The Day I Fell Off My Island

by Yvonne Bailey-Smith

  ‘I didn’t think you’d take any notice of what some old racist white woman told you, Erna! If we listened to people like that, most of us wouldn’t even bother to get out of bed. Come on, girl, you’ve got brains, and you can’t waste them being a glorified typist for the rest of your days.’

  ‘Don’t forget, I’ve got my mother to contend with, Jen. And all she’s ever wanted, from the moment I got off the plane, was for me to get a job and support myself.’

  ‘And you will be able to continue to support yourself, Erna!’ Jennifer replied. ‘You can get a grant. In fact, you’ll probably be better off. It’s not like you’re earning a fortune, is it?’

  I gazed at my friend sitting there brimming with a fiery confidence, and I felt a flutter of hope in my chest.

  The very next day, during a lunchtime visit to the library in Charing Cross Road, I came across a leaflet advertising introductory evenings for the newly established Open University. As I read through, it struck me that this could be the way for me to study for a degree without having to give up my job. Unlike Jennifer, I had no one that I could fall back on if money became a problem. I took the leaflet home with me and hid it in my clothes drawer, as if it was something too dangerous to leave out in the open.

  All week at work the leaflet played on my mind until I couldn’t avoid it any longer. On Thursday night I pulled it out of the drawer and read it again. I decided to take the plunge. The next day, after work, I travelled to the Finchley Road in north-west London where the Open University had a faculty in a large red-brick Victorian building. The open evening was in full swing when I arrived: Open University representatives milling around, handing out the university prospectus and chatting with the would-be students. There was a reassuring number of black and Asian people there, and maybe a few more women than men, but the biggest surprise was the age range of potential students, which spanned fresh-faced eighteen-year-olds to folks who looked to be in their seventies. By the time I left the building, I’d signed up for an English degree, which was not only affordable, but also offered the flexibility I needed, with no requirement for me to attend a physical university every day. Two weeks after I’d signed up for the course, I received a large package containing all sorts of English Literature study books, a dozen cassette tapes, and information on how to access weekly tutorials on BBC radio and television.

  In no time at all, I found myself immersed in academic reading and essay writing. I attended every evening and weekend seminar that home chores allowed. I woke at the crack of dawn to listen to tutorials, either on the radio or on the television, and often late at night I would catch the repeats. Every spare moment was spent in the library, which offered a desk and a quiet space away from the distractions of home. For the first time in my life, I felt like I had a future.

  Chapter 31

  Six-weeks after she was admitted to hospital, Mother came home. She looked thin and fragile, but mentally she seemed more settled. It was Auntie Madge who suggested that she might benefit from a trip to see their younger sister Lurline in New York. Auntie Madge looked at us older children – Patsy, Sonny, Clifton and me – to see if we appreciated what she was saying.

  ‘Your mother needs a break,’ she said, ‘and I can think of no better place than with our sister. Those two were as thick as thieves as girls. They’ll have plenty to talk about.’

  Lurline had settled in Queens and found herself a job as a private carer for elderly white folks who were still living at home. She’d left the island a year after my mother, and the sisters hadn’t seen each other since.

  To begin with, Mother resisted the idea, saying, ‘Madge, you know that I’m not well enough to make that kind of trip!’

  I was amazed that, for the first time, she’d actually admitted she was ill, but Auntie Madge wasn’t fazed at all, and she soon convinced her that a trip to see Lurline was exactly what she needed. And she wasted little time in planning Mother’s departure.

  Auntie Madge was the one person that my step-father appeared wary of, and he said nothing as she went about her plans to deprive him of his wife for another fortnight.

  Two weeks later, Auntie Madge and Uncle Herbie drove mother to Gatwick Airport and waved her off to New York.

  Within days of Mother leaving, it became obvious that something wasn’t right with Patsy. It was as if, on an emotional level, she’d stepped into the space previously occupied by our mother. A few weeks earlier, we’d both been pulling together to manage a difficult situation, but now Patsy was irritable and ill tempered, especially with the boys, blaming them for things they hadn’t done and cussing them terribly. Several times I had to intervene to stop a full-blown fight from erupting. In fact, she reminded me, scarily, of her father. I even caught her pinching the twins a couple of times. One day, I was standing next to her in the bathroom while she was getting ready for school, as she pulled her hair back to put it in a band, I noticed a tiny bald patch just behind her left ear. It occurred to me then that I’d been aware of her habit of picking at this area of her head in a rather absentminded manner, but somehow I’d never given it much thought. Seeing the result of this close up shocked me. What else hadn’t I noticed while I was out at work all day, preoccupied with my own concerns?

  Patsy became aware of my gaze and turned to me with a scowl. ‘What you looking at?’ she asked.

  ‘I was just thinking what a beautiful young woman you’ve become,’ I replied.

  ‘Huh,’ was all she said to that.

  She checked herself one more time in the mirror and pushed past me out of the bathroom. I was late for work so I simply filed away what I’d witnessed in the part of my brain where I stored all the things that upset me, and got on with sorting out my own unruly hair.

  When I spoke to Jennifer about it in a whispered phone conversation a few days later, she had a practical take on it, as always.

  ‘Well, what do you suppose is going on?’ she asked me.

  ‘I wish I knew. It’s just a whole heap of madness. My family seems totally weird compared to everyone else’s. My mother is mad, her husband is evil, and Lord knows what’s happening with Patsy. She always seems angry, Jen, and not just angry, sad as well. She’s got the same look in her face that she had when I saw her for the first time after I got to London. It was as though she had the world on her shoulders. And now she’s literally pulling her hair out. What I am going to do?’ I wailed.

  ‘This might sound harsh,’ Jennifer said, ‘but I am one hundred per cent certain that what you need to do now is concentrate on your studies. Education is the key to whatever we want to be different about our lives, Erna. This means that you can’t let your mum, Patsy, or anyone else distract you from your goals. I’m not saying you shouldn’t care. Of course, you must. But you can’t make them your responsibility forever.’

  Deep down, I wasn’t convinced by Jen’s argument, but, in the state I was in, I clung to her advice like a liferaft.

  ‘You know what Grandma Melba would have said about you? “Dat pickney gal ave old head pon young shoulders.”’

  Jennifer burst out laughing. ‘Your grandmother sounds like such a character!’ she said.

  The following morning, just as I was about to dash out the door, a familiar thin blue envelope addressed to me in Grandpa Sippa’s distinctive scrawl landed on the doormat. I picked the letter up and stuffed it into my bag. I didn’t want to take the chance of leaving it on the hall table in case the ugly Satan devil man threw it away. As soon as I got home that night, I sat down on the bed and gently prised open the envelope, taking care not to tear through any of Grandpa’s words. As I poured over the letter, I could hear the soft, reassuring tones of his voice:

  February 1974

  Dear Erna,

  Greetings in the name of the highest god Jehovah. I hope that when these few lines of mine reaches you, they will find you in the best of health. Sorry it take time to write you back, but my health wasn’t so good for a time. The hands having been shaking so bad,
I couldn’t steady them at all to do the writing. You have plenty cousin who would do it for me, but I still like to try and help myself. Anyway, God is good. And for now I am feeling as good as I can be, my advance age considering.

  I know you like to hear how things going on down here. The drought finally come to an end. It was a tough time. We had a lot a water problem in the district. Fight bruck out all over the place sometime, when people take more than their allocation of water. But, God willing, we see the end and now everything just spring back to life. Erna, me find it hard to mention it, because me know how you like your mango. Right now, them so plenty, them a splatter splatter all over the yard. Every day the yard boy have one big job to do clearing them up. But the hog them happy now more than people with plenty mango to fill dem belly. And it not just the mango! Whole heap a fruit plentiful all over the district right now. I would be glad if I could find a way to send some mango for you. I am keeping a look out for somebody who a travel to England and see if them will carry two over for you.

  I hope things settle down better than how you describe them last time. It seems life in England not easy at all. Plenty people get themself stress up. You must try to support your mother the best you can. I am sorry to hear nerves still a trouble her. I pray with God’s help she will recover soon.

  Erna, now I have to tell you something important. Me still a miss your Grandma Melba something terrible, but I need a woman more permanent round the place, because there is plenty things me just can’t manage any more now age overtake me. I know that you won’t be happy about it, Erna, but I am considering marrying Miss Blossom. It is maybe too much to ask you to understand, because you are still a young woman, but me still hope and pray that you will.

  Everybody here miss you, Erna, but England is where your life is now and you have to try and make the best of things.

  I will leave you for now with God’s blessings,

  Your grandfather, Sippa.

  I must have read the words I am considering marrying Miss Blossom a dozen times and still they made no sense. How could Grandpa Sippa even think for a moment that he could replace Grandma Melba with any other woman? And Miss Blossom of all people! I remembered her as one of the eccentric twin sisters who sometimes helped out with the washing and ironing when Grandma Melba was unwell. She was a nice enough woman, but marrying Grandpa Sippa was a whole different thing. A terrible doubt began to seep into my head: had Grandpa Sippa loved Miss Blossom all along? Maybe he didn’t really love my grandma. Otherwise, how could he think of marrying anyone else? I blinked away my tears and threw the letter on the bed. There was only one person who could help me to understand this. I began a silent conversation with my grandmother: I don’t know if you have heard the latest news, Grandma Melba. I don’t even know for sure if you can see or hear anything where you are, but I like to believe that you can. There have been so many times that I have felt that you’re right here with me. Watching over me, keeping me safe, making sure I do the right thing. So I hope that you can hear me now and that you will help me to understand how you feel about Grandpa Sippa’s news and what I should do. Maybe you’re happy about Grandpa Sippa marrying Miss Blossom, but I don’t feel happy, Grandma Melba. Grandpa Sippa is your husband and he should stay your husband forever. But if you’re okay with it, please, give me a sign.

  I stared out of the window at the night-time sky, but there was no sign from Grandma. After a minute of silent contemplation, I took a deep breath and considered that since Miss Blossom had been around forever, then maybe it was okay for Grandpa Sippa to marry her, just as long as he didn’t believe she could ever replace Grandma Melba. I felt much better now I’d come to this conclusion, so talking to Grandma had helped, after all. In time, I will write and give him my approval, I thought.

  Chapter 32

  I’d been desperately looking forward to the weekend, but on Saturday it rained heavily for the entire day. I tried to read, but a persistent migraine made that impossible. The pain was so bad that I couldn’t even listen to my pocket radio. The night brought some relief, in that I could legitimately try to sleep, with a hot water bottle wedged in the crook of my neck and my body wrapped tightly in the bedclothes, half of which I had to wrestle back from Patsy. I laid as still as I could with Patsy tossing and turning beside me, in the hope that a night’s rest would ease my headache. Eventually, I succumbed to a fitful sleep. I was in the middle of a dream where Patsy and I had climbed out of the bedroom window in our old house in the village to escape some nameless menace, when my dream was broken by the sound of muffled voices and the quiet clunk of a door closing. I listened in silence for a minute, then reached out to pull the sheets back over me. Then I sat upright in bed. Patsy wasn’t there.

  At that exact moment I heard my mother – for it was unmistakably her voice – screaming, ‘Get out! Get out!’ to some unseen person, followed by the nauseating voice of the ugly Satan devil man begging her, ‘Violet, quiet yourself down, woman, you want to wake the whole street?’

  Unable to comprehend what was happening, I slipped out of bed, pulled my dressing gown on, and crept on to the landing. I peered downstairs to see my mother, her suitcase upended on the floor, standing with her legs apart and her arms folded. In front of her was the ugly Satan devil man dressed in a nightshirt. Behind him was Patsy.

  The devil man looked up and saw me watching them.

  ‘What are you looking at, you witch?’ he shouted.

  Ignoring him I started walking down the stairs.

  ‘Erna, go back to bed,’ my mother said.

  I stopped halfway down and stared at her.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I said.

  All three of them stared up at me. Then Patsy, who had been frozen to the spot, turned and ran past me up the stairs. I looked up at her, then down at my mother.

  ‘What the hell is going on?’ I demanded.

  I could see my step-father’s face, strained and grey in the dull light of the bare bulb that hung from the hallway ceiling.

  ‘You bug-eyed bitch,’ he screamed, ‘this is all your fault!’

  My fault? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I started to walk down the stairs towards them.

  ‘Stop!’ my mother shouted. ‘You’ve got to stop.’ Then she slumped to her knees. ‘All this has to stop,’ she said.

  Sweat poured from the devil man’s bald head and his eyes turned blood red. Mother watched in silence as he walked off in the direction of the bathroom. A moment later, he reappeared carrying the purple bucket – I had left my smalls soaking in it. He pushed past Mother, knocking her off balance, opened the front door and hurled the bucket into the street.

  Then he turned and stared up at me. ‘When I come back, I don’t want to see you in this house,’ he shouted. Then he stalked through the door and slammed it shut behind him.

  I remained staring at my mother.

  ‘Has anyone collected the twins?’ she asked suddenly, as if it was the most normal question in the world.

  ‘The twins are in their beds,’ I growled. ‘But you’ve got to tell me what the hell is going on. And what on earth are you doing here, anyway? You’re meant to be in New York!’

  ‘I came back early,’ she said, ‘me and Lurline didn’t get on.’ Her voice was toneless, devoid of any emotion, and her face looked shrivelled and worn out in the dull yellow light. She climbed slowly to her feet and started dragging her suitcase along the hallway.

  I turned and fled back up the stairs. When I reached the landing, I could hear the sound of sobbing coming from inside our bedroom. I took a deep breath and opened the door. Patsy was curled up on the bed, her face buried in a pillow. When she heard me enter the room, she turned her head towards me and gazed at me with wet eyes.

  ‘What’s going on, Pats?’ I asked gently.

  Patsy studied my face carefully before speaking. Then she wiped her eyes and sat up. ‘There’s something I need to tell you,’ she said. ‘But you’ve got to listen, Erna.’

&
nbsp; I could feel my heart beating very fast. Suddenly I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what she was going to say next.

  ‘I’ve never told anyone before,’ she continued, ‘because I knew no one would believe me. But I trust you, Erna. You’re always asking me why my father takes all his anger out on me…’

  ‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘it’s never made sense to me.’

  ‘Well, it’s because,’ she blurted out, ‘before you got here, he had been having sex with me. And tonight he was trying to again.’

  ‘Who? Doing what to you?’

  ‘My father,’ she said, in between gulps of breath, ‘he’s been having sex with me.’

  ‘Patsy, I don’t understand,’ I said. ‘Are you seriously telling me that your own father…’ I could hardly say the words ‘…has done…this to you, his own child? Pats! This is serious stuff. Are you quite sure of what you’re telling me?’

  ‘I am one hundred per cent sure, Erna!’ Patsy fired back. ‘And I’m not talking about once, either. It’s happened loads of times. And don’t tell me I’m crazy! That’s exactly what he used to say, when he did it: “No one will believe you, they’ll just think you’re mad and a liar.”’

  I stared at my sister open-mouthed.

  ‘I am begging you, Erna, someone has to listen. Please!’

  The pain etched on Patsy’s face left me in no doubt that she was telling the truth. ‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry, Pats,’ I said, stroking her arm, ‘I didn’t mean to doubt you. It’s just… well, I’m finding it hard to take in, that’s all.’

  She looked at me and nodded slowly.

  ‘But…but when did all this start?’ I said.

  With tears flowing down her cheeks, Patsy told me how her father had started abusing her shortly after he kidnapped her and the boys from our grandparents’ home, when he’d taken them to his mother’s house on the other side of the island. She was ten years old at the time. She told me how at first she had no idea that what her father was doing was wrong. Then, one day, when she protested that he was hurting her, he took her to the graveyard and warned her that if she ever told anyone, he would put her into one of the graves with all the dead people – a threat that scared her so much she stopped speaking for several months.