A Journey into Manhood

I

1

I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth even though people thought my parents were rich. They owned a house in a district called E’tangs on the island of St. Lucia, and papa had a rum shop on the first floor of the house where the locals came every night to drink and talk about the day’s events. That rum shop made papa a businessman and in the eyes of the local people all businessmen are rich.

The fifty acres of land that surrounded the house did not belong to my parents but people did not know that so everyone assumed they were rich because they owned land. Even the laborers who came each week to cut the bananas scattered on the fifty acres and load them on the truck for the trip south of the island, which would eventually be loaded on a boat for England, thought they were loading papa’s bananas.

Papa drove a Land Rover that was the only vehicle in the district where they lived and people thought he was rich to own a vehicle because most people walked to get anywhere. But the Land Rover belonged to the government and papa worked for the government.

Most of the local people were illiterate but my parents could read and write (in fact my mother was a school teacher) So they were on a higher stratum from the rest of the people. So if you were a businessman, owned land, had a vehicle and you could read and write, you were a step above the locals and they showed reverence.

All that status was lost one night when a fire consumed the house. The fire started in the rum shop, maybe from a careless drunk who may have accidentally dropped his cigarette on a wicker chair, or maybe the cigarette had fallen on the old wood floor and ignited. Soon the fire had reached the second floor where mom was asleep on the coconut tusk mattress on the narrow bed with wooden slats. I lay asleep in a crib at the foot of the bed. It was after midnight, December 1951 and I was just a few days old.

The details of that night differ slightly when my mother told the story from what my father told. The fire had engulfed much of the first floor and had reached the tiny bedroom. The only exit was the tiny bedroom window that overlooked a small forest of banana and coconut trees.

I wrapped you in a blanket and jumped out the window with you in my arms. Mom told me.

I pushed you out the window. Papa corrected.

You pushed me out the window? Mom’s eyes narrowed in concentration as she tried to remember that fearful night. I don’t remember it happening that way. she said.

Yes, I pushed you because you were too afraid to jump. Papa said.

It didn’t matter to me how I had been saved. I was grateful to both of them.

Mom had broken her leg from jumping out the window and she would walk with a limp the rest of her life because the doctor who had set her leg had made a mistake, she told me. She didn’t know what mistake he had made, but she only knew she was in pain for weeks after the cast was removed.

Papa was a small, wiry man so he bragged that when he jumped out of the window he floated harmlessly to the ground.

We were out of a home after that fire so mom lived with her sister and papa stayed at his mother’s house.

Papa’s mother who I grew up to call TaTa was a mulatto, with delicate features, long dark wavy hair, and short in stature. Her father was an Englishman who had arrived on the island of St. Lucia in 1814, the year the British had taken final control of the island from the French. But because of the French influence most of the towns and villages on the island had French names and some of the people had French family names, originated from their French masters, and everyone spoke a French based Creole called Patois.

TaTa’s father owned a sugarcane plantation and hundreds of slaves and among these slaves was TaTa’s mother, a small dark woman who toiled on her masters plantation for the rest of her life.

TaTa had married a man from Tanzania who it was said had made a small fortune in a modern slave trade in Africa back in 1920 and had escaped the country for fear of imprisonment after the slave ring had been discovered. He arrived on the island that same year and met TaTa. They had two children; my uncle Thomas who was born in 1928, and who I had never met because he left for the island for Guyana in 1947 and later settled in England in the late fifties. Uncle Thomas was papa’s older brother. Papa was born in 1929.

My grandfather died when papa was in his teens. Though he had family in Tanzania, Papie, as my father called him when he spoke about him, willed all his possessions to TaTa, which included the house in which they lived and the almost hundred acres of land surrounding that house, an additional sixty acres in a district called La Croix, and lots of money in the bank.

TaTa had warned papa not to marry my mother because her family was too poor and worse, there was a history of tuberculosis in that family. Two of her sisters had died from the disease and TaTa was sure mom would succumb to the disease too. But papa ignored her pleas and married mom.

After the house had burned down in E’tangs, TaTa gave papa the sixty acres of land in La Croix, and enough money to build a house on that land.

The house papa built in La Croix was made from brick and it was cut out of the side of a steep hill and stood on varied sizes of cement stilts to make it level. There were two tiny bedrooms, a living room, a dining room and a kitchen with a cement hearth that burned wood coal. We had no electricity or plumbing, so water was hauled to the house in a big zinc bucket, and kerosene lamps brightened the house at nights.

There was an outhouse, a hundred feet away and down the hill from the house that was home to green lizards. The outhouse was my torture chamber. It was there I would catch lizards and do awful things to them, which I dare not describe here, but I will admit to breaking off a lizards tail and watch, fascinated as the amputated tail wiggled furiously on the ground like it had a life of its own. If the lizard was lucky it would escape to the galvanized roof of the outhouse.

Papa had a big cement tank built at the side of the house and in that tank was our drinking water which was collected from the aluminum gutters hooked to the eaves of the house. A long hollowed bamboo stem directed the rain water into the tank. Sometimes the tank would be full of water and sometimes it would be dangerously low. It all depended on how much rain fell.

Once a week papa would check the water level with a long stick and at the same time he would check for any frogs that might have slipped into the tank.

This was the house where my childhood memories were most vivid.

I spent eleven memorable years in our house.

The living room was the most beautiful of the rooms in the house. Mom had bought a colorful linoleum covering for the floor. There were beautiful Morris chairs with cushions made by a seamstress who had the only singer sewing machine in the district, and since no one had electricity the sewing machine worked with a foot pedal.

Beautiful framed pictures of celebrities taken from magazines adorned the walls. A full faced and smiling Harry Belafonte hung on one wall next to Nat King Cole; then there was the Mighty Sparrow, the calypso king. A serene picture of Pope Pius XII sat on the opposite wall along with a picture of Father Gaston, the French parish priest who had baptized me. A crucifix of copper was nailed above the entrance door of the house.

There were no pictures of my family in our house. A camera was a luxury my parents did not see an urgent need for, but one luxury we had in our house that I was happy for was a radio. As I said no one had electricity so papa had the radio plugged in a twelve volt battery. Above the constant static of the transmission, papa would listen to the world news on BBC.

An assortment of music like Country and Western, and especially Calypso livened the evenings. Even Merengue with its Spanish lyrics that no one understood, or paid attention too, played in the evenings. It was the merengue beat that got us hooked.

Nineteen fifty six was a good year to listen to American music on the radio. Rock N Roll was king and so was Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and lots of Doo Wop music.

There was a thick wood table in the dining room with table mats made from green palm frond on it. Six wicker chairs completed the ensemble. In a corner of the room a cabinet maker had built the most beautiful cabinet I had ever seen.

The doors were made of thick glass and the door handles were made from nicely polished cow horns. The heavy coat of red varnish made the cabinet sparkle when touched by sunlight. Mom kept all her expensive china in the cabinet, which were only used on special occasion. On normal days we ate from tin utensils.

I slept on a coconut tusk mattress on a spring bed that squeaked horribly. The mattress was infested with bed bugs that feasted on my flesh every night but I never had a sleepless night because of them.

Our house in the evening was a magical place. Millions of stars glittered the night sky, the moon shone brightly and fire flies in the hundreds blinked throughout the night. The house was lit by kerosene lamps then one day papa came home with a Coleman lamp he said he’d bought in a small store in the town of Soufriere. The light from the Coleman was so bright papa would hang it in the doorway between the living room and the dining room and it provided light to both areas.

The best time to listen to the radio was in the evenings when the Coleman lamp would be lit and moth and other insects would dance around the lamp to the rhythms of calypso, merengue, and American rock and roll.

One evening when I was five years old a woman carrying a beat-up suitcase came to the house with a shabby looking dog walking tiredly beside her. Papa saw her first, coming up the narrow dirt road and he came out to greet her. He introduced her to me as Auntie and said she would be staying with us.

Many years later I still did not know Auntie’s real name. Everyone called her Auntie, even people who were not related to her.

Auntie was a tall, light-brown skin woman of Carib Indian decent with a gentle face that laughed easily and when she laughed she showed beautiful white lower teeth but very little upper teeth, mostly she showed red gums. Auntie was married, had no children, and had left her husband to live with us.

She became my caregiver and as the years went by I looked to her more as a mother than my real mother. Auntie was illiterate, having never attended school and she had no idea how old she was but the wisps of white hair that came out of the head shawl she always wore attested to the fact that she was not a young woman.

The mingy dog that came with her had no name so Auntie told me I should name him and keep him as my dog, so I called him Jimmy. And we became inseparable.

In 1957 Auntie had been with us for one year but I was still expecting her to leave and return to her home. It scared me to think about her leaving because she had become my greatest supporter.

One day I sat on the little white painted stool in the kitchen and watched Auntie at the hearth cooking. She wore a brown shawl stripped in gold on her head and a colorful apron over her long sleeveless sack dress and she was humming as she cooked.

Auntie, when are you going back?

Back where, dearie? she asked as she tasted the chicken gravy she’d just made. Auntie had started addressing me affectionately as dearie.

Back to your home. I said.

I don’t know. she said quietly. I guess I’ll stay for the baby and then… She was quiet.

What baby? I asked. She looked at me with a wispy smile on her face and said, You are going to have a little brother or sister. We don’t know which.

When?

Soon.

And then?

She didn’t answer.

2

I was not allowed in my parents’ bedroom and if I ever had to enter I had to knock first. Decorum was important in our household.

My baby sister had been born a few hours and I was anxious to see her. I walked into the bedroom after mom had given her permission.

The bedroom was small with the bed taking up most of the space. Against a back wall was a three draw dresser with fancy drawer handles, and a tiny mirror was mounted on top of the dresser. Small items that belonged to mom were scattered on the dresser: cheap perfume bottles, inexpensive jewelry, and a small black bible. A crucifix was nailed on the wall above the bed post and in a corner of the room near the bed was a small table upon which rested a little statue of the Virgin Mary; a black rosary next to it and a bigger bible. A small jar of holy water was also on that table. Mom always dipped her finger in the water whenever she had to make the sign of the cross.

The baby, a girl, lay quietly in a crib beside the big bed. Mom lay still on the bed, her eyes focused on the ceiling. My baby sister wore a long white dress trimmed with lace at the bottom and it covered her feet. She had a black rosary around her neck and the cross lay on her chest.

Auntie had told me her name was Josephine and she was dead. Two days earlier a mid-wife had come to the house to deliver the baby. She was an elderly woman with hard white hair and sunken cheeks, who had delivered most of the children who attended E’tangs Primary School, to include myself. I had never seen this woman before but when she came in the house she cupped my face with her hands in recognition, called me her little darling and gave me candy. The old woman’s name was Victoria DuPont but everyone called her Madam Dee.

Madam Dee spent the day and night in the bedroom and papa slept in a Morris chair. Josephine was born during the night while I slept and in the morning through the heavy smell of brewed coffee, Auntie told me my little baby sister had died. Tears rolled down her face as she told me Josephine cried for a minute and then she was quiet.

We were so helpless, Auntie cried. Madam Dee tried everything to bring her back, but it was no use. It was the first time I’d seen a grown up cry and it scared me.

She’s gone forever and ever. Auntie said, She’s an angel in heaven now.

Can I see her? I asked, almost in tears myself.

Your mom is asleep. I don’t want you to disturb her.

But I want to see her. I demanded.

Alright. Knock on the door and your mom will let you in.

So there I stood staring at my baby sister who looked to be asleep, rather than dead.

She looks like she’s asleep. I told my mother.

Yes, she’s asleep. Mom shed no tears like Auntie had and I wondered why. Wasn’t she grieving like Auntie that Josephine was gone forever and ever?

Are you sad, mom? She didn’t answer. Her eyes were closed and I saw a hardness on her face that could have been sadness, but I wasn’t sure. Auntie is sad. I said.

Yes.

A tall man with a slight build, who I did not know came by the house and built a coffin for Josephine. I stood outside with the man, near the flower bed, where he had set up his bench and his tools and watched him build the coffin. He told me his name was William Gustav and that he was a good friend of papa. They’d gone to school together.

It took Monsieur Gustav two hours to build the coffin and varnish it afterward. Then Josephine was placed in the coffin. Papa stood by as the coffin was nailed shut. He did not cry and he showed no emotion as the coffin was placed in the Land Rover.

Mom stayed in the bedroom all the while this was being done.

When Pope Pius XII died October 9, 1958, a year after Josephine had been buried, mom cried like she had lost a dear friend but she did not cry for Josephine.

Anyway, I didn’t see papa for a week after he left with Josephine in the Land Rover and when I asked Auntie about him she ignored me. I didn’t dare ask mom because she looked lost and confused most of the time. She didn’t talk much and she didn’t leave the bedroom much either. I guessed papa had disappeared somewhere to grieve alone.

About the time of Josephine’s death another baby was born to a teenage girl whose mother was so poor they lived in a corrugated tin house with a mud floor.

The girls name was Maggie, she was sixteen and papa at age twenty-five was the father of that newborn boy.

When papa came home a week later, Auntie greeted him at the door with a cup of coffee but she didn’t say anything to him beside, Good morning, Robert, and she turned her back on him. Papa didn’t greet her back, instead he looked at me and said, Jimbo, go wash your face boy, it’s dirty.

Jimbo was a nickname papa had given me. He never told me why he called me Jimbo instead of Peter, which was my real name. But I accepted it.

And brush your teeth too. he added. These orders were not really directed at me but at Auntie who received the indirect order, got a basin of water and a wash rag and scrubbed my face hard, then she wrapped part of the rag around her finger and ran it over my teeth. They felt squeaky clean afterward.

While I was in the kitchen with Auntie we heard loud talk from the bedroom. It was more mom screaming at papa and he talking rough back to her. They were fighting over Maggie and her new baby. Auntie took my hand and led me outside.

It was a mild Saturday morning with fluffy white clouds dancing in the sky. Little gray birds were all over the place chirping and making too much noise and Jimmy added to the noise with his loud barking. Morning dew clung to the blades of grass and small plants and they appeared to glisten in the warm sunlight. The country air was fresh and crisp.

I asked Auntie why mom and papa were fighting.

They are not fighting. They are just talking. she said.

Then why does mom talk so angry? I asked. She didn’t answer. Whatever was going on it wasn’t for little boys to hear.

Papa had purchased fifty additional acres from an adjoining property and now he had a sizable piece of land that was covered with banana trees, assorted mango trees, and other fruit. He hired local laborers to do the laborious job of clearing the land, planting and caring for the fruits and vegetables scattered on small patches of the land.

One of the laborers was a tall, sinewy man with slightly bowed and stalwart legs named Leo who’d been with papa long before he’d bought the land in La Croix. Leo and papa had been school mates until Leo had to drop out of elementary school to help support his poor family. So like Auntie and most of the country folk, Leo was illiterate.

Auntie and I stood outside near the bed of red and white roses and watched Leo who was on a steep hill two football fields away cutting grass with a cutlass; grass that would be fed to the six cows papa owned. Leo stopped cutting grass and trampled down the hill and joined us in the yard.

Morning, Auntie. He winked and smiled at me. Wet blades of grass were stuck on Leo’s cuffed pants and his bare feet were caked with light brown mud which also sipped between his toes.

Morning, Leo. Auntie said.

The little baby resting in peace. he said solemnly.

Yes, Auntie whispered back.

While he was standing there the mud on Leo’s feet began to dry and turn dark brown.

I’m ready to go, Auntie. he said.

You are ready, Leo?

Yes, I’m ready, Auntie. By this time next month I will be gone.

I knew what they were talking about. A few months earlier Leo had approached papa with what papa had called a wild hair up his ass idea. Leo wanted to go to England to be a policeman. He’d seen pictures of bobbies and liked the way they looked in uniform, especially the helmet they wore.

When Leo told papa of his idea, papa laughed and called him crazy. But Leo told him he wasn’t crazy. He could be a policeman in England. Papa then asked him since he couldn’t read or write how was he going to pass the policeman’s test. Leo hadn’t thought of that. In fact he did not know one had to take a test to be a policeman. While he pondered that question papa looked at his callus feet with the ever present rich brown mud pasted on the edges of his feet; it had settled in the ugly cracks in his feet and squeezed between his toes and papa asked Leo when the last time was he’d worn shoes.

I don’t wear shoes, Robert. You know that.

You must wear shoes when you go to England, Leo.

He understood what papa meant by that so a few days later he approached papa and agreed he could not be a policeman but there were other jobs in England he could do. And as for shoes he already had a pair he’d bought for his trip to England and he was practicing walking in them.

Papa was exasperated when he said, What is a man who cannot read or write going to do in England? Wipe the white man’s ass for him? Papa could be crass sometimes. I sensed Leo was insulted but he laughed hard at what papa had said.

A man could be locked in his miniature world of peasantry and ignorance and not know the existence of a bigger world, a richer world, a world full of wonders, and all it may take is an accidental glance at a picture in a newspaper or a magazine, to be enlightened about that other world.

So there was Leo in 1957, standing in the yard with me and Auntie, cutlass in hand, blades of wet grass on his clothes, mud hardened on his feet, can’t even hold a pencil without it shaking in his hand to write his name, but determined to make something of his life nonetheless. And England was his ticket to that better life.

If papa was doubtful of this plan, Leo’s father was proud his son was going to England. It was the land of opportunity for poor West Indians and he thought one day Leo would not be poor.

Leo went back up the hill to gather the grass he had cut. Just then papa came out of the house with blood dripping down his shirt from a wound on his head. His shirt was wet and he smelled strongly of Bay Rum aftershave. His jaw wiggled furiously when he looked at Auntie but said nothing to her. Auntie looked glumly at him and said nothing. Papa got in the Land Rover and drove away.

The sight of papa’s blood dripping down his shirt scared me.

What happened to papa. Where is he going? I asked, scared to death. Auntie said something calmly about licking his wounds which I did not understand. I only knew I would not see papa for another week.

Years later as a young man I learned that in her anger and frustration, mom had hit papa on the head with a bottle of Bay Rum aftershave for having that baby with Maggie.

Papa was gone longer this time and when he came home he did not come in the Land Rover. A small black car sat on the side of the dirt road near the house. Papa was in the back seat of the car covered with a sheet. He had bought a shiny black British Hillman and he had spent the night in the car. I was surprised to see the car. Auntie brought him a cup of coffee early in the morning and he drank it sitting in the back. Later she brought him breakfast and he ate that in the back too.

Papa was proud of the Hillman, his first car, his prized possession, and he spent lots of time under the hood looking at the clean engine, polishing the car, and revving the engine to listen to the sound of newness.

He was gone most of the time when he had the Land Rover and things were no different with the Hillman.

Mom complained to Auntie that papa was galvanizing all over the island with his many women. She cried often on those days he was gone and Auntie did her best to console her but that did not help. Mom’s crying wasn’t just from sadness but from anger as well. She mumbled often of killing herself, then she would make the sign of the cross with the holy water after she had cussed papa to absolve her of the cussing sin.

One morning mom was in the bedroom crying. Auntie brought her coffee and spent most of the morning talking and praying with her. Through the paper thin partition that separated the living room from the bedroom I could hear everything that was said.

Mom wanted to leave papa because he made her unhappy, but she had nowhere to go. Besides, she couldn’t divorce him because we were catholic and not allowed by religious law to divorce. She was stuck with a bad husband the rest of her life.

What am I going to do, Auntie? she cried. I cannot stay with Robert. Not after all this. He’s out there making babies all over the island.

Papa had been making babies since he was fifteen. There were five children born to different mothers before papa married mom.

He’s your husband, BeBe. He’s the father of your child.

He’s killing me, Auntie.

The Lord will give you strength, BeBe. I heard Auntie tell my mother.

I pray to him for guidance Auntie but he doesn’t hear me. She wailed.

Another baby was born to a woman who lived in Vieux Fort, a town on the southern tip of the island, and mom had heard that papa was the father of that newborn, and that had caused the distress she was having.

That makes seven children that I know about, Auntie. How many more babies are out there?

I don’t know, BeBe.

My parents were physically an odd couple. Mom was a tall, dark woman who walked gracefully with her limp. Her hair was thick and straightened with a hot comb and it reached the middle of her back. She had high cheekbones that became more pronounced when she smiled or laughed. Mom was a woman with a timorous disposition but cross her too many times and she could be like a raging bull. She didn’t have many friends. Auntie had become her closest confidant.

When they stood side by side papa’s head came level with mom’s shoulder. He was a little man in statue but he made up for it in his gregariousness. He had many friends who came by the house when he was home to drink, talk and smoke, and papa did much of the talking.

His favorite topic was local politics and the plight of the black African in Rhodesia and South Africa. He hated the apartheid system that he said the national party of South Africa had developed to deprive its people of human and political rights and keep them hold up like cattle in the black townships.

TaTa had bestowed her beautiful mulatto hair unto papa and he was said to have good Negro hair that women everywhere adored. He also had a beautiful aquiline nose inherited from TaTa, but he was punished with an unattractively slopped forehead and shovel sized incisors that most of his children, including myself had inherited.

As for me I was made of bones and very little flesh covered the bones so they protruded fiercely at my knees and my elbows, even my knuckle bones glared at me. Some people thought my spindled neck would break under the weight of my big head, but they were strong. Even with my big incisors I was labeled a handsome boy by the many visitors who came to the house.

Mom’s parents thought she had made a good decision to marry papa because they knew TaTa had land and money which papa would inherit someday. What they did not know was that TaTa had been against the marriage, for reasons I mentioned earlier. She had thought papa had married below his station. Mom was too dark for her taste and her family were dirt poor. Secondly, TB ran in that family. Little did papa know that the land he had inherited and the money he’d gotten from TaTa to build at La Croix was all he’d ever get from her.

3

TaTa died suddenly on a Thursday morning, February 1959. Papa was at home when a young boy dressed in worn out khaki pants and bare foot knocked on the kitchen door. Jimmy barked fiercely but kept a distance from the boy who had picked up a stick from the ground to protect himself.

Auntie opened the door and looked at the shirtless boy with the protruding navel and beads of sweat pouring down his face and chest. The boy spoke out of breath in Patois.

I’m here to see Monsieur Robert.

What do you need to see him for? She eyeballed the boy curiously, expecting nothing good to come from a poor boy coming to the house so suddenly with sweat pouring down his body. Wherever he came from he must have ran all the way to the house to see papa.

His mother passed this morning and they sent me to tell him. the boy said breathlessly.

"Oh Mon Dieu!" (Oh my God) Auntie whispered and made the sign of the cross. Before she went to the living room to give papa the news she gave the boy a rag to wipe the sweat off his body and left him standing at the kitchen door.

Papa listened gravely to the news and afterward he quietly walked to the car and beckoned me with a finger to follow him. He got behind the wheel of the car and I settled in the passenger seat, while the boy, whose name none of us knew and no one bothered to ask him, sat in the back seat, his bare chest dry and shiny, his protruded navel looking like a miniature cucumber.

So off we went to the Font Du Estate where TaTa had lived alone in the house that my grandfather had built. Jimmy ran behind the car for a distance, barking loudly, then he stopped and went back home.

The car had that smell of new leather and I took deep breathes because I liked the smell. The engine hummed the way a new cars engine should and in no time we were at the Font Du Estate where we saw a handful of people, some seated and some squatted in the dirt yard of the big shingled house with the wrap around balcony.

They all got up and greeted papa dolefully. Then a middle age woman with an old corn cob pipe stuck in her mouth met papa in the balcony and told him she was the one who had discovered the body on the kitchen floor. She spoke to him in Patois.

I am sorry for your mother’s passing, Monsieur Robert. she said as she wiped a tear from her eye. She was a good woman. The Lord has her now. She is in good hands.

Thank you.

Papa left me in the balcony and went to the bedroom where TaTa had been laid. The woman smiled grimly at me as a little naked boy with a distended belly and layers of grime on his skin, walked up from the yard and clung desperately to her long shabby dress as if looking for security. The bare chested boy who had rode with us had gotten out of the car and disappeared. I had no idea where he’d disappeared to.

In a little while papa came back out with a glum look on his face and spoke to the woman. I was standing too far away when he spoke to her so I did not hear what was said. Papa shook hands with her after he was finished talking to her then we got in the car and drove back home.

Papa asked mom if she was going to the funeral with him