Excerpt: Starry Starry Night by Shani Mootoo

Excerpted with permission from Book*hug Press

I am alone in the bed when I awake. I hear Ma and Polly and Barlow talking but not their words. There is a whirring sound on the veranda, too. I call for Ma, but she doesn’t come. I call as loudly as I can. Still, no one answers. The sound of the whirring slowly comes nearer. I smell something sharp. It can only be Frank polishing the floor. I get down from the bed and go to the washroom by myself. When I finish, I pull the peerha to the sink and climb on it to wash my hands. I use lots and lots of soap and blow soap bubbles into the air.

It is Frank. The two round brushes at the end of the long pole he pushes and pulls across the floor spin and whirr in opposite directions. Frank doesn’t smell of rum this morning. Perhaps because all I can smell is the dark reddish-brown paste he spreads on the floor as he goes along. When he sees me, he stops long enough to bend down with his big happy smile and clap his hands at me and ask me if I am excited about something or the other. I don’t think he is drunk, but I still don’t know what he is speaking about, so I run away to the kitchen. Ma turns to see me and presses me to her body. She asks in alarm why my shirt is soaking wet and if I’ve gone by myself to peepee. She says, How many times I tell you not to play in the water? Now is not the time for you to be getting sick, you hear? All these years I am trying my best with you, and is now you going to go and make trouble for me? She takes me back into the bedroom and changes me, but she does it with more haste than usual. She doesn’t stay long brushing my hair and doesn’t play pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake with me as usual. Her haste makes me want to rush about, too, and I begin prancing in circles around her. She gets stern and holds my shoulders hard and tells me to behave myself, but I wasn’t misbehaving and don’t know what she means. I suck my teeth like Barlow does, and she raises her hand to hit me, but she stops and pulls me to her and hugs me, kissing my head. She is crying. It’s as if I make her cry all the time now. She looks at me, and her eyes get full of tears. I don’t know why. I hug her, and I want to cry, too. Still she says, Look, behave yourself, please. I begging you.

Everyone seems upset or busy or excited. Nothing is making sense. I feel excited, too. People are coming to stay with us. Not my cousins, but people I don’t know. I think they live in a faraway country, with lots of big waves and fish and ships between them and us. There are two children, but they are smaller than I.

Barlow makes breakfast and I have to eat it by myself because Pa is downstairs in the main office with his workers. Usually when he and I eat in the breakfast room, there is nothing on the table but our food and salt and pepper. But today there is a high pile of clean, pressed, and folded laundry—sheets, I think, or maybe curtains. He would be very upset about that. Pa likes everything tidy.

Barlow stands next to me while I poke at the scrambled egg. She won’t feed me a spoonful like Pa does and allow me to run around the house and return for another spoonful until the plate is clean. She says the floor is too slippery, I will fall, and she doesn’t have time for all of that horsing around today.

Pa doesn’t usually go downstairs to the office so early. When he comes up, he gives me a stack of paper that is blank on one side, crayons held together with a rubber band, and a pen with knobs you slide to get nibs with different-coloured ink. He will not draw the X and O game he taught me. He says I have to sit like a good girl and draw pictures. When I ask Polly to show me how to draw a boat, she steupses and laughs and says she don’t have time to draw no boat. She says, Everybody busy, child. You can’t see that? You life changing just now, and you still don’t know what coming your way. I don’t envy you. Stay there and draw quiet. You always drawing so nice. Draw what you know.

*

Ma is baking a sponge cake. She puts icing on it. She made chocolate fudge yesterday, with nuts in it. Polly made sorrel this morning, and when it cooled, she funnelled it into whisky bottles. The house smells of cinnamon and ginger, like Christmas. I want a cup of sorrel, but everyone is busy, so I decide to get it for myself. I open the fridge and it is packed with food and bottles of sorrel and ginger beer. I try to think: Is it Christmastime? No, there is no Christmas tree, no presents being wrapped, no black cake. No ponche de crème was made. So, what is all the commotion about? Polly rushes at me and pushes me away from the fridge and asks if I am looking to make a mess for her in the kitchen. She pours a glass of sorrel for me. The smell of spices in it, of the same little cloves and of the sticks called cinnamon that she puts in cakes, is strong. But it isn’t yet cold. When I ask her to put ice in it for me, she tells me to leave the kitchen and drink it just so. I stand in the doorway, sniff the perfume in my glass, and pretend to just drink my juice, but I am also looking at everything and trying to listen and understand why there are so many tins of sweets and cakes on the counters.