Old Testaments
Dr. Jacinth Browne-Howard sitting cross-legged on the beach and laughing. She is holding a hardcover book, while two others rest in her lap. Photo by Jannah Browne.
CW: This story contains discussions of sexual assault.
“‘Strike Amnon down,’ then kill him. Don’t be afraid. Haven’t I given you this order? Be strong and brave.”
2 Samuel 13: 28
March 11, 2008
Yuh wretch.
All the years you can’t talk but all of a sudden, yuh see dolla sign, yuh lip them loose. If yuh feel they go hol’ he yuh lie.
I don’t know who told my mother that people got paid to climb up on a witness stand and tell the unwarped truth. Now I’m starting to think that I’ve made the wrong decision. She’s still cussin’ at me, and I listen from the bean bag in my dorm room, as is our ritual since I came to study journalism at NYU.
When I agreed to testify against that man, I did it because Isaiah wanted me to. Because I needed to. Because a little distance lulls you into a false sense of security. Because the silent empty well I’d been falling down for years finally allowed me to scream.
My mother keeps ranting, and I regret that I sent her that magic jack when her malicious neighbour best friend Kimorra travelled in the Summer. The more she shrieks, the more deliberately my thumb encircles the END CALL button.
Yuh only ever talk to Isaiah, feel yuh too good for anybody now yuh feel yuh could hide up dey nuh? Them soon catch yuh and send yuh tail back, yuh dutty, lying disgrace. Ah know you could hear me. Ansa!
But the only answer I had was for my brother. I don’t owe another soul a word.
The dial tone bleats in my ear.
And I only wish that I had answered him sooner.
June 15th, 1998
Mrs. Joseph is no Ms. Thomas. Mrs. Joseph is only a substitute, a kind of woman who don’t know a lead pencil from a ballpoint. Today make three weeks that she supposed to be teaching us for Sunday School because Ms. Thomas can’t come again.
Ms. Thomas? Now, that is a teacher. She teach us in Juniors for the last year and we love her so much we call her Aunty Kerry. I like her from the jump. She does say – siblings always ought to look out for each other – brother and sister. So, me and Isaiah take that like gospel, that mean we could sit down together every week.
Now that we sitting together, it easier to tolerate Jeremy kicking the back leg of my old, beige plastic chair. It easier to pass notes on tear up paper we pull out of Aunty Kerry big, spiral-back, four subject notebook. It take a while before we start to pass whole conversations quiet, quiet between us. Sometimes he clout me in my head cuz I spit in he eye, whispering too hard, but we get the hang of it.
This morning, Mrs. Joseph is there searching for paper down in Auntie Kerry bottomless, Rubbermaid supply box. She digging as if is a deep grave and she plan to drop in. Her pencil skirt riding right up above her knee from all the bending over and I sure if Pastor Moore was in this scringe up room with us, he would send her straight home to dress again. Mrs. Joseph taking so long that my belly start longing for one of the hard, sticky sweeties Aunty Kerry does have wrap up in red and green Christmas paper.
Mrs. Joseph sweating like a bull by the time she turn round to our class of four bend up row with six people each. I wiggling in my seat and lean forward just in time to hear the little plastic chair groan out like it about to collapse under my weight and Jeremy hoofs.
She dabbing her forehead hard when she say, Watch. I have to run into the main sanctuary to get more pens. Marcus, you a big pickney, you almost thirteen, mind everybody til I come back. 2 Samuel 13: 1 and 2, a nice story dat’s what we will read awright?
She gone before we could answer and we left with Marcus, who short and stocky and love control everything. All ah we rush to grab the old, fray out leather bibles from the pile on Aunty Kerry desk before Marcus could say boo. I find the scripture quick, quick because granny have us searching up verse before we even learn to walk good. It take me three minutes to read them verses over and over until Mrs. Joseph come back and all I could tell you is, I don’t think that this is the “nice” story she mean for us to read.
June 22nd, 1998
If is one thing Union people like is melee. Mrs. Joseph didn’t even break the big, iron doors of the Union Episcopal Baptist Church good before Samantha done report to her mother that something inappropriate happen in class. First Lady Moore broad rim blue hat (that usually blocking everybody from seeing the pulpit) bobbing so hard, I know she vex.
Mrs. Joseph try to talk over Pastor Moore and tell him that she actually wanted us to learn about the rebuke of Saul and how we too facety. But he already royally vex when he shout out that is she who need rebuking for trying to twist the Word and spoil his daughter. He so sorry that Ms. Thomas fall into temptation, she was such a good teacher after all.
The talk about that class went on for weeks to the point that Pastor Moore now teaching the class and insist that nobody else must ask him anything about the incident with Mrs. Joseph.
This morning, we learned about the Creation in Genesis, we read these with granny plenty times but Pastor Moore talking about so much different interpretations he must be learn from his Bible degree that I confused now.
I can’t think about all that too hard though because I look out the kitchen window and see Aunty Kerry getting smaller and smaller, walking down the gravel in front our house. She is a little woman but in class, whenever we sing This Little Light of Mine, loud and clear, we all surround her like she’s the brightest sun.
Her hair always roll up in a bun but today it sticking out by her ears and shoulders like she just roll out her bed. She carrying a green plastic bag so big that the top waving in the wind. It look like an upside-down jellyfish that could swallow she. I feel bad because I never see her hang up so yet.
I miss the conversation that interrupt our good Sunday lunch, as mommy would say, but I know that is Sobers who had get up from the table and go to talk to her at the door. Sobers is big and strapping, with thick shoulders like the Hulk, that look like they will burst his crisp blue blouse. He head so shine that Bloody Mary she self would frighten if she look in it. He carrying that massive baton he always threatening us with, whether or not we behave. Even though he look kind of harmless rubbing his belly at the table, when he get up, he mean business.
Aunty Kerry custom come to our house to talk to him and sometimes she might bring strawberry sweeties for us, but today, Sobers get in he patrol car without Aunty Kerry and pass she straight as soon as she hit the sidewalk. I see she shoulder drop. She turn to pass the neighbour house and I swear she belly look like she swallow the plastic bag.
May 10th, 1997
I only ever went in Aunty Kerry house one time. . .
[Addendum: March 2008]
It was back when Sobers was still Uncle Kyle. He would pick me up from school every Friday because mommy was still sailing, so she could send money for us. He was dropping off some green bananas from the church for the real Ms. Thomas who is Aunty Kerry’s shut in grandmother.
While he assumed his intimidating stance in the doorway of her dark room, stout legs agape and thick arms folded, I skipped off to explore the rest of the little, blue chattel house. It reminded me of a dolly’s house and by the time I’d picked up the scent of ginger and cinnamon, I found her.
She looked just like the Shani doll that came on the TV set at home, now and then. I didn’t know it yet, but this was my Aunty Kerry, cradling between her mittens a pan of sweet potato pudding. I must have looked desperate because she was soon offering me (a complete stranger) a sugary, buoyant slice.
She was so beautiful, the perfect sheen of her dark French twist gleaming every time she turned her head to the afternoon light. When I sat down to eat, my elbow hit something, a book. It tumbled to the floor, landing with its pages spread out like a fan. The Voyage Out, it read, by Virginia Woolf.
Oh, just a book I plan to return to the Old Public Library. Aunty Kerry had sung with a twinkling laugh, adding, my grandmother thought it was a bad omen when I told her that the author had walked into a river with rocks in her skirt because she was going crazy and life was too much to bear.
I didn’t get to say much in response because Uncle Kyle was saying it was time to go in that tone that only spoke once. I hopped into the car, eager to get home to tell Izzy about Aunty Kerry. I even managed to get him a nice helping wrapped in aluminium then folded neatly in a paper bag.
We only lived five minutes away. I counted each ramshackled house like I always did, as we passed. I lost my number when we took a sudden turn on account of the blocked road. I humored him until I realized that the houses started disappearing and coconut trees followed, then sea grape trees replaced them instead. When the car finally stopped, all I could hear was the thunder of the Atlantic against the dark shore. The salt breeze forced its way up my nostrils.
The windows started rolling up, and I found myself wishing that we still had the Suzuki with the manual cranks. When the windows sealed off the final sliver of blue sky, when the doors clicked shut, my tongue stuck in my throat. I’ve never been able to peel it back since, not really.
I said nothing on the way home, just kept lapping the pleats of my rumpled burgundy skirt over my knees, folding each side in and out with trembling fingers. I said nothing when granny peered out from her bedroom to tell me I late for supper and why Kyle take so long to bring me.
Sobers had already gone to busy himself in the kitchen. When Isaiah busted through the curtains leading to the corridor to welcome me home, like always, the needle gathering his brows together burst a dam in me. I wailed and wailed. Snot poured down to my upper lip. Before anybody could ask why, I held out the brown paper bag, creased and darkened – Isaiah’s pudding, now flattened into a sticky pancake.
June 24th, 1998
Izzy does follow me everywhere. To be fair, I sometimes grab his skinny wrist too tight and I don’t realize until he bawl out. Today, is he who following me, just like that Saturday last year when he follow me everywhere until he finally shove a piece a paper in me face and demand that I write down exactly why I turn up three hours late, blatting like a goat, with a mashup piece of pudding.
Isaiah two years my senior but we tight like twin.
Boy, Ayani I does think bout that Bible story all the time.
He must see my eyes look confuse because he pat my head and tell me it go be alright. We read that whole story the same Sunday, of course we did. We don’t have parents to bawl out in horror.
Even though mommy been back a few months now and I just write Common Entrance, she never home and she won’t talk to me unless Izzy there to translate. Most of the time she want to tell me to wipe the mahogany centre table with Lysol or to go pick up the clothes on the line. One time, she tell me if I pass high enough to go to town school I could go stay with her sister and she don’t have to worry bout my face again.
Today, Izzy playing he helping me wash white shirts with blue soap on the jukking board in the yard. My mother no sooner than that, block up the entrance of the house, hands on hips.
Isaiah what you doing out there? Leave the dummy pickney and come go to the shop to buy two pound ah saltfish. Sobers go give you a ride down, just walk come back.
My eyes mus be two big saucer bowl cause Izzy watch me and smile his big, charming smile. He pull a piece of leather from his pocket and I could see the shiny jack knife he get from one of his friends at school. I grab his shoulder. He’s two heads taller and skinny like a board but he’s a thread next to Sobers.
You deserve better, Yani, the best.
He run off before I could answer, grab the money out mommy hand, hug she up, then jump in the car with Sobers. I scrubbing harder than ever now and I don’t know when I notice the burning in my hand but when I look down the water a kind of pink and my whole knuckle tear up as if I been fighting with a dog that trying to bite me.
April 1st, 2008
The policeman came to our house on June 25th. He perched himself at our round kitchen table with his legs crossed and nodded his oblong head as if concerned that my brother didn’t come home in almost 24 hours. He claimed that Sobers was at the precinct working late and hard because he wanted to know who did this to my brother. This man, Officer Drayton, despite his stutter, was here to deliver a death knell and a warning.
Ms. S-samson, they find a b-body down b-bayside. A tall b-boy in a green shirt and jeans pants with a knife in he hand. The b-boy cut up all over, S-sobers say he went off with some friends yesterday. Dem want you come identify the b-body.
My mouth formed a wide tunnel, but nothing was coming out. Nothing eventually did. My mother’s shrieking pierced my ears, I still hear it, louder than any of her rants. Always loudest, drowning out every question about my brother’s whereabouts. Where was Sobers? Why couldn’t he identify the body? Where was my brother?
We treated Mrs. Joseph’s story like prophecy, not accident, latched to it, learned it.
Only Amnon is dead . . . meanwhile, Absolom had fled. . . only Amnon is dead.
Then why, to this day, is he still alive?
June 24th, 2010
My dear Ayani,
I should have written sooner. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that you would see the bulletin in the online newspaper seeking confidential informants to convict Kyle Samson of multiple cases of sexual assault. And respond!
I’m thinking this is my own fault, you see, I’d been teaching Sunday School again (such a long story there) and a little boy who had just started coming told me his brother had been a part of a class in ’98. I couldn’t remember the occasion, but he mentioned that the class was scandalized by II Samuel 13. Now my dear, I didn’t know how the parents would feel about me reading this scripture with a group of eleven-year-olds, but I did my best to teach them using it about how they could speak for themselves where they could.
After class a little girl came to me, told me her mother had a new boyfriend, and he kept touching her. I can’t write it all here but thank God my son Joseph and the new Commissioner of Police’s son are good friends. Is the grace of God alone that I get through to her mother and the Chief, then I am to find out is Sobers behind this the whole time.
Ayani, I was livid, I would fight to make sure that man never touch another child again. It wasn’t easy. The testimonies were supposed to be confidential, I don’t know how your mother found out about yours, now the whole community knows. The day I watched the video with your recording in court, I bawled. Darling, I have never once heard your beautiful voice, and you do not deserve what that man did to you... to us.
Ayani, I heard that he was finally convicted because more evidence was provided – your letters darling – after you were discovered on campus, Spring 2008.
Three stories beneath your window – sprawled on the ground, a crimson pool around your fresh perm, in pink pajamas and bed slippers like a broken Barbie doll. It was so hard to get that chain mail out of circulation, that image out of my head.
The police opened all the letters as you’d dated them, they opened the ones you kept sealed from your brother too. They’re apparently reopening the case on his murder. They shared the records with the department here and on the news. Did all that note passing in class come to this?
Oh, Ayani I wish I knew. Only nine years is a travesty, I know. Will we ever get what we deserve? Still, I’ll try to be brave as you were, as long as I’m here, just for you.
Love Always,
Aunty Kerry
