“He sure as hell has been brainwashed by him,” Andrew says, not as quietly as he’d likely intended.
“Andrew!” Mummy’s eyes narrow in my brother’s direction. “Mind. Don’t think you’re too old that we can’t disown you.”
Andrew laughs at that. We younger Chens snicker. But the elders keep a straight face.
Several years prior when Andrew had brought home Colin for the first time, my parents, who had known of Andrew’s sexuality for years, welcomed his boyfriend with open arms. They didn’t flinch at their son introducing his same-sex partner, but they might just disown him at forty-three for swearing at the dinner table.
“Sorry, Mummy.”
“‘Im need two lick, to rahtid.” My father scowls. But with his round face, wide ears, and gentle demeanor, he is anything but threatening.
I watch my husband take it all in, our varied accents and opinions. The strict adherence to decorum and manners. The younger kids’ occasional shouts coming from the adjacent room where they were playing Jenga. The 1960s British balladeer. So different from his upbringing in Bordeaux.
In the early years of our relationship, I’d had to translate for him much of what my parents and their siblings said, so difficult was it to comprehend the accent. But by the time we’d had Julien he’d begunlistening to reggae, and it had made things somewhat clearer. Or so he claimed.
He turns to me now, and cocks his head, an inquisitive expression on his face. “Lick?” he mouths, repeating my dad’s words.
“Spanking,” I say with a smile. There hadn’t been a spanking in our family since the early ’80s. “It’s not going to happen.”
Shortly after, I find myself in the kitchen helping Mummy clean up. My mother does not like people in her kitchen when she’s cooking, but she’ll allow assistance with the aftermath. I’m at the sink rinsing dishes and stacking the dishwasher while she twirls around me sorting the leftovers, humming along to the Humperdinck.
“Every day I wake up, then I start to break up, lonely is a man without love.”
The kids enter en masse to get bowls of gelato. Sylvie’s little one, Henry, pulling up the rear. Imogen and Lucie doling out scoops of strawberry and chocolate for all. They’re about to head back to the family room when my mother stops them.
“Uh-uh-uh-uh. Eat that at the kitchen table, please.”
They fuss but follow Nana’s orders. She, as Jamaicans would say, has them under heavy manners. (Yes, Nana. Please, Nana. No, thank you, Nana.) My eyes follow her around the kitchen as she packs away the remainder of the goat, the rice, the cabbage. Her apron cinched around her once-twenty-two-inch waist. An attribute she used to remind us of, often. So much of my mother was defined by what she once was. Beauty contestant. Schoolteacher. Vice principal of Hartsdale Elementary.
Minutes later, Lucie returns with her empty bowl in hand and fetches the gelato from the freezer.
“I don’t think you need any more ice cream, Miss Lu.”
From across the kitchen island, I throw my mother a look.
“Mummy. It’s Christmas.”
“Not for three more days. And we can always find excuses, can’t we? ‘It’s the first of the month.’ ‘It’s the weekend.’ ‘It’s Tuesday.’”
Without saying a word, Lucie shuts the freezer door, and shirks back toward the breakfast nook.
I lower my voice once she’s out of earshot. “Please don’t do that again.”
“What? She’s getting a little bottom.”
“She’s twelve, Mummy.”
“Well, I didn’t have a bottom like that at that age.”
I close the faucet and turn to look at her. Recently she has allowed her grays to grow in, and they pepper her hairline, wiry and silver, juxtaposed with the chestnut brown. There are lines crossing her forehead, an “eleven” between her eyebrows from years of scolding, scrutinizing, judging. Her lips are thinner now, the skin on her neck like crepe. She will only grow older, less beautiful in her eyes… the Miss Jamaica finalist.
We don’t lose our beauty. It simply changes. But I doubt my mother viewed it that way. And I wondered what that did to her psyche.
“I’d like to shoot you.”
“I’d like to shoot you, too.”
I smile. “With my camera, Mummy. For my project.”
