Free The Heart Does Not Bend by Makeda Silvera Page A

with my grandfather. The bed creaked and my uncle called out Frank’sname. My grandfather was so busy telling his own stories that he didn’t hear. But I did, and for the first time, I was vexed with Uncle Mikey.
    Monday, when I came home from school, a cot and the small dresser that held my clothes had been moved into a corner of the living room for me. A lovely floral screen made a partition. My grandfather started sleeping in Mama’s bed. His bandages came off and he returned to work. Each evening he came home carrying a paper bag holding another piece of his clothing. Mama spent a lot of time at the stove, cooking like she did for Uncle Mikey’s parties, and we ate together as a family most evenings. Even though I had stopped talking to Petal, I still cared about what she thought. I made a point of watering the garden when she was out in her yard. I looked haughtily over the fence at her, for the whole street knew my grandmother’s husband had come back.
    The odd night, he missed supper and came home smelling like the bottom of a rum barrel. He’d bang at the door, because Mama hadn’t given him a key.
    One Saturday evening he came home from work earlier than usual and handed Mama a small bottle of perfume. In no time supper was simmering on the stove. Mama washed and combed her hair and slipped into her best jersey dress, showing off every inch of her curves.
    “Maria, yuh still one well-built woman. Nuh young gal can put a candle to yuh.”
    She smiled, pleased. But she still sucked her teeth. “Yuh gwaan wid yuh sweet mouth, yuh cyaan fool mi.” A peal of laughter followed.
    We sat down to eat and Grandfather Oliver amused and flattered her some more. She fell right into his rhythm, bold as the overgrown bougainvillea hanging over our barbed-wire fence. Maybe she was thinking of the girl from the seaside town who fell in love with a handsome boy named Oliver. Later we settled in the living room, and Grandfather Oliver searched through our record collection.
    “Maria, remember dis?”
    It was a song I’d heard at Uncle Mikey’s parties, “Man in the Streets,” by Don Drummond. Then he played one by Duke Ellington, who was one of her favourites. He pulled her to her feet and I sat on the couch and watched them dance a waltz and then the cha-cha, her skirt swirling above her knees.
    A soft breeze drifted through the windows, and the scent of bougainvillea swept into the room. I wished that all my friends on the street could see my grandmother.
    For a time we stopped going to Grand-aunt Ruth’s restaurant on Saturdays. Instead, we stayed home and waited for my grandfather to come home to supper. Mama always dressed up, and I was the bartender, serving rum and coconut water, or just plain water with ice. We still went to the movies every Friday night, since that was also my grandfather’s night to stay out late with his friends.
    Mama looked more rested in her face. I looked forward to evenings with my grandfather, just as she did, though I couldn’t help but compare him to Myers. Myers knew the difference between the little tomfool lemon-yellow wing, he knew the patoo by its call, he knew lizards by their croaks and which ones changed colour. Grandfather Oliver didn’tmuch care about flowers or their names, and he didn’t know the difference between crabgrass and carpet grass, a hummingbird and a doctor bird. Still, I welcomed the change in Mama.
    With Grandfather Oliver around, Uncle Mikey spent less and less time at home. Mama must have noticed, too, but she said nothing about it. Then one day Uncle Mikey told her that he was definitely moving the Sunday parties to Frank’s place.
    “Mama, ah mek up mi mind, ah think it best. Ah feel uncomfortable with Oliver around, is not de same. Him don’t like mi friends and ah don’t want no embarrassment.”
    “But Oliver have no say in anything. Him nuh own de place.”
    “Mama, ah don’t want to argue or cause nuh strife, but him is here over six weeks,