A Christmas gift for Anita

Dec 25, 2019 News

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By Michael Jordan

Gracie, my eleven-year-old sister, got to the gate before me and collected The Citizen, the evening papers, just dropped off by old Mrs. West, who walked through Tucville hawking her printed goods. It was two weeks before Christmas.
Gracie dodged as I playfully tried to block her path. she ran inside, laughing triumphantly. In a minute she would be giggling over the stupid comics, Flop Hat and Lil Comrade and Cassava Joe, and calling me to read about the latest exploits of Joseph the Amorous Goat, the big stray ram that roamed roaming Linden’s Burnham’s Drive, and pushed his head under ladies’ skirts.
I was thinking about Loraine and my brother’s upcoming party and table tennis when I heard Gracie scream. It was a sound of anguish, and I would hear her scream like that, many years later.
I rushed upstairs; she was standing in the living room, staring at the paper, mouth open, shaking her head.
“What happen, Gracie?”
She didn’t answer. Just kept staring at the newspaper, tears now coursing down her face.
“What happen?”
She looked me and said, in a trembly voice: “They kill my friend.”
*
I took the paper. Stared at the headlines:
SCHOOLGIRL’S BODY FOUND PROPPED UP IN ALLEYWAY. MURDERED AFTER LEAVING NETBALL GAME
Beneath, was the photograph of a girl. She appeared to be sitting in some narrow, grassy area. Her back was against a chain-link fence, her head tilted to the left; eyes closed as if asleep. The picture was taken at an angle that made her legs look too long for her body. Her white Dunlop boots seemed almost comically large. The long, thin legs were outstretched; her hands were limp in her lap.
“That’s not her,” I heard myself mumble as I stared at the girl while Gracie whimpered nearby. The girl my sister called her friend always had that half-smile playing around her mouth. There was something sad about this girl’s closed mouth. And her hair. … Gracie’s friend had neat plaits; this girl’s hair appeared dusty and unkempt.
“They kill my friend,” Grace whimpered again.
Murdered after coming from netball practice. …It can’t be her…But it could still be a mistake.
But what was not a mistake was the skirt; that pleated skirt.
*
Her name was Anita Stephens.I hadn’t even known that until now. Gracie might have told me, but my friend was all I remembered her ever saying.
My sister had just started out to Saints Stanislaus College, and I was designated to follow her in the mornings as she caught the East La Penitence bus that would take her to school. I didn’t mind, because I would sometimes get a glimpse of Loraine. She lived at the corner of Jackson Street. I had gotten to know her from church about a month ago. It was my brother who had made me know that he had heard her and a friend whispering about me.
“Loraine likes you,” he’d said.
“Who?”
“That girl in church, with that wide smile that shows her nice gums.”
“Oh.” I had spotted her after church; a slim, dark girl who had smiled and said something to me just as I was leaving church. Then she had walked on. I had met her again the first day I was following Gracie.
On those days that I followed Gracie, I would be so absorbed with Loraine that I barely noticed my sister’s friend. I estimated, vaguely, that she was a year or two older than Grace. She was a tallish, brown-skinned girl who always seemed to be smiling. She wore a light-pink uniform with a pleated skirt. I knew that was the Alleyne’s High uniform. I remembered Gracie said she played netball. Gracie’s closest friend had been a girl her age named Terraine, who had lived next door with a postmaster and his wife.
They had known each other since they were around four, when we had moved to Tucville. They had a silly, girly whistle that they would use when they wanted to meet and chat at the fence. But Terraine had migrated with her mother to the States last June. She and Gracie had both cried and promised to keep in touch.
This new girl was the new friend, I guess.
So, while we waited for the bus, Gracie would be chatting with this girl, and I would be with Loraine; too stupidly shy to say anything about how I felt; then the bus would come, and Loraine would smile and enter, and I would be thinking, afterwards, about what I could have said; should have said, what I would say next time; glad that this friend gave me some space to talk to Loraine.
I had not thought of the fact that I had not seen Gracie’s friend this morning.
And now Gracie’s friend was dead.
*
Anita Stephens had gone to school, come home at three, changed into a white tee shirt, and gone to netball practice at the Parade Ground. When she had not come home, her mother checked at friends. No one could account for her whereabouts. Her mom also checked at the Georgetown Hospital and made a report at the East La Penitence Police Station
Next day, with Anita still missing, Mrs. Stewart was passing by the Tucville Primary School when she saw a group of schoolchildren standing by an alleyway. Curious, she went to look, only to see that they were staring at Anita, who was lying dead in the alleyway.
*
My sister was still crying when Mom came home. Mom was furious that the Citizen would have such a photograph on its front page. She took the paper, put it away, and glared at me as if it was my fault that Gracie had seen it. “When Miss West comes tomorrow,” she snapped, “please tell her we not taking the Citizen anymore!”
With the papers out of sight, I half-wondered if I had imagined it all. But the next day, when I took Gracie to catch the bus, the girl in the pink skirt wasn’t there. I saw my sister, looking around as if expecting to see her; looking at the empty spot where Anita Stephen usually stood. Then, right there, she began to cry. I began to comfort her and didn’t see when Loraine came up.
“Hi,” she said, speaking to me, looking at Gracie, who was rubbing away her tears. “What happened to her?”
“Her friend,” I said.
Loraine creased her brows in puzzlement for a moment, then she said: “You mean Anita Stephens?”
I nodded.
She sighed. “Sad…” Then she added, looking at Gracie: “Don’t worry, girl. The police catch the killer, and they will punish him good.”
“What…when?” I blurted.
“You didn’t know? It in the Chronicle.”
“No,” I said. “I didn’t know.” Conscious of Gracie nearby, but curious, I asked. “Who they held?—Somebody from Meadowbrook?” I had heard someone say that she was attacked while walking through Meadowbrook.
“I thought you would know,” Loraine said; then her sweet mouth, that I often imagined kissing, twisted into a grimace of scorn: “Is Fat Man Do it!”
“Who is Fat man?”
“Her neighbor, man!” she said, a note of impatience in her voice. She paused, then added: “Somebody tell me that he plays tennis at your club.”
Fat Man. … A face came to me, and I felt a chill of recognition.

The Club

The houses of the De Abreus and the Joneses were where you went to party. The Harper house was the place where you went to lift weights and box and maybe learn a few karate and judo moves. Our house was the house with the table tennis club. But it wasn’t a club, really. It was just where a crowd of noisy boys from the neighbourhood that would gather at our bottom house to play table-tennis. My brother’s classmates would come over—Eddie, Wilko, Long-belly, and others. They followed when we moved to Tucville. They were joined by the new friends we made. The one they called Fat Man was one of them.
He was a stocky, round-faced, pleasant looking chap, who always seemed to be smiling, never playing, just standing nearby, looking on, never staying for any length of time.
That afternoon, after the finding of the body, the usual crowd of boys came around. Now that Fat Man had been arrested, we heard all that they said that he had done. That he “limed” with the two Baines brothers from East La Penitence; that they had raped a few girls coming home late, that he knew to fight, and that they believed he had broken Anita’s neck with a karate chop. There were whispers that they had found scratches on his body and blood on his jersey.
Mrs. West had come around with her stack of papers at around four. I told her that we weren’t taking the Citizen for now but didn’t tell her why.
The morning’s Chronicle had an update; a small story hidden discreetly in the centre pages. There was a passport-size photograph of Anita with that familiar smile and a headline that said: Several detained for Schoolgirl’s murder.
“We got to be careful who we let come to the club,” my brother said, after the boys had left. “And we can’t let mommy dem know that this chap used to come here.”
“Okay.”
“Gracie alright now?”
“Much better,” I said. Then I added: “I see Loraine today.”
“You inviting she to my party? I got the tickets.”
“Yes,” I said, playing it cool, not letting him know that I hadn’t even told Loraine how I felt, though I was sure that she liked me. I had never been bold like the Kickster.
“I will give you two tickets tomorrow.”
*
Anita was to be buried two days later. When the day came, my brother came up with the idea that the boys from the club should sub, buy a wreath. and attend Ann’s funeral. That was the Kickster; a girls-guy, but studious, always trying to do the right thing.
Mom told Gracie she couldn’t attend. Gracie had cried. Mom gave her a dollar to put towards buying the wreath.
So, that afternoon, there we were, attending only the third funeral I had ever attended … the funeral of a girl I had barely known; there I was, dressed in my Sunday clothes, along with about ten of us from the Club. The funeral was held at the small Seventh-Day Adventist church not far from where Anita had lived.
I saw several girls from Anita’s club. They were dressed in jerseys marked GT Celtics. The church was packed and hot.
We didn’t go to the cemetery. What I remember was us filing into the church, at the head of the isle, and passing Anita’s casket that they said that her father, who was a carpenter, had made. Even then, part of me didn’t believe that it was Gracie’s friend, and that part of me made me pause to look inside the casket and at the thin, powdered, longish face; the smile gone forever.
That night, I dreamed of Anita Stephens. She was sitting in the alleyway, staring at me.
*
I was following Gracie to the bus stop, glad that school would be closed in three days; glad that I would no longer see my little sister staring towards the spot where Anita usually stood, where the two of them usually stood.
I pushed the thought away, thinking of the Kickster’s birthday next week Saturday, thinking of how my hands had gone cold as I gave Loraine the tickets and she had said yes, she would come; thinking of what I would wear; the nice pair of Hush-Puppies that the Kickster had bought me, or maybe the brown platform shoes that would make me look taller…thinking of how it would feel to hold Loraine, smiling as I thought of the Kickster, who was only now wondering how he would juggle the three girlfriends he had invited.
Gracie and I were heading towards the Jackson Street bridge that would take us to the bus stop, when she emitted a small cry, stopped and clutched my hand tightly.
Fat Man, wearing a grey toque, short khaki pants, and white tee shirt, was sitting on the bridge.
He sat, hunched forward on the western side of the wide bridge, where we would be passing; staring at the other side of the bridge; seeming not to see the schoolchildren, the people hurrying past.
We stood there for a moment, Gracie’s grip tight around my hand; my heart pounding; wanting to turn back, but thinking that Gracie looked up to me, Gracie had never seen me show fear.I took a deep breath. “Come over to my right side,” I said.
She shifted over to my right, and, trying to put a swagger into my walk, trying to walk slowly, I headed with Gracie towards the bridge; trying not to look at Fat Man.For the first time I realized that he wasn’t really fat; at least, not fat in a soft, girly way, like the chap we called Piggy, who lived in South and had come to our club a couple of times. Looking at Fat Man was like seeing a ghost or someone returned from the dead, seeing this man who had always seemed to be smiling, wondering what to do, what to tell him, what he was doing there, why they had released him; feeling a wave of rage emitting from the slouching man, sitting there and seemingly ready to pounce ;daring anyone to say a wrong word or looked at him in the wrong way; and for the first time in a long time, I felt small, like the skinny, pimpled boy I had only recently grown out of being..
Two girls were heading across the bridge towards us. They took a quick glance at Fat Man as they passed him. I saw them veer away from him, step a little quicker, saw the taller one glance quickly back and, hand half-covering her mouth in that gossipy girl’s way, whisper something to her friend.
Fat Man turned to the girls, just as the tall one sneaked a look at him.
He shifted on the bridge, and for a moment I thought he was getting up to follow them. Then he spotted me and Gracie. We stared at one another for a moment; a moment in which his rage lay bare for me to see. Then he turned away and stared again at nothing.
We passed him. I did not look at him; did not greet him, just took Gracie to the bus stop.
I watched her look at the spot where Anita would have been standing. I knew what she would say before she said it, and I knew I would have no answer.
“They loosed him,” Gracie said. Her voice filled with that same anguish and disbelief as when she had stared at her friend’s photograph.
I didn’t answer.
“Why they loosed him?”
“I don’t know.”
I was just as stunned and baffled as she was. I guessed that Gracie somehow expected me to know why he was out. I was the big brother with a fascination for detective stories; hooked on them at the age of eleven and had never grown out of that phase. I even had a worm-eaten book with a British pathologist about his cases.
I had a collection of Mike Hammer novels, and I told Gracie that I would be a detective one day. She, naturally, expected answers from me as to why Fat Man, suspected of murdering her friend, was sitting on the bridge.
After I got home, I checked the newspapers for answers. I perused the Chronicle; I borrowed The Citizen from my best friend, Mallie Hawker. I read that a group of boys had lassoed Joseph the Amorous Goat and drowned him in the Demerara River. But there was nothing about Anita Stephens; not that day, or the next, or the next; nothing to say the detectives were working the case; nothing to say that a girl named Ann Stewart had even existed.
In my mind, the detectives had failed.

*

Christmas came. I got a pair of jeans and a jersey. Dad surprised me with a Bruce Lee magazine,’ Jeet Kune Do, My martial Arts Training Guide.’ Inside was a poster of Lee in his Enter the Dragon stance when he had fought Mr. Han in the hall of mirrors.
I was thinking about the best place to put the poster before I settled down in bed to read through the training guide, when Gracie called out to me from her room.For Christmas, Gracie got a compendium of games and a book. She also got a Christmas card from her friend Terraine.
I went over, wondering what she wanted, and found her on bed with her old teddy, and looking at the card and crying.
“You miss Terraine,” I said.
She stared up at me. “I thinking about Anita.”
I felt guilty, and a little angry, because I wanted Gracie to stop thinking about her; I wanted to stop thinking how we had failed Anita. I wanted to forget that photo of her in the alleyway; forget about seeing her in her casket, stiff and unsmiling.
I wanted to push away this feeling of helplessness. This was Christmas Day, for heaven’s sake. We had gone to midnight mass. The house smelled of black-cake and the chicken that mommy was baking.
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. Then she said: “I want to do something for Anita.”
I helped her pick some roses and zinnias from the front yard. I picked a few hibiscuses that protruded into our yard through the chain-link fence that separated us from Mr. Allen, the retired postmaster. We added some of mommy’s palm fronds. I tied them together and placed them in a plastic bag.
Mommy had given me a parcel to take to the woman who did her hair, so I told her Gracie was following me.
The hairdresser lived along the same route that we were taking. We dropped off the parcel and headed to the alleyway; getting whiffs of garlic pork and pepperpot, passing a group of boys with cap-guns playing a noisy game of ‘war;’ with one boy hotly insisting he wasn’t dead. From a house, we heard Nat Cole, singing about chestnuts roasting on an open fire. We passed Anita’s house. I noticed that there were no fairy lights strung in the verandah, no music, passed the house where I was told that Fat man lived; saw that one window was open.
Eventually we reached the corner where the alley started. A small trench separated the alley from the road. Someone had placed a narrow plank across the trench.
There was a man in the yard near the alley. He looked at me, looked at Gracie. I could almost sense him thinking of what had happened in the alley only a few days ago.
He kept staring as I crossed the plank. Now, still staring, he came closer to the fence.
“What you children up to?”
I was wondering what to say when he peered at me and said. “You are Mr. Mc Allister’s boy?”
“Yes, Sir.” I took the flowers out of the bag. “We are just putting these in the alley for my sister’s friend.”
He didn’t say anything, so I crossed over into the alleyway, now realizing that I had forgotten to count the houses to know where Anita’s was.
I walked about a hundred yards down the alley, the earth soft from the December rains. From where I stood, I could hear the soft strains of Nat Cole.Yule-tide carols, being sung by a choir, and folks dressed up like Eskimos. … It hit me then. Anita would never hear that song, would never get another present, would never sit at her parents’ table, waiting for stuffed chicken and ham, and when we were sleeping off the big Christmas meal Anita would be.
No. I won’t cry in front of my little sister. I pushed back the tears, placed the flowers on the ground. I turned back, stood with Gracie at the alleyway for a moment, then we headed home, with me making a silent promise that I would find out who had killed Gracie’s friend.

(From a novel to be published in 2020. In memory of Ann Stewart.
Murdered, December 1976. Killers unknown.

 

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