The Best Travel Writing 2011 - James O'Reilly [21]
When you were sixteen, Joseph immigrated to New York City to be with another woman. That was his true love, I think his last years were happy with her. Rowena got cancer soon after, and you slept in the hospital bed with her every night. She cried out for him until she died, you said, shaking your head at this kind of love. Your father died a few years later, in your early twenties.
Now all you had was brothers and sisters, but some of them were already lost. Rohan had immigrated “backtrack” to the States, illegally; you had heard he was in jail. Cordell had tried to kill himself and then disappeared; you assumed he was dead. Hilrod always had a new business idea; you lost money believing in him. It was only through your siblings that I could imagine your childhood. They showed its liabilities, while you showed almost nothing. You showed only what you wanted to show.
I met Aloma once in your living room. She was as soft and plump as you were sinewy and strong. Girlish, quiet, mother to two boys with different fathers, she hardly spoke. She was there for money, like most other times. After your father’s death she had cried to you, he troubled me, those few, coded words telling of years of molestation. She was home alone with him after I went to school. He was older and couldn’t find lovers as easily as before. He must have come after her then. I paused, afraid to ask. Never you? I asked. She shook her head. Why never you? Again you won the coin toss, got your life. Why not you?
Of your siblings, you were the only one to pass the A-levels, studying all summer from a book a teacher gave you. I went to your college graduation in a muddy field by the Atlantic coast, your flapping robes the colors of the Guyana flag. At twenty-seven you had become the girl in the armchair, out of danger. But there was no need for black and white pictures, threatening text; you knew this story well enough already. Your nieces and nephews were those faces staring out at you from your own family photos. You watched the patterns beginning to repeat. She likes to beat too much, you said about Aloma after watching her with her boys. You saw that there was another girl who needed saving (there is always another girl who needs saving) and imagined that you could help her.
For Fayola, you imagined a different life. Gregory had married Hassina, a Muslim woman, and they had had nine children together. Fayola was twelve years old, the age when Guyanese children take the exam to qualify for secondary school. You decided to take her into your home, tutor her so she could pass the test. All of Hassina’s other daughters had been married off young to men in the islands so they could send back money to the family. You wanted to help Fayola have a different life.
We visited them in Albuoystown on a bright Sunday afternoon in May, traveling by mini-bus from your home close to the Embassies, until we reached their sunken porch. Hassina greeted us with a child on her breast, two at her knee. The house was dark and musty with clothes piled in the corners and mattresses lining the floor. An older girl ran to buy cold drinks for us at the corner store. Fayola stood by as you and Hassina talked, and I wandered out to the back to play with the younger children. A tiny girl, two or three, kept running up to me and touching my hair then running away and laughing. She had long lashes, lovely brown eyes. When she turned to run I noticed open sores on her back and thighs.
Look at her back, I said when you came to find me. You saw your niece’s wounds, her giggling, smooth face. Should we go to the clinic, bring back cream for her? I asked. You shook your head. She’ll get them again, there’s no point. You could only save one girl at a time.
But which girl could grow up to save herself? I glanced at the baby girl in Hassina’s arms