Pao by Kerry Young

falling out. Is just the sheet tuck in there under the mattress that saving me from hitting the cold tile floor every night.
    And then the last night before we go home we do everything just the same way we been doing it all week. Fay take her shower and fix up herself and when she finish in the bathroom then it my turn to go take a shower and get ready for dinner. They serve dinner the same time every evening. Seven thirty for drinks and the little snack things on the terrace, and the band playing some gentle calypso. Eight pm you seated and working yu way through these five courses that they serve you every night. Not that I am complaining. The food is good, and every night is something else that I never see before. Like to me callaloo was callaloo but here they got it pile up in a little sandwich tower with some thin fried bread in between each layer and some strips of saltfish on top lay out like a star. And what they doing with the lobster I don’t know, but it cheesy and good, and the steak and the cream and the pork and the apple, and a whole heap a green and purple vegetable I can’t even recognise. But it good. It all good. It beautiful too under the clear Caribbean sky with the stars, and the music and the white linen tablecloth and the ice cubes clinking in the big water glass and the candles flickering on a little evening breeze. It nice. It civilised. They know how to look after you in this place.
    To me it is a miracle. It is not a dream come true because I couldn’t have dreamed this. Fay, she take it like she take everything else, like she was expecting it. She in her element.
    So this evening I shower and put on a nice pale blue Sea Island cotton shirt and some grey slacks and I stick a clean handkerchief in my pocket and I step out on to the veranda, and she is sitting there looking out to sea. She got the rocking chair pull up right to the veranda edge with her legs stretch out in front of her and her feet on the little white wall crossed at the ankles. She quiet. So I sit down on the sofa behind her where I can just catch sight of the sun setting. We nuh say nothing. We just stay there like that. Fay looking at the lawn and the sand and the hammock strung up between the coconut trees and me watching a blaze of orange sinking into the sea.
    And then after a while I hear a little sniff and a snivel. A little snivel like she crying. I dunno what to do so I just sit there. But then the sound carry on so I get up and I walk over to where she sitting and I look at her. I look at her in the face and is true, she crying. So I take the kerchief outta my pocket and I hand it to her and she take it. She mop her eye gentle like she don’t want spoil her make-up, but she nuh say nothing. So I go back and sit down on the sofa.
    By this time now it is getting dark and I see the lamps on the other verandas switching on one by one. But neither me nor Fay make no move to go switch on any lamp. We just sit there in the fading light and the silence.
    Then she say to me, ‘My father told me it was better for me to marry you than to spend the rest of my life fighting with my mother.’
    ‘You didn’t have to marry me. You could have wait until somebody more suitable come along.’
    ‘What, after Cicely had set her sights on you?’
    ‘I’m sure Miss Cicely not so stubborn to stick to her own view if maybe you happier with somebody else.’
    Fay just laugh. She just throw her head back and laugh with the tears still rolling down her face. And then she turn ’round and look at me. And looking at her like that it seem like for the first time ever since I set eyes on her that morning at the Chinese Athletic Club, her guard was down.
    ‘You think so?’
    I just sit there because I dunno what to say to her. She look at me and she sorta smile and then she get up and start walk back inside. But just as she going pass me I stand up and reach out. And I grab her and hug her to me. I dunno what make me think it would be alright