All the Finest Girls (20 page)

“Philip and Derek had another fight last night. On the way back from Clifton’s,” I said quietly to Marva, who had turned her attention to the countryside passing by the window. She sucked her cheeks. Taking the plunge, I continued.

“Do you think Lou, Lulu, would want Errol to be there?”

“Of course,” Marva said. “What stupid question is dat? Of course.”

“Well, Derek said Errol killed her. Or practically did.”

Angry now, Marva turned and looked at me, eyes bulging. “Kill her? Lawd. Dat’s pass ridiculous. Dey were going to be together again. Me cyan sure you of dat. From jes’ four days pass me knew it was true.” She spaced her next words out, to make herself perfectly clear. “Dey were going to be together. Believe me. Believe me. Kill her? Errol did no such ting.”

“But God, Marva, they’d been apart for so long.”

“Only because her so stubborn. If her weren’t so headstrong, she could have back dat man. Believe you me. He was
always
wanting her.”

“What makes you think she would have had him back? Now and not before?”

“Because I know! She my lickle sista and I know! She having a change of heart. She dress up when she fell in de water like dat? Well I know where she thought she were going. She had a change of heart! For years seemed like she wouldn’t see him. For years! He wrote her, sent her flowers, lickle stories about Philip. Ting and ting. He tried to see her, but she would nevah let it. Philip, he begged her finally, say to her, ‘Please, Mumma. Life is too short and he suffered and he’s sorry. Do it for me, leastways.’ And Philip is right, you know? Life
is
too short. If I could have one day, one
day,
wit my Josephus again!” Marva pressed a hard finger into her breastbone. “Me give up everyting for it. Me swearing it. And dere Lulu, refusing dat man.”

I don’t know what made me so contrary, but before I could stop myself, I’d waded deep into the conversation.

“Yeah, but Errol married someone else,” I said.

Marva shook her head in exasperation and then began to root around in her purse.

“Patrice? Of course he married Patrice!” Marva was looking for something, pulling her Bible, a fat comb, a small bottle of hand lotion, from her ample bag, pushing wadded up Kleenexes around, unzipping compartments, and all the while talking so that soon the entire bus had their eyes trained on her. “He have a child wit her from de first!”

“Before Lou?”

Marva sucked a tooth.

“What dem boys been telling yah?” At last she found what she was looking for. From a leaf of Kleenex that had been tucked into the smallest pocket of her handbag, Marva drew a thin gold braided band, one that looked vaguely familiar to me.

“Yah see dis? A promise ring. Errol, him a give it to Lulu long time pass. She weared it till him gwan married Patrice, den she put it away. Since her sickness she too drawn to wear it anyway. It woulda fall off. But not even one week ago, she ask me, she say, ‘Marva, can yah get a lickle bitty chain? Me wanting to wear dis round my neck.’ She was going to be wit him again. I know. Now I don’t know how Derek and Philip tell it, but it’s complicated. Not some simple ting. It’s not.”

During the hour or so we spent on that overcrowded bus, traversing the St. Clair hills, Marva set me straight. Hearing her talk was a little like traveling somewhere you’ve only known from a picture postcard. The happy people aren’t as carefree as they look, the sun rarely sets so brilliantly, the shining palace turns out to be a shambling relic held together with cheap mortar and tin. And, standing perception on its ear, neither is the distant vista what it appeared in two dimensions. The undistinguished, fuzzy background turns out to be the gateway to an entire, unimaginable ecosystem. Ultimately, Marva’s version illuminated for me, unrefracted, a vast landscape that had been wholly, stubbornly obscured.

“I’m not saying she have a choice,” Marva stressed after she’d explained what Lou’s boys had managed to omit over the course of the previous day. “She loved him before she knew, and den it was too late fi turning back.”

Apparently, at the time that Errol first set eyes on Louise, in Bobsled’s back office, he already had a wife. Not a wife in the technical sense, but with Patrice he shared an apartment owned by her father, Foxy, and a two-year-old little girl named Christine. For a man who had grown up without much but his looks, it was an arrangement too good to pass up. He was glad for the security, for the job, and not least of all for the companionship. “He liked de performing, but even more he liked being wit a body,” said Marva. “Errol always hated to be alone. Dat was what he couldn’t abide.” As time passed, however, he became restless, and chafed at the ordinariness of it all.

“Yah have to know,” Marva continued to explain as we bumped along the high road, “dis was a crazy time down here. Before independence. A spirit went and catch us all back den. We all of us were seeing a chance for tings bigger and better. We didn’t want anymore to be owned by a person. And you know Foxy, he really
owned
Errol. Even if Errol felt comfortable on de one hand about it? Him still struggling to be free like de rest of us. So when he met Louise, and Michael, him want him for Parliament, it was just a kind of — Boom — like it all come together.

“Lulu, she was young den, only seventeen when she went down to live wit Michael, but she weren’t foolish. She was always a very serious girl. She didn’t go a lot of places or have too many friends. See, dat was always me wit all the friends and people around, because I have a spirit dat’s outgoing. But she was smart and surely going to be a teacher. Our mumma had it all planned like for her. She worked at Bobsled’s while she was doing preparation classes for college. Lawd, she was doing great till Errol came along. When Mumma found out, she was so raging mad, she like to dead Lulu. Mumma was always very strict, even I say stricter than you need to be wit chilren. Very hard on us. Anyway, she never forgive Michael for promoting Errol in his sister’s affections. And she swore Lulu up and down about it, but she was shutting de barn door after de asses done got out.”

Marva laughed at her own joke, and sighed. But when she spoke of Lou and Errol’s love for each other, she was contemplative and serious in a way that revealed years of consideration. Marva believed fervently in her sister’s romance but was ever mindful of its consequences.

“Sometimes I wonder on Lulu’s life if she hadn’t met dat man. But it doesn’t advantage to dwell on what didn’t. It’s did dat matters. Lulu was a good Christian. She was, though maybe some people don’t tink so. And yah know her love fi Errol really wreck her in de end. She nevah let go de guilt she feeling for Patrice and dat lickle girl. It mash her up, yah know, made her sick. But deir love was too powerful to be denied. She tried. She turn away from dat man plenty of times. It’s even why she went away to de States. But she couldn’t run away from dat love more dan from a speeding car.”

Lou and Errol began seeing each other in the winter of ’64, though quietly at first. Errol’s nascent interest in politics proved a good cover. The Caribbean Federation had by then collapsed, the British interest in their island colonies was rapidly waning, and St. Clair’s future looked increasingly up for grabs. The country was vulnerable in every way; Michael and his cohorts saw their moment. They set hard to work grooming Errol as the first candidate of the National Labor Party of St. Clair. Hungry for revolution, they were nevertheless smart enough to know that the European influence would not die easily. Errol and his creamy skin were a godsend. By the end of that year, the NLP had taken off. Errol’s face was on a poster in every bar and grocery across the island.

That’s when Lou got pregnant. Errol was still living with Patrice and Christine, still singing at Foxy’s, and the situation sent Lou into a tailspin. “She came to see me and Josephus, and her go cry like a damn hurricane. I feared for her life den, she so distressed.” For his part, Errol was paralyzed. He was deeply in love with Lou, had been from the first, but couldn’t deny his obligation to Patrice. And, as Michael was quick to point out, his political future relied on clean resolutions. St. Clairians, like most Caribbean people, were tolerant of unconventional families, but few people would set much confidence in a leader with such a distracting personal life.

“Me tell Lulu to hold on. Me tinking it would work out,” explained Marva, shaking her head at her own advice. “Errol, I expect he was wanting Patrice to pitch him out. Dat’s how men is. Dey never leave, but if dey wanting out of someting den dey fatigue you till you want to dead dem. Patrice, she was stubborn about him, she wouldn’t give him de satisfaction. So for a time he kept wit both women, and dey played a waiting game upset all tree of dem. Dat changed when Philip was born. Ooh! He looked jes’ like his papa. And yah know, it did the turn. Errol finally done it. He left Patrice, left Foxy’s. For a time him and Lulu were happy. Dey were. Real, real happy.”

Not surprisingly, Lou became Errol’s greatest asset. “Dat quiet girl, she did all de work,” Marva crowed as our bus made another in a series of rattling stops along the lush mountain road. The rest of the passengers had gone back to their business, and Marva and I were able to disappear into a world of our own. I was stitching the pieces of story together and every now and again felt besieged by a recollection or flash of insight I didn’t have time to explore. It was as though I were racing through time on a bullet train, monumental events melting down to smears of color.

A far better scholar than Errol, and with more conviction as well, Lou did much to create the Errol Hodge who won a seat in Parliament in 1968. The year before, Derek had been born, and the family left Michael’s apartment for a tiny place of their own. Between the limitless tasks of caring for her two boys, Lou dressed her man, gave counsel on party issues, and late most nights sat at the kitchen table writing position papers and speeches. Michael set the agenda; Lou gave it words, though she herself stayed in the shadows. Still pained by the conflict she felt she had caused, she avoided being seen by Errol’s side whenever possible. She also encouraged Errol to spend time with Patrice and their daughter. Theirs was a fragile, but working, arrangement, until well into Errol’s first and only term. Marva admired her sister’s generosity of spirit, but she would never be convinced of its wisdom. “Lulu should have smelled trouble coming when Patrice started being around.”

At the reminder of what St. Clair’s independence had brought to bear, Marva’s features tightened as though they were being twisted from within. “It was nineteen seventy-one. My husband, Josephus, jes’ became a deputy. Tings were dangerous around here. Chesley stayed in as governor, but from de very first day he bad as week-old fish. Tieving and such. Michael and him rude boys were getting angry, began making a head of trouble. Pretty soon dey were tinking about righteous fighting, like Panthers, like Rastas. Violence was boiling up all over de West Indies, yah know, just like de States. Errol was set fi making peaceful change, but not Michael. Him go leaning on Errol for dis law and dat policy, wanting him to push Chesley around, but Errol wouldn’t do it. He’s a gentle man, Errol. It was maybe de only time when his weakness kind of served his favor.

“Dem two really fell out den. Oh, it was a murderation. Michael get real ignorant wit Errol, calling him whitey and a pig and such. Awful. Michael and his boys stirred a ton of trouble. Me always knowed my brother would gwan mash up someting wit his angriness. Anyway, dere was a bombing in Eldertown, April nineteen seventy-two. A man in a bank was killed. Dey nevah knew for sure who did it, but one of dem boys telled Errol it was Michael, and pretty soon Michael left fi good. Went to England and nevah came back. And dat’s, you know, what probably killed our mumma in de end. She didn’t really live too much longer than that.”

It appeared that the commotion of her mother’s memory would silence Marva, and I wished for her sake that she’d change the subject. But instead, she barreled ahead, gaining some sort of strength around her already vibrating self by carrying on with the tale.

“Well, me won’t lie to you. Tings weren’t gwan too terrific after dat. Errol for sure lost his seat, connected as he was wit Michael. And he took a good deal of dat burden, of de killing, on himself. Errol did. Put dat wit de other tribulations, wit Lulu and Patrice both wanting him, and he turn to drinking pretty quick. For my sista it just seem to her like a proper punishment from de Lawd. She climb up in herself even more dan before, and all de light around her faded.

“Errol tried his hand at a few jobs after dat, but nobody was really wanting him for anyting good. Hotels were coming up here and dere, and he tried singing again, but he showed up late, or drunk, a couple times, and dat was dat. For a lickle bit he was driving a taxi, but he got in a accident one night coming back from somewhere and him go lose his hack license. Lulu took back up working at de cinema, but it was too anguishing bringing de boys along, having dem fall asleep in a chair or on de office floor. Me like to say it was Errol’s fault, but yah know it takes two. Trouble is, Lulu tried to make dat man into someting he weren’t. He weren’t a sticking man, and she should have seen dat. We all should have seen it. Cyaant make a four-penny nail six.

“Before long, Errol was liming down at Foxy’s again. He go down to call on Patrice and de lickle girl but end up staying. Lulu didn’t see how she could complain too much about it. Before long seems like she was losing dat man to his old life. It pained her horribly, but she had de boys to feed. Finally she decided to leave. Her have a friend June, was caring for some chilren in de States — well, you knowed dem — and she tell her to come up fast for maybe she can get Lulu a job. De night she went and telled Errol, she had to search all over before she found him. He was in a back booth at Foxy’s. Wit Patrice and his old movie friends. I learned dat much later, from our old friend Fry.

“Errol, he didn’t fight her on it, which maybe hurt her most of all. He nevah was a bad man, just weak. Me tinking he felt like he was hurting people every step he made, so he jes’ gived up. And Lulu maybe hoped if she left, Errol would miss her so much he’d call her home. But dat isn’t how it went.