It might be New Year’s Day, but Isaac’s guilt was growing old and big and familiar. He liked the notion that Hope might just occasionally be looking at the picture of Cuffee. He had left it by accident in his haste to go, but he was glad that he had, because, after all, it was Cuffee who had brought his mother’s ancestors to this place two hundred years ago, and it was the blood of those ancestors that ran through Minnie’s veins … when she was alive and kicking inside Hope. Not so the case with the new Minnie. Although he had no biological connection to her whatsoever, he WAS and IS most certainly connected, he knew that for sure.
Fastened forever to her with a big fat fib as the glue.
‘Hey, where you gone?’ Efiba nudged him gently, jerking him into the present.
‘Huh? Ah, you know me …’ he replied.
‘Yes, sir, I do.’ She giggled. ‘Mr Dreamer, floatin’ off all the time. Well, now is no time for daydreams, there’s Puff Puff to put on the table. Priorities.’
‘Yes, yes, I know and Momma has made the caramel sauce.’
‘From the secret recipe she’d have to kill me if she told me …’ Efiba giggled again and Isaac knew she was joking and not joking. It was true that his mother guarded the recipe for the sauce she spread on the sweet dough balls. It was a family treasure and until Efiba was family, that’s how it would stay.
He watched her. She was wiping beads of sweat from her temples and her neck with a cotton cloth she’d retrieved from the freezer. It was the only way to stay cool in the blistering African heat. He found her graceful movements to be so lovely.
Isaac was indeed inching towards asking Efiba to please marry him. She would be such a kind, beautiful, thoughtful wife, and she loved him very much. She showed him in so many ways, every day.
She spooned up behind him and held him close every single morning when they woke up together.
She knew how much he liked his minty tea to start his day, and she brought it in his favourite old tin cup.
She understood that he needed to be quiet.
She paid homage to his parents by respecting their family traditions, however different they were to her own, and she laughed at their jokes and teasing.
She didn’t question him too much; she noticed how tense he became under scrutiny.
She thanked him often for all his kindnesses.
She supported him.
She knew him.
She sensed when he slipped into sadness, and she would whisper, ‘Remember, I am your life jacket anytime you need to wear me,’ in his ear.
She woke him gently when he whimpered in his sleep sometimes, like a dog dreaming of running.
She let him be. Just be.
And Quiet Isaac appreciated all of her. Even the parts of herself she was so harsh about.
‘My forehead is big as a moon.’
‘I’m as short as a twelve-year-old kid.’
‘I don’t know anything much, I’m not clever.’
‘I stink.’
Her regular dialogue was a litany of self-deprecating criticism. It was easy to reassure her when she was down on herself because Isaac genuinely admired her and didn’t see her in any light other than a bright, shiny, positive one.
Something was holding him back from proposing, though. Something he couldn’t explain to her, especially not today, on New Year’s Day, Minnie’s birthday. That’s where his thoughts were … all around little secret Minnie. Where his heart so often was.
Isaac leant over to Efiba and kissed her gently on the cheek. ‘Let’s get the desserts out, come on, before Momma turns murderous …’
It was much later, when the family had gone, and Efiba, full of delicious lunch, was snoozing on their bed, that Isaac sat down to write the letter he’d been constructing in his head all year. Hope had given him a PO box number and they had agreed not to communicate any other way: it was too risky. Isaac hadn’t written yet, he was so unsure what to say, but today was the day.
He was sitting at the table they’d all gathered around at lunchtime. It was cooler now the sun was disappearing. He placed his outdoor petrol-lamp near the pad of lined paper, and he sat back in the rattan chair with his arms behind his head. He looked up at the sky he could see over the tin roofs of the houses further down the hill, and above the busy industrial landscape of the harbour. He took a deep deep breath. He blew out. He wondered for a moment if that same air would ever have the momentum to whirl its way up up up across northern Africa, across Portugal, over the Bay of Biscay, across the pointy bit of France, over Guernsey and Jersey, all the way to Bristol to Minnie, who might just be in the middle of a big baby yawn unknowingly taking in a gulp of African dad-air. Could that happen?
He would so love a connection with her – anything to let her know that he cared. He felt heartbroken that she might grow up believing he had abandoned her easily. Nothing he’d ever done or would ever do was more difficult. This letter might at least go some way to letting her know.
If …
Hope let her see it …
Would Hope let her see it when she could read?
Would Hope ever let her
