Neo-Walt Village Combing
Mere Taito
Rotuma (Fiji)
disney is here
disney has come with its producers, animators and screenplay writers
disney expects a warm reception
disney expects respect and gratitude from you for
gracing your village with its presence
disney will stay for a while
disney will be foraging in your homes and meeting
houses for your stories
disney will show you how it can make magic
with the waves on your beach
disney will study the old wooden canoe in your backyard
disney will ask you to bring down the tapa you
have hanging on your wall
disney will bring out its magnifying glass
disney will look
disney will take notes and make rough sketches
disney will whisper
disney is here
disney will be looking for pretty little girls and strong men
disney wants their voices
disney will test their voices
disney will place these little girls and strong men
in front of cameras
disney will judge how pretty and strong they look
disney calls this an audition
disney will take their voices and the slant of their
jawline if it is happy
disney wants to make you happy
disney wants to make all your children happy
disney wants to celebrate you
disney wants to celebrate your gods
disney wants to celebrate your beautiful grass skirts
disney wants to celebrate your coconut shell brassieres
disney wants to make your arm tattoos uncurl and talk
disney will make a movie to make your children happy
disney will make cute dolls of your gods to make your children happy
disney will sell you these cute dolls and the movie with the magic waves
disney will remind you of the importance of your happiness and the happiness of your children
disney will remind you with giant glossy posters and teasing trailers
disney is here
roll out the teeth carpet
Granny Dead
Melanie Schwapp
Jamaica
Granny dead. Just sudden so. No warning, just like she always did do everything. Nobody even get the chance to call me, since she don’t show no signs of it coming on, only until she grab her chest before she drop and her eyes pulp out like she see duppy. That’s just like how Aunty tell me it happen.
I hurry up to the house cause I thinking she would never leave without telling me, even though she was vex with me. I hurry thinking that the rest of them see her eyes pulp out, but she just looking for me, just holding on till I reach so she can tell me she gone. But when I get there and call ‘Granny … Granny,’ all I hear was a big popping noise in her belly. Aunty say that was just gas leaving her body.
Gas. That’s all I get of my Granny after I don’t set eyes on her for two months. After she plait my hair and lotion up my legs all my life, she just gone like that and don’t even tell me ‘bye.’
I vex with Aunty. I want to scream and run back down the road. She’s the one who tell me to leave. Same Aunty, with all her stocious talk and her cast eye. I don’t want her touch me when I start to bawl. Don’t want none of them to touch me.
Them going to give Granny the same burial that she give her mumma and her puppa. Granny tell them all her life that when her time come, that’s how she want to bury too. I know all ’bout those burials. Granny used to tell me how they turn over the mattress and wash the body with bay rum and water, wash it and wrap it in the white sheet, then throw the water out the house so the spirit follow the water and don’t get confused and trap up inside the house. Then she tell me how they grate the nutmeg fine, fine, till it feel like silk in your fingers, and then throw the nutmeg over the sheet. They put ice too, plenty, plenty ice, and they keep the body right there in the house for everybody to come see before they bury it in the middle of the scallion field. All of Granny’s family out there in that field, and all of them bury same way before Granny even born.
Granny tell everybody that part of the story, ’bout the washing and the ice, then when me and she alone she say, ‘I drink the water, Queenie. I drink the dead water from my mumma and puppa, and then I eat piece of the ice. That’s how I know! All them things I know that nobody else know, and all them things I see, is cause of that water and that ice.’
I wanted to vomit when she tell me, and I didn’t want her to kiss me or nothing when I think ’bout that dead water touching her lips. But after a while, I forget ’bout it and let her kiss me and hug me and tell me that I am the queen of the Maroons.
Granny was half-Maroon. When she was little she used to go to Accompong village with her puppa every January for the festival, and sometimes they would go even when there was no celebration. She tell me how them stand under Cudjoe tree, and her puppa teach her how to listen for them things nobody but Maroon could hear. ‘We hear them plannin’, Queenie,’ Granny tell me. ‘We hear them plannin’ how to fight them England people. When you hear them voices, Queenie, when you hear Cudjoe talk, there no battle you can lose in this life!’
First battle Granny lose was with her own children. Her children say them not going nowhere near Accompong. Mummy tell me Granny tek them when Mummy was just three and Aunty was four, but when they hear the Abeng horn blowing and the dancing and chanting start, she and Aunty start a piece of bawling. Mummy say that Granny did slap them and tell them to behave, but they never stop bawling till Granny feel shame and have to leave. She never go back again, and Mummy say she was glad that Granny leave all that slave foolishness behind.
I did love Granny stories, though. I think that’s why she whisper to me ’bout the dead water and ice. She start calling me ‘Queenie’ for ‘queen of the Maroons,’ and even though Mummy get vex and tell her my name is Pearl, she don’t stop calling me ‘Queenie’ till the name stick and everybody start calling me that. Even Mummy.
I feel shame to admit that at first I wasn’t really interested in them Maroons. At first I did only use them to get myself out of trouble. If I did catch Granny vexness in time, and I could drop in a question ’bout the Abeng or some bush medicine, then Granny stop being vex just so, and start tell me ’bout all the different sounds the Abeng mek, and what them sounds mean. After that I grow to love to hear ’bout Cudjoe and how him kill all them English soldiers who was trying to tek the land from them. I grow to love to hear ’bout the bush, how the Maroons use everything to mek medicine that nobody else in the world can mek.
That’s how Granny send Mummy and Aunty to school. That Maroon medicine. She say them voices from under Cudjoe tree already inside her from she born, just like them was inside her granny and her grandpuppa and her puppa. She never have to go back to Accompong to know ’bout what was already inside her. She mek medicine for everybody.
But there was two types of medicine Granny mek: the kind she sell in broad daylight, and the kind she sell at night. Them people who come at night just come and tek the medicine quick, quick. Not even the moonlight coulda show them face. Me and Peter used to try and see them through the bedroom window, but the lime tree so full of Granny bush that she hang to dry that it always block the kitchen door. We could only see the back of them shoes-heel on the step.
One time we walking from the post office and Granny send me through the barbed wire to pick some bush from Mas’ Perry grave. Mas’ Perry just dead three weeks before that, and the bush just start to spring back round the concrete. That night, Granny boil the bush till it thick like molasses and the whole house smell like cow piss. Peter want to vomit and lock up in the bedroom, but I stay, and when I see Granny drop a panty in the pot, I ask her what that for. She just look hard at me, so I pretend to go in
the room with Peter, but what I really do was go round the front of the house and hide behind the mint bush. I nearly drop asleep behind that bush, but soon I see Miss Lyndsey, Mas’ Perry wife that him dead and leave, shuffle up the driveway and then hurry back down with the cow piss bag in her hand.
Next morning, Granny stare at me while I drink my porridge, but she don’t say nothing. When I ready to leave for school she grab my shoulder hard and whisper, ‘Queenie, rat play round puss mouth, one day him end up down puss throat!’
After that, Granny mek me sit down every day after school and learn ’bout all the different kinds of bush and the things them use for.
Mummy vex. ‘Doctors!’ Mummy did shout at her. ‘My children are going to be doctors, Mama, not damn bushmen!’
Granny never understand a lot of the things Mummy and Aunty used to talk ’bout. She used to say them go to big school and turn stocious with all them pretty talk. When Mummy cuss bout the bush, Granny just stick it under my nose and say, ‘Smell that, Queenie! Cause of this damn bush she get all that pretty talk in her mouth.’
Granny never argue when Mummy say she going to send Peter to the school Daddy used to go to, where the students live right there at the school. She never argue ’bout Peter, but one year later when Mummy say she thinking ’bout sending me to the school she used to go in Kingston, Granny stay up all night sitting quiet in the kitchen. In the morning she stick a book in my hand when Mummy not looking. Is a book I never see before. The cover tear clean off, and the writing on the pages so bad that I have to squint to mek out the letters. I see names of plenty bush and all the things they use for.
Granny love me the most. I know that cause she never hide it. Peter born with daddy high colour and soft hair. I born Maroon. Granny say she see her puppa in me from she pull me out of Mummy, with skin smooth and shiny like a new bruise. When we used go to play with the other children, them say me and Peter couldn’t be brother and sister, that Mummy give Daddy bun. Me and Peter don’t care ’bout nothing them say back then, cause half of them never have no father, and the ones that had father call them ‘Papa’ or ‘Pappy.’ Me and Peter call our father ‘Daddy.’ Stocious like. Our Daddy live right there in the same house with us. When the children start to tease us bout ‘bun-breed pickney,’ we just say, ‘We can’t play too long cause Daddy going tek us for ice cream.’ The children faces would mek up really vex after that.
Granny bring up Mummy and Aunty like that – married first, then baby. Granny say she never bring no scatter foot gal into this world, who open them foot before them get the ring. Mummy get married to Daddy, but Aunty have a cast eye and don’t get no husband. Is not that Aunty ugly or anything, but Granny say is how you wear things that count, and Aunty tek her eye to heart and she wear it ugly. I think she ugly inside. She’s the one that follow Daddy that night and come back to tell Mummy ’bout the girl with the belly. She’s the reason when me and Peter go to play with the other children after that, we don’t have nothing to say when them call me ‘bun-breed pickney.’
When I go to the Kingston school I pretend that my Granny not half-Maroon and that my Daddy not living with him new family. I pretend I don’t have a baby sister that Mummy say I must not ask her ’bout. I hide Granny book at the bottom of my drawer and put all my Chemistry and Biology book at the top. I talk pretty and stocious like Mummy and Aunty and those Kingston girls. I talk so pretty and stocious that Jermaine who come from a nice, nice Kingston family want me to join drama club with him. We rehearse once a week in the school auditorium, but one day the teacher don’t show up, and just like that, I turn scatter foot gal.
Just one time, and I have to leave school cause the belly would grow too big to sit at the desk and tek exams. I tell Mummy, but I don’t know how to tell Granny.
Aunty tell her. When I go home, Granny don’t even look at me. She have a vex look on her face, but her body move slow, like she really just sad. I tell her I sorry, is a accident, but she don’t answer me. Aunty say is best I go stay by Mummy in her new house till Granny stop being vex.
I break Granny heart. I know that’s why it bust in her chest just sudden so and leave her eye wide open. Is not duppy she see, but my belly.
Them wash her body and give me the water to throw outside. I decide to throw it by the lime tree beside the kitchen so that she not too far from the house. I stand up there for a long time, under all of Granny drying bush, but my hand won’t throw the water.
‘Listen, Queenie!’ I hear Granny say. I wasn’t even frighten when I hear her voice. ‘Drink!’
I put the pail to my head. The water warm and bitter and slimy and it mek the baby jump hard when it sink into my belly.
When I go back inside, Granny body still cover up with the sheet, but her head not covered. Her eyes closed. Mummy pouring more ice round her and Aunty throwing on the nutmeg. Granny smell like a Easter bun.
A piece of ice hitch up under her chin where the skin fold over. I tek it up and put it in my mouth. This time the baby don’t jump.
The baby don’t move again after that.
Granny bury in the scallion field and still the baby don’t move.
When the pain start, I know even before them tell me that the little boy dead from long time. Mummy and Aunty say to bury him beside Granny in the field so she can watch over him, but I just laugh at them pretty talk.
I say I going bury him under the lime tree where the dirt still smell strong of Granny bush. I don’t tell them, but I can hear him talking to me. Him know everything like Granny. I can hear the whole of them talking – my baby, Granny, grandpa, grandma … all of them. I hear them from when Granny burial water hit my belly. I bury little Cudjoe under the lime tree.
All of them is there together, talking to me while I hang out my bush to dry.
A Child of Four Women
Marita Davies
Kiribati
I watched my auntie in an animated conversation with the man behind the counter. She was trying to get me a last-minute ticket to board the plane to Marakei. We had been told by the woman at the ticket office the day before that the plane was fully booked but, typical of Kiribati, the woman noted, ‘Sometimes people forget they have a ticket. Try lining up for the plane anyway and see if you can get a last-minute seat.’
I watched and waited with my bags while my auntie worked hard to convince the man to let me board the plane. She made him laugh, then she begged, then she told him she knew his cousin. They engaged in quick banter – too quick for my limited use of Kiribati language. She became annoyed, then eventually turned to me: ‘Neiko, give him five dollars and he will let you board the plane.’ I did as I was told and was waved through.
I thanked my auntie and bid her goodbye, dragging the luggage I had brought with me – just in case I scored a flight. I looked around at the fifteen or so people also ready for flight. Like me, they too had bulging bags, no doubt full of supplies from the main island: rice, tobacco, teabags, sugar. There were, though, two major differences between me and everyone else heading to Marakei.
Most obvious was that I was the only light-skinned person on the plane. My lighter skin tone, the result of having a Kiribati mother and a white Australian father, stood out – enough for people to call me Imatung, white person. However, perhaps surprisingly, it wasn’t my skin colour that made me look like a tourist. It was the fact that I was also dragging along a ten-litre container of water. I’d had enough unfortunate bowel experiences in Kiribati to know that my stomach couldn’t handle the water from the wells. This container was a clear indicator that I was an outsider.
This bothered me more than I could have predicted. I had travelled to Tarawa – the main island of Kiribati – many times before, and being called an Imatung had never bothered me. In fact, Imatungs are treated with immense respect and undeserved favouritism in the islands. But as I lined up, although wearing my tiibuta and lavalava – the common every day outfit of most Kiribati women – I felt out of place. I lugged the container o
f water on board and chose a single seat next to a window, the vessel balanced on my lap.
The plane was basic, to say the least. The plastic in the windows was held in place by snap fasteners and my seatbelt was so weathered that I wondered if I would be the last person to benefit from its proper functionality. The pilot lowered himself into place and I watched him take his sandals off and place them carefully beside his seat. He seemed to relax once barefoot.
Perhaps any other tourist would have been panicking by this point, but none of these details bothered me – I had come to expect it when in Kiribati. I was more aware of the container on my lap, water sloshing within. Fellow passengers glanced at it and smiled. It was screaming, ‘She is a stranger! She is only a visitor to Marakei! She doesn’t belong!’
I was, in fact, the opposite. I was heading to Marakei to meet up with my mother, who was visiting our relatives there with my grandmother – a woman born on Marakei.
I had been to Kiribati many times before to visit family, and whenever I arrived on the main island of Tarawa, I was always asked, ‘Ko mena iaa?’ – Where are you from? At first I would reply, ‘Australia,’ to explain my half-caste skin. But that was never the answer they were looking for.
‘No, nei Marita, where is your family from?’
Over the years I had learned to reply, ‘My grandmother is from Marakei and my grandfather is from Tabetueia North.’
‘Ahhh,’ they would reply, nodding as if observations had been confirmed. ‘You sit cross-legged like a Marakei woman.’
These days, on the main island of Tarawa, it’s hard to find Kiribati people who are actually from Tarawa. Just as major cities are full of people from all around the world, so too is Tarawa.
Marakei and Tabetueia are where my ancestry originates, and after many years of hearing relatives tell me, ‘You must go to your island. It is yours. You must learn your history,’ I was about to fly to my home island. Still, more than ever before, I felt like a stranger.
So Many Islands Page 5