Pregnant Madonna

Two children in sunscreen whiteface, grimacing while their mother works paste into their cheeks as if scrubbing stains from cloth. A cabbie sagging over a bar rail, barking ride offers into the open air. A procession of families in palm-leaf hats, glittering with sweat, filing onto a bus.

Junior sketched them in charcoal. The upturn of a nose. The tensile line of a child’s wrist. The soft collapse of cotton at the collar. His hand moved as if in covenant with forms latent in the paper.

He was in Montego Bay to retrieve his uncle’s ashes.

Saying this inwardly to himself, he found it empty. More than for this errand, he had come out of a hunger for abrasion which he felt the island might satisfy.

He flipped to a blank page. Studying its vacancy, he wondered how to fill it—this field without confession offering back nothing but silence. He felt in it not terror but insult.

The phone rang.

He answered and heard the mild unhurried voice of Mr Amos.

“Junior. We’re here at arrivals. Where are you? I’m standin by a white cab.”

He rose and saw the man: short and copper, with a serene smile like he’d been standing there his whole life waiting for this exchange.

“Hello Mr Amos. It’s good to meet you. Thanks for coming to pick me up.”

“Pleasure to meet you Junior. And of course. It’s no trouble. Billy here drove me. I’m too old to drive dis far.”

Billy nodded through the sideview. His features lent the greeting an unintended severity.

They drove through a downtown concourse where merchants hawked miscellany. Rats skittered through gutters. Clusters of pigeons fluttered up to alley eaves and fell again to peck at refuse. A car topped with loudspeakers rolled past, warping promises of reform into static.

They ascended into dense forest where branches reached into the road and foliage brushed the car as if the vegetation sought to reclaim what had been carved from it. Tarnished asphalt broke into potholes, forcing Billy to slow to a crawl and pick his way through. Shack houses appeared at the roadside leaning in colors too bright for their condition. Goats regarded the passing vehicle with eyes alien and unastonished.

Junior held his camera to the glass and recorded.

“So Junior. You’re an art student I hear,” Mr Amos said.

“Yeah. I study painting.”

“Wonderful. We a family ah artists. You, Allen of course, and I’m a artist too you know.”

“Oh nice. What’s your medium?”

“Hair.”

“Hair?”

“Yeah. I used to compete at it back in de day. Dey have de hair shows where we do up women. I won many times.”

“When was the last time you competed?”

“Oh it’s been some years. Me hands nah work like dey used to.”

The conversation died. Junior welcomed it. He watched the land pass. The villages. The people standing and walking and selling and staring. It was all an impression of life he meant to capture in paint.

They came to a stop.

“Well, we’re here. Come on out.”

The house stood in weeds, boards grayed and peeling, set into a clearing on the flank of a hill, overlooking a valley of shacks swallowed in bush.

“Come on Junior,” Mr Amos said. “Let me show you to your uncle’s room. We got it done up for you fi stay de night.”

They descended a rickety stairwell to a cellar where the cool air smelled of damp wood. Mr Amos pulled a cord and a bulb flickered to a jaundiced glow. The room was covered with art. Oilworks of seaside shanties, ink drawings of small children, penciled nudes. Standing amidst the evidence of his uncle’s years, Junior felt respect for the persistence but not the products, which all seemed derivative and unbrilliant. He stood taller.

“We got de ashes right here.”

A black plastic cuboid sat on a desk.

“Allen,” Mr Amos said to the box. “It’s ya nephew come to take you back to Boston.”

On the wall Junior noticed a half-finished portrait of a young boy with an ugly smile. It was him. He turned from it, shifting his attention to a painting of a woman with her bare back to the viewer, one arm arched, eyes downcast. The rendering had a quiet sensuality.

Not too bad, he thought.

“Ah. You like dat one?”

“It’s nice. Uncle Allen was always pretty good at drawing women.”

“It’s true.”

Mr Amos turned away but kept his head angled so that his eye held Junior.

“Say. Junior. Me have sometin fi show you.”

“What is it?”

Mr Amos walked to a closet grinning, laid his hand on the knob and twisted.

The color struck first. Gold and cyan set against each other in a way that made the eye feel washed clean. What was white was not white but an opalescent mist. Light fell forward casting the image in a resinous sheen and a tempered shadow fading to shades of black like polished leather. Even before his mind assembled the form he was already caught by the surety of her hue.

Then her figure: a hunched Madonna with hands caressing her swelling abdomen. Curls fell in ribbons from her mantle. Tears coursed from her eyes. Yet her glistening lips held the gentlest upturn. A mercy. A small betrayal of hope.

Junior heard a drip and looked down. Beneath the canvas sat a bucket. Leaning closer, he watched a tear gather at the rim of the painted eye and roll down the canvas and plop into the bucket.

The painting wept.

His heart drew tight. At first he didn’t accept it. He wanted to disbelieve—wanted it to be some fever dream of Caribbean sunstroke. He hovered around the painting looking for tubes or some other signs of deceit. There were none. He tittered, and Mr Amos misread it as jubilance, when really he was tearing inside.

He had spent years studying light as if light would redeem him. Nights copying masterworks until paper wore thin under erasure. Yet here in a closet beneath a sagging cabin in Jamaica a dying man had made something that made all his years feel like a joke told by a cruel jester. He could almost vomit.

“A miracle Junior. It’s a miracle.”

He felt a surge of desire to reach out and clutch the canvas in his arms until it tore apart. Had he been alone just then he might have spat on her cheek and rubbed it into the canvas.

Mr Amos patted his shoulder and rocked him slightly.

“Dis was Allen’s last work. Me find him dead on de floor in a puddle of her tears. She’s gorgeous. But come now. Switch dat bucket out fa de one behind it dere and bring it up so we can eat. Don’t worry. She nah go nowhere.”

Upstairs, Billy and Junior sat around a small table with bowls of rice. Mr Amos served stew chicken from a dutch pot and hummed as he worked. Junior ogled his food.

“So,” Billy said with a smirk. “Him show you Mary.”

“Yeah.”

“She’s a wonder ain’t she?”

“She is.”

“Right. And me can’t lie. Whole time me know Allen me tink him nah much. But him prove me wrong.”

Mr Amos entered holding the bucket of tears and three cognac glasses. He set a glass by each plate then dunked them into the bucket and filled them.

“Don’t worry Junior. Me clean de buckets good. Try it.”

“Go on and drink,” Billy said. His smile did not soften his command.

“I don’t understand,” said Junior.

“You don’t have fi understand. It not for you fi understand,” replied Mr Amos.

“Not the tears. What I don’t understand is… I’ve grown up all my life seeing uncle Allen’s artwork. Sure they were alright. But that painting down there is different. Every other painting on those walls is decent. But not like that. I’m just surprised. I didn’t know you could do that. Uncle Allen or anyone.”

Mr Amos put his utensils down and looked at him.

“Junior. I know what you mean. You know… when me ah do hair, me have a model. Pretty woman. Not the prettiest. But good bone. Strong face. Judges say dey judging hair but dey men. Beauty bleed into de score.”

He took a sip of tears.

“Her husband drink. And when him drink, him mean. De competition two days. First night, every year, him beat her. Not in de face. Him no fool. In de ribs. Where nobody see. Second day, me tell you Junior—she shine.”

He tapped the bucket with a knuckle.

Junior drank. The tears tasted like water. He wanted them to taste like blood.

That night, alone again in the cellar, he circled her slowly. Studying the layering, the decisions beneath decisions. Sketching until the charcoal fractured. Mixing pigments but failing to summon her tint. He tried to isolate the trick again and again until the details blurred and he could only slink back in his chair and stare at it dumbly.

I’ll never outdo this, he thought. There isn’t even a lesson to learn. How do you mimic genius?

He sneered at that last word as soon as it came to mind. Looking around the room, he saw amateur works everywhere and then swiveled back around to this terrible goddess. He imagined Allen coughing in this room, dying, choosing every stroke knowing it was his last. And he thought, Fuck you. Then his mind wandered to himself, dying in his apartment years from now having made nothing that demanded a bucket.

Turning to the box of ashes, he whispered, “How did you do this?”

He did not sleep. In the morning his eyes were bloodshot and his hands were filthy with charcoal. He climbed the stairs to the yard for air.

Mist lay in the hills. The dawn light rose vermillion behind it. Mr Amos stood in the garden lifting scotch bonnets from their stems and placing them in a basket.

“Ah. Junior. Good mornin.”

“Good morning Mr Amos.”

“You sleep alright?”

“Not at all.”

“Is dat so? Well. I can understand.”

“Mr Amos. Can I ask? What are you going to do with her?”

Mr Amos did not look up. He plucked peppers with care.

“Hm. Sensible question. Me thought about it. Me try to tink about what Allen woulda want. Me tink it proper he woulda want her seen. So it proper me sell her. Give her to a dealer and see how much she sell for at auction. Maybe it would help us move. But don’t misunderstand Junior. She’s ours. Not mine.”

Junior nodded.

“But uncle Allen’s been dead for months. How come you haven’t sold her yet?”

Mr Amos sighed.

“You see how we use her waters. Dey do us good. Me don’t know if its real but dey give us sometin to believe in. Plus me don’t know who to call. How me ah call some art dealer and tell him to believe me have a painting dat cry?”

Junior felt an ugly thought rise in him.

“I’m in art school. My professors have connections. If I brought her to them, they’d know who to call. But. It’d have to be in person. Otherwise no one would believe it.”

Mr Amos’ serene smile did not move. The old man’s eyes were bright.

“Junior. We family. But me don’t know you too well. But Allen. Him know you. Him talk bout you sometime. I know him woulda trust you. So me tink me should trust you too.”

Junior swallowed.

“Thank you. I know it’s a lot of faith to put in me. But I agree. Allen would have wanted her seen. People will love her. She’ll immortalize him.”

Mr Amos shook his head slightly.

“No. It nah gwen make him immortal. Only famous.”

Noontime came. Billy arrived to drive them to the airport. Mr Amos brought out Allen’s old suitcase and wrapped the painting in towels and laid it on its front so the water would fall forward and not spoil the surface.

Billy watched in silence. His face was grim.

“So. You ah take Mary back up wit you to Boston eh?” he said.

“Yeah. I’m going to find a dealer.”

“And you sure you want to do dis?” Billy asked Mr Amos.

Mr Amos nodded and smiled.

“Well. It’s probably for de best.”

He said it with sadness. No one spoke much as they drove.

The departure terminal was mostly empty. Mr Amos checked the painting again and replaced the towel. He zipped the suitcase and hugged it gently then handed it to Junior.

“Be careful wit it.”

“Of course I will.”

“Good. And Junior. Tank you for comin.”

“Thank you for taking care of me.”

Junior shook his hand. He shook Billy’s hand too. Then he walked through the entryway and through the airport’s formalities then boarded. He stowed the suitcase overhead and took his seat.

Only then did he sit with the fact that he had left the ashes. Suddenly, the choice felt like it was made long ago, by someone else—as if he were stepping into a stranger’s memory. He considered standing. He did not.

Sorry.

The plane rumbled. The air shifted. He closed his eyes and slept.

Back in his apartment he unwrapped the painting carefully. The towel was damp. The paint had not smeared. Tears continued to flow. He felt he could exhale now for the first time all day.

Placing the painting on an easel, he arranged lamps around it. He photographed it from every angle until he felt he had trapped it in images. He turned the lamps off and took them away then sat in front of the painting in long contemplation.

What if I claimed you? It’d all be just the same, right? Only difference would be a name.

He stared at her mouth. That suffering smile. He hated it.

No. That won’t do. Of course not.

He brought out white paint. Poured it into his palette. Loaded a broad brush.

His heart beat erratic and his breath quickened.

At first he hesitated, hovering over the canvas. Then he gently touched white to a corner of the background. Still the tears fell. He dabbed the hem of her dress. Still she cried. He put more paint on the brush and then smeared white across cyan, gold and sorrow as his hands began to tremble and he pressed harder.

White over the lashes.

White over the mouth.

White over the pregnant stomach.

He stopped finally when no trace remained and the surface became a bright blank field.

The tears were done.

He stood there breathing and listening and waiting for something.