The Heart Does Not Bend by Makeda Silvera Read Free Book Online

it loose and plaiting it again. Mama sat close by, listening to her mother’s hum and to the changing sea, looking at me with pride on her face.
    For the rest of the holiday, we sea-bathed, ate fresh fish, sang and listened to Mammy talk of her girlhood. I’d fold myself in the comfort of Mama’s lap and listen. Some days the sea was a deep, quiet, shimmery blue, but other times it would turn restless and dark, whipping against the house. On one such night, Mammy began to talk about slavery times.
    “Is about 1890 mi born yuh know, so mi pon dis earth long time. Mi see whole heap, mi born not far from here, Port Antonio. Dem time whole heap of ship use to come in from all over de world and dock dere. Is right dere dem dock mi grandmother, tek her from Madagascar, bring her pon slave ship to here.” Mammy shook her head, spit in her handkerchief and continued. “Mi never know her, never even know mi own mumma, she dead when mi a baby. But she give birth to thirteen before mi, nine sister and four brother, all mi sisters raise mi after she dead. Ah never school, but mi do wid what mi had, and God never left mi.” She smiled and looked up at the sky, her hands raised and trembling in the air.

    That September I went back to school. I was a good student and my report cards showed it, but I hated having to sit all day in a classroom, hated having to be nice and clean in my starched uniform.
    Myers often came to our house. Sometimes he was like a shade plant in the garden, so quiet that I didn’t know he’d come till he was gone. I often rushed home from school just to sit with him in the garden. Myers didn’t take Uncle Freddie’s place. We didn’t fly kites, and there wasn’t the same excitement during crab season, though Dennis still brought by plenty for us. I think I must have decided back then, sitting with Myers, that I would work with plants.
    “Dirt is life, yuh know, everything grow,” he said, covering my small soft hands with his calloused ones. He gently circled my fingers in the dry dirt. “Wid just water, a little care, yuh can create beauty wid flowers, grow vegetables and fruit, yuh won’t go hungry. Ah going back to de country one of dese days, leave de city life.”
    One evening shortly after I had returned to school, I came home to find that he had dug and raised a tiny bed for me. “Molly, ah got some suckers fi yuh to plant,” he said excitedly. “Water dem every morning before yuh go to school, and in de evening when de sun go down. Yuh should never water in de sun-hot, it not good for de plants.” He handed me a small hoe to dig into the water-soaked dirt. “Yuh going to use yuh hands as a measurement to decide where to plant de other suckers. We don’t want dem too closeto each other, and not too far apart.” The dirt between my fingers and the smell of the damp earth pleased me no end. Were it not for the tiny suckers, I would have rolled like a pig in the dirt.
    “How long dem will tek to come up, Myers?” I asked.
    “Patience, little Moll, dat is what it will tek,” he said mysteriously. “Yuh just water dem, spend time wid dem, and we will dig for weeds once a week.” Later that night, as was our custom, we sat on the verandah with my grandmother, having a cold drink, listening to Uncle Freddie’s friends playing soccer and breathing in the scent of mangoes and rose-apple blossoms caught in the night’s heat.
    A few weeks later, in the middle of the night during a heavy rainfall, I heard Mama crying Myers’s name over and over, and hoarse whispers coming from Myers. I tried to wake from my sleep but couldn’t. I felt the big bed rocking from side to side, but with the heavy rain outside, it was easy to believe that I was in the sea, safe in the bosom of Mama’s arms, and the hoarse whispers were like waves in my ear and Mama’s cry a lullaby.
    A glorious morning followed the rain, and I awoke to blue skies with streaks of burnt orange and crimson and Mama calling,