Come the late afternoon, I called a halt to the torture in the V.W. room—Enough is enough!—and, returning to the house, I would gather up my son. Together, just the two of us, we would set out for the nearby beach. This was our private time together each day. The beach, in this instance, was Grenada’s magnificent Grand Anse, known to be one of the truly great beaches in the world. In the colonial scramble over the islands, France had lost Grenada to the British. Grand Anse, however, had retained its French name, as had much else on the island. Grand Anse meaning Great Bay. And it was just that, a wide, curving inlet over two miles long, graced from end to end with a flawless white sand beach that looked as if it were laid down fresh each morning. Equally flawless was the blue-green water of the bay—water so clear the golden mica on the seabed could be seen with the naked eye. Flawless, too, the great sweeping backdrop of palm trees that hid the one small hotel on Grand Anse at the time.
My son romped and splashed in the surf, built and destroyed any number of sand castles, chased every tiny sand crab he caught sight of back into its burrow, all the while chatting away with me. Along with the paradise of a beach, he helped me to recover, if only in part and if only temporarily, from the punishing, unproductive workday.
Our daily outing ended at sunset with the two of us sitting close together at the water’s edge, our eyes trained on the horizon. We were awaiting the phenomenon Grenadians called “the green flash.” The local folk swore that when the last bit of the sun vanished below the sea, there was a green flash, lasting less than the blink of an eye. This green flash, like a last hurrah to the day, occurred only at Grand Anse Beach, they said. However, not everyone was capable of seeing it. You had to be able to truly concentrate and to believe.
I never once saw the green flash, due perhaps to my frustration with the writing. On the other hand, my son, all of a sudden leaping to his feet, a small forefinger pointing, always swore that he did.
Mid-morning, and I was on the veranda taking a much-needed break from the torture chamber out back, when an old rattletrap lorry filled with country people went roaring by, horn blaring, in the direction of the capital, St. George’s. A second lorry, equally packed, quickly followed, then a third, a fourth. It was soon a veritable convoy, each truck with an overload of barefoot country folk standing jammed together on the railed-in truck bed, their heads bared to an already sweltering sun. No one there seemed to mind the overcrowding, the hot sun or the deafening horns. In fact, the riders were adding their voices, a loud, happy mix of patois and English, to the din. Their repeated outbursts of laughter were like so many colorful banners they were waving to announce their descent into the capital.
A political rally. Thanks to Miss ’Dessa, who had given me a crash course in Grenadian politics just days after my arrival, I understood the significance of the convoy. I had learned that politics on the island were synonymous with one man, the long-standing chief minister, Eric Matthew Gairy, a man disdained, even hated, by the white planters and the small black and Creole bourgeoisie in town, while adored by the masses of poor black country folk. They were the majority who returned him to office each time he ran. Whenever there was the least threat to his power, he was known to dispatch a fleet of the rattletrap lorries to the countryside to round up his supporters from the canefields and spice plantations and bring them, en masse, into the capital, there to be treated to one of the spectacular rallies he held at various sites in town.
I didn’t hesitate. Once the convoy ended, I informed the household that I, too, would be attending the rally. I had the cook prepare a sandwich for me to take, and with a kiss for my son I set off down the main road on foot, not bothering to wait for the public bus.
It eventually caught up with me halfway into St. George’s.
In addition to the beach at Grand Anse, Grenada’s other showpiece is its pretty little colonial capital. Built on a series of low-lying hills, St. George’s is a picture-perfect collection of Old World French and English townhouses complete with the classic red-tiled roofs. Above the terraced houses stands Parliament, with the queen’s standard aloft, while higher up, on a pair of separate hills, rise the capital’s two cathedrals, Anglican and Catholic. To complete the perfection, St. George’s also boasts a horseshoe-shaped deepwater harbor that is known to be among the finest in the Caribbean.
It’s a favorite with the members of the yachting set who sail the West Indies during the winter.
According to what the bus driver had heard, the rally today was to be special and would therefore be held on the carenage, the local name for the long curving wharf that faithfully repeated the horseshoe outline of the harbor.
By the time I reached town, it was well past noon and the entire carenage was packed to overflowing with the chief minister’s supporters. The only standing room to be found was on a narrow roadway above the harbor, where a small group of onlookers from town had already gathered. I joined them. Behind us the picturesque little capital seemed eerily quiet, deserted even, the gentry having retreated, perhaps behind their closed jalousies.
What followed was an endless wait in the crucifying mid-afternoon heat. Until, finally, what sounded like an awestruck hosanna welled up from those among the country people on the wharf who stood closest to the water. Alerted, the throngs behind them immediately joined in.
The object of the soaring paean was the distant figure of the chief minister, who could faintly be seen standing on the deck of a stately, white, flushed-deck sailboat that had just rounded the horseshoe curve of the harbor and was slowly approaching the carenage. Sails furled, powered solely by its motor, the sailboat majestically made its way toward the waiting crowd. Curiously, the chief minister was the only person on deck. Dressed in an impeccably tailored white suit that bespoke Savile Row and an equally bespoke pair of white dress shoes, he was standing on top of the cabin, his back flush against the main mast. In fact, he appeared to be somehow bound to the mast, his arms extended straight out from his side, and his face—the only thing black about him amid all the white—his face raised to the sky as if importuning Heaven.
All that was missing were the crown of thorns and the stigmata on his open palms.
The chief minister held the Christ-like pose all during the boat’s slow passage toward the carenage . Only when it finally docked, with its bow directly facing his audience, did Eric Gairy slowly lower his outstretched arms, then his prayerful face, and, to another tumultuous outpouring from the crowd, he walked slowly over to the microphone awaiting him on deck.
The rally was underway.
From where I stood on the roadway it was almost impossible to follow the man’s speech, given the roar of approval that punctuated almost every word he uttered. I nonetheless caught references to the many bills he was fighting to get passed in Parliament, bills that would improve the lot of his supporters. He repeatedly assured them that he never stopped putting pressure on “the damn planters” to do better by them, the country people, the hardworking people, his people. They and they alone, their welfare, was the reason he’d been called to politics. He also complained at great length about the obstructionism he faced every day in the House, even citing the names of his many enemies there. Each night he had to pray for God’s help to prevail against them. Once again he assumed the crucifixion pose, arms wide, agonized face raised to Heaven. He also repeatedly reminded them of the upcoming general election. As always, he was depending on their votes. “Mark you’ ‘X’ for Eric, oui! Mark you’ ‘X’ for Eric!” The crowd immediately turned it into a chant that didn’t seem to end. Another of his impassioned themes was full independence. “Finish with this so-called home rule! We want we own government, we own flag, we own anthem! And no more chief minister, but the Honorable Eric Matthew Gairy, Prime Minister, if you please!”
The roar of approval from the carenage was enough to uproot Parliament from its hill above the pretty town and send it crashing into the sea.
“Always a big show and a lotta big talk! Always f
ooling up the poor, ignorant country people. He ought be shame, oui!”
An angry outburst suddenly from a woman standing near me on the roadway. From her hawker’s apron and headscarf I could tell she was an ordinary market woman. With a loud suck-teeth to underscore her disgust, she abruptly turned and walked away.
Several others there joined her.
I also left shortly afterward. Again, instead of waiting for the bus, I started back home on foot, even though it was almost dusk by now. I needed to walk, needed to put as much distance as possible, and as quickly as possible, between myself and the combination showman-demagogue still holding forth on the carenage.
The bus came along in due course. Then, two hours or more after it deposited me at the house, the convoy of lorries followed, headed back upcountry. I had remained out on the veranda waiting for them. Again the horns were going full blast, desecrating the night silence that had fallen. This time, though, there was scarcely any talk and not a shred of laughter to be heard from the crowded truck beds. Something about their silence struck me with an appalling question: Had they eaten for the day? I at least had had the sandwich I’d brought along. But had they had anything to eat? Had the chief minister made any provision to feed his ardent supporters during the day-long rally? I had seen no evidence of such, not so much as a single “blugga” served, “blugga” being the local name for a particularly heavy, starchy variety of banana that was a staple upcountry. It couldn’t be eaten raw—it was too tough—but once boiled until it was edible, it was known to stave off hunger for the better part of a day.
There should have been at least several large vats of boiled bluggas down on the carenage to feed the crowd. Along with free bottles of the sweet drink Fanta or Juice-C, or just plain water to slake their thirst.
Bread and circuses. This had been a circus all right, but without so much as a breadcrumb.
“He ought be shame, oui.”
The market woman’s voice in my ear again.
In time, Eric Matthew Gairy’s ever-faithful supporters gave him his wish. He eventually became prime minister of an independent Grenada. Although this was to be short-lived. He was ousted in a coup d’état that preceded the U.S. invasion of the island in 1983. Gairy, a minor figure in the unfortunately long and disheartening list of postcolonial leaders who misused, disappointed and failed their own.
In addition to Miss ’Dessa, another close friend I made while in Grenada was an English-woman named Heather Chambers, who taught literature in the secondary school in St. George’s. A “maiden lady” like Miss ’Dessa, she, too, had chosen Grenada as home. In appearance, my teacher friend resembled the classic schoolmarm: tall, almost severe looking, her hair drawn back in a bun, and never a touch of makeup. Plain though she was, Heather Chambers nonetheless had the passion of a devotee when it came to the Big Drum/Nation Dance ceremony held every year on Grenada’s tiny satellite island of Carriacou that was a mere two hours away on the local schooner. Each year my schoolmarm friend joined those Carriacou people living in Grenada who faithfully returned home for the event.
My friend invited me to accompany her. The Big Drum/Nation Dance was not to be missed, she insisted, especially for a history buff like myself. Besides, we would only be gone overnight. We’d leave Grenada in the afternoon and be back the following morning. When I hesitated, reluctant to leave the work even though I was still making little or no progress, she enlisted Miss ’Dessa’s help. My “take charge” Bajan friend was even more insistent that I go. The change would do me good. The sea breeze would do me good. The Big Drum/Nation Dance would do me even better. Also, she would sleep over at my place as extra supervision over the household and my son while I was gone.
“Go!”
Miss ’Dessa giving orders.
I went.
From the crowded deck of the schooner the following day, tiny Carriacou was scarcely visible, a mere peak on the huge subterranean mountain range that also included Grenada. Unlike Grenada, though, with its Garden of Eden beauty, Carriacou was bereft of the usual lush tropical vegetation. It seems that from the time it was colonized the island had been plagued by various crop diseases and blight. Entire fields of the prized tobacco, cotton and sugarcane repeatedly decimated. Eventually the planters—Dutch, French, British—had given up on Carriacou and, one after another, sailed away to try their luck elsewhere in the Caribbean.
Left stranded had been the chattel labor they had owned—the forebears of present-day Carriacou people.
The Big Drum/Nation Dance was held at various sites across the island. The one my friend attended each year took place in a small inland village my father would have immediately described as “a place forgotten behind God’s back,” what with its little tin-roofed chattel houses, its depleted-looking fields and the bare dusty gathering place at the center of the village where the yearly event was held.
From the many hugs my friend received from the villagers one would think she was a blood relative dutifully returning home for the annual ceremony. They welcomed me with equal enthusiasm. “America!? You’s from Big America!? The States!?” they asked, and hugged me even more warmly.
Shortly after dusk the ceremony got underway. At first, there didn’t seem to be all that much to the Big Drum/Nation Dance. The drums were nothing more than a few hollowed-out logs with a drumhead of goatskin. The drummers themselves were elderly men who couldn’t possibly, it seemed, open their stiff, work-swollen hands to beat a drum. I couldn’t have been more wrong! Over the course of the long night, their drums held securely between their legs, and sustained by the jars of white rum beside their chairs, the old fellows proved capable of playing until dawn.
The men drummed and the women danced. Only women performed the Nation Dance, and mostly old women at that, the elders. It was not a single dance, but rather a number of separate and distinct dances, each signifying a different nation, one of those represented by the people left stranded when the planters fled. They knew, of course, the name of the continent from which they had been taken. More important, even, they had retained the names of the “nations” to which they had belonged.
Who we is, oui! Where we’s from in truth! Our true-true nation: Manding, Arada, Cromanti, Congo, Yoruba, Igbo, Chamba.
In remote little Carriacou, the names of those various nations had been carefully passed down through the generations.
Each time the old men drumming announced the theme of a particular “nation,” the women who claimed it as theirs swept onto the dusty circle, which tonight had become sacred ground. Led by the elders long-schooled in the dance patterns, songs and manners of their “nation,” the group repeatedly toured the circle—dancing. Wearing “their good clothes” and colorful headscarves—dancing. Arms held out at the elbows so that they resembled candelabra, the women worked their aged hips—dancing. They sang, hailing in patois the “nation” to which they traced their lineage while their bare feet spelled it out in a dusty calligraphy on the ground.
Ring Shout! I suddenly found myself remembering James Weldon Johnson’s memoir Along This Way, which I had read as a teenager. (It had been on the list of books by colored writers that I had boldly demanded at my local library.) In the memoir, Johnson described a circular dance called the Ring Shout that the old folk in his segregated neighborhood of Jacksonville, Florida, performed nearly every night at their meeting hall. Moving in a tight circle or ring around the hall they would sing and dance and shout! for the better part of the night sometimes, often keeping him awake as a boy.
Johnson’s Ring Shout and the Big Drum/ Nation Dance struck me as one and the same. Except, of course, that no drums were allowed at the Ring Shout. At that time drums in the hands of black folk were considered “weapons” for inciting rebellions. No matter. According to Johnson, the old folk created their own rhythm section by striking the floor in unison with the heels of their feet to create a sound as powerful as any drum as they sang and danced and shouted late into the night.
“We are
a nation of dancers, musicians and poets,” Olaudah, my adopted kinfolk, declared in his famous narrative.
Olaudah speaking of the things that sustained us in our wide dispersal.
It was long past midnight when the elderly dancers finally tired. They had acknowledged their nations, had repeatedly honored them in song and dance, and their strength had at last given out. With their departure the dusty circle that had become sacred ground under their feet was now simply a dance floor open to all. That included me as well as my schoolmarm friend, whom I repeatedly thanked for insisting that I attend the festival. A somewhat shameful confession, though: once out on the floor I had to be careful not to look at what my friend called dancing lest it throw me off step.
During the U.S. invasion of Grenada years later, Carriacou also found itself involved. President Reagan ordered that troops be sent to the little two-by-four atoll to rout out any Cuban communists who might be hiding there in its pitifully depleted fields.
For me, the idea for a novel I would write almost a decade later grew out of this overnight trip to what I would always think of as a time capsule of an island. I was scarcely aware of it back then. Yet the sense of a possible story had nonetheless implanted itself, was “on hold,” so to speak, in the memory bank of my mind beyond consciousness.
Writing fiction: a wonderfully conscious and unconscious act.
Praisesong for the Widow would be the name of that future novel. In it, a well-heeled black American widow, an unapologetic bourgeoise, given to her yearly Caribbean cruise, recovers something of her true-true self after experiencing the Carriacou Big Drum/Nation Dance.
Back in the V. W. room on the morning after the trip to Carriacou, I abruptly stopped before uncovering the typewriter and beginning another frustrating day of throw-away writing. Instead, I suddenly, purposefully gathered up the stack of steno pads containing my research notes. Next, I marched the pads, every last one of them, over to the house. There, in the storage closet, I respectfully deposited them in one of the expensive suitcases that, thanks to the Guggenheim, had replaced the Delanceys. Once all the pads were inside I closed and locked the lid of the suitcase. I also closed and locked the closet door. Then, back in the V. W. room, I sat down at the Royal, took several deep yoga breaths, and began writing my novel, finally understanding, fledgling that I still was, that as a fiction writer, a novelist, a storyteller, a fabulist, as it were, my responsibility first and foremost was to the story, the story above all else: the old verities of people, plot and place; a story that if honestly told and well crafted would resonate with the historical truths contained in the steno pads.
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