The walk, which was steadily uphill, soon became tiring under the relentless afternoon sun, but as we topped a small rise in the road a provision store appeared out of the heat haze like an oasis.
‘Dis is my shop,’ my father said when we reached it. ‘One a yuh big sista run it fimi. And dats my house over dere soh.’ He pointed towards a house that stood on a low hill about a quarter of a mile away.
My father’s provision shop was typical of all such village shops, a slightly off-square, two-roomed concrete building, with a red-painted zinc roof and faded beige-coloured walls. On the verandah, which ran the width of the shop, were two roughly carved wooden tables with benches either side of them. Seated at one of the tables were four old men playing a game of dominoes, while a fifth man looked on. One of the men slammed his final piece hard on the table with a cry of ‘Domino!’
‘Carry mi winner Red Stripe, come gimme, man!’ the winner crowed.
The three losers placed a few coppers on the table and the fifth man collected the money, went into the shop, and returned with a bottle of Red Stripe. While the men started setting up for another game, my father called to his daughter to send out two sodas and a gill of rum. The young woman inside the shop in turn bawled out ‘JM!’ and moments later a boy of about fourteen appeared carrying the soda bottles and the rum on a small wooden tray.
‘Him a one a yuh bredda. His name Junior, but wi call him JM for short,’ my father said, taking his soda from the tray.
As I gulped down the sweet fizzy liquid, I became aware that a small crowd had gathered. They looked from me to my father and back again. My father went over to a tall woman with feet large enough to match her height.
‘Yes, man, she’s a next one,’ he said to her. ‘Dis one grow with her grandparents dem.’ He turned to me. ‘Erna,’ he called, ‘come and say hello to your Aunt Berta. Berta a one of fimi younger sista.’
‘Good afternoon, Auntie Berta,’ I said to the tall woman.
‘Yuh kyaan hide yuh pickney dem!’ was all that Aunt Berta said in response.
While my father continued his conversation with his sister, I walked a little way from the provision store until I reached a spot where I was able to get a clear view of his house perched on the hillside across from a shallow gully. There were no other houses in the immediate vicinity. It appeared very large in comparison with my grandparents’ home. The original wooden structure seemed to be sandwiched between two newer concrete buildings, their zinc roofs glinting in the afternoon sun. All three visible sides of the house had glass panelled windows and the walls were painted a light blue that matched the colour of the island sky. Half a dozen brightly painted red steps led up to the verandah and a large brown double front door. It was surrounded by at least four acres of land, most of which was rocky and dotted with large trees interspersed with patches of tall grass and clumps of red, pink and orange hibiscus and green mountain sage.
Then I heard my father call out to me and I ran back to the store.
‘Come say goodbye to Mass Charlie,’ he said when I reached him. ‘Is time for him fi leave us.’
‘Thank you, Mass Charlie,’ I said, and he stood up and gave me a pat on the head before heading back towards the bus stop.
My father and I walked on until we reached the small gully that ran alongside the edge of his land. From its depths I heard, rather than saw, squealing pigs, cooing pigeons and loud roosters. Four dogs lounged on the path between the house and the shop. One large dog, with an attractive face and silky hair that made him look as though he’d just left a hairdresser, came bounding out of the gully towards my father.
‘Yuh come look fi mi, Freddie?’ my father said. He patted the dog a couple of times before shooing it off. ‘Go bout yuh business now, Freddie. Move, bwoy!’
The children we’d passed at the standpipe came up the path behind us, chattering excitedly as they moved swiftly with their buckets on their heads. Their energetic pace betrayed nothing of the weight they were carrying, or of the relentless heat. As they reached my father, they greeted him for the second time, and again my father looked at them, but did not return the greetings.
‘Mama mus a fi tired fi tek in Papa outside pickney dem,’ one of the boys said loudly as he passed.
‘Tyrone!’ my father called out. ‘Yuh waan fi come back here an repeat dat?’
‘Sarry, Papa! It nuh nuttin mi said, sarh!’
‘Mek mi hear yuh talk lakka dat again, dirty bwoy, an yuh scrawny arse will be sarry fi true!’
The others, who weren’t brave enough to echo Tyrone’s sentiment, cut their eyes at me and carried on walking.
Soon, they turned on to the path that led directly up to the house. As they mounted the first step, the front doors swung open and a tall, slender young woman appeared. She walked down the steps towards two large black plastic barrels that were placed to the side of the house and began helping each child in turn to lower their buckets and pour the water in. The empty buckets were then upended and left nearby. Water pouring over, the youngsters disappeared from sight.
‘Finish up yuh soda, Erna,’ my father’s voice cut into my quiet watching. ‘Yuh better come and meet Miss Iris. A long time she a wait fi meet yuh.’
I swallowed the remains of my drink and thought about what Tyrone had said. I felt nervous about meeting Miss Iris – what if she chased me away from her house and from her own children, or demanded that my father had nothing further to do with me? In the few minutes it took to reach the house, my belly heaved and churned so much that I worried that the moment I was introduced to her I would throw up all over her and that would spell the end of everything. The next minute, I found myself standing on the verandah and there, seated outside the kitchen door on a wooden stool, was Miss Iris herself, a rather fat brown woman. She was dressed in typical yard clothes, with a plaid scarf wrapped round her head, and a multi-coloured apron round her waist. In front of her was a small mountain of gungo pea pods. She was shelling at speed, dropping the peas into a large white basin covered in black spots where the enamel had chipped off. Miss Iris stopped her shelling, looked up at me and beamed the biggest, friendliest, most toothless smile I’d ever seen. Immediately, the churning in my belly was gone.
‘Dis is de daughta mi tell yuh bout, Iris,’ said my father. ‘De one mi breed wit de gal from Little Hammon. Yuh memba seh de mada did bring har here when she was a baby, nine or ten month? Something like dat. Den mi nevah hear from de mada again.’
Miss Iris smiled some more, to the point where I felt confident enough to address her directly.
‘My name is Erna, mam, an my mada name is Miss Violet.’
‘Yes, chile. Mi know all a dat. It good fi meet yuh now, yuh is big pickney.’
‘Tank yuh, mam.’
‘But, Judah,’ she said, turning to her husband, ‘a soh she fayva her mada! She nuh ave nuttin fi yuh. Not a striking ting!’
My father’s sister had said a few minutes earlier how my father couldn’t hide his pickney, and now Miss Iris was saying that I looked nothing like him. Nothing was making much sense.
‘A mus soh it go,’ said my father, ‘mi a go back out a road. You two kyan get fi know each other.’
I looked on as he strode back in the direction from which we had just come.
‘Siddung an res yuhself, chile,’ Miss Iris smiled. ‘Soh, yuh granparents dem well, chile?’ she asked, once I’d sat down beside her.
‘Yes, mam, dem very well,’ I replied.
‘Mi hope seh dem have sumady to help dem while yuh deya wit yuh fada. Dem ave odder grand pickney dere wit dem?’
‘No, mam. Mi sista and bredda dem gone an Hinglan. But mi have plenty relative in de village. Dem all help, mam. An mi grandparent dem strong.’
While Miss Iris continued to make small talk with me, one by one her children edged closer. The recognition that their father had indeed brought home yet another outside child registered in all their eyes.
‘It look like yuh bredda and sist
a dem want fi get fi know yuh, Erna,’ Miss Iris said. ‘Yuh kyan go talk to dem if yuh want now.’ And with that she picked up her bowl of shelled peas and disappeared inside the kitchen, leaving me alone with this crowd of siblings.
There was a long silence after Miss Iris left. All the young people’s eyes were on me. I wanted to say something, but nothing came to mind. There were maybe nine or ten of them. I scanned their faces in the hope that one of them might want to say something to me. A boy with dark skin like mine was staring hard at me, so I stared back. The more we looked at each other, the more I felt as if I was looking into a mirror and an angry male image of myself was staring back. I was disconcerted, so averted my eyes, searching around for a friendlier face.
‘All dem is Papa pickney, in case yuh a wonder,’ a young man of about eighteen years finally piped up. ‘Kenroy is my name, but people call mi Ken,’ he said, holding out his hand.
‘My name is Erna,’ I replied, shaking his hand.
‘Cho, man,’ Ken replied, ‘mi know dat long time. Wi fada talk bout yuh all de time! Tell wi seh yuh mada did bring yuh here one time when yuh a baby.’
‘Fi true?’ I said.
‘Wah yuh mean, if a true? Mi fada seh soh, soh it nuh mus be true! Bwoy,’ he continued, ‘yuh did look frighten when you did see all a wi. But yuh nuh se nuttin yet! Papa ave plenty more pickney.’
‘How many im have?’ I asked, amazed to discover there were even more of us.
‘People talk seh! More dan forty wid a whole heap a woman. Dem seh him have pickney spread up an down de country.’
‘Fimi grandparents dem have sixteen, but mi nevah hear seh any one sumady can have forty pickney!’ I replied.
The other children looked on, but said nothing.
‘Yuh see your mada? Papa have pickney wit fi har sista too! Mi believe she a de same age as you and dat renking bwoy over dere, soh! De long black one who a look pon you bad.’
I looked across at the boy with the angry eyes. His steely gaze was still directed at me.
‘Mi nuh tink seh im like me,’ I said. ‘Im look like seh im would kill me if im get a chance!’
‘Nah mind him. A soh him stay wit people.’
I was wondering why Mass Booker hadn’t made so much as a mention of my father’s many children. A little preparation would have helped. For some reason, he’d seen fit to mention my aunt Pookie’s daughter, but not the hordes of young people who now surrounded me. Of course, I hoped that I’d have a few brothers and sisters, but this was on another scale altogether!
‘Yeah, man,’ Ken continued, ‘mi did meet yuh auntie daughter once. She look like yuh too. Same gappy teet!’
The fixation with my teeth was strange, because as far as I could see pretty much all of my father’s children who’d opened their mouth that day betrayed the same slightly unfortunate inheritance, and that included Ken.
‘But yuh ave de gaps dem, too! Look like all a wi ave dem,’ I said.
‘And de brown skin girl, dat fat one dat look like Mama,’ Ken continued, ignoring my comment, ‘she is another one born de same year as yuh.’
‘Mi name is not brown fat girl,’ the girl retorted. ‘Mi name is Alvita Rose Mullings, an mi look lakka myself!’
‘Alvita! Nobody nuh chat wit yuh,’ Ken shot back. ‘Yuh always ave too much fi seh about nuttin.’
‘A wi next sista yasso mi a talk to,’ Alvita replied, ‘soh nuh seh nuttin else if yuh nuh want mi fi fix yuh mout.’
‘Soh weh mi was?’ Ken continued, as if this was a completely normal exchange. ‘Oh yeh, mi fada pickney dem. Mi a one of five pickney fi mi fada born de same year.’
‘Five different mada,’ Alvita added, ‘soh nuh bada tink seh yuh special!’
To my relief, this uncomfortable conversation was ended abruptly by Miss Iris calling for her girl children from the kitchen.
‘Hazel, Yvette, Alvita, Adana, Hilret! Mi ready fi start de food now.’
Immediately, the five girls disappeared into the kitchen, leaving me alone on the verandah, as my new brothers had scattered in all directions.
As soon as Miss Iris started serving out the food, my father made an appearance, said grace and headed into the dining room, which, even though it was far bigger than our Hall at home, still wasn’t large enough to accommodate his enormous family. The children took their food and slunk off to sit on what I thought were random stones and tree stumps scattered about the yard. It turned out, though, that each seating place was as demarcated as any chair around a table. Unsure what to do, I sat on a stone next to Miss Iris who smiled at me and carried on eating her food. And so, with little fuss, I was absorbed into the bosom of my new family.
Chapter 14
Night fell quickly, as it always did on our island, and I joined the girls in lighting the lanterns, which we placed in each room. The house had a shower room inside, but Alvita warned me that none of us children were allowed to use it.
‘Dem mek wi use dat old makeshift sinting,’ she said, pointing towards a corrugated zinc-roofed outhouse on the edge of the gully. ‘Tek two a de lantern down dere. Hang one pon de big nail inside, and hang de odder one outside pon de nail near de water drum.’
Only the girls used the shower house and the strict queueing system meant I was the last one in. The boys took their showers in the open, carefully positioning themselves on a few large rocks and then pouring water over themselves from a variety of buckets and water containers.
The adults hadn’t told me where I’d be sleeping and I hadn’t found the courage to ask, so I assumed that I would be with the younger girls. I followed them into a room, which contained a double bed, a wooden wardrobe and a dressing table with a mirror attached. Odd items of clothing hung from nails that were hammered into the wall. A strip of green cloth separated the younger girls’ room from the older girls’, but it might as well have been a reinforced door, as I discovered when I attempted to peer behind it.
‘Do dat again,’ said a voice, ‘an one of wi a go bruk yuh arm fi yuh!’
The cloth fell instantly from my hand, drawing loud laughter from the younger girls.
‘She nuh know who dem she a mess wit,’ Hilret chuckled.
‘She musa waan har arm bruk fi true,’ Alvita chipped in.
I waited until the five girls had climbed into the bed before squeezing myself in on the very edge. That night I wished that I was back in my village, sharing my old bed with my proper sister and brothers. I hated being in the room with these five strangers. They all had each other and I felt that not one of them cared about me, not even slightly.
When dawn came, I rolled quietly off the bed, pulled on my yard dress and went outside. The sun hadn’t yet risen over the hill and the morning still had a dewy, dreamlike appearance and a shadowy mist clung to the hillside. I walked barefooted a little way from the house until I found a large stone, which I sat on and examined the purple bruises at the top of my right thigh. The same two girls had kicked me several times during the night. I’d been at my father’s home for less than a day and already I was feeling utterly miserable. Part of me wanted to stay and get to know my father, but an even bigger part just wanted the warmth of being back home with my grandparents.
I could hear the rest of the household waking up, so I reluctantly got up and walked slowly back to the house.
‘Morning,’ I called out to the girls with whom I’d shared a bed, in an attempt to be cheery.
‘Tonight,’ responded Alvita, who seemed to be the main spokesperson, ‘don’t even tink bout coming pon fiwi bed! Nuff a wi on it aready. Yuh better talk to Mama and Papa. Dem kyan tell yuh wey yuh fi sleep tonight, but it nuh go be wid us! Yvette, Hilret, Hazel, Adana, wah yuh seh?’
‘Wi agree wit yuh, Alvita,’ they chorused.
I agreed too. I’d rather have slept on the doorstep, or even between two rocks, for the rest of my stay than spend another night in bed with that lot.
Around mid-morning I heard voices, all talking over each other, echoing
up the gully. I wandered down the path a way until I saw that there was quite a crowd gathered outside my father’s store, so I strolled towards it, curious to know what was happening. As I approached, I could hardly believe the scene in front of me: there were young people everywhere. I did a silent head count, and, including those I’d met already, there were twenty-seven people in all. Most of the new arrivals seemed to be in their twenties, with the exception of one tall, skinny man with a long face and a goatee, who looked almost as old as my father, whom he was standing next to.
As soon as he saw me, my father introduced some of his other children to me. ‘Dis is yuh big bredda Longers, Erna, him forty-year-old,’ he said, pointing out the man with the goatee. ‘Him real name a Elsworth, ahn him born when mi was fifteen year old. Im mada nuh did much older dan yuh is now,’ he added, with a grin. ‘Erselyn over dere is de oldest girl. JM dere is one a de younger bwoy. And Vinette, dat one dere, she a de youngest of all a yuh. Yuh wi get fi know all a dem, in time.’
Nine years old up to forty years old! Those were the ages of the children that my father had gathered to introduce to me. All the children lived on his land, some with their mothers, others with their own families. It was going to take more than two weeks to get to know these names, I thought. It seemed as if all the children in the village belonged to my father. There were enough of us born in the same year alone to form half a cricket team! Alvita was right, there was going to be nothing special about me in this gigantic family.
I passed that night on a makeshift bed on the concrete floor of an anteroom at the back of the house, which connected the dining room to the outside. It wasn’t comfortable, but better than the donkey kicks from my half-sisters. It was daybreak when I woke to the sound of a door closing. I sprang out of bed and through the open window caught sight of my father walking briskly away from the house. He hadn’t spoken to me much the night before, but I felt safe with him around. Now, I was worried that some of his children – the ones who seemed angry with me for turning up out of the blue – might take their revenge on me. So, instead of waiting for them to wake up, I decided to go and explore the area. I followed the gravel path that led up the hill away from the house. After fifteen minutes or so, I reached the far side of the hill, which was scattered with a number of neat houses. It appeared to be a thriving place with its own Baptist church, a school and another couple of provision stores. As I walked along the dusty main street, I was aware that every eye was turned on me. A woman who was leaning on a fence spoke loudly to her neighbour as I passed, ‘Anada one a big man pickney!’
The Day I Fell Off My Island Page 11