The Heart Does Not Bend Read Online Free PDF Page A

shells and on banana and papaya leaves.
    Paul, the dress designer Mikey worked with, was my favourite guest. He was a tall, thin, handsome man who kept his straightened black hair pulled back in a ponytail tied with a red silk scarf. He wore big colourful capes over his street clothes. Helen, Paul’s sister, who also worked in his dress shop, came too. She was tall and slender like Paul and always dressed in a red or black kimono. She piled her hair high on her head in swirls, two chopsticks holding it in place. Her skin was flawless, almost raven black. She was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen.
    There was Nat, a guitarist and singer, and Richard, a short, muscular dancer who looked like a black Yul Brynner. George, a chef at a Chinese restaurant, sported two gold crowns in his mouth. Ken was an actor in pantomimes at the Ward Theatre in downtown Kingston. He was a very prettyman, thin and fragile, like a girl in the movies. There were the twins, Tom and Rex, who dressed in matching clothes, a couple of photographers, a painter and June, the only other woman who was a regular guest.
    Mama’s favourite was Nat. He was older than the others and resembled Uncle Peppie, cool coal-black. He played songs she knew, the mento, and the rhumba, the mambo and the bolero.
    Mama loved to dance; it was one of the few times her face relaxed. I watched her dancing to a mento beat, the hem of her dress floating above her knees, her dress hugging her Sophia Loren breasts. I wanted to dance like her when I grew up. I wanted her breasts and floating hips.
    On these occasions Uncle Mikey was happy and relaxed, too, more so than at any other time. Mama moved easily among his friends. If she had any anxieties, they surfaced when she was sitting alone on the verandah, or when Miss Gatty came on Saturdays to do the washing.

    I didn’t meet the dundus girl until weeks after she came to live next door. She was a quiet girl, who never left her yard to play. The other kids were unrelenting in their teasing. “Dundus gal, dundus gal,” they’d singsong in front of her gate or when she walked home from school. Because of that, her father built her a treehouse in their backyard, which was the envy of the street.
    We met through the fence one day when I was watering my grandmother’s flower bed.
    “Hey, gal, what yuh name?” I asked, spraying the hose on her.
    She didn’t flinch, just stood there staring me down. I sprayed her again and then ran off. She made me uneasy with her white-white face and pale, wide-open eyes.
    A few days later she came to the fence and called out to me.
    “Petal, mi name Petal. Yuh want to come over?”
    I shrugged as if I was quite indifferent.
    “Yuh don’t want to see de treehouse?”
    “Yes, ah guess so,” I answered lazily, and crawled under the barbed-wire fence into her yard. We climbed up to the treehouse using a ladder made of thick rope. I was sitting on the floor thinking about what it would be like to have the treehouse for a bedroom when she asked me, “Yuh want to see something?”
    “Mm-hmm,” I answered, only half-interested.
    “Yuh promise not to tell?”
    “Tell what?” I asked.
    “Yuh have to swear on yuh granny grave dat yuh won’t tell.”
    I hesitated, but curiosity got the best of me. “Ah swear.”
    “Swear on what?” she insisted, staring into my face.
    “Ah swear on mi granny grave.”
    “Now swear on yuh mother grave. Wey she deh?”
    “Canada.”
    “Well, swear on her grave.”
    I swore. Petal took out a matchbox from the pocket of her yellow calico dress. Slowly she opened it, revealing a live grasshopper feeding on grass. She stared at me again, shutting the box.
    “Yuh mek mi swear on mi granny grave for dat?” I asked angrily. I sucked my teeth like my grandmother did and got up to climb down the rope.
    “Wait, ah only joking wid yuh.” She grinned. “Yuh ‘ave nice eyes.”
    I couldn’t find anything complimentary to say about hers, so I just