Peta-Gaye Stuart, Contributor

In his dream, a raven, black as night, was perched atop a dark evergreen tree. The landscape was stark and desolate, the trees, stripped of their leaves, scarecrows against a dull grey sky. The asphalt road was a melancholy, washed-out grey, the houses a forlorn echo of each other - a sorry sight to eyes that had feasted on the bright blues, sunny yellows and lush greens of the Caribbean, where sounds, sights and smells assaulted the senses all at once. In this tunnel of grey there was silence, except for the caw caw caw of a raven, an eerily lonesome sound that pierced the air.

There it was again, an omen. But what did it mean? It was as if there was a message he had to decipher, but the meaning was lost on the wind.

In his dream, the landscape shifted and Eddie Harrison was back in Jamaica, a teenager again, playing football on the beach with his friends. They were all there: Ronnie, Francis and Paul. 'Pass the ball, Migo!' They shouted. Migo, short for Amigo, a nickname from high school because he had excelled in Spanish. He ran on the sand, stumbling slightly on its uneven surface.

Some girls in bikinis sashayed by, hips swinging, holding a tray of fish and festival. It was Hellshire beach, back in the old days when it was the hot spot on a weekend, filled with Hawaiian Tropics oil-slicked bodies scorching in the Caribbean sun. One of the girls was his wife Sue-Ann, the way she used to be when he first met her: long, thick, dark hair, tanned, tawny skin, and always smiling. She was tall, almost the sam as he, and she came up to him in the dream and stuck her hand down his pants. He shuddered and they went into the water. Then a wave came and carried him out to sea ...

He found himself alone, standing waist-high in shallow water. The squat red-skinned people on the beach in grass skirts appeared to be Arawaks. They waved to him and he waved back. He was about to go ashore to ask them how to get back when a kick from Sue-Ann woke him. She said brusquely, 'The alarm went off and you didn't even hear it. Aren't you going to get up?'

He swallowed his irritation, swung his legs over the side of the bed and rubbed his eyes, determined not to let the dream edge past his consciousness into forgetfulness. He needed the memory: the smell of the salty sea, the heat of the sun on his body, the erotic touch of his wife on his groin. He realised it had been six months since they'd made love.

Eddie pulled on his robe and mentally prepared himself for the day. He changed and fed their ten-month old baby Abigail, and made lunch for his older daughter Sydney. Caring for his children had become second nature to him he constantly complained that he had no time for himself, he was secretly proud that Abigail cried for him, had eyes only for him, and would fuss when Sue-Ann tried to take over. Eddie was the one who fed her, changed her diapers, played with her and spoke and sang softly to her.

When the role was first thrust on him, he had felt useless. Sue-Ann would come home and shout that he had forgotten to change Abigail's diaper and bathe her, that Sydney's hair needed combing, and that he hadn't organised dinner or done the laundry. Now he had a routine: cook dinner as soon as he came home, throw in a load of laundry, help Sydney with her homework, load and start the dishwasher, get everyone ready for bed.

After Eddie showered and dried the beads of water that ran down his legs, he straightened up and looked at himself in the full-length mirror. My God, how he'd changed. He had always been tall and lean but now his frame felt lost in the pudgy skin on his thighs and buttocks, and he had a paunch! He viewed himself sideways. He looked like his father. Old. His skin looked blotchy and mottled and his curly brown hair, kinky in some areas, was streaked with grey. Stooped. He'd had a tendency to round his shoulders, as if he wanted to mask hi and blend in with the world. Now he felt weak abdominal muscles pulling down his frame to his middle. Defeated. His blue-grey eyes were watery and red with fatigue.

When he first came to Canada, he had taken a job as a security guard, a job that to him was as menial as a bag boy in a supermarket. It was all he could get, and he prayed that no one from Jamaica would spot him. He told his friends he wasn't working rather than tell them what he was doing. He could see the gossip. Hawk eyes and eager mouths stretched wide in anticipation of the newest juicy titbit.

Eddie Harrison from upper St. Andrew, former executive, yes, the same one who migrated for a better life to the great north, now not only a lowly security guard but freezing his ass off for essentially nine months out of twelve. The very same Eddie who was up to his elbows in Red Stripe and rum, and Sundays in the hot sun at the beach, and late night Friday domino sessions with the boys, now up to his elbows in dirty diapers and laundry, lunch boxes and vacuuming and walks to the park, one eye watching his children on the swings, the other turned inward in regretful reflection.

He kept in touch with all his friends and still knew every 'important' event that was happening in Jamaica: the weekend jaunts to Negril or Ochi, the Frenchman's parties and the latest gossip. Sue-Ann, on the other hand, couldn't care less what was happening in Jamaica, which she referred to with a contemptuous sneer as 'down there'.

She had started jogging and going to the gym every day, in all types of weather. Eddie reflected that that was what made one a true Canadian: not the black passport with the symbolic coat of arms on the cover with the apt Latin motto a mari usque ad mare, from sea unto sea, but the ability to go outside in all types of weather, as if the weather itself didn't matter at all.

Sue-Ann jogged when it was raining or snowing. She jogged whether it was morning or night. She jogged when there were five loads of laundry to be done and four hands would've been better than two. She jogged when bedtime stories needed to be read. She was at the gym when dinner needed to be cooked and he'd be damned before taking the kids to fast food restaurants every night.

Unlike him, she got more beautiful every day. She looked strong and athletic, lean and finely sculpted, like a model from the cover of one of those fitness magazines. If he ever felt angry or resentful, or if the thought slightly surfaced in his mind that she was selfish, he suppressed it guiltily because she had been through so much. She had every right to keep busy. She'd told him she had to. It made her forget the incident.

The incident changed everything. If only the incident hadn't happened. Or, if only it had happened the way he replayed it in his mind, where he was a hero, saving Sue-Ann and killing the men. In Canada they called it sexual assault, ambiguously tidy words to mask the violence of what happened five years ago in their bedroom. Rape was a better word. It conjured up all the hate and violence and horror and dread and insanity of the act.

The dogs had been barking that night but he'd taken no notice of it. Once one dog in the neighbourhood started up, they all did, a cacophony of barks from every household, some high-pitched, others low and deep in the throat. He'd got up that night and walked downstairs for a glass of water. He'd grabbed a kitchen knife, rushed back upstairs, and fought those two men before they had a chance to do the unthinkable and killed them both with his bare hands. But, of course, that was what he imagined.

What really happened was that he hadn't heard a thing. Didn't grab a kitchen knife, so that as he walked back into their bedroom, two men stepped from behind the door and held a gun to his head. Then they bound and gagged him with a filthy, foul-smelling scarf and kicked him into a corner. He watched with an odd sort of detachment while they took turns raping Sue-Ann. After they had gone, Sue-Ann limped from the bed, untied him and looked at him in disgust when she saw that he had sh-t his pants.

When they went to check on Sydney, who was three at the time, they found her under her bed crying soundlessly, staring wide-eyed at them. She didn't speak for a month and they never found out how much she had seen. Sue-Ann hadn't wanted to talk about it nor get help of any kind. She simply said that if he wanted to be married to her, he would have to come to Canada for good. She would be leaving the hellhole as soon as she could.

Within a month she'd wrapped up her life in Jamaica, cutting all ties that bound her - quit her job, cancelled her Jamaican credit cards, closed her bank accounts, sold all the furniture, paid the helper three months' salary, given away their cat, and told the landlord from whom they rented their house that he could kiss her a---, she was breaking the lease and too f--- bad. He could keep the deposit and stick it.

In that same month, she'd taken blood tests, taken medication to prevent HIV should that unthinkable possibility occur, and hidden the entire ordeal from everyone, including her parents. She was adamant that no one would ever know. The incident would not change her; the incident would make her stronger. No one needed to know her business, to then go and carry news all over the island and have people looking at her, pitying her and saying, 'She's the one they raped.'

He'd gone along with it even though his heart was breaking and he woke in a cold sweat every night. She had been fine the first night, and even the night after. It was the third night that she woke and started screaming. The scream came from low in her throat and rose and rose to a high-pitched fervour that wouldn't stop. Even after he held her rocking in his arms.

When Eddie came home from work that day, he tidied the house and threw in a load of laundry, fed the girls scrambled eggs and put them to bed. He cooked a quick stir-fry with chicken and broccoli because Sue-Ann liked it. Usually she would come home, wolf down dinner, berate him for some chore he hadn't done and head to her class, but today she was going to school straight from work and coming home late. She was taking a master's at the University of Toronto; since they'd migrated to Canada five years ago she had been taking a constant stream of courses, in addition to working full time and keeping herself fit.

She reminded him of a racehorse that never ran out of steam, a powerhouse of energy. People didn't believe him when, half-complainingly, half-proudly, he told them how she swam twice a week, ran most mornings before work and on weekends, and worked out at the gym. Eddie wondered what his carefree, rum-drinking friends in Jamaica would say if they saw him now, up to his neck in domesticity, stirring the food around in the wok in faded blue slippers with a protruding belly, like some old bachelor man.

Sue-Ann came through the door sighing.

'You're home early,' he said. She looked exhausted. 'I wasn't expecting you until later.'

'I decided to leave early. I missed you guys.'

'The kids are already sleeping.'

'The house looks good.'

It was a first. She'd never noticed his efforts before. She just expected the housework to be done. He came behind her and massaged her neck, then gently slid his hands down her back and around her breasts. She reacted as though she'd gotten a light shock.

'Eddie, I just came home.' She turned to face him and kissed him lightly on the cheek. 'And I'm so tired. Not tonight, hon.'

'Which night then?' She looked at him accusingly but he continued in a soft voice: 'Every time I try, you're tired. I'm tired, too. When are we not going to be tired?'

'I don't know. It will be better soon. After I get my master's, I'll earn more money and we can get out of this stupid townhouse and buy a real house with a proper garden for the kids to run around in.'

They sat down in front of the TV and he handed her a plate of the stir-fry dinner he had cooked.

He sighed. 'I don't want you to overdo it. I know you are doing a lot. Maybe I'll get a second job.' He changed the subject. 'Francis is having a party this weekend at his new house in Jacks Hill. He says he can see all of Kingston from his balcony.' She didn't say anything. 'He said there will be two dance floors, one with oldies music and one for the younger crowd.'

'Since when are you a big dancer?'

'It's going to be a great party. Wish I were there with the guys.'

'What do you care? You don't dance.'

'Just making conversation. It's not about me dancing, Sue-Ann. I miss home.'

'Nobody is stopping you from going back.'

Why did the conversation have to take a turn for the worse?

'You know I'll never go back.' He treaded carefully over his next words. 'But why do you get so angry if I even mention home? I'm not the enemy, you know, and bad things happen here, too.'

'Go back, then.'

'I'm not going back.' He was exasperated.

'Well, I'm sick of you always talking about what's happening there. Even when you talk to Jamaicans here. I heard you ask Belinda Carmichael the other night if she was missing the Air Jamaica office party. Do you think she cares? She's been here seven years. She has a life here. You talk about Jamaica as if we just left. God. You don't realise it, but you always do it. One foot in the past. And you asked Belinda's husband, who you hardly know, by the way, if he wanted to go drink a rum. No one has time for that. People are busy.'

'I was just being social. Christ, we live five minutes' walk from them.'

'Well, that's how itis here. And for God's sake, stop telling people you'd love them to drop in. No one drops in here. You want people to drop in when the laundry is being sorted on the floor or the bathroom hasn't been cleaned? I don't want anybody to drop in.'

'I think we should go for counselling. To deal with ... everything.'

'You mean me. You mean the incident. You mean, I should go for counselling. Forget it. I don't need to talk about it. I don't need to be reminded of it. I'm fine.'

'OK.'

He didn't tell her she had changed and that there was an ache in his heart that wouldn't go away and an unbearable guilt that made him constantly replay the events in his head. What if he hadn't been thirsty? What if he had carried a glass of water up to his room from earlier, as he usually did? Why didn't he that night? What if he'd had a gun, like so many of his friends who carried guns strapped to their ankles in holsters or bulging from their waists like some absurd 21st century Western where the half the men who carried guns didn't even know how to use them? What if he were stronger, more careful? What if they'd rented another house where the grilles on the windows were screwed into the inside wall instead of the outside?

His daughter seemed OK. When they had first arrived, they'd go walking on the street, and if she saw a dark-skinned man walking toward them, she'd cling to him and hide her face. When he pointed it out to her and asked why, she'd shrugged. He asked her what she had seen that night. She said warily that she didn't remember. He pointed out to her that they were all different shades of black and he didn't want her to be afraid of anyone. She'd shrugged again and ran off to play. He couldn't get any more out of her.

So many times he left things unsaid. They were all lodged on the tip of his tongue and sometimes he felt he would choke on the words. He wanted to talk about the incident, to shout to the world, 'This is what happened to my family, to my wife, to me, and it's changed us, hurt us. I want to go and find the sons of bitches and kill them.' So many times he wanted to do something, anything, to get out of the house: walk the malls, run, watch a movie alone; but he couldn't. He worked all day and came home to look after the children while Sue-Ann pursued all the things she wanted to do. And she was fooling herself if she thought that her rat race behaviour would make her forget. He knew that if he got 20 master's, five Ph.D.'s and ran around Canada twice, he would never forget the incident.

After Sue-Ann finally got her master's degree, she earned $500 more per year. She told Eddie she could potentially earn much more but she liked her job. 'If I go somewhere else, I might not have 10 sick days, nor such understanding bosses when it comes to time off. You need to look for another job. Belinda's husband Darryl only came to Canada four years ago and he's already earning over $100,000 a year.'

Eddie looked for another job. 'I swear it's my accent,' he told Francis over the phone. 'I swear that when people hear it, they are not interested in even seeing my résumé.'

'Bwoy, Migo, better you than me. I couldn't deal with that. Yard is best. I'll visit foreign but I wouldn't leave for good.'

Every time Eddie emailed a résumé, he thought of Darryl and his $100,000 a year. He wondered what made him different. If Darryl Carmichael could do it, surely he, Eddie Harrison, could do it, too.

Eddie Harrison heard a baby's cry from far away. He had been in a deep sleep and thought he was still dreaming. He had been dreaming that he was in som world where Muslims ruled and he had broken a law by not bowing down in front of a mosque. He tried to reason with the police but they held back his arms. He was screaming but no one would listen. He was trying to explain that he didn't know that he had to bow before approaching a mosque. He didn't know that particular law but he would try harder. He didn't deserve to be beheaded for not knowing. He didn't deserve to die just because he was Catholic.

A child and her mother were being executed inside the mosque and he heard the child's crying scream over the caw of a raven. As the axe came down, he jumped out of his sleep and realised the crying child was Abigail. Eddie rushed into her room. Her face was blotchy and she was out of breath. She must have been crying for a while and even though he knew this, a part of him was glad he had been able to get some sleep. It was Monday morning and the same old routine was about to consume him. Sue-Ann had already gone, doing what he thought was insane: going to the gym before work.

'Daddy, have you seen my library book?'

'It's on the table underneath the newspaper.'

'Daddy, can you sign my math test?'

'Pass it here.'

The phone rang. 'Sydney, can you get it? Is it mommy?'

'No, it's a woman.'

He took the phone and patted her head. 'Hello?'

'Hi Eddie. It's Belinda Carmichael.'

'Hey, Belinda.' He was cheerful, happy that it was almost the end of winter, the end of people hibernating like bears in a cave. He thought she was calling to invite them over. 'How are you guys?'

'I'm quite fine, Eddie, but can you please tell your wife to stop f----- my husband? Darryl has no intention of leaving me for her, contrary to what she might think, and frankly, I've had enough of it. Eddie? Are you there? Surely you know. It's been going on for years. So do me a favour and tell her.'

'OK.'

He couldn't believe that 'okay' was all he said. OK, then he'd hung up the phone. What does one say to a statement like that? He kept telling himself, OK. He could calm his anger. OK. He could think it through. OK.

He called Sue-Ann on her cell. 'Come home now.'

'What's wrong? Is it the children?'

'The children are fine. Come home now.'

'No. I just started my workout. Then I'm off to work. Whatever it is, deal with it, Eddie.'

'How long have you been sleeping with Darryl Carmichael? His wife just informed me.' He heard her sharp intake of breath. 'I'll see you shortly.'

'So do you love him?'

'I don't know.'

'Why, after everything, why?'

'Don't know. It just happened.'

'Nothing just happens.'

They called in sick. Eddie didn't feel guilty; he was sick. The churning in his stomach would not stop. He felt as if his intestines were being wrung like a wet rag. When he dropped Sydney to school and Abigail to daycare, he couldn't bear to see them off. He felt as if he would never see them again, and he clenched his jaw to keep from crying.

That day Sue-Ann and Eddie talked honestly for the first time in years. They agreed everything had changed after the incident. It might've gone differently had the incident not happened, but it had. Sue-Ann said she would always love him but she couldn't stay with him. She didn't want a sour break up. She knew he was an exceptional father and she wanted to share custody. She didn't know why she couldn't stay, and she couldn't imagine why he would still want her to. Yes, she still loved him, too, but she didn't want to go for counselling and she felt she had got over the incident. She also knew in her heart that it wasn't going to work. Her biggest mistake was the affair and not telling him sooner.

Eddie wanted to tell her that he would never forget the affair, but that he would forgive her. Eddie wanted to tell her that they could start over and if she wanted to pretend the incident never happened, he would be glad to go along with it. Eddie wanted to say that living in a foreign country without her by his side seemed useless, but that he couldn't go home, knowing he would hardly ever see his children. Eddie wanted to say many things, but he had become used to holding the words on the tip of his tongue. Eddie wanted to blame Sue-Ann, but he found himself blaming the incident and the two men.

After Sue-Ann had gone and had emptied the house, emptied it of toys and chaos, mess, candy wrappers, Barbie dolls, doll houses, emptied it of laughter and demands, joy and the gentle, innocent smiles of his children, the silence closed around him like hands around his neck. There was nothing to do, no laundry nor homework, no questions to be answered, no dishes to load in the dishwasher, no dinner to cook for anyone.

He made himself a sandwich with stale cold cuts and cheddar cheese that had turned orange and hard. It didn't matter. His senses were dulled so that he couldn't taste nor smell nor see nor feel. If his shell cracked, he knew he would collapse on the floor. He thought of calling Francis but he didn't want to talk about anything. The energy it took to talk, he needed to put one step in front of the other.

The house was becoming more and more oppressive. He tried to take a deep breath and came up short, gasping for air like a strangled fish. He clutched at the black turtleneck he wore and tried to pry it off his neck. The panicked feeling was getting worse. He tore off the turtleneck, flung it down and rushed to the back sliding door that opened on to the garden. He ran outside in a T-shirt and felt the cold air prick at his skin like tiny needles, darting in random jabs at his face and arms. One of Abigail's sand pails peeked out from behind an empty flowerpot, the only spot of colour in the garden.

Holding his heart, Eddie sat down slowly on the garden bench until the racing stopped, and he could breathe deeply again. He sat shivering in the cold for five minutes, and when he stood, ready to go inside, he heard an eerily lonesome sound. Caw caw caw. It was a raven, perched atop an evergreen tree, almost hidden by the branches.

Eddie looked up at the grey sky and squinted. The raven looked down at him and, as if in answer, the sobs rose from Eddie's throat and erupted in an anguished shout. Eddie shook his fist at the bird which seemed to stare through him with one eye.

Eddie sank to his knees in the snow and held his head in his hands. The raven cawed again.

- Peta-Gaye Stuart