Prose

My Best Friend Joyce

WRITTEN BY MARIA CROOKS

I am walking home from school with my best friend Joyce. We are always together and must make an odd‑looking pair as she is short and I am tall and skinny. She has, what in Jamaica is called, a cast eye – her left eye is crossed, and a white film covers the iris. Sometimes unkind children tease her, but they do so at their peril. She has an acid tongue and is not afraid to use it. By the time she is through, they often wish they had left her alone. She is bright and feisty or as we say in Jamaican patois, facety and can take care of herself. Next to her, I am timid and shy and wish I could wield one‑liners and put‑downs like she does.

We are walking on the highway that leads to the district where we live, reading the same book between us ‑ we often do this, why? I cannot say. Who can understand the workings of the adolescent mind?

I don't know how we have avoided getting run over as there are no sidewalks. The road has been mostly carved out of the side of a mountain and on both sides, there is no shoulder; there is the road and then the rock face of the mountain. Luckily the traffic is light, not many people own cars in our town.

A big car drives by, it's an American car with the steering wheel on the left. It slows and stops. We know never to accept a lift from strangers, but as we get closer, we recognise the driver. It's Mr. Peterson, Norma's father. She is a school mate who is one year ahead of us.

Mr. Peterson can afford a brand‑new American car, he discovered marl on his property, and it has made him rich; he sells it by the truck load to bauxite companies in the area.

I get in first and sit beside him. The seat is wide and accommodates us easily. Mr. Peterson is friendly, we chat shyly with him.

"How's school?" he asks in a friendly avuncular tone.

"Fine."

"You girls working hard to pass your GCE?" (GCEs are equivalent to High School Diploma exams.) "Norma is preparing, working hard."

"She is ahead of us; we are only in fourth form." I say.

"It's never too early to prepare. Education is very, very important you know."

So far he sounds like all the grown‑ups we know. We are 14, not a care in the world, we know nothing about nothing; we love to read, especially MB books which are romance novels from England about nurses falling in love with doctors and impossibly handsome, rich men who marry their secretaries. This is before women's lib, and it is the usual drivel found in romance novels of the period.

We feel special sitting in this car, so new and luxurious, leather seats and shiny chrome everywhere. Then one moment Mr. Peterson has two hands on the steering wheel and exhorting us to do well in school and the next, only one hand is on the wheel. His other hand is casually resting on my knee and then it begins to move up under the leaf‑green tunic of my school uniform. My heart begins to race; I look across and see that Joyce has noticed what is happening to me. "What should we do?" we ask each other with our eyes. Mr. Peterson is well known and respected in the community, he is an adult and we have been taught to be respectful of people who are older, he is our friend's father …

He keeps driving, his eyes on the road. He is a good driver, is Mr. Peterson, very skilled, able to obey the road signs, and maintain a conversation with his daughter's friends, while he works his hand up the skirt of my school uniform.

I don't know how to handle this. I try to move away but there's not much room. And then, my beautiful, feisty/facety friend comes to my rescue.

"Mr. Peterson stop the car; we are getting off here." She says.

"Why? we don' reach where you live yet." He says, his tone even and casual.

"Stop the rass claat kyar now!" She is practically vibrating. Mr. Peterson stops the car without another word, and we leap out. I have never heard her swear before, clever put‑downs yes, but this was out and out swearing and of the foulest kind that one would only hear from drunken sailors in Kingston harbour. But Joyce is bright, can take care of herself, and of me too, and she is my best friend.