by Sharon Maas
And so it went on, accusation and return accusation. And it was all about love. That’s the one thing I took from all the talk. Behind it all, behind all the words, on both sides, was a huge gaping hole; a hole where love should have been, but wasn’t. It was as if they were both, Mum and Gran, caught in a time-warp, a place they’d been trapped in for thirty years, from which there was no escape. Marion and I just sat there in silence. Finally, Gran said:
‘Rika, you don’t know what you saying. You just don’t know.’ Mum did not reply to that, and so Gran had the last word. So in the end, the war of words ended in silence. Nothing resolved, and the wall between mother and daughter as sturdy as ever. The truth was: they were on either side of that wall, and not one of them was capable of passing to the other side.
* * *
On Wednesday morning, though, Marion made me face a different bitter truth.
‘Inky,’ she said sternly, ‘you know I’m leaving Sunday morning.’
‘Yes?’
‘Well, who’s going to cook for Mummy when I’m gone?’
My voice, when it finally came, was small. A squeak.
‘Mum?’
‘Ha!’ Her chuckle oozed contempt. ‘What you think your mother gon’ cook? Alfalfa sprouts and wheat-germ burgers? No, darling, sorry. It’s you.’
I suppose I should have seen what was coming, should have seen it from the start, but sometimes I‘m as much of an ostrich as Mum.
Mum had her own definition of ‘delicious’. She was a vegetarian, had been for decades. She didn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t cook meat. If I wanted meat, I had to cook it myself. If Gran wanted meat – and she certainly did: meat cooked in special, mysterious, Guyanese-from-scratch ways – it would be up to me to cook it. Mum had always known this, but never spoken it out loud. She’d left it to Marion to explain, and to teach me. And now the inevitable was imminent: a crash course in Guyanese cuisine.
I was already a tolerable cook, I’d had to be, if I wanted to eat certain things, but this was a whole new world. Every morning Marion went shopping for the exotic ingredients Gran insisted on having, and since she couldn’t get it all in Streatham, she went all the way to Brixton Market, a bus trip away, bringing back a variety of fruit, vegetables and other ingredients I’d never seen in my life, or ever even heard of. Eddoes, yams, calalloo, plantains, cassareep: the names alone made my head spin.
But I was game; I actually liked cooking, and Marion was not only a good cook, she made it fun, interjecting her instructions with funny anecdotes from back home. And the best part, of course, was the eating of it all. Marion looked on with pleasure as I devoured her creations.
‘Everything but rope, soap and iron,’ she would say, as I tried yet another of her dishes. ‘You’re a true Guyanese!’
As we cooked she talked, and in those few days I learned more about the place Mum called ‘home’ from Marion than I had from Mum in all of my eighteen years. Marion brought ‘home’ to life – made it a colourful, vibrant place filled with quirky and loveable people.
By Saturday I had learned three staple recipes with which, by a system of rotation, I could keep Gran alive and reasonably happy. Marion recommended I teach myself four more dishes, and wrote the recipes down for me. She gave me a list of dishes I could look up on the Internet, and try out myself. And on Saturday she dragged me with her to Brixton Market. Strangely, I had never been there before; Brixton was slightly outside my home territory, and I’m not really a market person. But why not? It would be an adventure.
* * *
Marion pushed her way through the crowded lane as if she’d done this every day of her life. On her previous forays she’d already found her favourite greengrocer, and that’s where she headed, weaving through the shoppers with me following meekly in her wake. The whole place throbbed with life; it was as if, just one corner away from the last Victoria Line station, we’d walked into a Caribbean bazaar, the very air pulsing with tropical colour and energy. Heaped up on the roadside stalls were fruits and vegetables I’d never laid my eyes on, much less eaten. There were butcher shops and fishmongers, long counters reaching deep back from the street and laden with slabs of fresh meat, whole fish, prawns and other sea creatures nestled in ice. Colours and scents and sounds a world away from London; Marion’s world, and Gran’s, and maybe Mum’s, but never mine.
Marion stopped at her favourite shop, greeted the shopkeeper with a hearty ‘Mornin’ Errol, how yuh doin’ today?’ and began stuffing handfuls of okra into a brown paper bag. Now okra, I had eaten before, so when Marion turned to me to tell me what it was I was able to sound off expertly.
‘Actually, I don’t like it very much. It’s so slimy!’ I said.
‘Bah! If it was slimy they di’n’t cook it properly. Okra only get slimy if you boil it in water. Wait till you try me fry-up okra tonight!’
As she spoke, the woman on my other side, an Indian woman with a plantain in her hand, leaned forward and peered across to get a better look at Marion. Her eyes lit up.
‘Eh-eh! Marion, is you? I din’ know you was over here!’
Marion looked back and let out a shriek of recognition. ‘Jocelyn Ramsingh! Oh Lord, how you doin’ gal!’
I stepped back to let them fall into each other’s arms, okras and plantains forgotten. Marion turned to me. ‘Jocelyn, this is my niece Inky; my sister’s daughter. You remember Rika, nah?’
‘Rika? Who could forget Rika Quint? Of course! I heard she was in London, her cousin Pamela told me – Pamela and me got children in de same class – but she keep to sheself, like she too good for the likes of we.’
Marion laughed. ‘No, is not true, Rika just don’t like to mix. She lives in she own world. Inky, this is me old friend Jocelyn, from Guyana.’
Well, I had already gathered that, and as I let myself be scrutinised by Jocelyn I thought yet again that the whole country of Guyana must be like one huge jolly village, where everybody knew everybody else or at least everybody’s cousin and everybody’s cousin’s business, and everybody fully expected that, when everybody else moved to London or New York or wherever, they would keep that village going and feed it with new recruits; people like me, who belonged and yet didn’t. We were born here to these villagers, yet were so far away mentally as to be strangers, except that they didn’t realise it. We were Londoners; we’d left the village for the metropolis and our lives were so much larger, so much richer.
So when Jocelyn reached out to draw me into a bear-hug I stiffened, and when she patted my cheeks afterwards – as if I were her niece too, not just Marion’s – I drew away with as much discretion as I could. I didn’t want to be rude, but really, I couldn’t let her think of me as a villager.
‘Pretty girl!’ said Jocelyn, looking me up and down, and immediately corrected that to, ‘Beautiful! Her daddy in’t no Guyanese, right? I hear Rika married an American. A white man?’
I wanted to butt in right there and declare how rude and irrelevant it was to discuss another person’s race, especially in their presence, but they were already off, discussing Jocelyn’s own husband’s race and how many children she had and how old they were and who they were married to and what race and how many grandchildren she had already, and how dark this one’s skin and that one’s. I touched Marion’s arm.
‘Why don’t you give me the shopping list and I’ll get the other stuff? The two of you can go and have a coffee, if you like!’ I would have added, ‘Or else we’ll be here all day’, but I was too well brought up for that.
Marion was delighted at the suggestion, so off I went with the list and the purse. I finished buying the okras, moved to the fruit section and stocked up on mangoes and oranges. I couldn’t believe how cheap it all was, compared to the supermarket, but remembered how Marion had complained, the first day, how expensive everything was.
I took my purchases inside the shop to pay for them. The shopkeeper – not Errol, but maybe Errol’s son – packed everything into blue plastic bags and told me the
price. I opened the purse and gave him a ten pound note, and as he turned to the till to get the change I bent down to pack the goods into my backpack. When I straightened up again the shopkeeper pointed to my purse, which I’d left lying on the countertop.
‘You don’t belong in Brixton, right?’ he said. ‘Never leave your purse unattended like that here. Nex’ time, you might find it gone!’
The customer behind me, an elderly man, nodded and smiled. ‘I was thinking the same thing!’ he said. ‘Just be careful, Miss! Look after youself!’
I smiled at both in gratitude, feeling stupid. ‘Thanks!’ I said. ‘This is my first time here. I won’t do it again.’
‘Yeah, I thought you was new, I never seen you face before. Well, then, welcome to Brixton, and I hope I didn’t put you off forever! Most of us good honest people!’
Errol’s son’s warm smile made me feel right at home.
‘No, no, of course not. I think you’ll see a lot of me in future.’
Yes. Brixton Market had found a new recruit.
‘Nice, nice!’ He reached across a pile of sick-coloured bottles of fizzy drinks and grabbed a beautiful golden mango, which he handed to me.
‘There you go! Have a great weekend! Come back soon!’
As I thanked him and packed the mango into my backpack – this time, my purse clamped under my arm – a new feeling flooded me: gratitude, mingled with shame, and a delicious sense of comfort. Sometimes it’s just nice to belong. I suppose that’s the advantage of village life.
I met up with Marion and Jocelyn but it seemed they hadn’t finished their conversation yet, and had made plans. For me.
‘I hear you like Guyanese cooking?’ said Jocelyn to me, with a wicked glint in her eyes.
‘Love it!’ I said.
Jocelyn grabbed my arm, hooked hers into it. ‘Well then, you got to come to Brown Betty. Marion and me takin’ an early lunch there. Best Caribbean food in town – in the whole country!’
And they marched me off, down a side street where we were accosted by a black preacher with piled up dreadlocks yelling at us to ‘Repent! For the day of Retribution is nigh!’ Past stalls loaded with cheap bric-a-brac, past a sweet arcade; and then we were at Brown Betty, a narrow little place with one table on the street and a big glass window and an open door. In we went.
The place was crammed. There were only four tables, not counting the one outside, and all of them were crowded with plates piled high with food and surrounded by people eating. There were chairs everywhere, and people standing and talking and coming and going. A buxom black woman screamed when she saw Jocelyn and pushed her way past to enclose her in a tight hug. Her unblemished skin was polished to a deep mahogany, skin so tight and pure it could have belonged to a child. Her hair was arranged in small tight cornrows that started at her brow and rode across her skull to be gathered at the back of her neck on rolls of soft flesh. She and Jocelyn hugged as if they were long-lost sisters, and then they pulled apart and Jocelyn introduced her to Marion, who was pulled into a similar embrace, and then it was my turn. Strong arms closed around me and pressed me against a pillow of a breast; and all to the tune of ‘Welcome, Welcome darling, welcome my dear, welcome to Brown Betty!’
This was Betty, we learned next, and though the place was full, Betty found room for us by chasing out the four occupants of one of the tables who she lambasted for having been sitting there for four hours and just ‘gaffin’ de mahnin’ away when other people got wuk to do’ and ‘keepin’ away de custom’.
‘Ow, Aunty, leh we stay, nuh?’ said a thin black woman, with big golden hoop earrings and an elaborate corn-row hair style, grinning up at Betty in supplication.
‘You think skinnin’ you teeth gon’ help yuh? Haul yuh tail! Every man Jack!’
Reluctantly, the guests got up and left. Marion pushed Rika into the corner space they had left, and she and Jocelyn sat down opposite her.
‘Just like home!’ said Marion in delight, looking around her at the wooden walls painted in primary colours, posters pinned to them inviting people to a Jamboree or advertising hair extensions or ‘Cheap Calls to Guyana and the Caribbean’.
‘You mean to say, you live here all you life and this is your first time in Brixton?’ Jocelyn couldn’t believe it; she looked at me as if I were some alien.
‘Is not she fault,’ said Marion, ‘is my sister Rika – she always goin’ she own way.’
‘No sense of roots!’ said Jocelyn. ‘My cousin daughter just like dat. They wouldn’t set foot in Brixton – t’ink dey is too good.’
‘Brown Betty was a restaurant in centre Georgetown,’ Marion explained. ‘Gone now, but oh my! They used to have the best chicken-in-the-rough in the whole country. Served in a basket!’
‘Ice cream too!’ said Jocelyn. ‘We used to go every Sunday evening. Then drive to the Sea Wall and eat we chicken.’
‘Closed down now,’ said Marion, ‘But Betty here, she is the granddaughter. And Betty cousin …’ She launched into the story of Betty’s cousin.
Betty, meanwhile, who had disappeared into the kitchen some time ago, reappeared with several dishes balanced on her arms. She placed them on the red-and-white chequered tablecloth: dhal puri and chicken curry, plus pumpkin bhaji with mango achar, black pudding, metagee and cook-up-rice, channa and chow-mein – all of which I was commanded to heap onto my plate and eat up, eat up.
I ate my way through the dishes set before me, each one more delicious than the one before it. I was going to get so fat, but I didn’t care. Marion, Jocelyn and Betty looked on with delight.
‘A proper Guyanese!’ said Jocelyn.
‘She eats everything but rope, soap and iron!’ Marion informed her.
‘That’s the way!’ said Betty. ‘Eat up, darlin’, eat up!’
‘So when you goin’ home?’ Jocelyn asked me, in between all the food and drink.
I looked at my watch, and then at Marion. ‘Actually, we should leave, in half an hour at the latest,’ I said, and Marion and Jocelyn burst into laughter.
‘Not that home … home, home. Guyana!’ said Jocelyn.
‘Um – actually, I don’t have any plans. Probably never,’ I said, and hoped it didn’t sound rude. I didn’t say that this was home. London. South London. And now, Brixton.
Marion patted me on the back.
‘You will go. One day you will. Wait and see,’ she said.
Later on, I staggered and stumbled home – my present home, that is – with Marion, stuffed full with the most delicious food I’d ever tasted and satiated with enough affection to keep me going until – until I returned to Brixton and Brown Betty, which definitely would have to be soon. For the time being, that would be my Guyana. For it had dawned on me that day: Marion was right. One day, I’d go and find that place she and Mum called home. Meanwhile, I had learned a valuable lesson: Guyana’s way to my heart was definitely through the stomach.
* * *
Marion and I were cooking together one evening when I broached the taboo subject of Mum, Gran, and the Terrible Thing that had torn them apart.
‘What really happened?’ I asked, as casually as I could. Marion looked at me and shrugged.
‘If your mummy never told you, it means she don’t want you to know. It doesn’t really concern you and it’s all in the past.’
‘But I just think I should know. There’s such a tension between them. If I knew I could somehow… mediate. I have the feeling they both want to be friends, they both want reconciliation but something is holding them back. Maybe it’s pride or something. Maybe one of them needs to say sorry and if I knew …’
Marion sighed. ‘So you picked up on that? You’re right, Inky. The two of them are just dying to make up but it’s like they’re caught in a time trap, and they can’t escape, both too proud to make the first move. First Mummy rejected Rika and then Rika got her revenge by rejecting Mummy … it’s like a wall of rejection and if only they could just get past that wall – tear it down …’
‘But why, Marion? What happened?’
‘Sorry, Inky, you not getting that information from me. It’s too personal. Ask your mummy.’
‘You know what she’s like. She never talks about personal stuff. I asked her a couple of times already and she always manages to change the subject.’
‘Then ask Granny.’
‘She won’t talk either. She just keeps dropping hints. If I knew who had to forgive whom … whose fault it was. Was it really that bad?’
Marion didn’t answer. She was chopping onions. She rubbed her eyes. But I refused to be ignored.
‘Marion – how bad was it really?’
She glanced at me and said beneath her breath:
‘It was… horrendous.’
CHAPTER FOUR
DOROTHEA: THE THIRTIES
A fly was crawling along the back of her neck. Dorothea flicked her pigtails and it flew away. She turned her mind back to Pa’s sermon, both hands, in white lace gloves, decorously folded on her hymn book.
There it was again, the fly, crawling down towards the collar of her dress, tight around her neck. This time she reached behind to chase it away. Her hand dislodged her hat of white lace, matching the gloves. She straightened it unobtrusively. If she fidgeted too much, Pa, up there in the pulpit, would notice and teach her to her pay attention by learning a new psalm out by heart, after the service. So she fixed her gaze on Pa and tried to absorb the sermon, which wasn’t too hard as she’d heard it a million times before, if in other words.
It was a most persistent fly. It was back, this time crawling around the side of her neck towards her chin. She slapped at it and the noise fell unfortunately into a potent pause in the sermon. Mums, stiff-backed next to her in the pew, looked down at her and frowned. Dorothea smiled back, scratched her neck as if that was all she had been doing, and focused on Pa. He missed nothing, and up there in the front row she was practically under his nose.