From Harvey River

by Lorna Goodison

  After Margaret had given birth to two daughters, she yearned deeply for a son, so when Howard was born, he was like a messenger sent from beyond to assure her that, yes, she was a complete woman. He looked just like a cherub, an angel baby. She breast-fed him until he could walk and talk. She rose at least seven times at night to check on the rise and fall of his breath as he lay asleep in his cot. Whenever he had a cold she would put her mouth to his tiny nostrils to draw the mucus down to clear his breathing; and in the rainy season, she warmed his clothes in her bosom before she dressed him. She did not go so far as to mark his limbs with the symbolic “no trespassing” hieroglyphics, like many mothers in the village who would draw ancient African symbols with laundry blue on the backs and bellies of their babies. This was done to warn away sucking spirits. Neither did she resort to pasting sickly-smelling asafetida around the tender, vulnerable fontanelle or “mole” as Jamaicans call it, throbbing at the top of his head, in the hope that its acrid, medicinal smell would keep away ghosts and envious spirits. David, a staunch Anglican and the son of an English father, would not have had it. He did not hold with what his father called barbaric practices. Margaret, in any case, was not going to leave her son’s care and protection to any random spirit guardians. She preferred to watch him herself. However, she did surreptitiously sweep his tiny feet with a soft broom when her husband was not looking. This was to prevent him from becoming a “baffan,” or fool.

  She never allowed any strangers to hold Howard. She rarely ever took him out in public until he was about three years old, because she didn’t want people to “overlook” him, that is, to look at him too much with longing, envious eyes. She did not cut his luxuriant mass of black curls which cascaded down past his shoulders until he could speak clearly. And so, for the first few years of his life, he did indeed look like a beautiful, sexless angel. Margaret dressed him in sailor suits made from appropriate sharkskin. “You are a sailor like your grandfather,” she would say as she transformed him into a nautical cherub, and her husband would say, “I don’t want my son to take after your father.” But even as Margaret dressed the boy in sailor suits, she harboured a deep fear that he would die from drowning. She had run through all the possible harm that could befall a child living in that village, and had identified the river as the thing that posed the most danger. “There was no child born in Harvey River at that time who could not swim,” my mother would say. Everyone in the village used the river. They washed their clothes there, pounding them clean on the grey shale rocks. Everyone drew drinking water from the river, which ran clean and clear, coursing down always fresh from its secret source somewhere in the interior of the Dolphin Head Mountains. They all swam in it too. Mothers would take small babies there for the ritual bathing and sopping and stretching of their limbs; they would release the babies into the river where they would instinctively kick their arms and legs.

  All the children of Harvey River could swim, all except for Howard. Margaret had decided that the child should not bathe in the river, for that was where she would lose him, although no one in the village had ever drowned in it. Only once, a man from the nearby village of Chambers Pen had been stumbling home one night, drunk on john crow batty white rum, and while weaving a rummish path home in the dark turned right instead of left and fell in the river. “All the crayfish and janga must be drunk now,” said the people of the village. David’s father, William Harvey, had joked, “That man had only a little blood in his rum stream.” William was especially proud of his joke because one of his ancestors, born in 1578 and also named William Harvey, had discovered the circulation of blood and had been physician to James I and Charles I.

  For a time, David humoured Margaret’s fear of the boy drowning. But when one day he came upon her bathing Howard in a wooden washtub, he grew angry and yanked the boy–who was tall for his age–out of the tub, took him down to the river, and taught him how to swim. After that there was no stopping Howard and the river. But every time he scampered away half-naked and gleeful, Margaret would worry until he returned damp and glowing like one of the Water Babies in Charles Kingsley’s story. And those babies had all drowned.

  The boy grew into the most handsome of young men. He became a sweet boy, a boonoonoonoos boy, a face man, eye-candy man, pretty-like-money, nice-like-a-pound-of-rice man. Lord, women loved him. Older women looked at him greedily, as if he were some sweet confection that they could eat slowly and then lick their fingers long afterwards. Young girls just openly offered themselves to him. “Here I am, handsome Howard, pick me, choose me.” They fought to get to sit beside him at school and in church, to have him sweep those long lashes up and down the contours of their trembling bodies, to call them by name. “Yes, it’s you Cybil, you I talking to.” “Me, you mean…Howard, me? Oh yes, oh joy!” They befriended his sisters in order to get a chance to visit the Harvey household and be near to him, to drink from the same teacups from which his lips had sipped, to peep into his room and see the bed that he slept in. He could have had any woman in the district. That is why he never married, he just had too many beautiful women to choose from. Why then did he follow a Jezebel clear to Lucea, there to meet his death?

  “My Irish Rose” is what George O’Brian Wilson had said when he first saw his fourth grandchild. He also called her his Rose of Tralee and his Dark Rose, and the baby just smiled. David and Margaret agreed she just had to be called Rose because nobody had ever seen a more beautiful baby. Unlike Queen Victoria Cleodine, the unsmiling Miss Jo, and the almost-too-handsome Howard, Rose was perfectly beautiful inside and out. This baby was born smiling, causing her mother to wonder why, why was this baby smiling already, what was she smiling about? Perhaps she was smiling because everybody who ever laid eyes on her, loved her.

  People liked being near the beautiful baby who hardly ever cried and who cooed like a little Barbary dove at the sight of sunbeams streaming in through the front window. More than ever the people of Harvey River began to find excuses to visit David and Margaret’s house, because somehow being in the presence of this child just made everyone feel better. First of all, no one could help noticing that even more than other babies she had an especially sweet body scent, as if she had been birthed in the bed of lilies that grew behind the Harvey house. Her flawless brown skin had a pinkish glow to it, and her soft black hair curled on her head like petals. She was born with an unusually sweet disposition, which could be credited to the fact that Margaret was never happier in her life than in the years after Howard was born.

  Margaret had not entertained any strange no-hard-chewing, no staid no-smiling superstition when she carried Rose. The moment she had conceived Howard, she somehow knew that she was going to get her wish for a son. And she had made herself six blue dresses which she wore throughout the duration of her pregnancy. That was the only “strange” thing that she did. After the birth of Howard, she treated the rest of her pregnancies normally, as she went on to deliver up a new baby every two years.

  “Three rinse waters, they must go through three separate rinse waters so they will be completely clean.” Margaret, who was pregnant with Edmund at the time, had suspected that the girl who came to do the washing was only rinsing the family’s white clothes twice, for they were looking a little dingy. So after she had walked the girl back to the river to perform the third rinsing, Margaret returned to the house, where she had left Rose napping on a blanket on the floor, to find the child missing. They searched under every bed, every chair, table, and wardrobe, under every bush in the yard, but there was no sign of Rose, and a great wailing came up from the Harvey house.

  Just at that exact moment, David’s half-brother, called Tata Edward, was taking his daily constitutional in the midday sun, when he spotted the village crazy woman walking swiftly away from Harvey River with a small child held tightly in her arms. “My little girl, my little girl, look how she favour me, look how she favour me, I am taking her with me to Panama” was what she kept saying as Tata Edward dealt her a swift blo
w with his walking stick, causing her to let go of his beautiful niece. Being an excellent cricketer, he then swiftly flung himself sideways onto the grass and caught Rose before she fell to the ground. The poor woman, whom the villagers called Colun, had gone insane waiting for her lover to send for her to join him in Panama. Like everyone else, she had fallen in love with Rose, and for two years she had been peeping at the child through the hibiscus hedges surrounding the Harvey house. When she had made up her mind to steal Rose, she had spent days making a house of leaves and branches for the two of them to live in in the bushes outside Harvey River. The child just kept smiling while all the commotion was going on around her.

  “Look how this damn blasted woman, who fool enough so make man mad her, come take way my child! Is me tell her to fret herself till her head start run over that idiot who fool her and gone a Panama? Why she come pitch pon my house and my child?” Margaret cried and cursed the poor woman and thanked God and Tata Edward. David prayed aloud from Psalm 91. “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High, shall abide in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord He is my refuge and fortress: my God in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisesome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shall thou trust; his truth shall be thy shield and buckler, thou shall not be afraid of the terror by night; nor of the arrow that flieth by day.” And the district constable came and arrested the poor woman for the “crime” of being insane while the two-year-old Rose–who, for her part, seemed to have been born with some sweet secret–just kept smiling all the time.

  As she grew, Rose’s ability to keep a secret endeared her to her siblings and, later, to her school friends. If someone said, “Rose, I going tell you something and you mustn’t tell anybody you hear?” the pretty little girl would just smile, shake her head, and use her thumb and forefinger to screw her lips shut. And her sibling or school friend might say, “swear to God.” And Rose would just say, “not telling.” And you could be sure that no matter what, Rose would never, ever reveal a secret or disclose anything told to her in confidence.

  Because her belly had been more pointed than round, Margaret was happy to hear that everyone predicted her fifth baby would be a boy. There were only three things that caused her any discomfort during her pregnancy. First, she felt irritable all the time as opposed to just some of the time, and she found it disconcerting that she had suddenly lost her appetite for dry white Lucea yam, which was her favourite food. But the strangest thing of all was that she, who did not believe in ever going too far from her house, inexplicably developed a case of wanderlust and began to visit friends and neighbours in surrounding villages. Everyone in Harvey River began to remark on this. “Guess who mi buck up walking out a while ago? No, Mrs. Harvey! I never see her outta road yet, and make matters worse she big, big, soon have baby!” “David,” Margaret would say, “I feel to go and visit my mother.” “You sure, Meg? You are a lady that hardly ever leave your house. I can send to call your mother, she will ride come.” “No, I want to go.”

  And so it went, all during her pregnancy stay-at-home Margaret became walkbout-Margaret, until the minute that Edmund was born, when she lost all interest in ever leaving the house. The baby Edmund was born in the middle of the night. “This baby born quick quick,” said the midwife. “Him just slip out and slide right past me, like him want go walkbout already.” Because he weighed just under six pounds, they had to pin him by his chemise to a pillow so Margaret could hold him to feed him properly. “Aye, he looks like a leprechaun, like one of the little people,” said George O’Brian Wilson when he came to see his latest grandson. “Mind he doesn’t get up in the night and make mischief on ye all.” David and Margaret had had a good laugh when George Wilson said that. The little baby Edmund, who was also born with a short temper, howled.

  It seems that all Edmund ever wanted to do was to leave Harvey River. As soon as he could talk, he would say, “Too dark.” Then he would say, “Too damn dark.” “What is too dark?” they would ask him, and he would say, “Here.”

  As he grew he also developed a dislike for bush. “Too much bush,” he’d say, and everyone would say, “So what you expect, you live in the country.” That did not stop Edmund from disliking his birthplace. All that bush. Everywhere he looked all he could see was bush, and under every bush the duppy of some godforsaken slave. The boy’s heart did not sing out with joy as he beheld dawn rising pink and slow, moving like the folds of a woman’s nightdress up over the Dolphin Head Mountains. His spirit did not rise and canter like a young horse over the verdant green pastures each day, because he hated all the macca, the thorns set there in the green grass to pierce his bare feet. The wicked cow-itch weed that itched you till your skin would bleed. The nasty white chiggoes that bored into your feet and laid sickening mock-pearl parasite eggs. Grass lice, ticks, cow, goat, and horse shit, flies and mosquitoes.

  “Jamaica is a blessed country, there are no fierce animals or poisonous snakes here, and Harvey River is like the Garden of Eden.” David was always saying that. Edmund used to kiss his teeth when he heard it. Yes, but what about all those blasted insects, what about the thick darkness? He particularly hated the peenie wallies, fireflies, damn stupid little flies with that weak on and off light coming out of their backsides. He craved real lights. Street lights. He had heard that in Montego Bay and Kingston the streets were lit by tall gas lights. “Moon pan stick” country people called those lights.

  And then there was the darkness of the people. Country people, always telling each other “mawning Miss this or Mas that.” Who the hell wanted any mawning from them, thought Edmund. And the worst part was, if he did not answer them they would run and report him to his parents, who would chastise him for not having good manners. Good manners be damned. When he was thirteen years old he had actually asked his father one day where good manners ever got any black man and had his father ever noticed that backra and backra pickney, who were famous for not having good manners, always seemed to reach very far. David had been appalled by that statement, and called Edmund a savage.

  Edmund could not understand how he was so unlucky as to have been born in the country. From the first time that his father took him to Kingston when he was ten years old, he knew that the city was the place for him. There the streets had names, King Street and East and West Queen Street and Port Royal Street and Rum Lane. Not “outta road,” like in the country.

  Town had milk shops where he could go and order as much liver and light (light being what Jamaicans called the lungs of the cow or goat) for breakfast as he wanted. Eat, belch, pay his money, and walk out like a big man. Also rum bars where a man could order his rum by the QQ (a quarter quart), by the flask or the tot, put a question to the barmaid, who was probably called Fattie, and take her home to his room that he had rented. His room where he could turn his own key and come in at any hour of the day or night he pleased because he was his own man. Town, where cars drive up and down day and night. Cars and buses and trucks and tramcars ran all the time. Not like this back-a-bush place with only donkey, mule, and horse. Who the hell said country nice? Not Edmund.

  He considered it God’s make mistake why he was born in Harvey River. He was Moses among the bulrushes. If only Pharaoh’s daughter would just appear and carry him to town. As a child he would run outside to stare at any motor vehicle that managed to fight its way up to the village. He fashioned a steering wheel from an old pot cover and “drove” wherever he went, going “brrrum, brrruum” in imitation of the noise of motor vehicle engines, and he made hissing, screeching sounds whenever he stopped, like the boiling over hissing brakes of trucks.

  David rode a horse and Margaret had a pretty, dainty-stepping donkey, but nobody who lived in the village owned a motor car. Edmund had been taken to Montego Bay as a child and had seen the taxi men driving tourists around. Even as a boy, he had been struck by the elite corps of smartly dressed men in starched whi
te shirts and black pants, who all spoke “Yankee” and smoked cigarettes and had the prettiest women, because girls just loved a man who drove a car. Later, he would hear that tourist women–mostly rich Americans and English-women–would sometimes fall in love with a taxi man.

  While Howard was being taught to become a saddler by his grandfather George Wilson, and his younger brother Flavius had expressed a desire to be apprenticed to the tailor in the next village, Edmund was expected to help his father with the cultivation of the coffee, cocoa, and yams, and if ever there was a man who hated agriculture that would be Edmund. As he explained to Flavius, who was a born farmer, what the hell would he, Edmund, be digging, digging in the ground for? The only thing he ever wanted to dig for was gold. Gold to make ring and chain and decorate his teeth and give as earring and brooch to women as presents. As far as he knew there was no gold to be found in Jamaica. He would much rather buy rice and bread from a shop than eat yam. As a matter of fact he refused to eat yams once he left Harvey River.

  “Why the baby looking at me so?” said everyone who ever held my uncle Flavius in their arms when he was an infant. “Hey boy, if you see me again you will know me?” is what the children at the village school would ask him when he began to attend classes there at age seven. David and Margaret used to wonder when and if their sixth child ever slept because it seemed that no matter what hour of the night they checked on the children in their beds, the light of the Home Sweet Home lamp would reveal Flavius to be awake, alert, and staring hard into the darkness. Soon after he learned to walk, he armed himself with an old cooking spoon for a shovel and took to digging in the ground around the Harvey house. Then one day Flavius stopped staring so hard into people’s faces and took to walking with his head held down, a habit which greatly upset his parents. “Hold your head up, what do you have to be ashamed of, why you holding down your head so?” said his father, who had named him after a Roman nobleman in one of the books he had read. But Flavius was not ashamed; he was searching for something. Sometimes in his digs he found coins, and once somebody’s gold ring which must have been very old because the gold was so thin it was almost translucent. Another time he found a pewter spoon and the head of a china doll. He kept his “treasures” in a pile beneath the house, and he always said that when he built his own house in Harvey River, he intended to transfer his things there because, unlike his brother Edmund, Flavius had no desire to leave Harvey River. He was sure that whatever he was searching for was to be found right there in the parish of Hanover–and that included a wife. But before he identified a prospective helpmate and mother for their children–he intended to have a large family–he decided that he should be sent to learn tailoring, for he was not one to put all his eggs in one basket. Everybody said the boy had a good hand for planting, and in his time he reaped quite a few prize yams. Flavius reasoned that while the yams were growing, he could just as well be stitching somebody’s wedding suit. And as only madmen walked around without trousers, the men of Hanover would always need the services of a tailor. So he was sent off to learn how to “build” suits and trousers from tailor May of Grange, Westmoreland, whose father and grandfather before him had all been fine tailors. After being apprenticed to tailor May for a year, Flavius came back to Harvey River and began to sew for the men in the area. He grew to be quite proud of the fact that almost any man, even a struggling, ordinary-looking man from the country, could be mistaken for an important person when he put on one of Flavius’s well-constructed suits. When he finally proposed to a young woman named Arabella with whom he had gone to school in Chambers Pen, a petite girl with large soulful eyes and a still spirit, Flavius had his ducks all in a row.