Chapter 6
The morning of departure was a Tuesday in January.
Diane had packed Marcus's things into a hard-sided suitcase she had borrowed from a woman at the factory. Everything he owned that was worth taking fit into it with room to spare, which was information Marcus tried not to think about too hard. Diane had added things he hadn't asked for: an extra Bible — his grandmother's, with certain passages underlined in her careful hand. A photograph of the two of them taken outside the yard when Marcus was three. A plastic container of Jamaican pimento seeds. When he'd asked why the seeds, she had looked at him like the answer was obvious.
"So you don't forget what things are supposed to taste like," she said.
Mama Vie came out into the yard early, before the sun was fully up. She put both her hands on Marcus's face and looked at him for a long time. He was not afraid of her the way some of the other yard children were — he had always understood that her severity came from love, that she was hard on people because she believed they could bear hardness.
"You carry Jamaica in you," she said. "You understand me? Not a thing they can do to take that from you. No cold, no distance, no nothing. It's in you already."
"Yes, ma'am," Marcus said.
She kissed his forehead once, hard, like she was pressing something in. Then she went inside.
Leroy came to the gate. He had walked from his yard two streets over, arriving just as the taxi that would take Marcus and Diane to the airport was pulling up. He stood there with his hands in his pockets — a big, broad-shouldered boy trying to make himself small and not succeeding.
Marcus went to the gate. They looked at each other.
Leroy put out his hand. They gripped, then pulled each other into a brief, fierce hug — the kind boys allow themselves in important moments, armored with brevity.
"Don't let them change you," Leroy said into his shoulder.
"I'll be back," Marcus said.
"I know you will."
In the taxi, Marcus looked out the window at the street he had grown up on. The buildings going past. The vendors setting up at the roadside. A dog moving purposefully down the middle of the road. The Blue Mountains catching the first gold of morning.
He did not cry in the taxi.
He cried in the airport bathroom when Diane thought he was washing his hands. He cried quickly and quietly and dried his face on the back of his sleeve and came back out looking normal. He was nine years old and he was practicing a skill that would take him years to unlearn — the art of grieving invisibly.
At the gate, Diane held him for a long time. Longer than she usually allowed herself such things. She pressed her face against the top of his head.
"You call me every Sunday," she said.
"Yes, Mama."
"You eat what Beverley cooks for you, even if you don't like the taste."
"Yes, Mama."
"You work hard. Harder than you think you can. And when you get tired—"
"I think of why I'm there."
She pulled back and looked at his face. Her eyes were dry. He had never once seen his mother cry.
"I'm proud of you already," she said. "You haven't done anything yet and I'm already proud of you. You understand that?"
He understood it. He would carry it like a second heartbeat.