Miss Jewel, Alberta’s mother, wore her good hat and her best blouse to lead me to the house of my father’s cousins. I, a tiny girl, tripping along beside her in sham-patta shoes. My only words were Mamma and na-na (which I believe meant banana). I remember staring at white shoes tied neat with laces, two bloody knees and a grinning boy, who held a gecko on his palm for me to see.
With a nod and the assurance of money from my father, it was all agreed. Alberta was to leave Jamaica and take up work in Cuba and Miss Jewel would stay as a servant of my father’s cousins. She would watch me grow. In those years she washed, dressed and fed Michael and me. Calling him Massa Michael and me Miss Hortense. (Miss Hortense when there was someone to hear and ‘me sprigadee’ when there was not.)
I sat a quiet vigil in the henhouse. Waiting. Watching the hen pushing out her egg – seeing it plop soft and silent on to the straw.
‘Hortense, where are you?’ Michael padded around outside in his rubber-soled shoes. His shadow playing on the wooden slats in the wall. His one eye, with lashes that curled like a girl’s, looked through a hole in the wood. ‘Come out, Hortense.’ He slapped his palms on the walls, which shook this tiny world and startled the hen into deserting her egg. Michael liked to see chickens flapping their wings, scattering in fright, screeching until he could do nothing but laugh and cover his ears against the sound.
I pushed him aside as I carried the newly laid egg into the house, him leaping around me saying, ‘Let me see, Hortense, let me see.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘you have no patience, Michael Roberts, to sit and watch the egg coming out. So you have no reason to look upon the egg.’
Miss Ma thanked Michael for the egg I brought into the house. Her hands enclosed mine, the warmth of her touch gradually pulling the egg from my hand. Devotion lit her pale eyes as she gazed on Michael’s face. He puffed out his chest like a cock and said, ‘Shall I bring you more, Mamma?’
She only looked on me to say, ‘Hortense, I don’t want you in the henhouse. Leave the chickens alone. You hear me, nah?’
‘You are a nuisance to me, Michael Roberts,’ I told him. A boy one year older than me and one foot smaller who led me into mischief. For one, I was not supposed to climb trees. Mr Philip told me that it was not godly for girls to lift themselves into branches as a monkey would. Or come home wet from the stream, our bellies full of star apples, raspberries and mangoes, my skirt clinging to my legs with Michael running behind me dangling a wriggling fish from his hand. I was not supposed to hunt for scorpions, tipping them from their hiding-place, tormenting them with a stick. Or dress the goat in a bonnet and attempt to ride her like a horse.
‘Leave me alone, Michael. You can play all day but I have work that must be done,’ I told that wicked boy daily. I had washing to do in the outhouse sink, cleaning of the shades on the kerosene lamps. I was responsible for keeping the area under the tamarind tree free from dirt and a pleasure to sit in. But he was always, ‘Come, Hortense, come, Hortense. Let us see the woodpecker’s nest.’ Him impatient, wriggling underneath me as I stood on his back trying to see into the hole in the tree that the bird flew from. ‘You see anything yet? Come, Hortense, it’s my turn now.’ Tipping me on to the ground just as I was to look on the nest.
‘Why you do that, Michael? I just about to see.’
‘It’s my turn, Hortense. Bend over.’ This boy, older than me, climbing on my back, complaining all the time. ‘Stand still, you make me fall, nah.’ And saying, ‘I think I see. Stay still. I think I see,’ as the woodpecker flew from the hole and pecked him on his head. Oh, how that boy screamed from the little cut the woodpecker made.
If Mr Philip knew of the devilment I had been tricked into he would have sent me away. Little girls did not climb trees! ‘Principle,’ he bellowed at every meal. ‘We must all have principle. Each one of us will stand accountable – puny and small in front of the magnificent throne of the Almighty.’ After he had blessed the food with a grace that sometimes went on long enough for my neck to get stiff with the prayer, Mr Philip started his sermon: ‘Life is preparation for the day when we finally look upon the face of the Lord, our Maker.’ He rose from his seat clutching his Bible like a weapon. ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life.’ Sometimes he banged the table – Miss Ma looking nervous, seizing a vibrating bowl or wobbling water jug. ‘It is only through the Lord thy God that we will reach the kingdom of heaven.’ Larger than a mountain, Mr Philip stood looking down between Michael and I. Michael did not attempt to catch my eye for fear it would start us giggling. No words came from our mouths. Not one word. Spittle often hit my cheek but I did not dare brush it away. Or look on Mr Philip’s face, scared I would be entranced by the lines that came and went as his forehead danced with the wonder of the scriptures. Miss Ma placed food on to Mr Philip’s plate, nodding her approval, then held out her hand to serve Michael and I. We kept our heads bowed to eat as Miss Ma instructed us on appropriate table manners. ‘Take your elbows off the table while you are eating. Hortense, please sit straight. Michael, do not put so much food into your mouth. Only a horse chews with its mouth gaping.’
I pinched myself at the table on the night before Michael was to leave to attend boarding-school. Squeezing my nails into my hand until blood pricked on my skin. I did not want to cry. I did not want to paw at the table and beg them let me go with him. I had been told, when there is too much pain, tears nah come.
‘Remember now thy creator in thy days of youth,’ Mr Philip began. ‘But it is time to surrender the deeds of thy younger years. And walk in the way of God as a man.’
I gave Michael my bottle of perfumed water with which to clean his slate at his new school. I did not want his slate to give off the stinking vapours that the boys’ slates at my government school did.
He took it, saying, ‘I will learn about the whole world, Hortense. And you will be staying at the penny-a-week school, skipping silly rhymes and counting frogs at the base of the tree.’
I pushed my fingers into my ears and sang, ‘“What are little boys made of? Moss and snails and puppy dogs’ tails . . .”’ He poked out his tongue and handed me back the bottle. It fell and I finally cried when the earth claimed the sweet-smelling liquid.
Tiddlers swam in the rivers without worry. Woodpeckers went about their business. The goat looked as a goat should. Scorpions stayed in their hiding-place. Even Mr Philip cut short his nightly Bible readings, asking for his glass of water to be poured long before Miss Ma had given me any table manners. And, without Michael, I sat in the henhouse undisturbed.
Miss Jewel called me every day after school, ‘Miss Hortense, di boy gone, come help me nuh.’ Her colossal leather-worn hands squeezed waterfalls from washing. Her breasts wobbled: two fallen fruit trapped by the waistband of her skirt. Her legs bowed.
‘Miss Jewel,’ I asked, ‘why your legs stick out so?’
She solemn, sucked her teeth and said, ‘Me nuh know, Miss Hortense. When me mudda did pregnant dem seh smaddy obeah’er. A likkle spell yah no.’ And she sang as she washed. ‘“Mr Roberts wash him sock at night. And sidung pon de ground.”’
‘No, Miss Jewel,’ I told her, ‘you are singing the wrong words. It is “While shepherds watched their flock by night”.’
‘Weh you mean shepherd, Miss Hortense?’
‘A shepherd is a man who looks after sheep.’
‘Sheep? Dem nuh have none ah dat in Jamaica?’
‘No, it is England where the shepherd is, Miss Jewel.’
‘Oh, Hengland. Ah deh so de Lawd born ah Hengland?’
‘Of course. And in England sheep live everywhere. They wear wool to keep out the winter cold.’