The Man Who Turned Both Cheeks by Gillian Royes

Author:Gillian Royes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Paperback

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The woman sat with her back erect, a proud woman from the southern agricultural district, always above her husband’s fishing folk. She was small and fine boned, with the bronze skin and hooked nose of her ancestors who’d sailed from India on British ships after the slaves were freed, contract laborers for the sugarcane fields. It had been at least ten years since he’d seen her last, and Shad remembered very little of her. She had lived with her son after her fisherman husband died at sea, a woman who hardly spoke to anyone, before or after the incident.

“I don’t know where he gone,” she said. What little hair she had left had been given a bad dye job long ago and was now pulled back into a bun, which she kept clasping.

“I don’t want to know his whereabouts, Sister Elsa,” Shad said. “I just need your help, that’s all.”

“What kind of help?”

“I want to ask you a few questions.”

It had taken almost a week to find her, precious time wasted. She had left Largo a month or two after it happened, and the house at the end of their lane had sat empty since then, the zinc roof fallen in and rats scurrying across the floor. Her next door neighbors hadn’t been helpful.

“Like she disappear in the middle of the night,” Mas Alvin had said. “She was never the same after that night, you know. She didn’t even say good-bye or nothing.”

The old ladies in the market who usually knew everything had shaken their heads. “One week she here, and the next she gone,” Miss Winnie said. She’d tightened her mouth and started counting the change in her money belt.

It was Neville, his sergeant cousin in Port Antonio, who’d helped him to track her down. He’d run his fingernail down a column in a ledger and stopped at one line.

“What you want with her?” he’d said in his bossy policeman way, his finger still on the name, stomach pulsing against his starched uniform and threatening two buttons.

“I have something to give her,” Shad told him.

“It say here that the son was arrested for indecency in 2003. He was living with her at 28 Santana Road, here in Port Antonio. You can check see if she still there.” Shad thanked him, the cousin who’d never forgiven him for bringing the family name down.

The house at number 28 was nicer than Shad expected, bigger than his own, with a fresh coat of yellow paint on the exterior. He’d knocked, and a large Indian woman had opened the door. Behind her was a living room with neat furniture and a rug with an animal pattern.

“Excuse me, please, is a lady living here by the name of Miss Elsa?” Shad had asked.

“Who want to know?” the large woman said, blocking the doorway.

“Tell her Shad of Largo Bay come to see her.” Her sister wasn’t at home, she said, but he could wait outside for her. He’d sat on the front step until Miss Elsa, looking much older now, pushed open the gate.

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