The Secret Life of Winnie Cox

by Sharon Maas

  ‘Come,’ said Auntie Dolly. ‘Let’s go home.’ She took her parasol from under her arm, pushed it open with a whoosh, and held it over our heads as we left the Promenade Gardens.

  Myrtle had cooked enough to feed an army: a huge pot full of cook-up rice, and a little chicken to go with it, and fried plantain, crispy golden on the outside. The walk back home had only increased my appetite and I ate ravenously, all the more because the food was truly delicious, quite unlike the English meals Mildred had been instructed to cook at home. Myrtle gave me second helpings, and seeing me enjoy her cooking must have melted her a little towards me, because when she spoke again there was no more hostility in her voice.

  ‘You mus’ be tired after all that walkin’,’ she said. ‘Lie down and take a rest.’

  I thanked her. I was indeed tired, and I did retire to my room – Auntie Dolly’s room – to lie down, but the last thing I could do was sleep. It wasn’t just the noises in my head that kept slumber away; it was the sounds that came in through the open window. Most of all, the murmur of Auntie Dolly and Myrtle as they conversed down in the yard. I immediately got up and walked to the window. I could not see them but I could hear them; they were at the tap next to the vat just below my window, washing dishes. Auntie Dolly was doing the talking. I could not hear what she was saying above the splashing of water and the clatter of crockery, yet I knew that once again she was sharing the news of me and my mysterious sweetheart.

  More frustrated than ever, I returned to the bed, lay down, and tried to sleep. I couldn’t. After a while, the whirr of Auntie Dolly’s sewing machine in the gallery took over from the racket downstairs, and what with the squeals of children playing in the yard and my own chaotic thoughts, I could not even dream of sleeping. I got up and got dressed.

  I was thirsty, and walked towards the minute kitchen. In passing a sideboard my eyes caught on a word written on a piece of paper, weighed down with a small wooden statue. The word that caught my eye was – Theo.

  I looked around, listened. Auntie Dolly was busy sewing, Myrtle was in the yard. I picked up the paper, and read it. It was a notice:

  MEETING.

  Saturday 20th July, 9.30 pm

  Kitty Foreshore

  Speakers: Dr Night, Theo X, Brother K, Boatman.

  I replaced the paper, entered the kitchen, drank my water, and went downstairs.

  Myrtle had finished the washing-up and all the pots and dishes were on the back stairs, drying in the sun. She was now filling a huge wooden tub with water from the vat. She glanced up. I smiled. She smiled back, turned off the tap, and dumped an armful of clothes into the tub. I walked away, sat down on the front steps, and watched the children playing hopscotch for a while. The two older children were not present. I had heard their mother telling them to ‘run off and help ole’ Granny Rose with she cleanin’.’ So they were working, like their mother and grandmother. George was working too. Only I wasn’t. I was like the children, free to do what I wanted.

  There was a hammock under the house. I settled into it and once again tried to doze off, but once again couldn’t. This time it was not noise, internal or external, that kept me awake. It was the sense of uselessness, and restlessness that went with it.

  I got up and walked over to Myrtle.

  ‘Can I help?’ I asked. She looked up, astonishment written so clearly across her face I wanted to giggle. And then she said, ‘Yes, of course.’ She rose to her feet and pulled a length of off-white cotton, dripping water, out of the tub.

  ‘You can help me wring this sheet,’ she said.

  So together we wrung out the sheet, twisting and turning it this way and that until every last drop was squeezed out of it. As we worked we laughed – ’One more drop!’ cried Myrtle, and we’d give one more big heave till several more drops fell to the ground; and then again, and again, until we truly could not extract one more drop out of that twisted snake of sheet. And Myrtle patted me on the back and told me I’d done a good job, and my heart swelled with gladness and lo and behold, the noises in my head had stopped.

  We hung the sheet on the line together, still laughing together like a couple of schoolgirls. And then I helped Myrtle with the rest of the laundry – it turned out she was a washerwoman for Kitty’s wealthier inhabitants – wringing out all the smaller pieces of laundry once they were rinsed, and hanging them on the line. And then I ironed some finished pieces for Auntie Dolly, using a huge heavy iron filled with red-hot embers, on a table under the house. And then I helped Myrtle to ‘ketch a fowl for dinner’ at the back of the yard, chasing squawking fluttering chickens back and forth. Watched as Auntie Dolly wrung its neck and plucked it. And then I bathed three squirming, squealing brown toddlers at the vat, using a sliver of Palmolive soap no bigger than a lime leaf.

  ‘Them chirren more slippery than fish!’ Myrtle called from the kitchen window, and I looked up and called back that I agreed; just as naked little Patsy slipped her arm out of my grasp for the fourth time. I couldn’t very well confess I had never held a real live fish in my hands. And then the six-o’clock bee announced the end of day, reminding us that it was suppertime, and we ate together at the cramped but happy dinner table. I helped put the little ones to bed; they all, mother and five children, slept together in a bed that completely filled the second room except for a narrow passage between it and a built-in wall cupboard. Each one of the children hugged and kissed me and called me Auntie.

  I had never been called Auntie before.

  And then it was dusk and the crapauds began their chant of dissonant croaks, joined by the crickets and a myriad invisible bugs, reminding me of home. What was Yoyo doing right now, I wondered? Was she sitting on our veranda all alone, listening to similar sounds? And I realised I somehow did not care. She, and Papa, and everything at Promised Land, lived and moved in a different world to this, and somehow I had slipped into this alternate hemisphere as foreign to me as fish from fruit; and the strangest thing of all was the sense, deep and complete and immensely satisfying, of being perfectly at home, here, now.

  Auntie Dolly, Myrtle and I settled into cracked wicker chairs in the tiny front gallery. The day’s work was done. The sewing machine at rest, neatly folded pieces of half-finished garments arranged around it in anticipation of the next day’s work. The noises in my head had stopped entirely – that permanent snivelling and wailing that for the last few months had been my constant companion. Auntie Dolly, it turned out, had a gift for telling stories, and tell them she did. I heard of Granny Rose and her pet monkey who was terrified of cows, and would screech in terror and hide up Granny’s skirt as soon as one passed by. I heard of Uncle Arnold who gambled away every last bit of clothing at cards and came home naked one night to an incensed Auntie Jean, who hit him over the head with a wooden cooking spoon harder than she meant to, so that she thought he was dead and screamed down the village, till the neighbours came running and declared him only drunk and lugged him into her bed. I heard of the fearsome Old Maid Dorothy, once Most Beautiful Woman in Kitty, who had rejected one hundred offers of marriage and allowed no man to cross her threshold. Swell-Belly Bungo, a homeless old man with a club foot who slept under bridges and begged from door to door. Dr Danger, the village rogue, who had been in jail sixteen times. And a host of other Kitty characters who came to life that night for my entertainment. But engaging, and sometimes hilarious, as the stories were, as time passed by I started to disengage as I wondered what the time was. Somewhere nearby, a church clock chimed; I counted eight. Auntie Dolly said, ‘Well, me dear, I better get up and do some more work. I got three dresses to hem this weekend and with all the galivantin’ through

  Georgetown …’

  She moved over to a rocking-chair by the sewing machine and lit the kerosene lamp hanging on the wall, and in that dim light took up her work. She hummed to herself as she worked; I recognised many of the hymns we sang in church. I was left with Myrtle, who wasn’t as entertaining a talker as her mother but did her best, asking
me polite questions about Promised Land and telling me a little about her own life.

  After a while Myrtle, too grew fidgety. I knew exactly why, and when the church clock chimed nine I wasn’t surprised when she stopped speaking abruptly and stood up.

  ‘Well, it’s off to bed for me,’ she said with an exaggerated yawn, ‘Tomorrow more work waitin.’

  ‘I’m tired too,’ I said innocently. ‘That was a long hard day!’

  She raised her eyebrows, as if surprised. ‘Really?’ is all she said. I said goodnight, lit another kerosene lamp, and withdrew with it into my room.

  I had it all planned out. Yes, I felt guilty looking through Auntie Dolly’s wardrobe but I did it all the same; I was, after all, an experienced spy. I found it; a back church hat with a veil. Cradling it on my lap, I sat on the bed and listened. A murmured conversation between Myrtle and Auntie Dolly drifted in through the open ceiling, but I could not understand a word. A few minutes later, I heard the click of the front door. That was my cue. I waited a few minutes, and then I was on my feet, tiptoeing through to the back door, slipping down the stairs to the yard, out the gate and down the road. Running, as fast as I could. I had to catch up with Myrtle.

  I raced to Alexander Street and turned north towards the Atlantic. The street was quiet at this time, but I noticed that a few other people were walking in the same direction. I continued to run. Yes, it would draw attention but at this moment I didn’t care, and finally I saw her ahead of me. Breathless, I drew up next to her.

  ‘Hello, Myrtle!’ I said.

  She swung around, eyes open wide. ‘Winnie! What you doin’ here?’

  ‘I’m coming with you – to the meeting!’

  ‘The hell you comin’ – pardon me!’

  ‘I am too! Come on – don’t stop!’ I grabbed her forearm and tried to pull her forward, but she refused to move on.’

  ‘Winnie, go back home, immediately! I ain’t takin’ you!’

  ‘All right, then I’ll go on my own!’ I let go of her and marched away.

  ‘Wait, wait!’ She hurried behind me and, catching up, said, ‘How you know about this?’

  ‘You think I can’t read? If you leave announcements lying around the house what do you expect?’

  She groaned. ‘Winnie, you can’t come! People will notice you – you with you white skin gon’ stand out like a ghost!’

  ‘I already thought of that,’ I said, and waved the hat in her face. ‘See! It has a black veil. Nobody will notice me.’ We were now walking briskly northwards, side by side.

  ‘Mummy gon’t kill you tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Why you can’t just keep quiet and do as she says?’

  ‘Because I need to know!’ I cried. ‘I saw that George – you call him Theo X, right? – is one of the speakers. What is he speaking about? Why all the secrecy?’

  ‘You gon’ find out soon enough,’ she said grimly. ‘You just better pray that hat protect you. People not gon’t like to see you there. The situation precarious enough as it is.’

  ‘I’ll be invisible,’ I promised. ‘I just need to know.’

  ‘White people!’ Myrtle sighed in frustration, but at least she seemed to have accepted the fact that I would not be chased away. ‘Put on that hat now!’ she insisted, and I did as I was told. She pulled down the black veil, made sure it was in place, tucked the ends into the high neck of my blouse. ‘Keep you hands in you pockets!’ She ordered, and again I complied. ‘All right. let’s go.’

  We walked on in silence. As we neared the coast more and more people appeared on the gloomy street, all making their way northwards. The street was dim, lit only by an occasional gas lamp, and the figures looked like sceptres as they made their way silently forward. As for me, I was tingling with excitement. I would be seeing George again! George, in a secret identity as Theo X! I was thrilled beyond words. What would he be speaking about? A lecture on Telegraphy, perhaps? But why hadn’t he invited me, when we spoke that morning? I was determined to get close to him and reveal myself. How surprised he’d be!

  By the time we reached the Sea Wall we were many. In single file we climbed the stairs to the Wall and down the stairs on the other side, to the beach. The moon was full, a glowing ball above the Atlantic that seemed near enough to touch. The tide was out, far, far away, and along the horizon a strip of ocean glittered silver. The entire world was cast in a ghostly pale light. A cool, gentle breeze wafted in from the Atlantic. Dark figures like silent shadows descended the wall and spread out across the hard undulating stretch of baked sand, each finding a place to sit, bending over to spread pieces of cloth on the beach, dropping cross-legged to the ground. In spite of the half-light I could make out that was a mixed crowd: men and women, old and young, Africans and East Indians.

  I was the only white person, and I felt conspicuous, in spite of my veil, and the masking cover of night. I was also the only person wearing a veil, though many of the women wore hats or head-scarves. One or two people glanced curiously at me, but looked away again. As for Myrtle – she was now pointedly ignoring me. She had brought a small cotton square of cloth which she placed on the ground and signalled for me to sit down. I shook my head; it was hers. But she stamped her feet and raised a fist as if she wanted to cuff me and I hastily dropped to the ground and sat on the cloth. Myrtle herself sat on the bare sand.

  The atmosphere tingled with suppressed excitement. People murmured among themselves, but Myrtle said nothing. I tried to listen to the conversation of a couple right next to us, but they spoke a very fast Creole and I couldn’t understand a word. I did, now and again, decipher the word Theo. I wished Myrtle would speak to me. I had so many questions. But she remained stubbornly silent, her face turned away from me as if in protest, and I didn’t dare provoke her further.

  At last, the four speakers arrived, stepping gingerly through the seated crowd. The hum of conversation rose to an animated buzz; one or two people clapped, a few called out names: Theo! and Bravo, Brother T! My George was right there, dressed all in black. I felt a swelling of pride. My George! I glued my eyes to his beloved form.

  The speakers made their way to the front, where the first one climbed up onto a raised platform of some kind. The crowd clapped, and some voices called out: Dr Night! We sat near the front, and I could make out that Dr Night was an East Indian, perhaps in his forties, though I never could guess the ages of adults much older than myself. But his hair was smooth, black and long, and shone in the moonlight. The clapping died down and he began to speak.

  ‘Brothers and Sisters!’ he began, ‘We have once again gathered here to fearlessly proclaim our solidarity. The struggle is underway. We are the ones who will herald in change. We are the ones who will end the centuries of oppression in British Guiana. We are the ones who will put an end to the white man’s domination …’

  On he went. His voice boomed out, angry, aggressive. Dr Night was a gifted speaker, drawing out the crowd. Now and again he called for responses: Are you ready? YES! The crowd cheered. Will you put up with white domination? NO! It cried.

  And as he spoke a dark cloak pulled itself around my heart and at last, at long last, I understood. I understood the rage and the frustration and the helplessness of these people. And I felt a smothering, overwhelming, agonizing sense of guilt. I realized that this society was divided cleanly into two; that there were two clear-cut sides, and that I, through no fault of my own, fell clearly on the wrong side. I was that oppressor of which Dr Night spoke! I was the enemy! Dr Night’s speech was laced through with hostility, hatred even. He described the acts that had called forth that hatred: the injustice, the deprivation, the oppression of the people who worked in the cane fields and, here in town, in the dockyards and factories. ‘My brothers and sisters, Indians and Africans,’ he finished off, ‘We are together in this fight, and we must link together, arm in arm. The white man has had his chance, and he has failed. The day of Massa must come to an end! Massa day done!’

  Massa day done! Massa day done
! The crowd took up the chant, jubilant as it clapped to the rhythm, contagious in its confidence. I felt my lips forming the words, my hands itching to clap – yet I couldn’t.

  How naïve I had been! What kind of meeting had I expected? A friendly cultural exchange? Shouldn’t I have known it would be political? Did I live so outside the beating heart of my homeland that I was so unaware of this swell of protest? Had I not seen enough in Promised Land to know that there was more at stake than just a few hundred disgruntled sugar workers? Shouldn’t I have felt, seen, sensed, known that the entire country was in revolt against us, a little white bubble at the top? And George, my George, my beloved – how idiotic he must think me, how silly and childish! Was he, too, full of hatred for my race? How, then, could he love me? What would he say? My heart began to thump almost audibly as the chant died down and Dr Night stepped down from his box and handed the megaphone to George – and George stepped on to the box raised it to his lips.

  ‘My beloved friends, brothers and sisters,’ he began, and a cheer went up, louder than any reaction Dr Night had brought forth. And I realised: this crowd knew and loved my George.

  But what a difference! George’s speech was not angry. There was no hatred in it. It was cool, calm, and reasonable. It was historical, yet laced through with humour and goodwill. He told the story of the absentee European planters exploiting British Guiana’s resources, both human and economic. Wealthy men with, George said, enough rum to turn all the water of the Thames into rum punch. ‘All Londoners could get drunk on our sugar!’ he laughed, and the crowd laughed with him. George spoke calmly of the slave trade, which was followed by indenture. He painted word-pictures of Africans brought over in overcrowded ships, bent low in the fields, whipped and abused. Contract workers, lured from their villages in India to what they thought was a Promised Land, only to find themselves under the boots of their masters, unable to escape, unable to return home.