Dew Angels Read online

  PRAISE

  ‘An incredible read’ OFF THE SHELF

  ‘One Awesome book’ SHELF LIFE

  DEW ANGELS

  MELANIE SCHWAPP

  DEDICATION

  To Grandma, who loved to teach, and who saw no difference in the class or colour of any soul. Mom and Dad, you are my wings, and with your support, I have never been afraid to fly.

  We all suffer from the same affliction …

  adored by some, abhorred by others.

  But the worst affliction of all,

  is to be abhorred by ourselves.

  Anonymous.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

  I’d like to thank my three angels - Briana, Daniel and Claire, for never tiring of my bouncing paragraphs off of them, and for never complaining when my writing cut into a lot of ‘mummy duties’. Thank you Chunky, for allowing me the gift of staying home with he children, an opportunity which granted me blessed time with them, and the six years which it took me to write this novel.

  My gratitude to Annmarie Vaz, Jackie Lechler and Cynthia Hamilton, for telling me that I was a ‘writer’. Your faith in me was a light in many discouraging times.

  My dear sister, Charmian – you are my rock. To my brothers, Warren and Gregory, I say thank you for teaching me that laughter and love are more valuable than the material things in life.

  Very special thanks to Hazel Campbell, Gail Whiteman Moss-Solomon, Maxine McDonnough and Camille Parchment, for holding my hand to see this project through, and for having the wisdom to cut where I was afraid to.

  My heartfelt thanks to my Jamaican people… your humour and pride are the sugar on top of the bitter pill we sometimes have to swallow. You are the essence of this novel.

  Prologue

  Nola’s birth uncovered the secret of the great sin that Fin Thomas had committed many, many years before, but one she bellowed to the world from the very first moment she poked her kinky head into it.

  The secret spoke of a lapse in judgement. Some blamed it on a hidden streak of madness which was said to rear its ugly head every now and again in some member of the outwardly perfect Thomas clan. It must have been madness that caused such a fine specimen of a ‘high-brown’ man to fall in love with, and marry, a girl whose skin was so black that the sun shone its reflection from her face.

  The girl was Patricia Rose Leland, the only daughter of the fruit seller by the Pitts Pen train track. She was the bumptious gal who, in her unlearned, barefooted state, had had the audacity to earn the favour of the most coveted bachelor in Redding.

  It happened the morning her mother was too sick to carry the fruit basket from their shack in the hills to the train tracks that ran through the village, and Patricia had taken over the chore. It was then she captivated the sweet, caramel love of Fin Thomas. That morning, as Patricia sat before her basket of fruit, Fin looked into her ackee-seed eyes and his steps faltered. He came to a complete halt as his gaze fell on those lips, thick as liver, with their soft inner flesh as startling in colour as the girl’s middle name implied.

  To the shock of the village, Fin married Patricia Rose Leland and, in just a shimmy of six years, bred with her four offspring. The only blessed thing about the union, people whispered, was that the children were born with skin as golden as the retreating sun.

  Over the years, as those Thomas offspring bore their own golden babies, the shame of Patricia’s midnight shade retreated into village history, becoming whispered warnings to anyone who showed signs of repeating Fin’s sin: “Choose a girl with nice high colour. Don’t bother with no ‘Fin’ Bride!”

  The sin remained a well-guarded secret until Nola Chambers, Patricia Leland’s great-granddaughter, unearthed it from her mama’s loins and screamed it into her papa’s shocked ears. Nola was born at dawn, but it might as well have been in the dark hours of night. When she revealed her face, as black as a moonless night in December, the muted whispers were at once amplified.

  Unfortunately for Nola, there was no Fin and his unfaltering love to shield her from the disgust of the village. From the very first moments of her life everything she did, every step she took, would be directed right back towards those train tracks—tracks which led, without one bend or curve, straight out of the village of Redding.

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  EPIGRAPH

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  NOLA

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BY THE SAME AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  CHAPTER

  1

  Mama was dying. Even before Louisa called with her swollen voice, Nola knew. That proverbial ‘feeling in the gut’ that put a misty haze on everything. Only the feeling remained sharp, tearing at the senses and mangling the marrow of the bones. Even when she tried to escape it with sleep, it was there, burrowing through the sheets like a maggot. It squirmed into her dreams, and lurked there for three nights.

  The dream itself never showed death. But, Nola knew what it meant to see Mama standing still. Mama never stood still. She was always moving, always chopping. Always that incessant chopping! And yet, here she was standing still in the scallion field, with only the whispy, white-streaked hair blowing like dried river grass in the breeze.

  The dream showed every detail of the field, every ditch, every hump, every muddy curl of worm shit. She could even smell the damp ruddiness of the soil, the spicy sting of the scallions. Mama’s scallions had always bristled with the substantial girth of rain and good manure, but in the dream they were covered with fungus. Mama stood in the midst of the mottled crop, at the end of a broken trail of the stalks. Her path stopped in the middle of the field, even though a gate, just a few yards away, opened wide onto another field dotted with the lush pink of rice-and-peas vines. Nola wanted to shout to Mama to go through the gate, to move away from the rot, but the words were frozen in her throat.

  As Nola watched, the scallions began to collapse. One by one, they bowed to the lifeless statue of Mama. Soon there was no difference between the muddy earth and the curdled rot of the stalks. Suddenly, Mama’s eyes moved. She stared out from the dream. Nola could feel the eyes piercing her. She turned fitfully in her sleep, but the
eyes bored deeper to hold her still. They pierced the lifelines of her body – the blood pumping through her heart, the bubbles of air fizzing into her lungs, the tears perched on her lids. Then Mama’s mouth opened, but instead of words, a blackbird flew from the dark cavity of her throat, with wings so wide that they cast a shadow over the field.

  Mama’s head finally moved. She tore her eyes from the mist of breath perched on Nola’s nostrils and followed the bird with her gaze. Her eyes were brimming with longing as she panted with every wild caw – eyes dry, but longing for tears; mouth open in a silent circle.

  Nola had not seen or spoken to Mama for eight years—eight years of no letters, no birthday greetings, no messages through Louisa’s quick, sporadic phone calls, yet here she was, over 80 miles and eight years away, feeling Mama’s death: drenched in sweat on a pillow musty from three nights of weeping, dreaming of the mother who had sent her away. Dreaming of her, and wondering if she still smelled of bitter onions and sweet rosewater.

  “You better come, she keep callin’ your name.”

  It was to be that simple. Nola was to jump on a bus and head to a home that had branded her soul, then dashed her like a piece of trash unto the roadside. Mama was calling from the euphoria of pain medicine and the erosion of cancer, but calling just the same. Whatever Mama’s body had wanted in life was not what her spirit now wanted in the face of death. After waiting eight years for Mama to call, the wail of a blackbird would do just as well.

  To return was a task that Nola had never thought she would have had to face. It wasn’t that she hadn’t wanted to see Mama, to look into those dull eyes and share her agony. But Nola had always imagined it happening here in Kingston. Mama would come, her market basket filled with her guava cheese and banana bread, and they would sit at the table, the steam of hot cocoa rising over their faces like a hot salve. They would heal the pain without words ever having to be spoken.

  Now memories would have to be faced. On that third night, the last night of the dream, Nola resigned herself to going back and the dream never returned. The ghosts came quickly, as if waiting at the door. The river came too, its gush so strong that her bed bobbed in its power. It coursed into her veins as if it had finally found its wayward tributary.

  That third night, when Nola finally faced her ghosts and her river, they left her body racked dry, and her cheeks streaming with tears.

  CHAPTER

  2

  The story Nola liked best of all Grampy’s stories was the one about the Dew Angels. Grampy told her that at dawn, while the world slept, the angels came down from heaven, perched the sun on the horizon, and washed the earth beneath the pale blue light.

  For many years, Nola thought that the dew-soaked soil was the remnant of an angelic cleansing ritual, the thick fog a curtain of modesty drawn to hide the naked earth beneath. Long after Grampy died, Nola believed his tale. So, when the sores started to come up on her lip, and Papa said, “You too nasty! Outside with that damn cow! That’s why you have them sores all over your face!” Nola thought that the angels could make her clean and she began to wake at dawn to be washed with the earth.

  Mama and Papa’s bedroom was beside the kitchen, the door always held ajar by an old coal iron. Nola always stopped there to check for Papa’s nasal whistle and Mama’s gentle breath. Sometimes, the smell of stale whisky burned through the crack and Nola knew that, on those mornings, Papa would not wake till long after the sun had nudged the manure in the scallion beds.

  After checking that Papa was in his whistling slumber, she would creep down the passage to peep into Louisa’s bedroom. It had been Grampy’s room where she’d spent so much time listening to his stories and massaging home-made pimento oil into his gnarled hands. For days after they’d removed his twisted torso from the house, Nola had curled up on the stained mattress and had only stopped weeping when she heard the whisp, whisp, whisp of his breath—coming from no particular direction—warm and lemony, smelling just as it used to after he’d drunk his morning mug of tea. He had feathered her forehead with kisses, assuring her that he would always be in that room. But one week after Grampy died, Papa told Louisa that she could have the old man’s room.

  As she stuck her head into Louisa’s room to breathe in Grampy, his voice would whisper from the walls, “Mornin’ Little Bird, where you off to before Massa Sun even yawn his first yawn?”

  “Goin’ to the angels, Grampy, to wash away the sores.”

  “Mind you ketch cold in the dew, Little Bird.”

  Louisa never stirred as they spoke. Her beautiful face always remained relaxed, golden skin glowing like one of the angels.

  Not even the mongrel dog would raise his head as Nola glided past his sleeping place on the kitchen step. The fog would embrace her, and she would smell them instantly—jasmine angels, wet grass angels, cow dung angels. She would listen with glee to the light rustle of their wings through the leaves of the coolie plum tree. Ellie would be waiting, sensing her within the swirling mist, her rope winding round and round the braided trunk. Nola would sit on the old tree stump and wait.

  The dew would cling to Nola’s skin, the mask raising the hairs on her face. It would cap the coconut oil on her braids, till a halo of wet light surrounded her. It radiated her soul. It pulled the dirt from deep within her.

  Soon the heat from her skin transformed the halo into myriad streams, trickling them over her mouth so she could taste her own skin’s salt and the dew’s sweet sugar.

  One morning, Nola went for her wash and forgot to close the kitchen door. The mongrel dog pushed it open and went in. He’d caught one of the rats and killed it right in front of the stove, then chewed up Papa’s work boots in the midst of the blood. He’d made such a ruckus that he’d stirred Papa from his sleep. Nola could hear the bellowing from out by the pen—“Stupid gal … out with damn cow … leave door open … beat some sense …!”

  His voice had chased the mist away and sent Ellie tramping round the tree trunk. Even though the words had reached her ears, Nola remained frozen on the stump. She thought of running to the river and hiding within the tall grass, but she would have to come out sooner or later, and it would be worse then.

  She crept back to the house and crouched beneath the kitchen window, readying herself for the blows as she stared at the leather boots that had been flung unto the grass.

  Then Nola had heard Louisa’s voice, hoarse with sleep, but a sweet, sweet sound to her ears. It said, “Papa, don’t be vex. I didn’t see Nola in her bed, so I come to check if she was outside, and I forget to lock back the door.”

  Papa calmed right down. Nola was able to go back into the house, walking far around him in case he spotted the truth in her wet eyes. She sent Louisa a look that said, “Thank you for savin’ me.”

  Louisa bent to pick up Mama’s scotch bonnet peppers that the mongrel had knocked out of the basket. But Papa said, “Leave them! Let her clean up the mess, and when she finish, clean my bloody boots as well!”

  The day after that, the sore on Nola’s lip erupted fiercer than ever before. She couldn’t put anything larger than teaspoons of porridge into her mouth for three whole days and Mama painted on so much gentian violet that her face had remained stained for two weeks afterwards. When the sore eventually went down, it left a dent in the right corner of her top lip.

  If anyone had asked Nola then, why Papa hated her, she would have said it was because of the baby boy. He’d only been one and a half when he drowned in a drum of rainwater.

  Nola came a year after that, but she was nothing like the soft-haired baby who lay in the Redding graveyard. She was the wrong gender and was as black as that moonless night.

  A black baby in Redding, where the folk were ‘hard workers’ when it came to ‘washing out the black’. The village had earned its name because of the deep red colour of its soil, but it might as well have been so called because of the colour of its folk.

  Miss Watkins, Nola’s Class Three teacher, explained that Redding had
been settled, many years ago, by a group of Germans who had come to seek a better life from the disease-plagued conditions of their own country. In the fertile soil of Redding, they had planted not only food crops, but tender-hued villagers as well.

  Granny Pat had been lucky. Just one little girl, Lilly, had dared to be born with the ruddy hint of her mother’s pigment, but she died within hours of birth. Some whispered that Marva Thomas, Pappy Fin’s mama, had presided over the birth and upon seeing the tell-tale darkness tingeing the baby’s ears and fingertips, had commanded the midwife not to slap it and allow the life cry to fill the little lungs with oxygen, nor to wrap it for warmth during the chilly mountain night.

  When Nola’s papa came to Redding from Clarendon and met her mama, he saw only the golden-skinned beauty, the shy doe-eyes and sweet smile which hid the secret of Fin Thomas’s sin.

  CHAPTER

  3

  Nola took the 54 bus from downtown Kingston. As the old bus choked over the asphalt and began its route to Redding, Nola’s memory took her back eight years, right to that very schoolyard in front of which the bus would soon deposit her.

  Only the end of April and already it was as hot as hell; the end of April, and still the rains had not come. Tree limbs hung feebly while flies buzzed dizzily over the empty juice boxes and patty bags scattered in the schoolyard. A slight gust teased now and then, lifting mini tornadoes up Nola’s skirt as she stood under the lignum vitae tree in the middle of the schoolyard, trying to stay cool in the only shade in the yard.

  “Nola, you goin’ eat that?” Dahlia Daley pointed at the half-eaten bun in Nola’s hand. The girl was sitting on the ground in front of her, a thick film of dust on her sweaty face. Nola shrugged and handed her the bun. Dahlia stuffed it into her mouth, with no second thought of the sore lifting the corner of Nola’s lip. No other student would have eaten anything from ‘Fassy-Face Nola’, but, for Dahlia, as long as it was food, it didn’t matter where it came from.