Black Cake(26)

Covey batted away her father’s hand. As he laughed, she noted a solicitous tone to his voice, a tone that rode up her back and stiffened it into a wall of resistance. When Covey’s father mentioned Clarence Henry, she knew it meant trouble.

“Little Man?” Covey said. “What business does that delinquent have coming to our house?”

“Clarence Henry,” Lin said, insisting on using the man’s formal name instead of the nickname he’d earned for his massive shoulders, “is coming around to see you.”

“To see me? What for?”

“I think he’s coming to court you.”

Covey let out a sharp laugh. “Court me?” She didn’t know which sounded more ludicrous, the idea that Little Man would be so genteel as to court anyone or the idea that she was expected to entertain a visit from a gangster and bully of a man who was nearly as old as her father. From what Covey had heard, Little Man wasn’t the type of person who should be welcome in anyone’s home, not even on a Sunday.

“Court me? And what mek dat man tink…?”

“Patois!” That’s all her father ever had to say to stop her from slipping into the dialect, which had always been off-limits to her.

She began again. “Where did that man get the idea that he could come around to court me, when you don’t even think I’m old enough to go down to the beach with my friends?”

“I never said you couldn’t go down to the beach, I said you shouldn’t go swimming out in the blasted sea alone in the middle of a bloody hurricane.” Swearing, on the other hand, was not off-limits to her father.

“It wasn’t really a hurricane, Pa.”

“No, of course not, just a deadly little storm.”

“Plus, I wasn’t on my own.”

“I was there, too, remember? I saw how you were not on your own. I saw how you had to pull the so-called safety boat to safety. What a joke.” Her father put his hands on his hips. “And, anyway, that is neither here nor there, young lady. Clarence Henry is coming around this afternoon, so you’d better go and get yourself cleaned up.”

“Clarence Henry can come around to court you, Pa, I will not be here.”

“Oh, yes, you will, Coventina.” Her father raised his voice in that way he often did when he’d been at the drink, but there was a softness around the eyes, a kind of question. No, a kind of pleading that turned her skin cold.

“What did you do, Pa? What did you do?”

“Covey, just do this for your pa, won’t you?” he said, more softly, now. “Just humor the man. It’s Sunday. Let him come around and have a cool glass. I did some business with him and he expressed an interest in—”

Covey slammed her hand down on the kitchen counter next to the small tower of sweets that had been forming on a piece of parchment paper. A couple of tamarind balls tumbled off the counter onto the floor.

“You did business with Little Man?” she said. “What kind of business, Pa? Gambling business? You don’t owe him money, do you?” Covey’s father didn’t respond, but the shift in his face made it clear enough. Covey turned and walked away, flattening an errant tamarind ball underfoot. She could see now why her mother had left her father. She just couldn’t see how Mummy could have left her, too.

“Coventina!”

She didn’t turn around when her father shouted her name, but she was trembling. She thought of Little Man’s reputation as a ruthless moneylender, as someone whose threats could have deadly consequences. Covey’s hands were still shaking as she pulled open the door of the wardrobe in her bedroom, as she tried to pull up the zipper of the dress she’d chosen.

Covey wanted to slip out of the house but if she did so, it could mean big trouble for her father. If she even said the wrong thing to Little Man, it could mean trouble. Later, she kept these thoughts firmly pinned to the front of her head as she showed Little Man Henry into the front room and he leaned back against the settee, closing his fingers around a tamarind ball.

“Delicious, Coventina,” Little Man said, settling his gaze in the dip below her collarbone before sliding it down past her waist. “You’re turning out to be quite an accomplished young lady, in addition to being very beautiful.”

Coventina bit into a tamarind ball to camouflage the expression that she knew must be crossing her face right then. She thought of her mother, who surely would not have hidden her disdain. No, her mummy would have put her hands on her hips and cut her eyes so sharply at Little Man that he would have stood up and slinked toward the front door, as her pa had on more than one occasion. But her mother was not here. Just when Covey needed her most.

Covey thought of the knives that Pearl kept in a lower drawer of the kitchen, the biggest, sharpest ones reserved for cleaving meat and stripping sugar cane. One day, she would regret not having kept one of those knives with her.





The Price





Lin wasn’t sure at what point, exactly, his destiny had put him on the path toward Little Man. He was already in trouble when the first rumblings of that anti-Chinese fuss caused the fire at one of his shops. When the cockfights weren’t going so well, Lin had wagered goods from his store, figuring he’d win back the value, but his debts kept accumulating.

Things got worse when his woman left him and, still, he made sure their child never went without new school uniforms, which she outgrew at a nerve-racking pace. On this much Lin and Mathilda had always agreed. Covey was going to get a good education, never mind that she was a girl.