The Pink House at Appleton Read Online Free PDF Page B

burdens and unfulfilled dreams. When her job was done, Pepsi tiptoed behind Mama out of the room to languish on the verandah on the white rattan chairs. She languished there while the sun’s rays crept lazily across the tiles, and while Barrington, who had suddenly developed a habit of being very attentive to Mama, stood at the French windows with his hands in his pockets, watching.
    Boyd lingered at the end of the verandah in the long grass, hoping to catch Pepsi’s words, to glimpse her slender legs which ended in brown open-top shoes with loosely buckled straps, and sniff the adult scent of the Pond’s Cold Cream that she wore. Her coming and her presence had already created dramas of epic proportions in his head. And in those dramas she fought with Estella and Lydia Parsons for his special attention.
    â€˜Pepsi!’ a voice hollered from beyond the green hedge. ‘Mrs Moore want you!’ It was Icilyn, Mrs Moore’s maid. ‘Pepsi, where are you? Come now, you hear? Pepsi!’
    Poppy rushed to the side of the house, barking hard, fazed by this reckless, disrespectful shouting in the quiet of mid-morning when the only sounds were radio sounds, the sublime voices and music of
Housewives’ Choice.
    â€˜Pepsiiii! Pepsiiii!’ The voice seemed desperate.
    Poppy was barking himself to death.
    â€˜Pepsiii! Mrs Moore want you. Come now. Pepsi! You hear me, chile?’
    Pepsi took the steps down to the garden two at a time. Sunlight splashed her hair. Boyd, Barrington and Yvonne watched the thin-legged figure till it vanished in a dazzle of colour at the garden fence. What manner of girl was this?
    The next day, in the long grass at the far end of the garden, hidden from the house, Pepsi came suddenly upon Boyd and Poppy. She found them gazing into air.
    â€˜Do you know what place this is?’ Pepsi asked brusquely.
    Boyd hesitated. They were a long way from the house, alone in the grass with Pepsi.
    â€˜This is where the slaves were beaten by the slave owners in slavery days,’ Pepsi related. ‘You live on a sugar estate and don’t know that? They don’t teach you these things at school because Jamaica is a colony and they want to keep you down, but my cousin who’s at university told me. The women slaves were lashed with cat-o’-nine tails. Their clothes were ripped off.’ Pepsi looked about. ‘Have you ever seen a naked woman?’
    Again Boyd hesitated, trying to make sense of the question.
    â€˜Not your mother. Everybody’s seen their mother naked.’
    Boyd didn’t know what to say. He had his secrets and his reserve.
    â€˜Have you ever seen a naked woman who wasn’t your mother?’
    â€˜Yes,’ Boyd said. Poppy’s tail waltzed slowly as if hypnotised.
    â€˜Who?’
    He didn’t want to say.
    â€˜Boyd, I said who? Who was it?’
    Boyd was silent.
    â€˜It’s your maid,’ Pepsi told him.
    Boyd nodded, with relief. He didn’t want to talk about the fleshy, pink women in the encyclopaedia. He didn’t know how to tell about them.
    Pepsi laughed. ‘Ha, ha. Boy. Spying on your maid. Disgusting. That is what you country boys do, spy on people. You were, weren’t you?’
    Boyd didn’t answer.
    â€˜I said you were spying on her. Was it when she was undressing in her room? Tell me. I know what you people get up to.’
    Boyd couldn’t think, the air full of the women’s lotion and earth smells.
    â€˜Did you spy on her when she was in the shower?’
    Boyd nodded. She already knew. He had watched Perlita in the shower from a crack in the adjoining cubicle as she shrieked and gasped under the gushing water. It was her joyful shrieking and the rush of the water that had called him to her. He remembered the three tufts of black hair, her bouncing titties concentrating his eyes, the fleshy form that was woman, and he could not, did not want to stop looking. Later in the