Black Cake(28)

The stunned feeling was starting to wear off. From below that came something that felt like thunder in the distance, like a howling wind coming off the sea, like a wild animal approaching. And now she was that animal, and she was unlatching the gate and running into the street, tears wetting her face, wetting her neck, wetting her shirt. She was running up the road, her voice coming out of her like a growl.





Covey and Gibbs





Covey didn’t know how she was going to tell Gibbs about Little Man, but Gibbs had already heard. Covey was leaving school with Bunny the next day when she saw Gibbs hurrying toward her from across the road that ran between the high school and the bluffs.

“Is it true?” Gibbs said loudly.

“Shhh,” Covey said, looking straight ahead and walking fast down the road.

“Well, is it true?” Gibbs said, lowering his voice. “Is it true what dem saying about you and Little Man?”

“Wait, wait,” Covey said. They walked for a while with Bunny, both closed-mouthed, until Bunny finally said likkle more and kept going straight while Covey and Gibbs doubled back on a road that led down to the beach.

“When were you going to tell me about you and Little Man?”

“There is no me and Little Man, Gibbs, this is all my father’s doing. They have this idea in their heads that I am supposed to marry Little Man, but of course I’m not going to marry him.”

“If Little Man wants to marry someone, he will marry them.”

“But it’s ridiculous, don’t you see? My pa will realize that soon enough. And Little Man? Can you imagine him, married? He’ll forget about it, he’s just showing what a big man he is, that he can get whatever he wants. I am not going to marry that man, Gibbs.” Covey wrapped her arms around Gibbs. “But please,” she said. “I need you to be calm for me. We need to let some time go by.”

“Time? What time?” Gibbs said. “I’m leaving for England in two weeks. What is going to happen to you?”

Gibbs held Covey’s face in both of his hands. This was not the life that Covey had imagined for herself only days earlier. Covey had hoped to follow Gibbs the following year once she’d worked out her school papers and sponsorship and a ticket for the transatlantic crossing. She had planned to move to England to be with Gibbs. She had planned to marry Gibbs, attend university like Gibbs. Have children with Gibbs.

“Covey, please, come with me now.”

“What, to England? But I’m not ready.”

“Then I’ll wait for you. We’ll go together.”

Covey gasped. That wouldn’t do. She needed to get Gibbs away from Little Man.

“No, you can’t stay. Your studies…”

“There’s no other way, can’t you see?” Gibbs had said.

But Covey managed to convince Gibbs that she was right. Gibbs would leave and, Covey promised, she would make her plans for her own departure.

“Don’t worry,” Covey told him on their last day together, even though Covey herself was beginning to worry. They were treading water in their secret place, that stretch of coast where they went when they wanted to swim alone together. As Covey clung to Gibbs, as she felt his saltwater mouth on hers, she thought back to the way Little Man had pronounced Gibbs’s name on the day that he had cornered her in the kitchen. He had said Gilbert Grant like a curse, like a warning, like an ultimatum.





Matrimony





More than four thousand years after the first marriages were recorded between men and women in Mesopotamia, plans were under way for a similar ceremony in August 1965 on the north coast of a small West Indian island. In keeping with tradition, Coventina Lyncook was to be bound to Clarence Henry, not only for Henry’s personal benefit but also for the greater social good. In Covey’s case, the wedding would result in the easing of the financial obligations that her father held toward Little Man.

Covey stood on a low stool in a dressmaker’s shop in town, feeling the wedding dress being pinched here and there by pins, not fully believing that her marriage to Little Man Henry would really take place. Covey, who had been brought here by Little Man’s mother, had chosen the ugliest dress she could find, a monstrosity of puffs and fluffs, hoping to consume as much of the woman’s money and patience as possible.

Surely, Covey’s father would figure out something. There had to be an alternative, she thought. In the meantime, she refused to speak to her pa. She eyed herself in the dressmaker’s mirror and considered whether, in a worst-case scenario, one of the knives Pearl used in the kitchen could be concealed in the many folds of the wedding dress. If it came to that, would she have the courage to use it? What would she be willing to do?

And what would she do after that?

Covey kept believing that her father would work things out with Little Man, that there would be a last-minute reprieve. Things would settle down, she and Bunny could do that harbor race, and Covey would travel to meet Gibbs the following year. But Little Man would have to back down first.

It wasn’t until two days before the ceremony, when Pearl went to the hotel to start work on the wedding cake, that Covey’s marriage to Little Man seemed inevitable. Covey, still ignorant of the delicate mechanics of having to work for a living, was furious with Pearl. How could she agree to make a cake for a wedding that was taking place against Covey’s will? When Pearl came with Bunny to see Covey right before the ceremony, Covey couldn’t look Pearl in the face. She merely turned her cheek to accept a kiss.