The Day I Fell Off My Island

by Yvonne Bailey-Smith

  Interrupting my thoughts, Grandma Melba shooed me off to do my chores. I managed to complete them at lightning speed, wanting to present myself somewhere in the line of Mass Booker’s sight, in the hope that he might tell me more about my possible father. But he managed to avoid seeing me for the rest of the afternoon, even when I sat on the edge of the step watching as he reckoned up with Grandpa at the end of the day.

  June was mostly a wet month, hampering Mass Booker’s progress on our house. He and his workers even downed tools for a couple of weeks. But by the last Monday of the month, despite being less than four hours since sunrise, the temperature soared high into the eighties. I was on my way to clean out the chicken coop, when I spotted Grandpa and Mass Booker standing under the breadfruit tree deep in conversation. I surmised they must be talking about the work on the house.

  ‘Chile,’ Grandpa Sippa said, ‘Mass Booker here tell me seh him been talking to yuh fada and dat him waan fi meet yuh.’

  I did a motionless jig – my father wanted to see me! ‘Yes, sarh,’ I replied, ‘I would waan fi see im, if im waan fi see mi.’

  ‘Mi wi a leave it fi Mass Booker to arrange, den,’ Grandpa said.

  That seemed to be that, and both men turned from me and continued with their conversation.

  At the end of the day, Mass Booker called me over and asked if I could write. What kind of stupid question was that? Of course I could write, and probably better than him! But he was going to take me to meet my father and, however stupid I thought some of his questions were, he couldn’t be allowed to read my thoughts.

  ‘Yes, sarh,’ I replied, ‘I can write real pretty and I can spell good too.’

  ‘Then can you write a letter to you father to tell him you want to visit him?’

  ‘Yes, sarh, Mass Booker. I kyan write good. I’ll write him a nice letter jus like yuh seh.’

  ‘Well, then, write down this address,’ he said. ‘Mr Judah Mullings, Boldero Corner, Boldero PA. Write the address in the letter and don’t forget to write the same thing on the envelope.’

  That evening I sat at the dining table in the Hall and began composing a letter to my father. I wrote slowly taking care not to make any mistakes:

  Dear Mr Judah Mullings,

  Good Morning, sir. I hope when these few lines of mine reaches you, it will find you in the best of health. The man who is working on my grandparents’ house tells me he knows you and that you are my father. His name is Mass Booker. He said I have teeth just like yours and fine coolie skin. He said that you want to see me, and he told me to write you this letter. That is why I am writing it. Mass Booker said when you write back with a date, he will bring me to your house. I beg you to write back soon, because I would really like to meet you.

  Yours truly,

  Your daughter,

  Erna Annette Mullings.

  The following day, both Grandpa and Mass Booker read the letter. Mass Booker handed it back to me and nodded his approval.

  ‘Yuh seem like a clever child. You can write good and yuh spell well,’ he said.

  ‘Tank yuh, sarh,’ I replied.

  Grandpa handed me a three-pence coin to purchase a stamp. I placed the letter in my pinafore pocket and ran as fast as my legs would take me to the Baldwin’s store. One of two provision stores in the village, it sold most of the basic things that village people used on an everyday basis, and was home to the sub-post office – it also housed a men-only rum bar out the back.

  Miss Baldwin, who was always to be found behind the counter, took the envelope and my three-penny coin. She examined the letter for some moments before asking, ‘Mullings? A your fada yuh writing to?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Soh, is down a Boldero Corner him live? Sugar cane and mango country!’

  Did the whole district know who my father was? Was it only me, his actual daughter, who’d had no idea that he even existed, never mind was alive and well?

  ‘Mi nuh know, mam. Mi nevah been dere.’

  ‘A wha yuh still standing here for, chile?’

  ‘I tink seh yuh did a talk to me, mam.’

  ‘Cho, foolish chile, away wit yuh!’

  I’d always known my surname was Mullings and was happy that I didn’t share the same surname as my sister and brothers. In fact, I preferred not having a father to sharing a surname with the man that I’d come to despise as much as my Grandma did. I skipped back up the path to our house, greeting everyone I met. I wondered whether they all knew just how happy I was in that moment? Could they guess my secret? Did they know that I was only days away from meeting my father for the first time? I couldn’t tell them anything, not just yet, not until I saw him with my own two eyes and was sure that I hadn’t dreamt it all up.

  But it felt like an eternity before there was a response from my father. During every visit to the Baldwins’ provision store and post office, I asked the same question: ‘Anyting in de post for me, Miss Baldwin?’

  The answer was always the same, ‘No, chile, but mi will tell yuh when someting come in fiyuh.’

  In the end there was no return letter, just a message from Mass Booker to my grandfather to let him know that my father had received my letter and was expecting my visit. There was no indication of when the visit would happen, just that I was expected.

  Grandpa Sippa decided that the best time for me to go would be the start of the summer school break – only a week away. He would arrange for his good friend Mass Charlie to take me there. It seemed that Mass Charlie was in charge of taking people places, and Grandpa was confident that his old friend would be happy to help out. Grandpa himself rarely took bus journeys. His preference was to use our donkeys wherever possible; he did not have a lot of trust in the safety of our jolly buses or their drivers.

  A few days later, Mass Charlie arrived and settled himself in the village, and then, before I knew it, it was time for him to take me on my long-awaited visit.

  Chapter 13

  Early the following morning Grandma prepared breakfast for Grandpa and Mass Charlie. They sat together on the verandah where they sipped their coffee and ate their spicy turned cornmeal. After my morning wash, I tucked into the lumpy porridge that Grandma insisted I ate as the journey was long and it would keep my belly full. Lumpy porridge ordeal over, I pulled on the bright-red second-hand dress one of Auntie Pookie’s daughters had given me. Grandma attempted to rake through my hair with a thick-toothed plastic comb. Each time she tried to pick up a bunch of hair in the comb, it felt as though my scalp was being lifted from my head. I hollered so loudly that she soon gave up.

  ‘Chile, run to miss Petra an beg her fi do sinting wit dat hog hair!’

  Miss Petra had a great technique. She would grab a large chunk of hair close to the roots tightly in one hand, comb out the the looser hair from the end, then work the comb toward the roots. Once the knots were out, it was easy to comb through all of my hair. In no time at all she’d combed and braided my hair and I was ready to leave for my father’s house. I felt like a proper lady, dressed up in my new long-line brassiere with its myriad hooks and eyes, my red second-hand dress and my shiny black shoes. I was all set to leave when Grandma Melba called me to her and checked me over carefully.

  ‘Mm, Erna, yuh look pretty still. Siddung wit mi awhile,’ she said.

  I sat beside her on the verandah, took her left hand in mine and began playing with her wedding ring.

  ‘Grandma, can I have your ring when you die?’ The strange question just popped out of my mouth.

  I needn’t have worried, Grandma replied with her usual calm, ‘Mi nuh tink so, chile. When me dead mi ring fi go pass to mi youngest bwoy. Yuh uncle Dan.’

  ‘But I would like it,’ I insisted.

  ‘Now, tek yuh tings and gwaan. Mass Charlie wait long enough fiyuh,’ she said sternly.

  I was going away for two whole weeks, so Grandma had packed a couple of changes of clothes – one yard dress, one half-slip, two pairs of panties and my church dress – and placed them
in the battered grip I was using as a suitcase. She handed me a canteen stuffed with ackee and saltfish and bammies and placed it inside a jute bag. For good measure, she put four ripe mangoes and an avocado inside the bag as well.

  ‘Lunch fi yuh and Mass Charlie,’ she said. ‘Aff yuh go now an yuh mine to behave yuself good, like mi teach yuh.’

  I was halfway across the yard, heading towards Mass Charlie who was still sitting on the verandah with Grandpa, when Grandma called out, ‘Chile, come back yasso. Fiyuh slip waan fi draw up. A yuh slip!’ she repeated as I walked back towards her. ‘It too long. It a show long down under yuh frock.’

  Grandma hitched up my slip, tying the slender straps into knots on each side and tucking them out of sight. When she was done only a glimmer of white lace could be seen below the red dress. Grandma considered that a hint of lace was acceptable, but a great length of white cloth hanging below one’s hem was not.

  Mass Charlie, who was known for his love of walking, set a quick pace on our three-mile journey to Preston, where we would catch the bus that was vaguely expected around 9.30 in the morning. I was soon lagging behind. Mass Charlie stopped and waited for me.

  ‘Let mi help yuh wit dat, chile,’ he said, and I handed him the grip.

  Only then did I realise that it was quite heavy and that I was doing all the carrying, what with the lunch canteen hanging from my left shoulder and the grip in my right hand. Now I was able to keep up with Mass Charlie and we reached Preston with half an hour to spare.

  At approximately 9.20am the raucous sound of the horn signalled the bus’s approach. People who had been ambling around suddenly converged towards the sturdy wooden sign that marked the bus stop. A number of passengers were making hurried last-minute purchases of fried dumplings and patties from Mass Julius’s provision store. Promptly, on the half-hour, the bus arrived and screeched to a stop in a cloud of dust. We piled on in the order that we’d each reached the stop. Some of the passengers were heading to market, which meant a long wait while the bus conductor supervised them in loading their bales of produce on to the roof – including sacks full of yams and crates containing pigs and chickens, their squealing and squawking loud enough to muffle the sound of the engine. Mass Charlie managed to grab a single seat on the already-packed bus and sat me down on his knees. The journey time was dictated by the state of the road, and was slowed considerably in the places where it was still badly damaged from the last year’s storm. The only respite from the constant bumping up and down came when the bus neared one of the many small towns along the route. Here, the road surface changed from gravel to tarmac, and the bus glided smoothly along for a few minutes, until it changed back to the gravel road a mile or so outside the town. Although everyone knew that there was only one bus a day, not everyone made it to a pickup point in time. Now and again, someone would dash out of the bush, awash with sweat, and race after the bus, sometimes managing to leap on to the small ladder attached to the back, where, if he or she was strong enough, they would hang on precariously until the driver decided to stop. Despite these constant distractions, it wasn’t long into the journey before my thoughts began to turn to lunch.

  ‘Mass Charlie,’ I said, ‘mi hungry. Mi kyan eat mi lunch now?’

  ‘If yuh seh yuh hungry, chile, den it a good time to eat.’

  Grandma Melba had carefully wrapped our food separately, so it was easy to remove my portion from the canteen, leaving Mass Charlie’s for when he was ready. I finished my lunch long before lunchtime, and for a time kept myself busy counting roadside fruit and vegetable stalls as the bus whisked past them, reminding myself how lucky I was to live on my island. Makeshift sound systems pumping out reggae music kept the roadside sellers and higglers entertained, and when the bus drove by one it would slow a little and the passengers would sway to the music.

  It was a whole hour and a half into our journey before we reached the small market town where the majority of passengers got off. The back of our journey was broken. The blood-red dirt road morphed into grey-coloured clay and, as the bus neared Boldero, the earth changed again to a chalky white. The lay of the land and the vegetation also changed. The craggy outcrops I was used to disappeared, replaced by flatlands and sugarcane plantations as far as the eye could see. As the bus trundled along the dusty road, I also noted a large body of water that was sectioned off into square pools.

  Before I was able to ask Mass Charlie what the pools were, he volunteered the answer, ‘Fish farms!’ he exclaimed. ‘Dem breed up certain type of fish in de water to make sure folk get dem fish on demand. It’s not every time de fisherman dem bring wah people want fram de sea.’ It sounded like a very strange story, but I feigned understanding.

  Just then the driver shouted, ‘One stop!’ to remind Mass Charlie that we were getting off the next time the bus stopped.

  The bus chugged on for a few more minutes before pulling up outside a low concrete schoolhouse. The handwritten sign on the weather-beaten board above its weather-beaten wooden doors read: Boldero School House. That must be where my brothers and sisters go to school, I thought, as we clambered off the bus.

  The bus drove off in a cloud of white dust, leaving Mass Charlie and I on the side of the road. I looked across at the provision store on the other side and felt my heart leap in my chest. My father – for it was unmistakably him – was leaning against the wall, next to a shiny red and black motorcycle, looking straight at me. He was taller than I’d imagined, and well-built, without an ounce of spare flesh on his muscular frame. His short-sleeved shirt exposed the strong arms of a man who worked the land. He was a good-looking man with a fine brown face, exactly as Mass Booker described him to me. He was wearing a red baseball cap, which I soon discovered rarely left his head. Seeing us, my father straightened himself up and called out a greeting to Mass Charlie. He smiled as he did so and I was relieved to see that his teeth were nice, even if they were buck teeth just like mine, with gaps between them. Mass Charlie and I crossed the road towards him.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mister Mullings, sarh,’ I said shyly.

  ‘So, yuh is de daughter your mada did try fi hide from me,’ he laughed in response. ‘Come, let me look pon you good, chile. An a soh yuh fayva Violet! Lawd a mercy! Yuh fayva har fi true.’

  My father was full of surprises. How could a mother hide a child? I couldn’t recall being hidden anywhere. I was always there in my village with my grandparents and my sister and brothers, before they were taken away. No one had come to claim me, like the ugly Satan devil man came to claim his children. A dozen questions whirred around my head, but before I could say anything more my father directed us out of the sun to the verandah, where we settled down on a couple of rickety benches.

  ‘Miss Lettie,’ he called out to the middle-aged woman who was sitting behind the store counter sewing something, ‘bring a soda fa mi daughta! Mass Charlie, wah yuh a drink? Miss Lettie have Red Stripe and rum if yuh wi tek someting strong?’

  ‘I’ll tek a gill a de rum,’ Mass Charlie replied. ‘Beer is young bwoy dem sinting.’

  Miss Lettie brought out two sodas and a generous helping of rum for Mass Charlie. My father, as I soon learnt, neither drank or smoked these days. The two men exchanged some brief talk about the journey, after which my father turned to me again.

  ‘Lawd, Erna, yuh really fayva Violet. Yuh have everyting fi har.’

  Not my buck teeth, I thought. I sensed that my father didn’t know what else he could say to his long-lost thirteen-year-old daughter, and I didn’t know what I could say to him. But all I cared about in that moment was that there was this man sitting two feet away from me who was partly responsible for me existing. At last, I had a mother and a father, as well as my grandparents.

  ‘Soh, Erna, yuh a go a school?’ my father said, after a bit.

  ‘Yes, sarh! Mi go a school. Rose Hill School, sarh.’

  ‘Yuh a learn good?’

  ‘Mi tink soh, sarh.’

  We finished our drinks and my fathe
r explained that his house was roughly half an hour walk away. Then he went over to where his motorbike was lent up against the wall.

  ‘Miss Lettie,’ he called out, ‘mi a beg yuh, keep a good eye pon fi mi motor for me. Mi a come back later fi tek it off yuh hands.’

  ‘It will be alright with me, Missa Big Man,’ Miss Lettie replied with a smile.

  ‘Missa Big Man,’ I whispered to myself. That was how Mass Booker had referred to him on at least one occasion, too. He’d said something about my father being a big man in the village and I’d interpreted this to mean he was a tall man like my grandfather, but now I realised it was a measure of respect as well.

  Once my father had sorted out his motorcycle, we set off for his house. The two men strode side by side, chatting as they walked, and I followed a short distance behind them. We turned right on to a gravel path and after about ten minutes we passed a group of children, a number of whom appeared to be a similar age to me. They were standing in a line on a series of flat white stones by a standpipe, waiting their turn to draw water. Containers of different colours and sizes sat on the ground next to them.

  ‘Good afternoon, Papa, good afternoon, sarh!’ the children chorused as we approached, but my father and Mass Charlie continued with their conversation without replying, seemingly oblivious to the children’s greetings. The children stared at me but made no comment.

  I walked on behind my father and Mass Charlie and occasionally glanced back, only to catch a number of curious eyes looking after me. Why had they called my father Papa? Perhaps I’d just misheard them. Yet they all seemed so familiar!