Sammy's Girl

Sammy's Girl

Ann

Copyright © 2020 Ann

All rights reserved

First Edition

NEWMAN SPRINGS PUBLISHING

320 Broad Street

Red Bank, NJ 07701

First originally published by Newman Springs Publishing 2020

ISBN 978-1-64531-897-2 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64531-898-9 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Island Girl

Man of Principles

The Big Tree

Holidays

Harvey

Millie Moved Out

The Move from Argentina Back to Saint Palm

The Murder

Living with Pappy

Our Visa came Through

The Boutique

Everything Came to a Head

My Teacher

First Things First

Working Age

My High School Graduation

New House

Kicked Out into the Streets

No Regrets for My Plan B

Rough Ride

Margo’s Graduation

Iraq: Called to Active Duty

Leaving US Camp

First Stop in Germany

Day Zero in Kuwait

Diary

Island Girl

"Island girl. Tell me what you wanting with the white man’s world…" The haunting echoes of Elton John’s lyrics from this song came from the small radio sitting on the old oak dresser pushed up against the mirror in my room. In response, Me want every ting! echoed through my subconscious.

The title of the song seemed especially applicable to me since I was born on the small Caribbean island of St. Palm. All I knew was I was going to America, but I knew nothing about America. I came expecting to be better off than I was, not to experience a nightmare in an entirely different world.

I was in Englewood, New Jersey, in the dead of winter. It was already freezing cold, and the forecast called for snow in the next couple of days. Gee, we don’t have snow on the island. I must admit, this caused me to reflect on island times. Living on the island, surrounded by a postcard-perfect beach, I would wake up, pick some fresh fruits from the trees around our house, stroll along the beach, munching on them while feeling the smooth sand between my toes, and maybe end up taking a swim to cool off from the hot sun. The temperature stays hot all year round on this tropical island, a paradise for some people, and a dream come true for others. For me, it was home.

Island life meant living in a small community. There were no secrets. Everyone knew each other and everything that went on in the community. People looked out for each other and were never too busy to stop and chat on the street or to give a greeting of the day. In some areas, the rumor mill was a reliable source, endlessly feeding through gossipmongers. Tourists came in large groups, taking over the beaches, and you couldn’t escape them. They loved the sun and enjoyed chatting with the islanders.

The island is small, and like with us, the tourists’ options were limited. There were no toll roads. There were no never-ending highways or wide-open spaces. Except, of course, the seemingly limitless ocean. The roads were poor quality outside the main villages and towns, and some roads were scarcely more than dirt trails. There was no national ambulance service. If a minor accident occurred, it was sorted out between the two parties involved, but if it was a serious accident, there were emergency services available.

Saint Palm is renowned for some of the best beaches on the planet. The mountainous island is a paradise, a haven for sunseekers. People come to yachts and relax and explore hundreds of unspoiled scuba diving and snorkeling sites. It has magnificent vegetation and crystal clear water. The ocean floor looks like linoleum. The water is so clear.

Lush forests play a vital role in the climate. The trees soak up rainwater and then give it back in the form of streams and rivers. Carnival celebrations stretch from May through July, culminating in street parties with a spectacular celebration of costumes, performances, calypso rhythms, and steel bands. Coconut, banana, and arrowroot are the major exports. Fishing is a common trade, but the fish feed the islanders.

In the eighteenth century, England and France fought over Saint Palm. England won, but eventually, the island gained independence. Tropical storms, hurricanes, and the volcanoes of Soufriere plague the island.

I was born in Chateau-Belair, commonly called Chateau, more than an hour’s drive from the capital. The name alone makes me feel special. It evokes a sensational awakening that elicits a smile from deep down inside and blankets my face, almost like a seasoned, much-admired movie star, Mizz Chateau-Belair. It soothes my horrible nightmare that I cast to the back of my mind. Chateau is a large fishing village located south of the volcanoes. We could see them from anywhere in the village.

My mother was energetic and passionate, even after what my father did to her. She brought me back to her parents’ house. Oleta, my older sister, was already living there. I remember that house well.

Pappy was the boss of everything. He was a no-nonsense man. He wore all the hats. He was the judge, jury, and executioner, so to speak. Too bad I wasn’t old enough to know about slavery so I could report him to the slave catcher as a runaway. He was small-framed, maybe five-foot-six, and lean and strong. He had a small face with bushy eyebrows. His hair was gray and black, and sometimes he would shave it off the way he always shaved his beard. His small brown eyes were ice-cold; they spoke the unspoken and echoed his words. His nose was broad enough to fit his face, and a round chin built for the sound of a roaring tiger. He had a handful of gray hair on his chest.

He was a hardworking man who raised vegetable crops and never had a tractor, so he was powerful. He didn’t like laziness in his wife or daughters or granddaughters. He demanded a clean house and a well-swept yard. He hated clutter.

Pappy was the oldest of four brothers and one sister, and he had helped his mother raise them after his father died. Pappy could iron, cook, clean, and sew—and he could have survived in the wild too. Pappy was always aware of his surroundings. He was watchful that no intruder trespassed on his land. He was mean, but he was a man’s man. His masculinity was bold and domineering, but he had old-fashioned manners. Men his age respected him, and younger men feared him. Respect was an important character for anybody. Ass-whipping was a daily exercise for him to instill respect.

My mother’s name was Edna, a common name among the islanders. Her mother had five children; a son from a previous relationship, Rex, and four daughters by Pappy. Edna was the oldest, then Ella, Millie, and Evetta. Millie and Edna got Pappy’s whippings the most, usually for leaving the yard. While on the island, kids usually ran free, but he didn’t like his girls visiting.

I remember the story of how I came to be; no, a stork didn’t bring me nor was I hatched. At eighteen years old, my mother, Edna, was brutalized so badly she could hardly walk. The only people she told about it were her mother and sisters. She didn’t and couldn’t tell her father, so she stayed in bed for a few days with her mother covering for her, saying that she was sick. She didn’t dare let him know what had happened because he was beyond ignorant. There was no telling what he would have done. Back in those days, rape was treated very differently than today. Who would have believed her? She’d had a torrid love affair with him, and he a married man! They’d already had my two-year-old sister, despite her father’s disapproval.

My mother lived at home until she was close to delivering me. Her father, a man she called Pappy, she feared might beat her too. She fled to a friend who took her in and put her up in a room. Pappy told her she could never set foot in his house again, but my grandmother sent her food in a tin can by means of her sisters, Millie and Evetta. Pappy seemed to blame Edna for what happened and flew into a rage.

I remember hearing stories about why Pappy was so bitter. He was a sailor in the British Army and served as a cook. When he came home, work was scarce, and he traveled overseas to places like Cuba and Santo Domingo to cut sugarcane and pick fruits. He would send his money home to Saint Palm’s to his mother for safekeeping because he had planned to buy some land.

Living conditions were terrible, the pay was poor, and the bosses were mean. But his family used the money he sent to live on instead of finding work for themselves, and he couldn’t buy the piece of land he was planning to buy. He was mad at the whole family, the world, and anybody that got in his way. He never forgave them. He never went back overseas, but instead, he secured work in Chateau-Belair when it was available and saved up enough money to buy the vacant land directly across from the family home. He couldn’t afford to build the house he wanted but settled for something smaller.

Pappy beat my grandmother, who we called Mommy, all the time. He would hit her with a chair or whatever was at hand. Everyone was afraid of him. But if one were to look closely, there was a flicker of light under all that rage—a heart inside of him that beat magically for my sister Oleta. Oleta was sickly and mentally challenged. Back then, people used the term doltish and stupidee. Edna was in total denial, and so was Pappy. Me, he saw as a cancer. If it was left up to him, my place would have been with the dogs outside. He probably blamed me for what he suspected about my father.

Edna had a real talent for crafts and was good at basket weaving and handcrafts. Her handy craftsmanship was the talk of Chateau. But she couldn’t make a good living to support her two daughters. So her mother borrowed some money from a trusted friend to buy a one-way ticket for her to Argentina.

Oleta and I stayed with Mommy and Pappy. My mother promised she would send money home every month to help take care of us, and she did; she was bound by her words or promise and never missed a month, so he agreed to keep me, even though he hated me. Mommy and Edna planned out the whole thing to manipulate him.

My Aunt Ella was already living in Argentina and could have been a great help to her, but Edna and Ella didn’t see eye to eye. Ella let Edna stay with her for a short time, but they must have fought, because Ella, who had proper papers, called Immigration on Edna, and the Immigration man raped her. Edna blamed Ella for that.

My father paid a little child support for Oleta, but he disowned me. He said I was not his child, but I know I am my father’s child because I am the spitting image of him. I always believed that he disowned me because of what he had done to my mother. He couldn’t bring himself to believe he had fathered me through such brutality, maybe, but a man who feels the need to beat a woman and force himself into her has no soul or conscience.

He was a man who was used to getting and taking what he wanted. My mother paid dearly, and I was the constant reminder of that cruelty. She was on the right track of making a life of her own and was getting ahead. She was the first one to graduate from college. Yes, me momma bin a nurs, I remember telling people. At that time, we spoke Palms people Creole, a mixture of English and a few other dialects. I heard that the slaves spoke Creole as a form of communication, but it is still spoken today. A few years later, Marleen, my half-sister, came along; she was born to some police fella in Argentina and stayed with us too for a short while.

I remember bits and pieces of a conversation between Edna and Mommy on one of Edna’s visits from Argentina. I was five or six years old at the time. She had left when I was three years old, so I didn’t know her and didn’t have a love connection for her. I feared her because she was rough with me. When she was around, I was a stressed child, butterflies filled my little belly, and I always felt stiff. There was no loving and no hugging. I got none of that, and she would whip me for little things.

I didn’t want anything to do with her, and the way Evetta and the others would say Yo momma a go fo beat yo or Me a go tell yo momma when ‘e com made it seem to me as if she was the big bad wolf, and she was. She had a heavy hand, and there was no time out for me to delay a beating. I got it right then and there.

Every time I turned around, she would hit me with her hand as if it was automatic. If she called me and I didn’t move fast enough, yes, I got the hand—that fucking hand. My mother was not a slim woman, and she hit hard. I was a shy child and kept everything inside. Sometimes she would call me to her, and I would start to cry right away.

What are you crying for? she would sternly ask and firmly grab my arm.

Notten, I would manage to say in between the tears.

You want me give you something to cry for? she would say. Meanwhile, I was already getting spanked.

Our house was built on stilts, and the area underneath was used as the common area where we did the cooking. There was a long bench under it for sitting next to the makeshift fireplace for cooking. I was upstairs and sitting close to Mommy because I didn’t want to sit next to that mean woman while they were talking. During those days, children were not allowed to jump into the conversation with grown-ups, and they were very particular about children hearing what they were talking about. So the premise was that children must be seen and not heard.

Ann, go dong-day and sit dong pan-e-bench… Mommy would say to me, telling me to go downstairs and sit on the bench. I did what I was told and went down under the house to sit on the bench, but I was a little busybody too. I could still see them between the steps and I could hear their conversation. I was the only one there, so it was quiet. I played and kept stealing glances at them through the steps.

Na say notten in front a child…children talk, Mommy said, meaning that children don’t know how to sugarcoat what they hear. They repeat things the way they hear it. If I had been standing there, Mommy would have winked an eye or used hand gestures and movements of the jaws to motion not to talk or to wait. That would usually keep a child from understanding what was happening, but I was a sponge. At five or six, I knew things. I was a very observant child, probably because I didn’t talk much.

I knew the codes for things. God forbid a child would have gotten into the conversation with grown-ups. It was unheard of for a child to talk in grown-up conversation. There was no way, unless the child had said something that piqued an interest or raised a flag to the grown-up. I couldn’t hear all the conversation, but I did hear Mommy’s advice to Edna, saying that she should say that Oleta and I were her sisters, not her children, because a man won’t want to marry her with three children. She said this as she puffed on her corn-cob pipe.

I remember hearing that conversation, and it became etched in my mind. It was her secret, and I knew it but never told a soul. I couldn’t explain how I felt…I think I felt sad, yet I kept it to myself. I felt as if I understood. They sat up on the top stoop, and they yelled at me to stay below and play. Evetta was usually with me, but she hadn’t come yet. So I spent my time just sitting on the bench or using my imagination to play and to steal glances in-between the steps.

Even before Edna’s visit, I used to hear bits and pieces of conversations when it didn’t suddenly turn into codes and wink and blinks. Most of the conversations were about life, and I recall a few of the conversations. What goes around comes around and God sees everything, Mommy said.

Edna only stayed for five days. I remember her going to visit a few of our relatives while she was there, and she walked proudly as if to say, Look at me now. You can’t touch me. I felt so glad when she left. Mommy protected me from Pappy. She couldn’t defend me from Edna. It was as if she felt if Edna was there, her job was done. When she left, it felt like the world was lifted off my little shoulders. I remember feeling exhausted and relieved because I was afraid of her. Some of the little butterflies in my little stomach were gone.

I was the child who was born with a white streak running down my back and got thrown out with the bath water, metaphorically speaking. I had that streak of bad luck and a circle on my chest that read defective. All the love went to Oleta. She was Pappy’s star. He loved her, and my father paid child support according to a ruling of the court. It wasn’t much, but it did get paid. Oleta was sickly, asthmatic, and she stammered, but that didn’t matter.

I remember once when she gave them a scare. It seemed as though Oleta was sick every day, and our world revolved around her, but she was taken care of well. She was wheezing, and it had gotten worse during the evening. After dinner, we all sat on the veranda, nursing and watching Oleta. Her eyes rolled back in her head as she wheezed and wheezed, and she could hardly breathe. Pappy rocked her too, for a minute, then eagerly handed her back to Mommy as if she was fragile. Mommy gently rocked her in her arms as she massaged her chest with candle grease. Minutes later, Oleta went limp and stopped breathing.

Oh, God, the peckney a ded…oh, God! Pappy exclaimed, but then Oleta burst out a sigh as if she had been holding her breath.

Me a go get some bush wata, Pappy said as he hurriedly left her side and disappeared into the darkness. He probably went to cry. I don’t know. He knew exactly where to go and where to find what he was looking for.

I remember looking at him and wanting to get close, but his loud Go ova day (Go over there)! look or the dirty and evil look on his face that read don’t even think about it frightened me. Mommy quickly pulled me away from him so I wouldn’t get too close. When Oleta felt better, he played with her and gave her pony rides, and she laughed and laughed. I only sat far away and waited for my turn that never came. Mommy would see the eagerness in me and how I wanted to play too, and she would warn me.

Ann, com ya. Me keep tellin yo stay ova ya. He na like yo, yo know dat, stay ova ya. Me na want him for do nottin to you.

The sight of me repulsed Pappy. He hated my father, and his hatred for him rubbed off on me. I was poison in his eyes because I was the product of a man he despised, a child who turned him into a madman when he set eyes on me. Luckily, Mommy was my savior, but she died.

I remember experiencing a sort of out-of-body syndrome during my transition to a new and different life, and I had to adjust fast—adapt, overcome, and survive. As a result, I experienced information overload; I had to remember phone numbers, learn traffic signs and safety procedures, and learn directions to and from school. At the time, I only spoke broken English. In order to get used to speaking proper English, I had to catch up fast. In fact, there were so many things I had to learn and adapt to that it made my head swim. It made me miss home even more.

This was all a culture shock to me. I disliked how my mother and my stepfather, Jerry, made me feel. Jerry was cocky, arrogant, and cunning in an overbearing way. His unpleasantness and threatening presence made me feel as if I was living in a hostile environment. I was naive and innocent. I respected everybody and figured that living in a new environment with my mother and Jerry would make me happy. Living with them, though, turned out to be dreadful, and there was no way out from this situation, because I was still a teenager.

I realized how much I missed Pappy and needed him more than ever. I saw how Jerry looked at me and made me feel uncomfortable. I wasn’t pointing a finger at him to call him a creep, but my perception outweighed his intent.

I had nowhere else to go and I was in a new and unfamiliar country. I wanted to gain an appreciation of the new culture, so I had to adjust whether I liked it or not. I couldn’t call anyone because I knew no one, and going back to the island was not an option. Island life just wasn’t enough, because there was no future there for me. I knew stepfather’s relationships could be tense and full of unpleasantness, but I was starting a fresh life and wanted to make a good impression. However, I hadn’t envisioned being a veritable indentured servant that demanded subservience to Jerry’s unearned arrogance.

I clearly remember my journey to America and how immature my thinking was, how naïve and innocent I was.

When I got the news that Oleta and I were leaving to go to America, oh God, I was happy. Yes, Lord, the start of a brand-new life! I wanted my whole self to be a blank slate. It was a new beginning, so I should start with a new slate. I was almost at the cutoff age of fifteen for school and failed the entrance exam to go on to high school, so I wasn’t going any further and would have to go to work.

The excitement empowered my oomph because there was no way Pappy was going to let me stay at home, doing nothing. It was unthinkable. He was not that kind of man. I couldn’t even entertain the thought even for a second. It was bad enough that I couldn’t stay home from school, sick with a stomachache. He didn’t sympathize with a stomachache. So this was great news for me that came in the nick of time.

I had no future. All I had was what I thought I wanted to do, mixed up and confused. I remember early on in my childhood wanting to be a dancer, a singer, and a writer, and my desire for those things never changed. Naïvely, in my little mind, I thought they were easy. It was my escape at such a young age.

Dancing seemed so free and fit me, because it felt natural and made me feel special. It made me see my own self instead of through Pappy’s insulting rhetoric. Even the fat girls and the girls who I thought were ugly were dancing, and I figured if they can do it, then I can do it. I liked how people danced and expressed themselves, even girls my own age. I watched how the women, when dancing with the men, deliberately twisted and moved their bodies to match the rhythms of the men’s body movements as they moved in unison to the beat of the music, and their hips slowly and purposely rolled in a slow motion. They deliberately raised their bottoms to the rhythm to follow the hips, almost like tightening to the right, then to the left, exercising that whole area of the hips, causing them to move in unison almost automatically and naturally from the way the hips and bottom moved.

But Pappy saw it as vulgar dancing and didn’t allow that type of vulgarity in his presence. Anger corroded everything positive in his mind. I couldn’t twist my body like them; hell, I was too skinny and stiff, and my bottom wasn’t built like theirs. I was a scrawny child who barely had any meat on my bones to show any kind of curvature, much less buttocks, but it didn’t change my mind about dancing.

I realized then that you didn’t have to be pretty to dance. They were expressing themselves. I wanted to express myself too with my body through dancing, to tell beautiful stories and show off my inner beauty. Once I showed that, then the outer beauty would fall into place.

I never really aspired to be a great dancer. It came to me, but it was up to me to nurture it and make it into something. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a clue, only what I saw at carnival. I grew up thinking that I would get a job right away through dancing and wouldn’t have to worry about anything and that things would fall into place, and so I held on to those thoughts. I just had to dance without winding up my backside.

Then the Beatles came along, and oh God, I thought I had died and gone to music heaven, but I couldn’t move my body so freely. I didn’t have that groove or level of flexibility like they had since butterflies lived in my belly, so I wasn’t as relaxed. I remember hearing Pappy say that people dance vulgar, and I was apprehensive and scared of even winding up my hips. I remember seeing the disapproving expression on his face, shaking his head and sucking his teeth, letting it be known that he didn’t like that kind of dancing. To him, it evoked sexual ideology. He said, Dem a too vulga. Dem gells too dam yong fo be wineing up dey batty like SMH [sucking his teeth] damn vulga, man. Once I heard that, I knew I couldn’t dance like them in front of him.

Me ha fo mek-up me own dance so me na ha fo whining up me batty, but he na see way go aan in me eye, I thought

I believe the rhythm of the steel band influenced me too. The steel band across the river practiced almost every evening, and that music must have seeped through under my skin, drained through my flesh, and penetrated my bones. The band practiced long hours and occasionally well into the night. Once they were done practicing, you could tell that they knew they had perfected the piece. Ironically, people didn’t complain, because they knew the band had to practice close to the holidays, especially around carnival time.

Carnival moved me. There was no doubt. The beat of the music at night would lull me to sleep, allowing me to escape into my dreams. I could see me watching me sleep. I could see my rapid eyelids sliding from side to side and my eyeballs darting up and down behind my eyelids and a warm smile covering my face, and I could only wish I could see what was making me so happy.

In my dream, as the music began and the light slowly painted the stage, I could see the girl inside me come to life. She was stunning. She moved so gracefully across the stage, lightly on her feet as if sweeping a feather across each area of the floor. The deeper feeling, the connection, moved her as she purposely and deliberately swayed her body into movement of the music to express her story. She tells the sad story of how her grandfather saw her, a child of darker complexion, a child that he despised from the actions of her father. She showed the audience her pain, and they saw beauty and elegance. She was stunning. The audience was so enchanted that they gave her a standing ovation with nonstop clapping. It was morning when I woke up.

I could only dance in my dreams. I couldn’t bring me out of my dream all for the sake of Pappy. I didn’t have the outlet to dance. My culture didn’t promote any of these things for me, just for the people who were already in the industry. I had no idea of the kind of training that I would need and all the work behind developing me. I was so clueless about not knowing how screwed I was and the grand delusion that by going to America would fix everything.

I was totally unprepared to face the world. Pappy was more vigilant in keeping an eye on us. If he knew what a chastity belt was, he would have gotten it and made damn sure Oleta and I wore it, just to be on the safe side. So if I were to have gotten involved with a boy, I would have had to sneak around to the far end of the island, and still, he would have found out. We didn’t have telephones or cell phones. We had a village.

Man of Principles

Pappy was a man of principle but not always practical, in a manner of speaking. He didn’t care who you were. He would tell you exactly how he felt.

Pappy was an angry man, full of rage and hate—a man who was so terribly hurt by his birth family that it spilled over into his own family. He was an abuser too. Anger made him ruthless. He didn’t think anything of beating his wife with a chair or any nearby object. He was strict and everyone was afraid of him, but if one were to look closely, there was a flicker of light under all that rage, a heart inside him that beat magically for his first grandchild, Oleta. I was the cancer in his eyes. If it was left up to him, my place would have been with the dogs outside. Did he know I was the product of a rape? Blight with the infliction of scorn? He must have suspected something since Edna was so badly beaten. He wasn’t a stupid man. He was just ignorant.

I always had to be far away from Pappy, because he would shoo me away with his foot as if I were an animal, and I’d always feel so hurt. I wouldn’t cry, but my feelings would show on my face. God forbid I would climb on his leg following Oleta’s lead. The sight of me repulsed him.

I distinctly remember one Sunday when I must have been four years old. Pappy and Mommy were relaxing upstairs. It was our living room. It had a few chairs circled around and a center table with a bouquet of artificial flower arrangements sitting in the center of it for decoration. The floor was covered with nice, bluish linoleum. At the far end, my foot was tied to a chair with a piece of string as a precaution of not going close to Pappy while Mommy served him a plate of food. As always, I would get the false signal that it was ok to get close, and next thing, I would wake up the beast inside; so to be on the safe side, it was a precaution.

At the side, there was also a small table to put food on once it was cooked downstairs so that nothing foreign would go into it and the stray dogs wouldn’t bother it. Pappy was a fussy man. Cleanliness and personal hygiene were important. You couldn’t smell of body odor in our house when there was water all around—a public bath, the river, and the sea to wash yourself in the evening was a must before bed. There was no excuse in taking care of yourself. He never missed a thing; he was up on everything when you think he wasn’t paying attention.

Anyhow, I couldn’t be in the same room as Pappy, because he despised me so much. If I was there, I could not be heard. It didn’t take much for the sight of me to stir his ignorance.

Way ya lok pan me fa? he would sneer. Move da damn ugly braad nose pickney from ya so…e popa a playboy…dam fresh ass. Me go kill da man yo no eef me ha de chance…dam man wotlis man…so damn black and ugly Pickney, na go mount to notten…smh.

Ann com ova ya so. Me tell yo he na like yo…yo na lissen the man na like yo, she said, and my little heart would just sink into my chest. I recall asking mommy, Way me do me na do nottin…

Yo na see when people na like you stay away from them and na badda wid them. Sit ova day, she scolded.

He argued by himself as Mommy would sit and be silent. Answering him would only fuel the fire and set off his rage. When he was home, I couldn’t even play. I had to stay still. Just sit and not be heard as goes the saying, children must be seen and not heard…so, yes, I was always getting The Look.

What as a child could I have done to be hated so much by my own grandfather? I remember him saying that I was too black and ugly. Hell, he was black too, but I didn’t know what ugly was. I remember all the ugly things he said to me.

David, e only a child, Mommy commented a few times when he felt the need to insult me.

Dam ugly ass flat nose pickney… he would say with wrinkled eyebrows and dirty looks. If looks could kill, I would have been dead already.

Com ya, Ann, Mommy would call me and occasionally massage my nose upward, almost squeezing it together as if that would iron out its flatness and give it some shape.

I remember my first manhandled slap from Pappy too. I was seven. Our houses overlooked the main street; not too close, but close enough. The river separated a part of it from the main street. I was sent to get something at Mr. Simpson’s store, and as I was walking back, I decided to drag my foot in the gutter of flowing clean water next to the road. It was refreshing on my feet since I wasn’t wearing shoes. I could hear Pappy fussing at me from across the way for me to stop playing and come on. His voice roared as he fussed about me, and as soon as I walked up the steps of our house, he launched from where he was sitting and gave me two big slaps on my face, almost knocking me to the ground. Mommy sprung to my rescue and snatched me away from him in case he wanted to give me another slap as she cried out in pity.

Oh, God, David, e only a child way yo hit um so hard fa! she said, and she gently rubbed my face. His finger had left a welt.

Me na bin a do notten. Me only put me foot een e wata, I told Mommy between the heavy tears running down my face. The slap stung so hard I felt the sting through my whole little body, and I cried and cried and had to cry in silence so he wouldn’t say, Yo want mo? It’s something Pappy had wanted to do all my life, and he had finally gotten his chance.

People always say you have to forgive and forget. Well, how does that work when all those things are etched in my mind? The slap stung and hurt, and I cried and cried. Eventually, I learned to cry silently or else he would have given me something to cry about, as they always said. It left an imprint in my mind that I could never forget.

Mommy got the regular letter with the $10 a month from Edna. She couldn’t read, so Evetta or Millie would read the letter to her. In the letter, Edna mentioned that things were not working out between her and Ella and that she was moving in with Rex’s girlfriend until she could get a place of her own. She also said Ella had called immigration on her and that the immigration man sexed her up; the rest they read quietly.

Oh, Lard Jezas, help Edna…dem a two sistas she a hathead too…me na no how come day na get alang…Lard Jeezas, Edna ha a hard life and a cross fo bare… Mommy said. She tried to puff on her pipe, but it couldn’t light. Her heart hurt for her first daughter. Me a worry, she said as she cleaned out the corn husk pipe, stuffed a small piece of tobacco leaf in it, cracked a match, and lit it up and puffed, puffed, and puffed.

I was the grunt in the family, the bastard child, the ugly duckling, the black sheep…you name it, that’s what I was. Oleta couldn’t do much; so much was left for me to do along with all the beatings. Those things didn’t bypass me that’s for sure. Everything stuck to me. Because Oleta was sickly, everybody felt sorry for her and paid more attention to her, and as much as I knew, I didn’t know hate or how to hate, but I knew how hate felt—disgust and ugly heart-wrenching words—and oh, I knew them too well.

Anyhow, Oleta couldn’t play in the water, and they didn’t want her to wander off, so Oleta was everybody’s job. I had to watch out for her too, because I felt sorry that she wasn’t witty and smart like me, but I didn’t dislike her; she was my sister. She was delicate, but I must admit that I was jealous of the fact that she never got a beating, she got to do everything without getting yelled at, and she got piggyback rides and to play with Pappy. I guess I couldn’t have it all—witty, smart, and disliked. But anyhow, I used to manage to get away to play cricket or hang out with Mr. Simpson’s two boys, Jeffrey and Sam, and sometimes their sister, Val, when she got the chance, because she had to do everything in the house. They lived in the house a few yards above our house. At times, Oleta and I would play dollhouse and make mud pies.

It was always, Ann, com ya fo do dis. Ann, com ya fo do dat. I was the legs and the brain, and so it went, but I wasn’t a lazy child. Could have been that I was hyperactive, don’t know. I was a little busybody too. I was always willing to do the dis and the dat, but I didn’t like to go to our cousin Clare Ann’s shop or at any shop to ask for credit. Clare Ann was Mommy’s sister’s daughter. They used to talk about how cheap she was, and she didn’t like to give credit from her store. The other sister lived in the capital, Kingston, and to me, if you lived in town—the capital—then you must be rich. My version of rich was a big house, wearing socks and shoes, having a servant, na get dutty, and wearing a pretty dress. Anyhow, the sister had two daughters, and things were tough with them, and Clare Ann had two grown children herself, a boy and a girl—Sena and Simond.

When I went to her store to use credit, she would look at me with an attitude as if she had already suspected why I was there with a Waa yo want? look, and I didn’t like it. As a child, I felt her demeanor. I would get that jittery scared feeling that she was going to say no and talk loudly so everybody would hear her showing off. I felt shamed and intimidated. I would quietly tell her what Mommy had told me to ask so the loiterers in the store wouldn’t hear me, but they knew. We didn’t trust too many merchants, because Pappy didn’t like the idea of getting credit from anyone. We only used it when we really needed it.

A few times, Mommy would send me to see Clare Ann without Pappy knowing. Clare Ann didn’t like to give credit, especially to the people who patronized her shop…go figure. She would turn up her face with an attitude. People said she was a penny pincher and cheap. I used to hear people say, Me na know why she so raven/greedy because when she dead, she na go tek it wid her… And then she died and left everything behind.

Sena was a teacher, and on weekends, I would help her clean Clare Ann’s house. She lived in Shallow Bay on the beach, not too far from us on the hill. It started when she asked if I could come and help her clean, and Mommy said yes.

It was great hanging out with Sena. I liked her because she was fun and funny. Some of the time, it was Evetta and I, but we didn’t clean all the time. We would play board games with Sena and go swimming in the sea, which was only a few yards away, and then in the evening, she would give us something to eat and we would make it home before Pappy came home. This was only on weekends—Saturdays. If we were not there, he would ask where everyone was and why and start to fuss about going to people’s house; he didn’t like that. Everyone had to be in the house before he came home. For Millie and Evetta, there was no such thing as going on any date. So to avoid any confusion and to calm the beast, everyone was home when he got home, but he always found something to quarrel about, and Mommy was a gem; she never aroused the beast; or maybe she learned not to poke the beast.

Anyhow, on school holidays, Clare Ann’s nieces from town took turns coming to spend school vacation for a few weeks. The girls were quiet and seemed like they didn’t get dirty. Like I told you, what my take as a child was they lived in the capital, and I was the poor girl from the suburb who catered to them. They wore socks and shoes and acted like princesses when they came to visit, and Clare Ann didn’t even want them to get dirty either.

The girls were saarfee and seemed fragile. God forbid they would fall down and scrape their knee or dirty their dress. On their return home, Clare Ann would stock them up with lots of brand-new clothes—panties and socks and slippers and shoes. All the nice things I didn’t have. Hell, I walked barefoot and sometimes didn’t wear panties. The one or two pair I had needed to be washed every day, so I would have a clean pair to wear to school. Even then, we were taught to sit with our legs closed with or without wearing panties, but it was the idea of watching her with all new clothes, and Clare Ann never offered me even a pair of socks.

That was the hardest part. I walked barefoot, so why need did I have to wear socks? I would be there to see her try on all her new clothes and pretty dresses, and I would wish I had some too; but deep down inside, I had the false sense that we were both going to try on new clothes too but didn’t! It seemed like we were the poorest of everybody, but just because we were poor didn’t mean we were dirty or didn’t have pride. We were a proud family too.

I remember a Saturday when I went to Shallow Bay to meet up with Sena and the girl, but they had already left for the shop. Sena wasn’t at the shop when I got there, but the girl was there with Clare Ann. Sena took her to the store, so she and I would do the cleaning. Anyhow, Clare Ann called me to the back of the store where I waited for a few minutes, which seemed like a long time. The door to the back of the store was only a few steps away. There was a room for privacy, but I didn’t know what was taking her so long.

Finally, the door opened, and it smelled like someone had just taken a dump, and it stunk up the whole area. There was no ventilation…but I didn’t say anything. I just held my breath. The expression on both their faces was just that. They knew it stunk too, but what could they say? I didn’t figure it out until I got to Shallow Bay. Whatever it was, she put it in a small box and told me to take it to Sena and helped put the box on my head. Then the girl and I walked to Shallow Bay, but I carried the box. I was very careful with the box as she was adamant about me being careful. I didn’t want to fall or stub my toe. I was never so careful.

I was nervous and wanted to get there. I could hear a slight splashing and would slow down, walking, but it still didn’t click with me as to what I was carrying. The girl knew what I was carrying on my head in the box, only I didn’t know…yet.

When we got to the house, I called out to Sena, letting her know that I brought something to the house. Okay, put it ova day by the latrine, she yelled out. I was still curious what was in the box, but I put it by the latrine and walked over to the steps of the house and sat, waiting to be invited in. I think she was watching me from the window and wanted to divert my attention from the direction of the latrine so I wouldn’t see what was in the box. She finally called me into the house, but as I was going in, I glanced at her as she darted out the back door of the house, opened the box, and took out the portable potty. I felt so hurt not knowing that I was carrying this girl’s nasty shit in a box on top of my head.

I was vexed, yes, but I didn’t say anything to Sena. I kept it inside. She had asked me a few times what was wrong and that I was so quiet, but I still didn’t say anything. The emotion showed on my face. I didn’t want to be branded as rude and lose the time of being away from home. This was my outlet, because I had fun when I was with Sena. We did fun things together, but I couldn’t wait to tell Mommy when I got home what had happened. Even then, I was reluctant, because she might have said that I couldn’t go back. I couldn’t get the look on their faces out of my mind.

What if I had spilled it on my head or stubbed my toe and fell down? The whole idea saddened me, and I felt hurt. So that waa me good fa…teking shit, I remember thinking in my little mind. I knew Mommy wouldn’t breathe a word of this to Pappy. She only told him what he needed to know, knowing that he was against going to people’s houses. He didn’t like it no matter how much he didn’t like me. Mommy wasn’t happy. She was vexed too and talked about me not going back, and I cried and begged her to let me go back…and she reluctantly did the next weekend.

The Big Tree

We had a big tangerine tree not too far from the foot of the steps of our house, and every year, it would bloom and bear fruit. I would always be the first to spot the biggest, brightest, orange-colored tangerine buried in the heart of the tree, only for me to see. There was also a pomegranate tree next to the tangerine tree, zaboca or avocado trees, banana trees, a lime tree, breadfruit trees, and coconut trees. We had many fruit trees on our property. The pomegranate tree and tangerine tree were closest to the house—just a few yards away—so when I had to get a spanking from Mommy, I was sure to get my own switch/whip. This is how it went:

Ann, com ya, yo na here me a call yo-yo na listen when me a tark…go pik e wip.

Tears would shower my face on my way to get the whip, but I would already see which whip I wanted. It was the smallest branch on the tree, and as soon as I would reach to break it, I would hear, No, not dat one, dat one. She would point to the branch she wanted me to get. Go sit dong ova day, she would say after giving me a few lashes. It was enough to keep me from doing whatever I was doing wrong again.

I caught an ass whipping most every day, and that too motivated me more to be at Sena’s house, but I don’t remember ever seeing Oleta getting spanked. How could she? She was the love child and was always so sickly. It would have been wicked for her to get any lashes, but I took care of that. I got enough for her and I was such a good sister.

Holidays

Christmas and carnival were both a big to-do. Christmas included three segments: Nine Mornings, Christmas Day, and the two days following Christmas. On the Nine Mornings, Palms people hold parties each day in the predawn hours, then go to work, and party again the next day. They do that for each of the nine days. Christmas Day is spent with family. Boxing Day and the day after are spent visiting neighbors, but we didn’t visit anybody. Instead, people were welcome to come to our house if they were invited by Pappy…but mostly, people just enjoyed the day at home. We didn’t visit neighbors, because Pappy didn’t go to people’s house, except for family, and that was rare. For one thing, if he didn’t like their appearance. Eating from them was out of the question. I don’t ever remember him eating from anybody; the slightest mess would turn his stomach. He believed when you cooked, you had to clean as you went; he was funny like that.

Way me a go sit up pan somebody house fa…smh…tark bout people…dey gee yo a piece a food fo eat den dey go tark ’bout it, man me na ha time fo dat…me ha food ya, Pappy would say, quarrelling to himself; it didn’t take much for him to start quarreling.

The second holiday is the annual carnival—a showcase for the best in calypso singing, steelpan orchestras, soca music, and masquerade costumes. Cricket and soccer matches are the passion sports of the island.

I remember overhearing one of Mommy’s conversations with Millie. It was around Christmastime, and that steelpan orchestra across the river from us would practice and play their band almost every day. It was not only on Christmas Day, but other times, because they played for different occasions. It was Christmastime, and the party was on. People were busy baking and celebrating and getting ready for the big day. The joy of Christmas was exciting!

Pappy would bring all the provisions from the bush, including yams and sweet potatoes, dasheens, eddoes and cassava, plantains, and more. There were coconuts to grind for the sweetbread, and wood was chopped for the fire on the brick oven outside. He knew what the menu was and took care of