Blue Black Berries
I. Listen, I'm not supposed to talk about this. It's supposed to be closeted, absolutely. Unless, of course, you have at least one black parent. Except, of course, you know at least one black person (intimately). I'm exposing soiled laundry here. Just so you know. I'd better whisper: II. Six months before I was six, my mother gave me away because I was her blackest child, and because my hair was thick and coarse as the coir mat where people wiped their feet before coming into the house, and because her next and final child was pine-colored, a little beauty whose sweet curls grown women liked to fondle, and my mother sent me away because I was bad; I put my hand in my pants. III. From the dark, a premature rooster might have boasted its morning alarm. Someone would have checked my small brown grip, packed just so with new underwear. New socks. New hair ribbons. New dresses. The hems of these new dresses would be deep, the dresses too long on me, for they would've expected me to grow over the summer. I would have been dressed carefully, my going to the city and all. And after my deliberately light breakfast of tea and toast with marmalade, the maid would have folded over twice again a section of the Daily Gleaner. She would have put it under the bodice of my dress. She would have pressed into my hand a small green lime from the backyard tree. She would have told me, earnestly, to hold it in my hand the whole way. Cockney style, she would've dropped the h sound on "hold” and "hand" and "whole." The newspaper, the lime would ward off my carsickness, she knew. She knew it as a pregnant country woman about to deliver knows that if she presses a rockstone fast against the top of her head, her baby will not crown before they are safely in hospital. I was five and a half. I would've believed her. It was May. Perhaps there had been a thunderstorm the night before, and the morning, rainwashed, had bloomed bright yellow. Perhaps someone said, "Let's stop and get some fruit for the Watsons." Perhaps we pulled up beside a higgler who fanned a sleeping baby in the hammock of her lap. Perhaps the woman handed the baby to a toddler who took the baby inside to the cooler darkness of a small wooden house, struggling all the way under the load. Perhaps there'd be a blast of crape myrtle blossoms, tongue-pink, trembling in the grassless yard where a little girl sprinkled water against the dust. Perhaps her big sister swept the packed dirt clean with a coconut frond. The higgler might have haggled. Perhaps she said she wouldn't sell the naseberries by themselves, they were married to the star-apples and we would have to buy the lot. The driver perhaps had sucked his teeth and spat in the dirt. Far in the sparkling harbor there could have been a still, white perch of double-masted sailboats. I know I threw up. The leather smell of the car, the sick-sweet smell of petrol, the green trees, the light poles, the fence posts all racing the car peripherally. My green lime abandoned on the backseat. A sour lap of shame. IV. They left me there. In Kingston, with the Watsons. I was going to play with their little boy, a convalescing little boy, the son of my godmother Aunt Dottie. I liked playing, didn't I? I don't remember Robin, the little boy. I remember the forced naps. I remember the tutor, a pursed-lipped lady on the black verandah. I remember not having to dress for dinner. I remember having chores for the very first time—being obliged to take out my own chimmy half-full of overnight pee, to wash my own socks and underpants in a white enamel basin. I remember the deep loneliness. I remember the bed throbbing with my quiet, best-girl, evening sobs. I remember no mother, no father, no sister, no brother ever came to visit. No one ever called. V.Smile back at this little girl. It is my sixth birthday. My mother has come to take me home. My stern father is not interested in coming. My three brothers, my three sisters are with him. My new dress is aqua rayon. The cloth is not comforting. I am not sure who has dressed me. Mama. For I'm wearing her signature hairstyle, Heidi-style braids, a white taffeta bow to match the eyelet lace on my pockets. The photographer is Rag Wynter, 4 East Parade, Kingston, JA, B.W.I. I am standing on a velveted ottoman in his photo studio. I feel unsteady. I will feel unsteady for several years. I will walk with my arms frozen at my side. I will feel as numb as my surrendered hands. When I ask, my mother will tell me: When God made you, he left you in the oven a little longer. It will comfort me. I am six. VI.Blue Black Berry 1
This is my mother posed for her official engagement portrait at the Morais Photo Studio, 121 Orange Street, Corner Charles St., Kingston, B.W.I. She is 20, and unexcited. She looks sadder than any woman should be at her impending marriage, blunt and glazed, even though it might have been the style of the period not to smile. I'm hoping the photographer told her to hold perfectly still. VII. Let's ask her what circumstances would ever warrant sending a five-year-old on such a long sleepover. Q: So weird to talk to you again. A: My Lord and King, you look like me! So stout too. Q: I know. But look here, I'm here to ask you some questions, man. A: You could come and see me, you know. Plant a little bush or something on the graves. You should've planted your brother here too. Not a one of us has ever been cremated before, you see. You children just put him out like garbage. Q: C'mon, let's not quarrel. That's not why we're here. A: You call that quarrelling? Q: Mama, can we finally talk about why you shipped me off to Kingston that time? A: Oh, Lord have His mercy—nuh bother wit that again. Put it whey, nuh, sah? Stop being so fenkey-fenkey. Q: I'm not being petulant. And we can't talk patois if we're going to talk seriously. A: It's hard for me to believe you could still be thinking about this thing after all these years. Q: My whole life's been stained by it. I'm always a blasted outsider. A damn fish out of water. Always. VIII. I ask her: Your firstborn had ginger hair, freckles--everyone else is brown skinned--did my blue-blackness ever embarrass you? Did you ever want to leave me at home sometimes? Did Dada ever want to hide me from photographers? Did he think he fathered me? She stares off, as she does in the photo. Her frown line is murderous. She answers: What kind of rubbish is that? Goodness gracious, you're still as melodramatic as ever, I see. Mi love, you have no children, but you must know in your heart that you're talking utter tripe. Don't ever write again that I gave you away. Which sane mother gives away a child? Tell me? The Watson child needed a playmate. He'd been so sick with rheumatic fever; he almost died, the poor lickle thing. That was the extent of it. When my silence deepens, she continues: See here, it's hard for me to believe that one summer affected you that deeply. It's not as though somebody molested you or some such. Your father used to say we gave you pickney too much privilege. It's true. Think of those mothers who are forced to immigrate to New York or London and so on and so forth. They have to leave their children behind for years and years just to make a life for them. You have nothing at-tall to complain about. You went off to boarding school as merrily as any of the other children. Mama harvests her balled handkerchief from her bra and, more from habit than heat of the day, wipes the deep lines that swag her mouth. She dabs her neck and returns the delicate embroidered cloth to her bosom, and says: It's hot as nine days' love between two fools. She's hoping I'll laugh and change the subject.Blue Black Berry 2
