Mama would ask her, “Joyce, when yuh going to settle down? It nuh good to run round so, yuh know.” Then Grand-aunt Ruth would add, “Is true, Joyce, yuh need to settle.” Aunt Joyce always answered with a mouthful of laughter, and her body, not unlike my grandmother’s in its generosity, threatened to bounce right out of her tight cotton blouse and pencil-straight short skirt. Then she’d say, “Ruth, yuh is like the kettle calling the pot black. You settle down?” She’d laugh again, looking around to capture her effect on any man passing by. “But mi have God,” Grand-aunt Ruth would answer. “Mi nuh need no other man.”
“Well, there yuh go,” Aunt Joyce answered, laughing again.
Truth was, Grand-aunt Ruth owned her house and had taken in Ivan and Icie as her own. “Yuh nuh change at all, eh?” Mama responded. “From we growing up as gal pickney, a so yuh stay, and mi end up wid de pickney dem and wutliss man.” Mama never failed to say that, and it always made me sad, but Aunt Joyce never let it bother her much. Again she’d say, “There yuh go.” But I hated when Mama got like that. How could she regret having children when she loved me so much? I would not have been there with her had it not been for her daughter, Glory.
Grand-aunt Ruth had no children, but she’d do her best to comfort my grandmother. “Nuh mind, Maria, yuh have dem already and dem a big pickney, remember God have a plan for all a we.”
That particular night stands out even now because of a man named Myers, who came into the restaurant to buy a meal. Oxtail and rice, he ordered, then later a beef patty. When Grand-aunt Ruth told him that her sister had made them, he bought another one, praising their spices. He was a friendly man and he seemed to know a lot about everything. He bought us all a round of drinks: white rum for my grandmother, a beer for Aunt Joyce, soft drinks for Grand-aunt Ruth and me. Aunt Joyce invited him to sit with us. We learned that he was a gardener at Hope Road Botanical Gardens. Mama’s eyes lit up.
“Ah looking for somebody to help out wid mi garden. Yuh have de time?”
“Yes, ah can find de time,” he said. “Give mi de address an’ ah will come by tomorrow afternoon.” He was an ordinary-looking man, tall, medium-build and clean-shaven, younger than Mama by a few years. Aunt Joyce tried to interest him in other talk, but it was clear that he was concentrating on gardening and on my grandmother.
He came to our house the next day, and I was glad that I was on summer vacation. Mama and I were sitting on the verandah.
“Miss Maria, nuh worry. I can have dis garden back in top condition in no time. Dis is de kind of work I been doing all mi life.”
“Yuh can start tomorrow?” Mama asked.
“Can start right now if yuh please, Miss Maria.”
“No, tomorrow okay, de sun too hot.”
“Yes, it too hot to dig up de beds and transfer plants, but not hot enough to stop mi from pulling some weeds and raking de grass,” he offered.
“Dat okay. Start tomorrow. One more day won’t mek any difference. And call mi Maria. How much yuh going to charge mi? And how often yuh will work?”
“We can discuss that tomorrow,” he said sheepishly.
“No, mek we do it now,” she said.
He turned to me. “So how yuh doing, little Miss?”
“Fine,” I said shyly.
“Still on holidays?”
“Yes.”
“Good, den yuh can be mi little assistant in de garden.” His nut-brown eyes danced and I no longer felt so shy.
“Yes, ah can help, ah can pick out de weeds,” I said, my excitement building.
Then he turned back to my grandmother. “Ah can uproot some of those bird-of-paradise plants. Dem want to tek charge of de garden,” he said, smiling.
Mama sent me inside to get him a glass of ice water.
“Start tomorrow den,” Mama said when I returned with the water. Then she added, “Some garden tools round de back. Yuh can look at dem. Mi son use to help mi wid de gardening, yuh know, but him gone to foreign.”
“Dat nice,” he replied. “Good opportunity. England or America?”
“Canada,” she answered. “Molly, show Myers where de garden shed is.”
I ran ahead of him to the shed. He turned the tools over in his hands as though they were prizes. He felt the point of each to examine its sharpness. He looked around the backyard, took out his measuring tape and wrote some figures on a piece of paper. Then we came back around to join my grandmother on the verandah.
“Everything is dere. Ah will start tomorrow early before de sun come up.” He sat down again and asked me for another glass of water.
“Yuh have a nice backyard, Maria. Ah can get some okra and tomato seeds, callaloo sucker, cho-cho vine, scotch bonnet pepper, green onion and some other provisions to start a vegetable garden in de back.” Mama smiled, encouraged by his enthusiasm.
I was up early the next morning. Myers was already in the garden, had dug up the weeds from the four garden beds, fertilized the plants and soaked the beds with water. He was shirtless, his body toned but not muscular. He wore old khaki pants, cut off at the knees.
“Sleepyhead,” he teased. “Want some jelly coconut? Ah going to climb de tree after dis.”
I spent the day following him around, my belly full of coconut water. He gave me rides in the wheelbarrow all around the yard. I laughed and screamed as I bounced from side to side. His laughter was loud and deep and honest. Later that day, he piled dried coconuts in a crocus bag and put them in a corner of the kitchen for Mama to make her coconut drops and gizzadas for the Chinese pastry shops.
Uncle Mikey was pleased with the way the yard looked. He commented on the new buds coming up, the large beds of cannas that Myers had introduced and the orchids he had transplanted from the Hope Gardens. “Mama, dis Myers man is a blessing, look how de garden look rich!” Uncle Mikey exclained. My grandmother agreed.
Myers came once a week and spent the entire day in the yard, digging weeds, introducing new plants, cutting back the hibiscus and the bougainvillea, picking coconuts and repotting plants. He and Mama grew into a slow companionship. They sat on the verandah or in the backyard, smoking cigarettes and drinking rum, sometimes quietly husking dried coconuts until dusk. Later he’d ride off on his motorbike. Some evenings he took me for rides through other neighbourhoods, around Hope Gardens, where the houses were vast and giant trees protected the owners from curious eyes. I was always glad, though, to get back to our dead-end street, where you could peer into houses through doors and windows that were wide open, and where my friends ran barefoot, flying kites, playing marbles or dandy-shandy.
Summer came to a close, and my grandmother and I took our annual end-of-August trip to Port Maria to see Mammy. I loved those visits and always looked forward to them.
Mammy was waiting at the station when we rolled up in the bus, her thinning grey hair tied in a bright square of cloth, her eyes two blue buttons. She was a wisp of a woman, her pass-for-white skin told the story of her mother’s mother’s journey from Africa and her plight on a sugar plantation in Jamaica. We were loaded down with canned goods and cloth, stockings, hairpins and hairnets. She hugged and kissed us, turning me around to examine how much I had grown.
“Gal pickney, yuh still all skin and bones. Where de flesh?” she teased me, her mouth crowning her toothless smile. “Come let we hurry home, unnu must be hungry.”
Mammy’s house was a wooden one by the sea. It was perched high on stilts, had a galvanized zinc roof and was painted sky-blue. Her verandah edged out of the yard and almost into the street. Fretwork in the shape of palm fronds framed the windows. The floors were kept shiny with a coconut brush.
There were no fruit trees in Mammy’s backyard, except for a coconut palm, and no vegetable garden. The sea was the backyard. My great-grandfather had built the house on a small patch of leased land. That was where Mama grew up and where my mother and Uncle Freddie spent most of their childhood.
As we ate, my grandmother told Mammy all the news from town and read her
two letters from the grand-aunts. Mammy couldn’t read or write, but she was one of the most spirited and intelligent women I’ve ever known. She had a memory that wouldn’t quit, she seemed to know people’s motives, and she knew the Bible from Genesis through Revelation.
“How Peppie? Freddie write yuh yet?” Mammy asked, her voice almost apologetic.
“Write! Write. Dat a de beast of ungratefulness a walk round pon two foot,” Mama replied bitterly.
“De Lord is de final judge, Maria, and nuh give up on him. Mi know yuh heart heavy now, but a yuh pickney and mi know yuh love him. In yuh heart yuh grieve, but don’t turn yuh back on him, for as de scripture say, what man among you, if him have a hundred sheep an’ him lose one a dem, don’t leave de ninety-nine in de open pasture and go after de one which is lost?”
“Get mi some water, Molly,” my grandmother said. I took my time getting the water and kept my ears open.
“What ’bout Mikey now, any sign of change?” Mammy asked.
“No. The Lord knows ah wish him never have those feelings.”
“A change will come, Maria, nuh worry. Just remember fi go down on yuh knees and praise God, Him will tek care of things.”
Mama didn’t answer. She was not a church-going woman, though she always sent me to Sunday school. Grand-aunt Ruth was the only one who took to going to church like Mammy. It was an open secret that Aunt Joyce went to church to show off her fancy clothes and jewellery.
We made plans to go sea-bathing the next day and to church Friday night, Saturday and Sunday. For as long as I knew her, Mammy had been a member of a revivalist church whose members were known as Pocomanians. Services were held in a boarded-up building with a dirt floor, and were very different from those at the Anglican church I went to in Kingston. Mammy’s was a livelier church, and spirits came upon the congregation, sometimes making them dance and jump and talk in tongues. Once, when I was seven, the spirit had come upon Mammy. Her seventy-year-old body had moved in a frenzy, and she’d shouted out her praise in tongues. I’d been frightened. Mama had comforted me, told me not to worry, it would pass, and it did. By the end of the service, my great-grandmother had become Mammy once again.
That night she let me play with her hair, running the comb through it, plaiting it, pulling it loose and plaiting it again. Mama sat close by, listening to her mother’s hum and to the changing sea, looking at me with pride on her face.
For the rest of the holiday, we sea-bathed, ate fresh fish, sang and listened to Mammy talk of her girlhood. I’d fold myself in the comfort of Mama’s lap and listen. Some days the sea was a deep, quiet, shimmery blue, but other times it would turn restless and dark, whipping against the house. On one such night, Mammy began to talk about slavery times.
“Is about 1890 mi born yuh know, so mi pon dis earth long time. Mi see whole heap, mi born not far from here, Port Antonio. Dem time whole heap of ship use to come in from all over de world and dock dere. Is right dere dem dock mi grandmother, tek her from Madagascar, bring her pon slave ship to here.” Mammy shook her head, spit in her handkerchief and continued. “Mi never know her, never even know mi own mumma, she dead when mi a baby. But she give birth to thirteen before mi, nine sister and four brother, all mi sisters raise mi after she dead. Ah never school, but mi do wid what mi had, and God never left mi.” She smiled and looked up at the sky, her hands raised and trembling in the air.
That September I went back to school. I was a good student and my report cards showed it, but I hated having to sit all day in a classroom, hated having to be nice and clean in my starched uniform.
Myers often came to our house. Sometimes he was like a shade plant in the garden, so quiet that I didn’t know he’d come till he was gone. I often rushed home from school just to sit with him in the garden. Myers didn’t take Uncle Freddie’s place. We didn’t fly kites, and there wasn’t the same excitement during crab season, though Dennis still brought by plenty for us. I think I must have decided back then, sitting with Myers, that I would work with plants.
“Dirt is life, yuh know, everything grow,” he said, covering my small soft hands with his calloused ones. He gently circled my fingers in the dry dirt. “Wid just water, a little care, yuh can create beauty wid flowers, grow vegetables and fruit, yuh won’t go hungry. Ah going back to de country one of dese days, leave de city life.”
One evening shortly after I had returned to school, I came home to find that he had dug and raised a tiny bed for me. “Molly, ah got some suckers fi yuh to plant,” he said excitedly. “Water dem every morning before yuh go to school, and in de evening when de sun go down. Yuh should never water in de sun-hot, it not good for de plants.” He handed me a small hoe to dig into the water-soaked dirt. “Yuh going to use yuh hands as a measurement to decide where to plant de other suckers. We don’t want dem too close to each other, and not too far apart.” The dirt between my fingers and the smell of the damp earth pleased me no end. Were it not for the tiny suckers, I would have rolled like a pig in the dirt.
“How long dem will tek to come up, Myers?” I asked.
“Patience, little Moll, dat is what it will tek,” he said mysteriously. “Yuh just water dem, spend time wid dem, and we will dig for weeds once a week.” Later that night, as was our custom, we sat on the verandah with my grandmother, having a cold drink, listening to Uncle Freddie’s friends playing soccer and breathing in the scent of mangoes and rose-apple blossoms caught in the night’s heat.
A few weeks later, in the middle of the night during a heavy rainfall, I heard Mama crying Myers’s name over and over, and hoarse whispers coming from Myers. I tried to wake from my sleep but couldn’t. I felt the big bed rocking from side to side, but with the heavy rain outside, it was easy to believe that I was in the sea, safe in the bosom of Mama’s arms, and the hoarse whispers were like waves in my ear and Mama’s cry a lullaby.
A glorious morning followed the rain, and I awoke to blue skies with streaks of burnt orange and crimson and Mama calling, “Molly, wake up, is school morning, get ready.” Her pastries were already in the oven, and she had a steaming bowl of banana porridge and slices of hard-dough bread waiting for me. I wanted to ask her about the night before but thought better of it. After school let out, we went to deliver the baked goods. The box of pastries was perfectly balanced on my grandmother’s head and her hips swung under her cotton dress as we walked up our street to Maxfield Avenue.
Christmas was always a busy time for Mama and she thrived on the season’s demands. There were cakes to bake—the ones she sent abroad to my mother and uncles, cakes for the grand-aunts, cousins and Mammy, special cakes she made for Paul and Helen, Uncle Mikey’s friends, and others for our house and for paying customers. That Christmas season was special. My mother had written that she was getting married a week before Christmas, and though she said it was to be a very small no-fuss wedding, my grandmother insisted that she should have no less than a three-tiered cake. Also, Aunt Joyce would be leaving the island the day after Christmas.
We were on the piazza in front of Grand-aunt Ruth’s restaurant when Aunt Joyce burst out with the news.
“Dem fire mi, dem dutty shit, after mi work wid dem fi so long. Dem seh mi tief shoes.”
“But Joyce, how dem can accuse yuh of dat if nutten nuh go so?” Grand-aunt Ruth asked.
“How yuh mean, yuh doubting mi?” Aunt Joyce said angrily.
“Is not dat she doubt you, but dem nuh seh dem find de shoes in yuh bag?” Mama offered.
“Smaddy plant dem in mi purse. Why mi would a tief dem?”
Mama and Grand-aunt Ruth exchanged looks.
“Even when mi seh to dem, call de police, call de police if yuh think is me put de shoes in mi bag, dem never budge. Dem did want to get rid of mi, because mi start talk ’bout union.”
“But why yuh gone talk ’bout union? Mi nuh tell yuh from long time, fi lef dem injustice up to God,” Grand-aunt Ruth said.
“Listen, Ruth, when mi haffi work dem long hours mi nuh see
no God.”
“Yuh must have faith,” Grand-aunt said, ignoring Aunt Joyce’s irritation.
Aunt Joyce sucked her teeth, and then she surprised us all.
“Remember Ken? De mechanic who use to eat dinner here every evening? Well him in America, in Brooklyn, New York, and him sending mi a ticket.”
“Dem say ‘nuff opportunity in America,” Mama encouraged, “and yuh nuh have no pickney to hold yuh back. Gwaan, gal, go see life, an’ nuh think ’bout dem dutty fart you deh work wid. Nuh future nuh deh deh.”
“Ah going, but ah worried to death ’bout Mammy. What if anything happen and ah can’t find de passage back?”
“Lawd, Joyce,” Mama said, “Grab de opportunity, don’t let it fly in yuh face. Mi and Ruth will look after Mammy. For yuh branded as a tief now anyway.”
Joyce cut her eyes but said nothing. Mama always spoke her mind, even if what she had to say hurt the other person. To ease the wound, Grand-aunt Ruth added, “Joyce, everything will work out. Go, nutten nuh deh here, and sooner or later dem would find something to fire yuh for.”
“Joyce, is de best thing to do,” Mama agreed. “Yuh and Ken can mek life together, have a family and who knows, maybe in time, come back and buy a big house in Red Hills!”
My aunt Joyce smiled for the first time. “Yes, Maria, yuh right. So mek we have de best Christmas ever.”
The talk that evening was celebratory. All about my mother’s wedding, Aunt Joyce’s departure and Mammy coming down to Kingston for the holidays.
I helped Mama a bit with her baking, mixing the sugar and butter, but I got bored. I much preferred my hands in dirt and water, sticking seeds into the earth. So mostly I sat and watched her. She never used a recipe book to bake from; every detail was kept in her head.
The Heart Does Not Bend Page 4