didn’t have to because he was a man and could take any woman he wanted, whenever he wanted. After all, women were property, like animals, and land, and furniture. They had their uses.

But the skin of the country was changing, and slowly but surely, the women of Rae Town began to be affected by the trickle down worldviews they read about in the Star newspaper and the radio talk shows. They heard such things like ‘Women can speak out’ and don’t always have to be submissive. They were hearing via the trickle down, that the bodies they carried around was really theirs and that it had hidden qualities that were alien to them. They heard words like emotions, tenderness, hormones, partnership and orgasms. All these words were fundamentally related to the female form.

At first, it was hard for Merceline to associate such words with herself, primarily because she only had a surface understanding of what they meant. Nevertheless, it was liberating to learn that she was in charge of her body and all the words pertaining to it. That was the most empowering bit of news she and her kindred souls in Rae Town had received in their entire lives.

Sitting over the box of sweet potatoes she planned to take to market, Mercie mulled over the radio program she’d just listened to, and a particular advertisement that said, “Plan your family, better your lives”, it was directed to women mostly, and was the current mantra of the family planning board. The men in Rae Town couldn’t give a hill of beans about such things. They were men, and men did not concern themselves with those things. That was a woman’s business. Besides, if a woman told a man that he was going to be a father, immediately he would perceive the news to be another notch on his belt; rather than added or new responsibilities.

The more children he had, the more powerful he would become. People would even start to imagine that his manhood was also quite big. Taking care of these children and being in a family unit with them was not a part of the male agenda. His main concern was the size of his ‘hood’, as it was called locally, how many children he had, and how many women he controlled.

Boysie wanted to be like the man known as “Charlie mattress”, his hero, who had 48 children by different women, and if he worked really hard he could be like another champion breeder in the parish of Westmoreland known as “Taste mout” who had 65 children with 22 different women.

A strange wind was blowing, a wind that brought change and information, but only the women, it seemed, received the message. Mercie sighed over the box of potatoes and dismissed the information running through her mind. She made up her mind to go to the dance on Saturday night, with or without Boysie. She had asked him at least five times if they could go together and his response was always to ask her if she was mad. Now she decided, she was going, and she knew just what she was going to wear. She had just the right material to take to Icilda the dressmaker, who would make the dress she saw in the Vogue magazine.

What did it matter that the dress in the magazine was draped over the sleek chiseled form of a size six woman.

The woman in the photograph was a platinum goddess whose face and form could launch a war. She stood with her lips slightly parted, her left hip thrust provocatively and was tantalizing as her scarlet pout. A string of pearls hung from the v of her neckline and stopped precisely on her pubic bone.

Mercie saw herself in this outfit and she knew that all eyes would be on her, and that Boysie would become so jealous he would confront her and perhaps slap her around a bit. Nevertheless, he would notice her. Mercie was a size sixteen that was eyeing an eighteen. The dress in the picture stopped at mid thighs with a deep neckline and spaghetti straps. A very simple style it was, for an uncomplicated figure.

Mercie’s figure was complicated starting with her belly that looked pregnant although she wasn’t. Her arms were heavy and showed no sign of muscles, just the strong will of her fat. Her thighs plummeted downward toward her knees in true ham style, and stoutly fixed themselves to her knock-knees. She had a dreadful case of genu valgum that was not addressed in childhood, despite Professor Golding’s pleas to her mother.

She walked with a dip and step movement and when she danced, she was either deemed creative or terribly amusing.

Her face however was extraordinary. Mercie was very pretty as most of the women in Rae Town were, and when she smiled, she could not be ignored. Her glow was overpowering. But Merceline did not know the power she had, nor did she understand that the urge she had toward book learning was another natural magic that lived inside her soul. Mercie thought she was good for nothing except to be Boysie’s woman, have his children, cook his food and wash his sweaty clothes. This was her heritage.

She counted the potatoes and put them in another box, made a note of the number in her little book and then made her way through the broken fence toward Icilda’s house. She walked through the back fence because she didn’t want the rest of the tenants in the yard to see her leaving with the shiny material under her arm. She couldn’t find a bag to carry it in and she was not going to answer any nosy questions. The zinc fence snagged her heel as she forced through the opening the children had made.

“Raas, di zinc cut mi heel back, cho dam!” Mercie was quite annoyed as she looked at her heel and tore a bit of old newspaper lying nearby to dab the cut. A shadow fell across her form as she stooped wiping her foot.

“A weh yuh a go Mercie?”

Startled, Mercie looked up to see the hulking sweaty frame of Boysie looming over her.

He was wearing only a pair of dungarees cut off at the knees and some muddy iron man water boots that came up to his mid calf. His black skin glistened in the hot sun and Mercie became transfixed with the rise and fall of his breathing and the sweat beads running down his six-pack, only to disappear in his waistband. When she couldn’t see the beads anymore she imagined his ‘hood’ pulsing in his shabby underwear. Her eyes traveled to his groin and she was about to call up a memory when Boysie’s bark straightened her up.      

“Ooman yu nuh hear mi ax yu a question?” “Mi say,” he paused and punctuated his speech for emphasis, “a weh, yuh a go, an is wat dat unda yuh arm?”   His voice was a rich deep thrill, but his fist did not carry the same excitement, so she hurriedly stammered an answer, “ Mi going down to Miss Icy go give har dis piece a material so she can mek a frack fi mi.”

She held out the material to show him. It glistened in the sun. Boysie squinted at the fabric and looked back at Merceline quivering before him. He thoroughly enjoyed moments like these and wished the sun wasn’t so bossy or he would stand there all day and watch her melt down from fear of him. His insensitivity knew no bounds. Instead, he chuckled and touched the cloth.

“Yuh a go somewhere Mercie, wah yuh a mek new frack fah?”   He grabbed the cloth and flashed it open and the sea breeze fanned it out into Mercie’s face.

“Is church mi a go next week an mi nuh have nutten to wear” she stepped back and averted her head slightly to avoid the cloth flapping in her face.

“Den a which blood clawt church yu can wear dis ya shiny sumpn inna? “A man yuh a go deh go look, is di preacher yu like?”

Mercie swallowed and did not answer. She lowered her eyes and inspected a dead roach by his shoes. It was a huge one with gold wings. It was one of the ones that could fly. She had a great fear of roaches. Someone had stepped on its upper body and crushed the head completely. Its journey ended in the dust. She felt like her journey was going to end every time Boysie took this attitude, as if he was God.

She stood still, could hear him breathing, and smelled the mingled odors of Cuban cigars and dragon stout.  It was an arousing smell, and she started to imagine his belly muscles moving in rhythm with the sweat beads that were trying to hide between the cut of his six pack. His thigh muscles twitched and caught her focus. Her mind was racing, “is why mi luv dis blasted bwoy eeh, im is a reel crow bait, an one a dem day, a gwine cut up im backside.” Sumpn mussi do mi, is muss obeah deh pon mi” Mercie fussed inwardly and folded her arms defiantly, her right foot doing a slight tap tap in the dust.

“Gwaan to di dressmaker, juss mek sure mi food leff inna di kitchen or yu nah go like it wen yu come back”.

He crumpled the fabric into a ball and flung it at her. She caught it before it slapped her face as he intended it to do. As she folded it, she watched his back muscles moving away from her and thought of following after him in case he wanted something else after he had eaten. Her body twitched to go in that direction, but a sudden flare shot up in her consciousness and she made a sucking sound with her teeth. “Ole wretch, im waan smaddy buss im dam hed, tink im is some god or king, a gwaan like is him one massa God mek.” Mercie’s mind worked the whole way to Icilda’s yard. She had to rid herself of this heavy yoke. He was wrecking her life, but how in God’s green earth was she going to get rid of him without going to jail.

Her thoughts went back to the dress because she couldn’t answer her own questions. Something will come to her, but she wasn’t going to ask God for help because he might not be as drastic as she intended. This one was hers alone. After all she continued, “Mi have free will an mi a go use it free myself instead of only using it wen mi deciding wah to buy at di farmer’s market or wat to cook. Mi have sense like everybaddi else,” she fumed as she marched in the hot sun.

Mercie quickened her steps. The sun was rigid and she could feel the perspiration trickling down behind her knees. She wished it was Monday and that she was doing her one-day work at Mr. Samuda’s house. He had a swimming pool and God knows she would jump in it right after he turned out of his driveway.

She recalled the story that Miss Yvonne the lady from the bottling plant gave her, about the helper who had come to do the laundry and had eaten some special cookies that her employer had hidden atop the fridge; and how she was found fast asleep at six in the evening atop the pile of dirty clothes. She was fired, after being severely reprimanded.

Merceline chuckled at the memory but still cherished the idea of going into Mr. Samuda’s pool. Eating marijuana cookies was quite a different thing from grabbing a swim. She was hot enough to jump into any pool without aforethought.

                                                                       THE DRESS.

 “Good eveling Miss Icy, wah a gwaan chile?’ mi ‘ope yuh nuh too busy beca mi have a job mi want yu to rush.”

“Rush, me rush? Gal yu bounce yu hed some way nuh?” Mek mi see di clawt” Mercie quickly handed it over to Icy.

“Jeezas, Mercie dis nice man, it saaf eeh man, an shine like di sun. A dis dem call La ma- a- y? She drawled and rolled her eyes, as she mimicked the upper crust voice tone. “Yu have a style areddy?”

Quickly, Mercie dipped into her bosom and produced the cut out from the magazine. Icilda spread the damp magazine page on the machine.

“Woii,” Icilda cooed, “my girl, dis nice fi choo” Icilda’s face was glowing with delight as she fingered the cloth and studied the picture of the skinny woman in the slinky dress. “Tell mi dis doah, wen yu want dis to ‘appen, mi ‘ope is not fi Sattiday”

Chuckling Merceline took some crumpled notes from her bosom and shoved them into Icilda’s hand. “Yes, a Sattiday mi plan to wear it, but nuh tell nuh baddi mi waan come een as a surprise”. See wat yu can do fi mi Icy, mi a beg yu”.  The fist full of money was quite an encouragement for Icilda as she could hardly remember when one of her customers made a down payment much less paid in a timely manner. She always had to threaten and fight to get her money.   The last time she fought for her money she actually did ten days in the lock up, because she had cut the reluctant customer when she tried to cut the dress off her. Now she had a paying customer who did not even ask the cost of her labor.

“So wen yuh say? Sattiday?

“Yes, Sattiday”

“Arite, come early in di Mawnin so mi can fit yu. Stop by wen yuh going to market.”  Mercie was delighted, her face shone with a brilliance that dazzled Icy, who stared on her for a full minute. She had never seen anyone with such a brilliant smile and so many beautiful teeth.

Most of the people she knew had teeth missing, rotten, or very discoloured. Not Mercie, she had two rows of perfect teeth underneath a pair of moist bow shaped lips. “Eff she neva so fat an hab twiss foot, she couda enter beauty contess” was what Icy thought.

Inside her room Icy fingered the material and looked at the cut out from the magazine.  “But dat chile is quite mad, ‘ow she expeck dis style to look pon har, she hissed her teeth and eyed the money. “Well dat is fi har funeral, I am just di dressmaker”, she stuffed the money in the Singer sewing machine drawer and reached for her scissors.

                              

                                                                            SATURDAY MORNING.

Merceline never went any place late. She was always on time like her period, and that is why each time she got pregnant for Boysie she knew from the first day. Each time he had insisted that she abort the pregnancy.   After the fourth time she knew that she would never make him impregnate her again. It was no point asking Boysie to use a condom. Jamaican men regarded condoms as something to rob them of their pleasure; therefore, she took birth control pills in secret.

If ever she became pregnant for who ever, she would carry the child. The memory of her best friend Sonia bleeding to death after she left the so – called drug store, where the so- called pharmacist performed his act in the back room behind the store; left Mercie in a permanent state of shock.

She could still remember the smell of Sonia’s rotting insides when her mother found her dead, and everybody from the neighborhood had crowded into the yard to get a glimpse of her swollen body lying face down with a blood soaked rag in her hand. The autopsy report said she died from septic shock, and when she was found, she was already two days post mortem. She was a sight to behold. The hot sun, the zinc roof, the closed windows, provided a virtual oven for the lifeless body to molder.

The entire neighborhood knew how she died and why. When the police came round to gather information to confirm their long held suspicions, no one was willing to divulge any of the details. Almost sixteen young women in the neighborhood and nearby vicinity had been the victims of the infernal drug store on Spanish town road.

Mr. Wyatt practiced dirty medicine. Knitting needles, bent wire hangers, and odious concoctions were the tools of his trade.  Few of the women he worked on escaped death from hemorrhage and infection, but were irreparably scarred and ended up at the University Hospital to have their uteri removed, thus ending their ability to bear children. They were all under the age of twenty five.

It was never discovered what kept the survivors mouths shut. What fear did Mr. Wyatt hang on their hearts? No one knew.

With this in mind, Mercie was happy she did not perish. That last time she had come real close and she was not too sure now if she was capable of child bearing.

“Icy, Icy, Icy, is me, open di door,” the dogs on the lane were yapping up a storm in the early morning. The sun was in a battle with the low hanging clouds. It was going to rain soon. A sleepy Icilda cracked open the door to her room and Mercie bounced in like a new rubber ball.

The dress was hanging on a wooden hanger from the door of Icy’s wardrobe. The shiny gold cloth fell in soft pleats and wrinkles, waiting to hug the flesh of some accepting form.

As quick as light Mercie was out of her clothes and squeezed into the magic dress. Icy yawned and zipped her up.

She stood there gazing at herself with a look only Narcissus could have mustered. In truth, she looked like a golden orb balancing on a crooked pedestal. Then she smiled and was transformed into a mythical mermaid, which in reality was a manatee in a gold dress.

“Lawd have mercy Icy, thank you so much, how much mi owe yu?” Merceline could barely speak; she was so enthralled by what she saw in the mirror.

“Yu gimme enough areddy man, everyting cool man” Icilda knew she was overpaid and could not bring herself to take advantage of the woman who had rescued her when she came to the city to be with her ‘City boyfriend’, who did not meet her at the bus depot as arranged. She recalled sitting on her tattered grip, gray at the gills wondering what the night would bring. Mercie was watching her from her stall near the bus depot and summed up the situation. It was a daily occurrence in downtown Kingston. Her heart went out to her female counterpart and she had rescued her from being homeless in a strange environment.

“Aright gwaan now man, mi still waan sleep”.

“So yu coming to di dance later Icilda?”

“’Ow yu mean? Nuh muss, wait till yu see my outfit” Icilda grinned like a sly old fox who had cornered a flagged out chicken.

“Jeezas! Mi skin ketch a fire Icy, woii”, Mercie gurgled like a happy baby. “Mi gone den” she giggled nervously.

She grabbed the bag with the dress Icilda had folded neatly and flew from the room like a supernova

                                          

 

                                                                                       SATURDAY NIGHT.

 Boysie left the house exactly 10pm. He was as dapper as could be expected. His tight linen slacks caressed his buttocks and thighs and his nipples peaked through the mesh shirt that clung to his upper body.

White slacks, navy blue mesh top, black loafers, and his black kerchief hanging from his back pocket; his dread locks in a ponytail, the man was large. Mercie eyed him from under the corner of her sheet. She felt like jumping out and gobble him up the way she gobbled up Miss Edna’s Christmas pudding. Instead she turned away from the last supper and wished for him to leave quickly. She wouldn’t betray herself.

The minute he left, she jumped up and watched him though a crack in the door. She saw him sashaying through the gate and watched him pause briefly to accept some compliment from Miss Dina who sold candy under the streetlight by the gate.

Miss Dina craned her neck to watch him strut down the lane. She dearly wished she was younger instead of eighty-three. She slipped her forefinger under the bandana cloth around her head, as it had suddenly become tight. Her breasts long and flat had the temerity to harden their nipples. Miss Dina dabbed her forehead and passed her free hand over her bosom. A slight tremor disturbed her groin. She chuckled. “Punani cyan dun fi true” she whispered to herself.

 Free to prepare for her show, Mercie unraveled herself from the sheet and revealed her nakedness. She had been lying naked for the last two hours since taking her shower. She didn’t wish to get sweaty even though the cooling evening zephyrs were giving her a treat.

Every now and then she could smell the saltiness of the sea as the tide ebbed and flowed. She fixed her two bits of under garments, sprayed the ‘Night Magic’ perfume Mrs. Samuda had given her last Christmas and made sure not to put too much deodorant under her arm pits. “Just enough”, she whispered to herself.

Mercie eased into the dress and wiggled a few times until she got the zipper up. Earlier in the day she had pulled back her hair in a chignon and tied it with a scarf. She took the scarf off, and stared awe struck in her dresser mirror at the vision staring back at her. Mercie frowned.

Something was missing. “Lawd mi earrings, a weh dem deh?” she dug furiously in the bag she took to market and pulled out a pair of gold clip on earrings. Cinderella was ready.

                                 MIDNIGHT IN RAE TOWN.

                                 It was midnight when Mercie arrived at the dance yard. From the bottom of the road she could hear the boom boom of the sound system interspersed with what sounded like gunshots. That did not deter her. Gunshots were a part of the neighborhood sound effects. It was a part of the climate of lower Kingston, and it was getting close to a major election so the Dons liked to fire shots in the air to make statements.

She approached the gate and gave the keeper her entrance fee and he returned it exclaiming that he was no longer collecting because it was five minutes after twelve by his watch, so she could enter free of charge. Her smile could not be broader. The gatekeeper smiled with her and offered to buy her a drink. She accepted and he escorted her inside the dance hall.

Before she could settle into the semi darkness, she saw a familiar figure streaking towards her.

“Ooman, wat yuh doing ‘ere?” “Who say yuh could come to dis dance?” Boysie was breathing hard in Mercie’s face. Mercie stepped back so that he could see her fully. She stared him dead in the face and a little smile played on her lips.

“Oh, yu tink yu cute, I see di play Miss big shot. I also see di church frock”. Boysie was trying to speak proper English. He spoke like that when he was getting really mad.

“You lie to me one time too much girl” his face twisted in a snarl, one Mercie was very familiar with, and his hand shot up in the air.

It came down all right, but quite limp by his side. Boysie pitched forward and then down on his knees, then backwards, still on bended knees. Only in death could one assume such a position. Both his arms were opened wide as if he was to be crucified. A little blood ran from his nose. There was a small hole in his forehead and a thick pooling of his blood formed at the back of his head.

The booming music stopped as folks ran and screamed in all directions. Mercie stood stock-still staring at Boysie’s lifeless form in the grotesque position. His groin thrust upward at her face. She remembered his ‘hood’ and grieved a fraction.

Like a zombie, she walked toward the gate and bumped into the gatekeeper who stood there grinning.

“A long time mi a watch yu Mercie, long time. Everyting gwine be juss fine now man, juss fine. Irie. Later den.” He touched her cheek with the back of his hand. She smelled gunpowder on his fingers and she flinched.

“Gwaan ‘ome man, di police soon come and a nice gurl like you shoudn mix up inna tings like dis, we tawk soon.Irie!!”

That night and for many, many weeks, Mercie could not sleep. She had many nightmares in which she replayed many of her beatings, her painful abortions and Boysie lying dead with the hole in his forehead.

Sometimes the images were all in one dream and played out like a movie in one long string and she’d wake up sweating. She switched the bed to the other side of the room and moved around the other furniture. Icilda was right, this did help and her dreams disappeared. But, she could not erase the memory from her mind. Only time could do that, if time wanted to be merciful. That depended on one’s remorse or lack of. Mercie could not decide if she was glad Boysie was dead. Was it good fortune or a bad omen of things to come?

                                        

 

                                                                    NEW YORK, BROOKLYN.

The flight was late. Gateman was nervous and paced the shiny hallways at the Air Jamaica arrival lounge at the Kennedy airport. The passengers started to appear in twos and threes. Sometimes no one came through the automatic doors for a good five minutes. He nibbled at his fingernails.

Then the doors slid open and there she was. She saw him too and her smile removed any doubt from his mind. One of the first things he was going to have her do is fix her knees. He liked her fat.  Mercie was happy that the customs officer did not ask her too many questions or sniffed out her nervousness because every bit of her travel documents were forged. She was now Mrs. June Thompson coming to America to join her husband. She never truly found out the reason Gateman had killed Boysie and how he managed to spirit himself away from the police and from the Island. She had only complained to him once after Boysie had beaten her and she met Gateman on the way back from the hospital with her arm in a sling.

When she got the first air letter from him she was quite surprised, as everybody was wondering where he was hiding. She never mentioned a word to a soul, not even to Icilda. She left Kingston telling her friends that she was going to Cayman on a government work program.

                         ****************************************

                         Gateman loved his mom but never got to tell her, because when he was ten years old, he watched his father beat her with his fists until she stopped moving. Gateman also loved Mercie. He loved her from the first day he saw her crossing Spanish Town road with a basket of yellow yams on her head and that wonderful smile on her face.

Gateman took Mercie’s suitcase, and put his arm around her.  “Mi glad yuh come safe Mercie, yuh hungry?” Doan cry baby, Doan cry, everyting gwine be juss fine.  In two days they were going to see a lawyer to really become Mr. and Mrs. Hector Thompson. Hector had an apartment in Brooklyn and worked in a meat packing plant during the days. What he did at nights was really what paid the bills and would keep Mercie in fine style.

The yellow cab sped away with them safely tucked in its belly. This is how I remembered the dance, the night Boysie took a bullet in his forehead.