From Harvey River

by Lorna Goodison

  My mother never did say why she went to bathe alone in the river that day; maybe she wanted to do her own private washing in private and as it happened there was no one else there when she reached the river, so she took off her dress under which she was wearing her bathing costume and dived into the river. She was a beautiful diver, who never made a splash when she entered the water although she was a tall, plump girl. The water just seemed to part for her and to let her in. She swam bank to bank and dived deep once or twice to investigate what was under the rocks in her family river. She came up with a small crayfish but she threw it back. “Grow some more,” she said aloud to the underweight crayfish.

  “Who you talking to?” said a voice, and Doris looked up to see a strange boy standing across from her on the riverbank. He had to be a stranger, for normal river protocol dictated that if a village boy came across a Harvey girl bathing, he would leave immediately. Instead, this one stood on the riverbank, big and bold, staring at my mother, who had buried herself in the water up to her neck the moment that she realized that she was not alone. “Go away,” she said. But the boy just stood there, grinning and staring. “You don’t hear me say you must move, go’ on, go ’way from here?” she said. The bold-faced boy, who was from Kingston and was visiting with relatives in nearby Chambers Pen, had never seen a river before, much less a river with a pretty young girl bathing in it. He stood his ground, looking right at her, smiling an impudent, pleased-puss smile and refused to budge an inch.

  The news reached Margaret and David before Doris got home. How she had been overheard cursing terrible badwords down by the river, “expressions” as she and her sisters called them. For my mother, taking the charge to defend her virtue seriously, had summoned up every curse word she had ever heard used by anybody in Harvey River, or on the streets of the seaport town of Lucea, and had flung them across the water at the leering town boy, who was so surprised by the stream of invective issuing from the mouth of the sweet-faced bather that he did exactly what my mother had been trying to get him to do, he fled.

  “That’s right, my daughter, I am proud of you.” To her surprise, instead of scolding her for cursing badwords, that is what her father, David, said to her as he held her in his arms when she reached home.

  “You do well, Doris,” said Margaret.

  “She did not have to stoop so low as to curse expressions,” said Cleodine.

  “Any port in a storm,” said David, who then sent his sons to find the visiting town boy and to explain to him just how men were expected to behave when Harvey women were swimming in their river.

  “Doris is not the prettiest one, but she is the one that everyone loves,” her brother Flavius would say. “Dear Dor” they called her, for if Cleodine was pristine and as perfectly designed as an anthurium, Albertha a lily above reproach, Rose a fragrant damask rose by name and nature, and Ann gorgeous and intense as a bird of paradise, my mother could be described as a mixed bouquet. She was a little of all those flowers, with a good spray of common wildflowers like buttercups and ramgoat roses bundled in with hardy perennials and quick-growing impatiens, and she learned how to send her roots down deep when storm-time came.

  Storm-time was the furthest thing from Doris’s mind while she grew up as a daughter of the first family of Harvey River. She was an easy-going child who from an early age displayed signs of a quick intelligence and a love of hyperbole. Once, when her brother Edmund hid in a bush and jumped out at her, a frightened Doris declared: “Only Almighty God alone knows how my poor, poor, trembling, fearful little heart could stand such a great fright…” This she said with her eyes raised to heaven and one small hand covering her little palpitating heart. She had a way with words, words being one of the things she learned from her village lawyer father, David, from the vituperative Irish eloquence of her maternal grandfather, George O’Brian Wilson, and from the West African Guinea woman griot-style of her grandmother Leanna.

  “Doris is really Mas David daughter.” In the same way that her father literally gave the shirt off his back to people going to Court, and constantly loaned them money to pay fines, my mother was known as a “come to help us.” Much as she loved her dresses, she would give them away to her cousins who admired them. She was the one you went to if you wanted to borrow anything. If you needed somebody to keep your baby while you went on an errand or if you were feeling sick, she was an excellent nurse. Once her sister Albertha’s fingers had become so swollen and infected from excessive embroidering that she could do nothing for herself. It was my mother who bathed her and dressed her until her hands healed, and Albertha always spoke about her sister’s ministrations with tears in her eyes. Everybody in Harvey River loved Doris; so on that September morning in 1920, after Margaret Wilson Harvey’s husband and children had left the house, and she noticed a line of red ants marching along her clothesline–a sure portent of trouble–she did not expect trouble to do with Doris. In the late morning, she glanced across the valley, up to the hilltop, in the direction of the village school and saw what looked like a group of school girls in navy blue uniforms fluttering down the hillside like a flock of grass quits. Minutes later, when she heard the girls burst into the village with a great warbling commotion, Margaret hurried out into the square only to behold her daughter Doris at the head of the crowd bearing her long black plait in her clenched fist.

  Back up the hill they went, this time with Margaret at the head of the crowd, carrying her daughter’s once waist-length braid flung over her left shoulder. As they climbed the hill, she cried “this is like murder” and swore to personally punish the culprit who in a fit of adolescent concupiscence had sliced off my mother’s hair as she sat in front of him with her head bent forward, concentrating on the rules of proper speech in her Nestfield’s Grammar.

  So devastated was Doris that she refused to go to school for weeks, staying close to home with her chopped-off hair hidden under a mob cap and bursting into tears anytime anybody said something like: “You hear what happened” or “Here is some money, go and buy a bread for supper,” or “Didn’t you hear me calling you?”

  Harvey relatives came from far and near, bringing Doris little gifts, a nice ripe mango, a coconut cake, a shilling, gifts to help ease the misery of the loss of her plait, which Margaret kept, lying in state, on a table in the centre of the drawing room.

  “Why these things always happen to me? Look how that nasty boy spy on me and make me curse those expressions and embarrass myself, and Almighty God, who seeth and knoweth all things, knows that I was innocently, innocently studying my book and that wicked wretch come and cut off my hair, why me? O Lord? Why me?” And then she cried out something that she had read in a novel: “My life is over, for a woman’s beauty is her hair.”

  Margaret could not let that pass. “A woman’s beauty? So you a woman now? The only woman in this house is me, your mother, so you better put this hat on you head and go on to school.”

  Eventually David dug a hole in the yard and buried the severed plait, saying, “It is only hair, it will grow back, it is not as if the boy took her life.” “Yes, that is true,” said her mother, “but it look like she have bad luck. Look how that renking little boy from town was peeping on her and now look this…her lovely head of hair shorn like a sheep.”

  For months after the boy cut off her hair, my mother wore a broad leghorn straw hat whenever she went shopping in Lucea with her sisters. For these trips they would debate for days beforehand about what to wear in order to “cut a dash” when they entered the town. They favoured linen, crepe, and georgette dresses in cool pastel colours or romantic florals. Never dark colours; dark colours were for older, married women. Sooner or later they each would have decided on an outfit, always ones with skirts that buttoned up the side so they could undo the bottom buttons when they rode, two to a horse, into Lucea. But my mother would be changing her clothes up until the eleventh hour. Sometimes she would change into as many as ten complete outfits before her sisters threatened to leav
e without her as they rode the five miles into the town of Lucea. “Yes, Match-Me Doris, those black shoes go with that powder-blue dress and you don’t have time to change them,” says Albertha. And Doris, who did not like to be hurried, and was liable to become short-tempered if pressured, would certainly have told them, “Go on, go on and leave me behind, for I am not going into town looking like a poppyshow today. Furthermore my clothes are mine. I sew them, I can change them as much as I like.” “You think you are the only one who can change clothes?” They would have argued, but once they got there they would become the five ladylike Harvey girls.

  Lucea, the capital of Hanover, is situated on the western side of a horseshoe-shaped harbour that is approximately one mile wide. With the exception of the parish of Kingston and St. Andrew, Hanover is the smallest of the fourteen parishes in Jamaica. Hanover was almost named St. Sophia, in honour of the mother of King George I, but this name was voted down by the Legislative council in favour of Hanover, originally spelled Hannover. The name was chosen with reference to the German domain of the reigning family of England.

  When the Harvey girls descended from their home in the hilly interior of Harvey River and rode into the town of Lucea, they never failed to look up in wonder at the Lucea Clock Tower, which held a red clock that looked like the high-domed helmet worn by German royal guards. Everyone in the town knew that the clock in the tower was brought to Lucea by mistake, that it had been destined for the island of St. Lucia, and that the captain of the ship which was transporting it had mistaken the Port of Lucea for the island of St. Lucia, and delivered it there in 1817. As it so happened, Lucea’s town fathers had already ordered a new clock built, but it was of a more modern design, and not anything as grand as this German helmet. They decided forthwith that they could not and would not let the red helmet clock go and so they laid claim to it. It has remained there ever since.

  After noting the time by the clock tower, the girls would dismount and leave the horses in the care of one of their relatives in Lucea, after which they would sometimes go to visit the Lucea Parish Church and pay their respects to some of their relatives who were buried in the churchyard. They would go by the Lucea Hospital at Fort Charlotte (named after George III’s queen) and Rusea’s High School, built towards the end of the eighteenth century with money left by a Frenchman, Martin Rusea, in thankfulness for the safe harbour and hospitality that he had found in Lucea. These were the town’s main landmarks, situated fairly close together on the promontory overlooking the harbour. With the imposing Dolphin Head Mountains rising as high as two thousand feet, and an abundance of cabbage palms and tall coconut trees forming a lush backdrop to the azure harbour, the town of Lucea was a small but steady source of light.

  The eligible young men of Lucea gathered to feast their eyes on the Harvey girls whenever they came to town. These included the young men who worked as clerks at the courthouse and as civil servants in the few colonial government offices in existence at that time, such as the Collector of Taxes. Some of them were apprenticed as surveyors in the Lands Department, and a few were members of Her Majesty’s Jamaica Constabulary Force, but the Harvey girls would not consider giving the time of day to a policeman. For some reason (probably to do with their Irish grandfather, George O’Brian Wilson) their mother, Margaret, had a fierce prejudice against policemen and soldiers. Another of her edicts, in addition to “No child of mine will ever rule me,” was “No policeman or soldier will ever sit in one of my chairs.”

  Dressed to the nines to come shopping for yet more fabric, the girls would go directly to Mr. Jim Reid’s store on the Lucea main street. Mr. Reid, a slender, well-dressed, and soft-spoken man, was known for his exquisite taste. He stocked the finest cloths, lace, buttons, buckles, belting and trimmings, accessories, lingerie, and millinery, as he referred to his hats. Mr. Reid was unmarried. Such a pity, for any woman would have been glad to have him dress her every day. He adored the beautiful Rose. “Look Miss Rose, I ordered this blush pink crepe de chine with you in mind, and these carioca kid shoes are perfect, just perfect.” Mr. Reid smelled nicely of Florida water. On Sundays he wore a crisp white drill suit and an expertly blocked Panama hat. He had a friend, Mr. Dixon, who owned a bicycle built for two. On Sunday afternoons, Mr. Reid and Mr. Dixon would go bicycling along the coast road, their well-seamed trouser legs secured by matching bicycle clips.

  Shagoury’s was the other store frequented by the Harvey girls. The goods there were not of the same quality as those stocked by Mr. Reid. Doris used the first one-pound paycheque from her job as a pupil-teacher to buy a pair of pumps from Shagoury’s. Mr. Shagoury, who was not too long from Lebanon, recommended the shoes highly, saying, “these shoes strong, you wear them till they bark.” Maybe that was a popular saying in his native country. But the shoes fell apart after a few weeks. The uppers and the sole separated, creating a flapping, gaping space in the front of the shoes when she walked. Her brother Howard said that was what Mr. Shagoury meant when he referred to the shoes “barking,” for they now looked as if they had open mouths.

  They would also shop at Emmanuel’s Haberdashery, sometimes for special linens and lingerie, for each Harvey girl expected to be married, and they each had a bottom drawer. After shopping, they would visit their Aunt Fanny’s bakery on what was called Back Lane, to buy fresh breads and pastries to take back to Harvey River. The girls had a particular fondness for the small, flat buttery loaves called gratto, a word which was probably a corruption of the French gâteau in the same way that other French words crept into the language and had been reshaped by the tongues of Jamaicans. For example, Château Vert, a village in Hanover, was now called, Shotover, and the bunch of assorted vegetables–the legumes–that could now be bought in the local market for the Saturday soup were called leggins.

  Aunt Fanny was their father David’s sister, and she ran the bakery with her husband, a grim-faced man who had travelled to Panama and there learned the art of baking. In his case, he had learned the secret art of baking, for he refused to share his recipes with anyone, including his wife. He insisted on being alone when he prepared the dough for the buttery gratto and French bread, the meltingly delicious cashew and molasses biscuits, and the fancy pastries. All Aunt Fanny and their children were required to do was to place the privately prepared dough in the oven. The man died with his recipes unrevealed, and Hanover people claim that since his death there has not been baked a gratto as delicious as his.

  Aunt Fanny had stood at his deathbed, accompanied by a few of her children bearing exercise books and pencils, saying, “Baker, Baker.” She would have said that, for by now no one referred to him by his real name, and everyone called him “Baker” as if he alone had the right to this title. No other baker in Jamaica was as deserving of this name, not even “Nayga Bun,” the cunning baker Bennett from Spanish Town who had invented the hot cross bun with the cheese hidden in its belly. Long ago at Easter time, some generous Christian masters would sometimes let their slaves have a hot cross bun as a treat, but they considered cheese to be too good for them, so Bennett hid the cheese inside the bun and marked those buns specially. Maybe he made them odd-shaped and thick-faced so that the aesthetic sensibilities of the mistress of the house would cause her to reject them (and allow the enslaved to have them). Maybe he made the rugged crosses on them with heavier dough. But whatever the case, he and they both came to be known as “Nayga Bun.”

  “Baker, do, I am begging you as your wife, to tell me how you make the gratto. How many eggs do you use to make a baker’s dozen, Baker? How much flour and salt and so, what else you put in them to make them so nice?” The children stood ready with pens, pencils, and paper, poised to take down this precious recipe for the golden gratto. No answer. “All right Baker, since you won’t tell me how to make the gratto, what about the biscuits? How much molasses? How much ginger and flour and other things you use in the biscuits, tell me nuh, Baker? Please, I am begging you as your wife, the mother of your children, who are going
to starve if the bakery closes down.” And Baker, who had a flat yellow face like a stale, spoiled gratto and who was really dying from a spiritual illness brought on by a “croomooching” nature, turned one jaundiced eye in the direction of his wife and children, then turned his face to the wall and swallowed hard. In this way he committed to his knotted bowels all his knowledge of the efficacy of egg whites, the cloudlike consistency of thrice-sifted flour, appropriate measures of leaven, and just how high dough should be allowed to rise before you punched it in the face for being too puffed up.

  After his death, the bakery had to be closed down, for no one could replicate the bad-minded baker’s creations. Poor Aunt Fanny had to move to Kingston, where one of her sons died from falling out of a tree at the Kingston Race Course, when the great Paul Robeson was giving a free concert there.

  On their way past the blacksmith’s forge, the Harvey girls would often have to push their way through gangs of schoolchildren who loved to stand outside the door and chant rude words in time to the ring of the blacksmith’s hammer on the anvil:

  Lulu Bing

  Sally Bing

  Sally Bing

  Lulu Bing

  Morning Lulu Bing

  Morning Sally Bing

  Look up under Lulu Bing

  Look up under Sally Bing.

  The Bing sisters were two spinster ladies from England, and this coarse jingle must have been a source of mortification for them, as no doubt they had never consented to having anyone look up under their modest cotton dresses. Now they had to put up with having their good names being bawled out in the streets by bands of dirty, uncouth ruffians, who had even added a second verse to their vulgar ditty: