YAKIMA CUFFY-BAZIL
There are a great many things that a diasporic teenager with a military mother has seen – but a house sitting atop a Bedford truck at the height of midday traffic was certainly not one of them. Celeste’s belly somersaulted all the way from Fond Cole to Bellevue Chopin as her Aunt drove her silver Corolla behind the truck. The long, loose ringlets of her hair fluttered out the window, their speckles of gold shimmering in the sunlight. She was not used to the narrow city thoroughfares, nor the precipitous roads that curled themselves around the mountain. It was a mystery how the truck in front of them sped along, with her Aunt’s chattel house dancing to and fro as they bent the serpentine corners leading to the village. Behind them was a van carrying furniture and appliances – a kerosene fridge, twin-size mattress, cooktop burner and floral couch whose upholstery long past its prime. It was a small motorcade of things that were altogether out of place.
“You alright, chile? You look like you bout to puke,” Aunty Mara regaled.
Celeste nodded and swallowed hard.
“Don’t worry, we almost there.”
Celeste had met Aunty Mara only once before – the summer she turned five. She barely remembered much about her aunt, but flashes of the chattel house kitchen where Celeste, her mother and Aunt Mara kneaded their laughter into tamarind balls floated across her mind like driftwood. That summer, they used to sit for hours sharing stories while shelling tamarind, adding sugar crystals and a little black pepper in a calabash bowl and rolling the tart treat into tiny orbs. Celeste recalled the joy and the sweat of their labour.
There was sweat today as well – so much of it that it seemed to soak through her cotton t-shirt and short jeans pants. There was a little bit of something else too. Perhaps fear. Perhaps longing.
Celeste’s mother had been deployed to Iraq. It was her first tour outside of the US, so Celeste was sent to stay with her Aunt until…
The girl was used to moving around as a child. Since she was three, she had rarely lived in one place for over a year. And until today, she had never known that it was an option to carry one’s house along when one moved. There was nowhere in particular she really called home, although there were parts of each of the six houses she and her mom had lived in that came as close to home as she ever thought she would get.
The first house in Philadelphia had a library where Celeste would bury herself in books while her mother trained on base. Their second dwelling in New Jersey was smaller, with paper-thin walls, chipped paint and a leaky kitchen faucet. Her mother often remarked that the house had a lot of “character”.
House number three had bathroom acoustics that rivalled the finest amphitheater, and the Fort Lauderdale weather was excellent for traipsing through the nearby park after school. The fourth had a living room with a fireplace, where Celeste and her mother would roast marshmallows and drink Dominican cocoa during the horrible Chicago winters.
Celeste fell in love with the wrap-around porch overlooking Lake Michigan at their penultimate residence. It was here, at thirteen, that she had met her father for the first (and last) time. He showed up unannounced with a stuffed teddy bear and chocolate-covered almonds. She was allergic to nuts.
At their final home – a three-bedroom Atlanta townhouse – Celeste made a haven out of the walk-in bedroom closet where she buried life’s mementos – the teddy bear from her father, her grandmother’s ring, a picture of her mother holding her as a baby, her journal and the secret letters she had written to the boy in her class with the fresh fade, crooked smile and Jamaican accent. He had shared his headphones with her during Homeroom and complimented her art. She had drawn a picture of a tamarind tree at sunset, the place where the two people she loved most in the world found peace.
The boy had recognised the tree from his homeland. “Tamarind, look pon sugar. Come leh we ball up!” he said tersely.
Celeste had smiled coyly. She wondered what the boy was doing now, halfway across the world.
“We reach!” Aunty Mara announced.
A crowd of people had already gathered, some familiar faces – Benji (Aunt Mara’s boyfriend) and some neighbours – and a few unfamiliar faces too. The men were tying rope to the chattel house on the truck to form a pulley, and the convivial women were fanning the flames beneath the coal pot nearby. The village of Bellevue itself was a quiet nook nestled in the contours of a mountain. Apart from the congregation which came to help mount the ti kais, Bellevue lacked the rhythmic bickering of neighbours that she had strangely grown accustomed to in Fond Cole, and the blare of sirens that forced her out of bed almost every morning back in Atlanta. The houses were also further apart, each with its own backyard garden decorated with herbs and tea bush and vegetables. In Fond Cole, there were no secrets. The houses were so close, Celeste often overheard the mothers praying for their imprisoned sons, or couples fighting, or the latest village gossip. But here, she would have to get used to the tranquility, and the space.
Celeste clambered out of the vehicle.
“Is that little Cece?” a woman shouted excitedly running toward her with her arms wide open.
As the lady pulled her in, Celeste’s face slammed into the woman’s ample bosom. Her breath smelled like stale tobacco. She was tall and stately, unlike short, petite Aunt Mara.
“I remember you when you were only this tall,” the strange woman said, her arms floating at her hip to demonstrate their acquaintance.
“Celeste, this is your big Aunty, Consuella. She was Granny’s sister.”
Celeste could only muster a half-smile.
“Is she who give me this piece of land to put down some roots. De government give me 30 days to vacate. Can you believe it? After all those years. But God is good – my ti kais going up right here on this plot.”
Celeste didn’t have much of a concept of God, although she prayed to Him every day to protect her mother overseas. He hadn’t answered her when she prayed for her father to stick around, or for her mother to leave the military, or for a place to call home. She was hopeful that this time would be different.
“So, how you like Bellevue so far?” Consuella inquired.
Celeste looked to the left and to the right. “There’s no tamarind tree,” she blurted out.
There was silence at first, then the entire contingent burst into laughter.
“Chile, come learn how to roll dumpling,” Aunt Mara remarked.
The pot was already bubbling on the firetop. Aunt Mara and Consuella sliced green bananas, yam, carrots and potatoes and dropped them into the pot. Then they threw in the lentils, back and neck, followed by some fresh herbs.
Now, it was time for the dumplings. Flour, cornmeal and a little salt. Consuella did the first one – massaging it between her two palms like tamarind balls. They were perfectly rounded – soft to the touch, yet stiff enough to keep their form.
It took Celeste several attempts to get hers even as half as good as Consuella’s. She wondered whether her mother would be proud of her dumplings, and if the food in Baghdad smelled this good.
“How did my parents meet?” Celeste surprised even herself with this question.
Consuella and Mara stared at each other for a moment.
Aunt Mara cleared her throat. “Your mother get a scholarship to study at a college in the States. She met your father there. He was a star soccer player, but a knee injury cost him his spot on de varsity team. When your mother tell him she pregnant, he was ecstatic. De following day, she never heard from him. She found out from the school’s coach that Andrew had drop out of school. She tried calling and texting, but he never answered. Then she had you. After graduation, she enlisted for de military. A few years ago, he contacted her out of de blue and told her he want to be part of your life. Although she had her doubts, she didn’t want to keep you from your father.”
“Was that when he showed up on our veranda?”
Mara nodded. Consuella sucked her teeth.
Visions of the flowery chiffon summer dress she had worn that day to meet her father, and the taste of chocolate sticking to the roof her mouth, flooded Celeste’s mind. He didn’t look like the pictures of the decorated athlete her mother had shown her, his head partially bald and his belly protruding over his belt. Overgrown stubble dotted his face – his skin, the colour of a winter morning. He barely said ten words to her before her throat tightened and her body went limp.
“So, why did she choose the army, Aunty Mara?”
“She wanted to become a doctor but couldn’t afford it. De military paid for her medical degree and offered her a steady income.”
“One… two… three… pull!” Benji yelled, his breath laboured as the men hoisted the ti kais off the truck and onto the concrete foundation. It took them some time to get the chattel house in place. They had to be careful that the entire wooden structure didn’t fall apart during their maneuvers.
“Soup ready!” Consuella announced, and the men all swarmed around the pot at once. There was slurping and belching and the unnerving sound of silverware against ceramic bowls. Soon, they were finished eating and the booze started to flow.
The women who had been cooking left the fireside and went into the house to help Aunt Mara unpack and move the furniture. They moved meticulously – an assembly line of people working in tandem. Celeste always thought it took six months to unpack a house. She was used to searching for cups in the bedroom cupboard and digging kitchen towels out of the box under the bathroom sink even after weeks of moving to a new neighbourhood. Life with her mother was haphazard like that; like navigating one’s way through a minefield.
Time slowed down that afternoon, and by sunset the work was complete. The men were playing dominoes outside and the women were taking shots of ginger wine when Aunt Mara’s Blackberry rang. The phone had been a gift from Celeste’s mother.
Celeste watched curiously as her Aunt dropped both the phone and the plastic cup in her hand to the ground. Mara fell to her knees and started bawling. “Not my sister, not my sister. Oh God, please, not Connie.”
Celeste immediately froze. Her heart throbbed. Her throat suddenly went dry. The truth stung like sour tamarind. She knew that her chattel days had finally come to an end. This was home.
