And besides, Vera had told herself that the job at the factory would only be temporary. Just until she could find something better, though she’s worked there for more than nine months. She planned to save up money to go back to school, but so far, she hasn’t been able to make any progress. Vera’s father was a barrister, so she had grown up comfortable. She never worked as hard as she should have in school, and she quit after fifth form. She had taken for granted that she would be the wife of a man with means. She knows she would have if she hadn’t fallen for Abel.
It is Vera’s goal to find her way back to that life again, but her choice of husband has worked against her at every turn. It never seemed to occur to Abel to want more, so she had to do the wanting for both of them. He would have been fine to continue working as a chauffeur, if she hadn’t pushed him. She told him straightaway that she had no intention of making a life of hard labor part of her marriage vows. She saw how the other women at the factory had been ground down to the bone so that they looked much older than they were. She promised herself she would never be like them.
Next to the bus stop, a group of Rastafarians is congregating. Vera counts fifteen of them moving up the street and can pick out several more weaving through pedestrians to join their brethren. Most are setting up drums. They’re dressed in long white tunics cinched at the waist with cords and white turbans. Some of them have dreadlocks but not all. A few carry long staffs, taller than their heads, curled at the top like a shepherd’s. She’s never seen Rastafarians dressed like these, and she wonders if they are wearing some special ceremonial garments in honor of Selassie’s visit to Kingston.
Pages from this morning’s discarded Jamaica Gleaner lay scattered and trampled on the ground, occasionally being picked up and transported along the sidewalk by foot traffic and the wind. Vera reads them as she waits, hoping that focusing on the words will make her feel steadier on her feet.
EMPEROR SELASSIE LANDS IN TRINIDAD
POSTAL SERVICE CRIPPLED BY STRIKE
KEEP ON POURING GORDON’S DRY GIN.
Most people are sucking their teeth and shaking their heads as they pass by, annoyed at having to go around the demonstrators. The Rastas begin beating the skin of their drums. Two of them are hoisting the Ethiopian flag, emblazoned with a golden lion. A man with his face hidden under a thick beard, his profile obscured by matted dreadlocks, holds up a photo of Haile Selassie and yells over and over, “Behold the Lamb of God!”
Which taketh away the sin of the world. Vera remembers enough to complete the verse, though she knows her pastor would be horrified to see who it is being used to describe. He would no sooner entertain the idea that Selassie is the incarnation of Christ than he would that Vera is the new Virgin Mother. What would her pastor do if he knew that she was getting rid of a child? Would he rally the congregation to chase her from the church? Would he use her as a cautionary tale, make her the Jezebel in one of his sermons?
She bows her head and asks for forgiveness, getting a head start. Takes a moment to explain it one more time to Jesus Christ himself. While she knows she’s adding more sin to her soul, it is the only way to spare Abel more suffering. He’s already watched his partner die. Besides, this way, if she needs to leave Abel, and that seems more of a possibility lately, this will make her load much lighter. Well, isn’t leaving your husband a sin too? It’s her mother’s voice she hears. She hasn’t spoken to her mother in a year, since she married Abel. Her mother did not think Abel had any drive to better himself, and it burns Vera to know she was right.
But there is no question in her mind that this Abel is not the man she married, though she had known him for just three months before he proposed. When they met, she had been the outside woman of a man twenty years her senior, Chester Brown, a friend of her father’s. Her mother had always told her to find a man in the church, but those who were unmarried were still boys. She wanted a man who knew himself, someone already established like her father. She had known Chester since she was a child, so she felt at ease around him. It also helped that he bought Vera almost anything she wanted, though she wasn’t after gifts. She wanted a husband, a life just like the one her parents had built. In her naivete, she thought that since this man slept with her and complained about his wife, it meant she had a chance of replacing her.
But he made it clear to Vera that she should never come by his house. He was just as afraid of Vera’s father finding out about their affair as he was his wife. One day, she surprised him, when she knew that his wife had gone to visit relatives in England. He let her inside, rushed her in so the neighbors wouldn’t see. They quarreled, and before she could turn to leave, he hit her. She hit him right back. He became enraged and started beating her.
She knew all the house staff heard her cries for help, but it was only Abel, Chester’s driver, who did something. Abel chased the man right out of his own house and beat him in return, in his yard, as his neighbors looked on and did nothing. She had never known a man to stand up for her like that, except for her father. She thought it meant he loved her. She had never thought she would choose love over comfort, but her attraction to Abel, and her gratitude, was so strong she let everything else fall away. At first. Later, when Vera told Abel what kind of life she wanted, he promised to work to give it to her. When she asked him to become a constable, to improve his station in life, he didn’t seem to hesitate.
Now he thinks that the city is not for him, and he wants to go back to his poor country life in Harold Town. He doesn’t treat her like he used to. Not since they paired him with that wicked man as his partner. He’s turned against her. He flinches when she touches him. She’s not sure he even realizes it. Still, she knows no excuse will be good enough for her mother. Is so you jus’ go from one man bed to another? If you say vows, you mus’ follow through. If she leaves him, wherever she goes, it cannot be back to her family.
“King of Kings, Lord of Lords,” one of the Rastas shouts. He holds the photo of the emperor, turning to his right, then his left, so all can see. Vera looks up from her newspaper page just as he turns to her, and their eyes meet. She looks back down at the ground.
Once the bus arrives, the teeming crowds rush it, and Vera abandons hope for a seat. She ends up standing next to the very same Rasta she’d just made eye contact with. Up close, Vera sees his eyes are a bright hazel, which stand out against his cherrywood complexion and light-brown dreaded hair. He smiles down at her, just as, to her horror, a wave of nausea hits her, and she leans over, and without thinking, she vomits into her purse. People start to groan and hold their noses. She feels light-headed, looks around with desperation for someone to give up their seat. Her knees are about to go limp when the Rasta puts his arm around her and pulls her head into his chest. “Is alright, sistah; you can lean on me,” he says. Her first instinct is to push him away for acting so fresh with her, but she feels dizzy, as if she might faint. She is too sick to do anything but surrender. His head is above hers, so he can’t see how red she’s become. Her skin feels hot.
She wonders how she got here, leaning into this man like they are old lovers, when she had been raised to roll her eyes or curl her top lip at someone with his ragged appearance. Her mother would die if she saw her now. Vera can see her disapproving pale face in her mind vividly. Her mother, Patricia, taught her that whiteness was partly a state of mind, part manipulation of the body. Though she always told Vera her nose was too broad, her hair a little too kinky to pass as she did, if she let the relaxer sit in her hair until it burned, if she stayed out of the sun, if she displayed the right manners, the right poise, if she inserted her white grandfather in enough conversations and forgot that all of her ancestors on the other branches came from slaves, she would rise above her blackness. Jamaica was independent now; there was no need to be as lily-white as the queen—near white was white enough.