by Olive Senior
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask, “And what had you lost?” but I thought better of it. Instead I asked, “So she never said why?”
“No, but I think that from when she was little she felt left out. She always said nobody loved her. She had it in her head that you loved me best, Lise was Papa’s girl, and Junior as the only boy was everybody’s eyeball. She was special to nobody.”
“Oh, nonsense,” I said. Perhaps a bit sharply.
“Maybe. But there was something else. And this you will say is nonsense. But Shirley came to feel that it was because she was the darkest one in the family.”
“For heaven’s sake, Celia. You know she wasn’t treated any differently. If anyone could lay claim to that it is Lise. She is the one who got teased for her looks. Remember all those names the kids used to call her? Quaw. Mus-mus. Redibo? Even Junior and Shirley did it.”
“I know.”
“I’m really distressed to hear that. Shirley was special to everyone. She certainly had the most attractive personality of all you children.”
“G, you know that how we perceive things as children is more important than the reality of our lives.” She gave a funny laugh then and said, “For instance, I always thought you had given me away as a child because you didn’t want me. How do you think that made me feel?”
“Oh God,” I said.
“It’s okay. It’s okay.” She reached over and patted my leg. “I think I understand now. But I’m talking about the child’s perception then.”
I sort of screwed up my face, trying not to get entangled in this one.
“So all I am saying is that is how Shirley felt.”
“But something must have led her to feel that way.”
“Well, I don’t know. It’s not something you should get upset about at this stage. It’s too late anyway.”
“I’m not upset. But how would you feel if you suddenly learned that your children were thinking such terrible things about you?”
Celia laughed out loud then. “Oh my God, you should hear that Ashley sometimes. The things she says. I’m the worst mother on earth! Gabriel was a little more subtle. When he was small and he got mad at me, he used to tell everyone that his real mother was going to come in a helicopter and take him away and it would serve me right.”
I smiled then, but I knew it wasn’t the same. I decided to hold my peace. I was learning that too much talking could sometimes be as bad as silence. We sat, saying nothing, but this silence was making me uncomfortable, so I asked about Lise, for we hadn’t talked about her at all. I was curious to know if she had seen Lise recently.
“Oh, Lise,” Celia said in a tone that made me relax. “I haven’t seen her in ages, but we’ve been talking a lot on the phone lately. I don’t know, I guess we are just at that age where family is beginning to mean more to us. I’ll dig out some pictures later to show you.”
I said I’d like to see them and asked what Lise was doing.
“You know Lise, always getting her own way. She ended up in Houston of all places. Went into real estate, buying and fixing up old property, now she is quite the landlord. Lise is doing okay, let me tell you.” And she rubbed her thumb and forefinger together.
“And her children?”
“Amazing, when you think of it. All turned out fantastic. Doing brilliantly at school. She might end up with two doctors, and I think the third one, the girl, wants to be an architect. Don’t know how she managed it. Wish mine would do as well. And she raised them all as a single mother too. Just couldn’t be bothered to marry any of the men in her life—and there have been plenty, I can tell you. Still attracts them like honey, from what she tells me. Knows how to love them and leave them.”
Just like her father, I thought sourly, for certain things I still couldn’t swallow. Celia must have noticed my expression. I don’t know how she read it, but she surprised me by saying, “Promise me you won’t be hard on Junior. I think he is trying to make amends. For a lot of things. Just try and love him, Mom, and not say anything. Forgive him. For Shirley’s sake. You know what she was like. Not a mean bone in her body.”
I had to think about that for a long long time. So many loaded words embedded there. Making amends. Love. Forgiveness. Shirley.
Shirley and her beautiful smile. I had never really mourned her. Because I never knew the cause of her death, it had left me in a kind of suspension. As if I was waiting for her to come in slamming doors as she always did, dumping her school bag on the table. Turning somersaults. Noisy, irrepressible Shirley. And now, now that I knew the finality of it all, I still didn’t know what to think.
But Celia was still on the subject of Junior.
“He’s been paying back for what he did. The drugs. Shirley. Living a lie. Deceiving all of us. It hasn’t been easy. Life is testing him, though. So when you go down …?”
I just nodded, for I couldn’t speak even if I wanted to. I didn’t feel angry, just sad, like a child who has done something she knows is wrong and is reprimanded. The wrong I did was to close my eyes to the truth about Junior staring me in the face all these years. What a hypocrite Millie and all the others must have thought me. How could I not know?
I didn’t want to talk any more about it; I needed a break from all the emotional turmoil of the last few days and weeks. I told Celia I was going to bed.
She said, “Of course. Hey! I’m sorry. I know you’ve been through the wringer. But things have a way of working themselves out, though, don’t you believe it? I’m already beginning to feel lighter from all the talking.” She leaned over then and kissed me on the cheek.
The gesture only made me feel sadder. I got up and started up the stairs.
“Hey,” Celia called out. “G, before you go back home, there are two things you should know about Junior, so you won’t be too surprised.”
“Oh,” I said, mentally bracing for more unpleasant revelations. But Celia’s tone was light.
“One. Junior has lost all his hair.” She was laughing when she said it.
It made me chuckle, for I remembered how vain Junior had been about his full head of curly hair.
“Okay,” I said. “I can deal with that. What’s the other?”
“He’s found Jesus.”
“What?” I said, and this just burst out of me without thought. “I didn’t know he was lost.”
Celia roared with laughter then, and I found myself laughing too, and we looked at each other and laughed and laughed until all the tension between us dissolved.
I went back down the three steps I had already climbed and this time I kissed Celia on her cheek. “Goodnight sweetheart,” I said. It seemed perfectly natural.
110
SO DESPITE ALL THE revelations, I did feel a slight lifting of my mood. That night as I lay in bed I said to the imaginary Celia, there’s still a lot to talk about. Up to now I don’t know all that happened to you those years we lived apart. But small steps have been taken, we are starting the dance, you and I. It’s not a waltz yet, might never be, more of an improvisation. One that supposedly tells a story as people weave in and out of each other’s spaces. Not that I have managed to figure it out. I don’t think I’m good at that. But at least I’ve learnt that I need to move forward too.
111
WHEN I GOT BACK to Ellesmere Lodge, my head was still full of the past, of the children, of all the pain we had suffered. I spent much of the day wasting time, doing nothing, trying to clear my head. Then that night in my room, I had this brilliant idea, which I offered to the absent Celia. I’ve thought of the best way of making amends to you, to all of you, I told her. I want to give you my notebooks. Perhaps the letters too, as they are a part of this record and I don’t know what else to do with them. I foresee your reaction, your wide-eyed expression, the wheels slowly turning in your head before you say anything, for this gesture of mine will truly surprise you.
You will say, “Are you sure you want to?”
And I will say, “Yes, I am sur
e. I want you to have them. Read them sometime. Anytime. Today, tomorrow, when I am dead. It’s up to you. They say all the things I cannot.”
I think you will hug me then. I am hoping you will have tears in your eyes. Then you’ll smile and say, “Okay, but why don’t you leave them to me in your will? You have a lot more to write, don’t you?”
And I will whip out another notebook looking identically like the others, a new one, and say, “Time to start another.”
Maybe I won’t exactly hand over the old ones yet. Maybe I’ll think about it some more. But I will at least let you know they’re meant for you. I have no other gift to give you.
I will say, “Read these. I don’t fear exposure anymore.”
And I hope you will say, “Neither do I.”
112
PACKED AND READY TO go, nothing left but to say my goodbyes. The middle of the week, so my granddaughter Ashley is driving me down and wants to stay over. She is far more excited than I am. Celia and her husband to come over the weekend. That will be a first. A family reunion, with Junior there. The beds and bedding, the new furniture, the curtains we have chosen, my daughter and I, have been delivered. I didn’t feel anxious or indebted about accepting such largesse anymore, it seems a natural way of doing things. This is their family home, after all, and I’m dying to see it, repaired, restored, renewed in all its bright paint.
Right after breakfast I went into the garden to say goodbye to Winston and found him looking very much at home in his plot, which has now spread to encompass not just our original beds but also quite a bit of what was once poverty-stricken lawn. He has a flourishing pumpkin vine, a chocho arbour, a bed of calalu, and rows of gungo peas, in addition to the beds of sweet peppers, tomatoes, and cabbages we had originally planted. I have no doubt that Winston’s alternative crop at the back is also thriving. Winston is a different man, energetic and smiling. Now he has an assistant. A slim, shy youngster named Lenny, who turns out to be his eldest son. To Lenny, Winston has handed over the duties he once took such pride in but which he now scorns—the lawn mowing, the massacre of the hedge. Winston himself has materialized into a real gardener.
“Winston, you have just enough here to feed your present baby-mothers. I hope you don’t plan to have any more,” I couldn’t help teasing.
“Cho, Miss Sam,” he laughed. “You always exaggervate. Is only four baby-mother I have.” He leaned then on his garden fork, took off his cap and rubbed his bald pate, and looked slightly contemplative. “But you right, you know, Miss Sam. From now on, is only ground me working. A one set of seed me a scatter.”
I too laughed when he said this. But it made me think that if I could leave Winston dazzled by the notion that he could produce something other than children, maybe I did have something to offer after all.
To the kitchen next, where I was shocked to see how Cookie had aged. They still hadn’t released her grandson’s body for burial because the police were sticking to their story of a shootout. There were arguments over the post-mortems, a human rights group wanted to bring in an outside doctor to ensure justice was done, and the case had become an international cause. But what good would that do for this small woman sitting on the kitchen stool, looking as shrivelled-up as her future? Cookie, I wanted to say, I know what it’s like. I too have lost a child to violence. But it wasn’t the same at all, was it? It was hard to lose Shirley, but she didn’t go down with all my hopes.
I was sad to leave Cookie and Annie. All of them. Even Matron. When the car was packed and the actual time for leave-taking came, while Ruby waved from the front door, Matron came down the steps to the car, a vision in purple and green swirls. But somehow the sight didn’t annoy me anymore, for now I saw it, like Ruby’s, as a flag of survival, proudly waving. We hugged each other.
“Miss Sam, I’m going to miss you,” she said.
“I’ll miss you too, Delice, my dear.” My saying that surprised me as much as the way her name just popped into my mouth.
“You mustn’t forget us.”
“No, but you must come down and stay with me sometime,” I said. “Anytime. As soon as you get your holidays.”
“You really mean that?” I was surprised by her eagerness.
“Of course.”
“Miss Sam, you don’t know how I would love to do that. I don’t have anyone left in the country anymore, you know. But I’m always wishing I had somewhere to visit.”
“Yes, Mrs. Spence, to eat sugar cane and pick mangoes from the tree,” Ashley chimed in, laughing. I had to laugh too, for though she knew nothing of country life, her idea was exactly the same as Morveen and Kyisha’s.
“Well, I don’t know if a certain person would leave me any of the mangoes,” Matron said, screwing up her face in what I suppose was meant to be a wink at Ashley.
Winston shook his head and grinned.
“Well, now we’ll get to keep our pens and pencils too, I suppose,” Ruby’s rusty voice came as she negotiated the steps and moved towards us. The shock must have showed on my face, for she gave her famous cackle and hooked my arm with the walking stick she had taken to using, and I turned and held her frail body close to my heart. “Ha-ha, my dear G,” were her parting words. “How little you know.”
And that, I thought, could well be my epitaph, as I got into the car and we drove from under the porte cochere, past the sun-blasted canna lilies, everyone waving like mad till we disappeared from sight beyond the elegant gates of Ellesmere Lodge, my granddaughter and I.
113
WHILE I WAS WAITING for Ashley to arrive, I opened my new notebook and on the first page I wrote: A New Inventory of Myself.
Person—Okay. Not bad for age.
Health—Good, thank God.
Skills—Reading, writing, sewing, farming, cooking, baking, washing, ironing, cleaning, contriving—making something from nothing.
That was it. There was nothing else I could say about myself. But at least, I thought, I had skills I could share in the place I came from in a way I had not done before. I could start literacy classes. I could start a library and get my grandchildren to help me collect books, even the ones in the United States I have never met. I could teach girls how to sew and bake, learn skills that they could use. I could invite the boys to come and grow vegetables for themselves. I was getting so excited, I was lost in this vision.
My grandson Gabriel, Ashley’s brother who is studying anthropology in the United States, wants to come for a semester to study village life. His mother has suggested that he should come and stay with me and work in our area. I would like that, for I’m thinking that maybe he can find answers to all the things I want to know. About my mother’s people. Who they were. What happened to my father. I won’t tell him or any of my grandchildren what I believe to be true, for it is something I know only with my heart. And now I know my heart’s knowledge to be unreliable.
These young people, these privileged young people, Gabriel and Ashley and the rest, can’t I use them to help? How can I tap into these resources that I never knew that I had available to me? My family. Something I had never thought about before as even existing as a concept. Will I be given a second chance to gather up the seeds I have unwittingly scattered?
Maybe it is children like these, people like Cookie’s Trevor, now gone, the ones we are struggling to educate, who will have to come up with the answers. To find out what happened to all our fathers. Who our mothers were and where they came from. For everything has to start here. With the fulfilment of that passionate, individual desire to know who we truly are.
One thing is certain: nobody comes from the canefields anymore, for the fields have been abandoned. Abandoned like the ordinary people, the extraordinary people, of this land.
I’m tingling with a new excitement: I can’t believe I am writing this, for I truly have never thought this way before. About the world, about other people. Never felt this way before. I feel my anger coming back, but now it’s a new thing. I no longer feel angry at
the portion life assigned to me. I am no longer angry at what I already know. I’m angry about what I don’t know.
This is what I have decided, and I will sign it with my name: Gertrude Richards Samphire. And I will send for a copy of my birth certificate so I can see my mother’s name. If my mother was a slug I want to uplift her by trying to help those baby-mothers, children themselves walking down the road with their constantly big bellies. If my father was a madman, I want to help those boys sitting on the bridge rid themselves of the madness of violence in their hearts.
114
THERE’S JUST ONE OTHER thing, if I’m going to be totally honest with you, Celia. It’s about the time you were born. It’s not true that I loved you instantly, unreservedly. That had to come later. Months later, during which time other people took care of you—Mother Gatha the midwife, Millie perhaps, Sam’s mother, Ma D, and Sam too, I imagine. For I was incapable of doing anything, I had no interest in you or anyone else. I don’t know where I was in all those days and weeks and months. I had fallen into this black hole, you see, just as I had the day they took my father away in the Black Maria. It was as if his turning up in such an uncanny way at just that moment, the day of your birth, plunged me back into that spinning vortex.
I don’t know how I came out of this darkness, the one I fell into when you were born, for there was no Aunt Zena to bully me, and no one ever spoke to me of that hard time. But something must have happened, for I suddenly came back to myself one day and there you were beside me, this perfect little stranger, and how my heart leapt to find you there. How I revelled in your smile, the perfection of your limbs, your toes. I wasn’t lying to you about that, about my feelings for you. Only there are these gaps in my life, you see, that I cannot explain, the places where I walked alone, so there was never anyone to remind me of what happened or of that self that I was then. Maybe that’s not a bad thing. It’s like passing through a room full of cobweb and coming out with bits and pieces of it clinging to you. Like this vision I sometimes have, parts of it as clear as if it actually happened: a room full of women chanting and my sitting in a bath pan full of warm water with the scent of sweet herbs and spices rising to surround me, mint and rosemary, pimento and orange peel, and me sitting there naked with a cloth draped over my head and covering the entire bath pan to keep the steam in. The soft singing, the scented steam, creating this safe space for me, a cocoon that I only shed when I rise out of that water and into the large white sheet they drape me in. After that I sleep, that is part of the memory, and when I open my eyes you are there, as if conjured up from that water. But it was I who was born again that day, for the pain that was afflicting me had vanished, and I felt at peace. To this day I don’t know who to thank for it or even if that was how it happened.