The Day I Fell Off My Island

by Yvonne Bailey-Smith

  The days, weeks and months dragged slowly after the children were stolen. For a time, they occupied all of my thoughts. After all, we used to do everything together. My nights were filled with bitter tears. I’d sob quietly into the harsh calico pillow, and many a morning I woke still sobbing.

  It was nearly a year after the ulgy Satan devil man took the children when a second letter arrived from Auntie Madge. As impossible as it seemed, the news within was even more of a blow: the children had been taken to England at the start of the year.

  I listened keenly from the side of the house as Grandpa Sippa slowly read the letter to Grandma Melba. The more she heard, the more I heard her shift uncomfortably in her wicker chair. I snuck a glance, as Grandpa read out that the devil man had never intended to buy land at all; he only came for the children.

  A defeated expression on Grandma’s face had replaced any last-minute hope she may have been harbouring of her grandchildren being returned to her.

  ‘Come play hopscotch with me,’ a voice sung out from behind a thick clutter of flowering coffee trees. It was my cousin and friend Dorcas. ‘Come from de verandah, come play hopscotch with me!’ she said.

  In the months that the children had been gone, Grandma hadn’t failed to notice the pervasive look of sadness that had settled in my eyes. Each time she was near, she would pat my head gently and sigh loudly before murmuring, ‘Oh, life, life, life!’ And so it was that she’d borrowed Dorcas from her mother, Miss Mavis, to provide me with much-needed company.

  Dorcas came nearer and tugged at my yard dress. ‘Come, Erna, come play now, man.’

  Dorcas’s mother had plenty of children and not enough food or beds, so she was more than agreeable to Dorcas going between the two homes. I had a new horse hair mattress and every trace of pee smell was gone from my room. On the nights that Dorcas came to stay, we shared my bed. I was happy that she wasn’t a bed-wetter like my sister and brothers. We played games well into the night and we had two imaginary boyfriends, named Devon and Darren. We had discovered our bodies, and our boyfriends – who were, in reality, two lumpy pillows filled with bits of old rags – helped us to ‘sin’ on an almost-nightly basis. Although that kind of sinning was never discussed in church, we knew for sure that what we were doing couldn’t be right. We were both convinced that our punishment would be to roast in the deep hellfire that the church minster preached about every Sunday. We’d seen a picture of what a hellfire looked like in the big orange-coloured book my grandparents kept propped up on a shelf in the Hall. Each time we sinned, we got down on our knees, faced each other, and prayed as hard as we could that we would never let our lumpy boyfriends touch us ever again. But we always did, safe in the knowledge that we could make things right with a prayer, asking for the good Lord’s forgiveness.

  But while Dorcas was helping me to recover from the loss of my siblings, Grandma was not the same person after the children were stolen. Her health began to deteriorate and she laughed less and often sat alone and in silence. Her nosebleeds were occurring more regularly, too, and I was worried more about her health than anything else. And even though I had Dorcas, I still missed my siblings’ warm bodies next to mine, and their voices, and all the other daily things that were once so routine.

  The news of the children now being in England overwhelmed our little household with sadness. Grandma seemed to know from the day they were taken that she would never see them again, and, on the day that Auntie Madge’s second letter arrived, I believe she began the process of slowly dying.

  The April storms arrived during the night with the usual drama. Howling winds and eerily creaking trees made sleep almost impossible. The old jalousie windows rattled in their partly rotted frames, so much so that I worried what we would find when day broke. Three nights later the storm was still raging. I was in and out of fitful sleep when I woke with a jolt and a deep sense of foreboding: Grandma was sick again. I just knew it. Leaving Dorcas fast asleep in the bed, I ran to my grandparents’ room with our old enamel pail and propped it on Grandma’s lap as she struggled upright. I sat by her side and clutched her grey hand in mine, watching as half a pail of thick coagulated blood poured from her nose. I shook Grandpa Sippa, who was deep in sleep and snoring so hard it was enough to wake the neighbourhood. He woke with a start and then, when he looked into the bucket, he knew immediately that Grandma was going to need hospital treatment this time around. He left the house before dawn to work with the village men to prepare a wooden stretcher to carry her to the roadside, so that a car could take her to the nearest hospital in Black Hill.

  I was terrified. If death was coming to my beloved Grandma, it would mean that she would no longer be able to stand over me, her warm breath bathing me in love as she tried without success to rake through my unruly hair. Who would hitch up my slip when it showed below my dress? Who would scold me and then make me laugh till I cried? Being dead would take that all away. It would all end up with a nine night with hundreds of people eating too much curry goat and drinking far too much white rum. And when the nine nights were finally over, there would be a burial not too far from the back of the house.

  The storm had pretty much washed away the dirt track that led to the main road, so the young village men, who were given the job of carrying Grandma on the wooden stretcher, had to drag themselves through rushing swirls of water and mud to reach the main road. That was not a lot better, the thin layer of asphalt having almost disappeared with the force of the storm. The truck used to transport Grandma to Black Hill Hospital was an old wreck of a thing and very noisy, but the men tried to make her as comfortable as they could. They lined the truck with straw covered with old sheets, before laying Grandma carefully in the open back. Grandpa and I scrambled in beside her. The driver did his best to compensate for the state of the road, and the truck drove slowly along, kicking up pebbles as it did so, a few of which landed in the back of the truck where Grandma lay, drawn and grey. Several torrid hours later we pulled up outside the hospital, where two porters rushed her at speed through the large entrance, followed by Grandpa and me. We were greeted by the overpowering smell of Dettol, but it was a far more welcome scent than the smell of a bucket of Grandma’s blood. Grandpa and I were told to remain in the waiting area while the porters were joined by a doctor and a stern-looking matron who wheeled Grandma out of sight.

  The waiting area was crowded with adults and children. Two seats along from us was a man with a heavily bandaged right arm with fresh blood still seeping from it. Next to him, a skinny young man peered anxiously out of his massively swollen eyes. He looked as though he’d collided with a knuckleduster. Opposite us sat a small girl, who kept bawling, ‘Mama, mi belly a hot mi bad bad!’ and next to her was a little boy, no more than two years old, with a massive bump protruding from his tiny head. In the middle of all of us, pacing up and down and talking constantly to each other, were two heavily pregnant women, one of whom looked far too old to be having babies. The women rubbed gently at their enormous stomachs as they paced and talked.

  We sat in the waiting room all day, and eventually my exhausted Grandpa was told that Grandma was in a serious, but stable, condition, and that she would need to remain in the hospital for now. They would only allow us to look into the ward, so we said our goodbyes to an unconscious Grandma Melba from the doorway and left.

  Grandpa had arranged for us to stay at the house of one of my aunts who lived not too far from the hospital, but he could only afford to stay away from our smallholding for a couple of days, so the following day, reassured that Grandma was in safe hands, we left Black Hill and returned to our village.

  It was always hard when Grandma had to go into the hospital, for both Grandpa and me. The worst was the distance. In her absence Grandpa busied himself on the land. It was naseberry season and they grew in abundance around us. I kept myself occupied fruit picking with Dorcas. We’d fill our baskets with as much as we could carry and walk around our village and the next selling the fruit for one cen
t each to whoever we could.

  Grandpa and I were kept informed of Grandma’s progress by relatives and friends who passed by the hospital. Then, three weeks after her admission, Grandpa received a telegram to let us know that Grandma was ready to be discharged. The doctors had worked a miracle – Grandma had been pumped full of plasma and other people’s blood and was well enough to return home. We waited all day for the truck that would bring her back, and then, just before sunset, Grandma arrived, looking frail and tired, but insisting that she was in good health. Her first words were a comment on the untidy state of the house, and this made me feel better than any doctor’s pronouncement: Grandma was back! And she had returned in her very favourite fruit season: mangoes.

  Chapter 12

  The storm had damaged the house as well as the roads and, while Grandma was in the hospital, Grandpa decided it was time to fix up the place to provide her with a bit more comfort. He took his inspiration from his younger brother Egbert, who had recently renovated his own house. Great-Uncle Egbert had had extra rooms built, new glass windows to replace the wooden jalousies, and a shiny new zinc roof in place of the old rusted one. His place looked so good that Grandpa employed the man responsible to renovate our old house as well. He was big man named Mass Booker, and he had a weird looping moustache that he twiddled while speaking. He was at least fifty years old – not as old as my grandparents, but still really old in my eyes.

  He arrived at our house early one morning at the end of Grandma’s first week at home, carrying with him a large canvas bag, which I later saw was packed full of all manner of work tools. Grandma, who was up and about and seemed back to her old busy self, offered Mass Booker freshly made coffee in the white enamel mug that she reserved for strangers. When not in use it was kept a couple of feet away from the fireplace, filled to the brim with ashes. Grandma said the ashes sterilised things. I’d watched her a few days earlier filling the same mug with warm ashes after she’d offered fresh mint tea to the Coolie Man who had passed through the village and had soldered our pots and pans.

  Grandpa and Mass Booker talked for a long time. They drank more coffee and then Grandpa walked him around the house pointing out what needed doing. When at last they stopped talking, Mass Booker gathered up his belongings and left. Grandpa called Grandma and me to the verandah and told us we were going to have a new roof and a brand new kitchen, with a proper oil stove to replace the old paraffin one.

  ‘Dat is nice, Sippa, tank you,’ Grandma said when he told her, flashing Grandpa an almost girly smile.

  In Grandma’s new kitchen we would be able to sit around a proper table on proper chairs, instead of wonky stools and upended buckets with plates of food balanced precariously on our knees. I wondered whether eating around a table all the time would make Grandpa keep his false teeth in when he ate, or whether he would continue to remove them and pop them into the same handkerchief with which he often vigorously blew his nose.

  Mass Booker returned two weeks later with more tools and a couple of young men who turned out to be two of his seven sons. It was reaching the end of the rainy season and the land had quickly dried, already wearing a cracked and parched appearance, as though it hadn’t rained at all. Only the profusion of overgrown plants, flowers and weeds told the real story.

  Over the next few days, the three men took measurements, marked out lines on the ground and wrote numbers in chalk on the walls. Half a dozen young village men, who normally sat around bleary-eyed with nothing to do but watch the days pass, each as uneventful as the next, got themselves on to Grandpa’s payroll, and soon our village was buzzing with noise and redolent with the smell of the men as they lugged their heavy loads of cement, wood, zinc and whatever else was required to carry out the work from the track to the house. Grandpa shopped for provisions each day and used our largest three-legged iron pot to cook food for everyone.

  On the days that I wasn’t in school, I scrutinised the youngest of Mass Booker’s sons. One night when Dorcas asked me why I’d screamed so loud, I couldn’t tell her that my boyfriend wasn’t a pillow any more, he was almost real, and his name was Daniel.

  Shortly after Mass Booker began working on our house, a parcel arrived from England. In what I presumed was one of my mother’s better moments, she’d sent me new clothing, as well as some useful things for Grandma and Grandpa. She had also sent me the doll that I’d always wanted. I was months away from my fourteenth birthday, a little old to be playing with dolls, perhaps, but I’d prayed for one so hard that, when it came, I played with it unashamedly, dressing and undressing her, combing her long silken brown hair, taking her little shoes and socks on and off and admiring her three-quarter length pantaloons with their frilly edges. She came with her very own flowery plastic carrycot, which had a mattress, a sheet, and a woolly cover. I remember wondering how cold it must be in England if even dolls were covered in woolly blankets. She was a lovely doll and I named her Elizabeth, which I thought was a really nice name, the same name as the England Queen.

  One day as I played with Elizabeth in the yard I heard a deep voice behind me. ‘Yuh is too big to be playing with dolls!’ it said, accompanied by an enormous hand, which snatched my precious Elizabeth from me. It was Mass Booker. He was an educated-sounding man who spoke in a mixture of speaky-spokey and village patois.

  Before I could react, I watched with horror as Mass Booker dropped my doll into the huge hole that had been dug as part of the construction.

  I was so upset and angry that tears immediately exploded from my eyes, followed by unsightly dollops of yellow and green mucous that streamed from my nose and down my face. How could he not understand that, besides Dorcas, Elizabeth was my only proper company during the dark island evenings? She was my next best friend! Wiping my face, I drew myself to my full height and fixed Mass Booker with the nastiest, coldest stare I could muster. I wanted to ask him why on Earth he did this, but every island child knew the unspoken rules: you do not question the actions of adults, and you never answer back.

  Before I could speak, Mass Booker addressed me again. ‘But wait,’ he said, ‘now I’m looking at you good… Yuh look like somebody I know. Tell me, what yuh mother name?’

  None of your business, was the answer in my head. ‘Mi mada name is Miss Violet, sarh,’ I said, knowing full well he wanted her surname, but as I was still angry about what he did to Elizabeth I decided to play the fool in the hope that he wouldn’t ask me any more questions.

  ‘Violet what?’ he persisted.

  ‘Mi mada name is Violet Pearl James, sarh.’

  ‘So, yuh have the same name as yuh mother?’

  ‘Well, no, sarh. Mi ave mi own name. Mi name is Erna Annette Mullings. Mi mada did give me my fada name, sarh, even though me nuh know who im is, sarh.’

  Mass Booker twiddled his moustache and repeated what I’d said, ‘Mmm. James and Mullings. Yes, man, me know her. So, Violet James is your mother and Big Man Mullings is your father. Hmmm.’

  He didn’t seem to be addressing me directly, so I felt no need to reply.

  ‘But yuh say you don’t know yuh father?’ he asked, after a pause.

  The man was getting on my nerves. I was thinking he was supposed to be building a house, not asking me lots of stupid questions.

  ‘Yes, sarh, mi nuh know who mi fada is, sarh, but people seh im name is Judah Mullings, and dem seh him mussa dead long-time, sarh! Dem seh him was tief and him fall off truck an bruk him neck, sarh.’

  ‘I think people telling you a whole heap of foolishness, child,’ Mass Booker replied. ‘Your father is far from dead. He’s more alive than me! I know who he is very well and he is a big man where him come from. And, now I look at yuh, I see you have the same big buckteeth an half-coolie face like him.’

  ‘Mi fada nuh dead fi true, sarh?’

  Mass Booker didn’t answer my question, but instead continued, ‘You’re his child for certain. All Big Man Mullings’ children look the image of him. Him can’t hide them. Soh wait, that mu
st mean that Big Man Mullings did breed up the two sisters at the same time. Violet and Pookie!’ He smiled to himself, but not in a nice way. ‘Nuh, man, your father! Him nuh easy.’

  He turned and went over to talk to his youngest son, Daniel, who was also my boyfriend who had no idea he was my boyfriend. My heart was skipping all over the place. I’d grown up without questioning the fact that my grandparents were, in every respect, my parents. My brief meeting with my mother did little to make me feel like I was actually her child, and all I had known of my father up to the point of this awkward conversation with Mass Booker was that I had his surname and that he was probably a thief who fell from a truck and broke his neck. Now, I was being told by this man who asked far too many questions that not only did he know my mother, but that he knew my father too, and that my father was very much alive. Suddenly, I was desperate to keep Mass Booker talking and I was happy for him to ask me a thousand questions if he wanted to. I needed to know more about the buckteeth man with his half-coolie face and why he was so sure he was my father. I was equally fascinated that Mass Booker said that my father did breed up two sisters, my mother, Violet, and her sister Pookie. I knew what ‘breed up’ meant and now I knew that I had at least one other sister on my father’s side. I also worked out, from what Mass Booker said, that this likely sister was also my first cousin, because she was my Auntie Pookie’s daughter. The girl he referred to had to be Angelia. She was the only one of Auntie Pookie’s many daughters who was the same age as me. I’d seen her at the house when I visited a few times with Grandpa at the end of market days; one of her sisters had even said that we had the same large eyes. Since my entire family was already full of all kinds of mix-up, I wasn’t surprised to hear that I had a sister who was also my cousin. But as I watched Mass Booker scratching his head from under a partially removed cap, I had more important questions running around my head: did I really look like my father? Was he nicer than the ugly Satan devil man? Did he also steal people’s children? Since my mother wasn’t his wife, did he have a different wife? And, if he did have a wife, did they have other children? The idea of lots of new sisters and brothers played out like persistent sweet music in my head. It was like the world had suddenly expanded and I had a new and important role in it.