Island Songs (17 page)

Joseph could sense the hush as he paused. He could only hear the chinking of rum bottles against mugs and the patus hooting from the trees. He began to recite Kofi’s tale.

Tall like his father before him, Kofi was curious and headstrong. Disregarding the warnings of his elders who told him that on no account was he permitted to come within three miles of any plantation, Kofi violated this law on countless occasions.

Weary of trying to capture hogs in the wild and his curiosity getting the better of him, Kofi, roaming south into the parish of St Elizabeth, always trespassed within the forbidden areas of the plantation at dusk. Concealing himself behind bushes, Kofi sighted slaves at work cutting cane, defeated expressions upon their faces.
Pauses were punished with cracks of a forked whip and at nightfall he witnessed women tending to the scored backs of their menfolk with soiled rags. Kofi learned that the slaves called these cloths ‘blood-claats’. He saw the overseers tossing the slaves chicken claws and cow foot; the women placed them inside a pot, mixing it with corn and scallion to boil a broth. On one occasion he witnessed a woman, sobbing uncontrollably, plunge the spike of a sickle deep into her belly, killing herself and her unborn baby. She was soon dumped into a sewage pit.

On another nearby plantation, Kofi couldn’t but be affected by the mournful song of the men who were ordered to chop down the giant silk-cotton trees; a handful of these slaves chanced execution by stealing mug-fulls of rum and sprinkling it over the felled trees while humming a lament. Kofi knew that to cut down a living tree would provoke demons and malevolent spirits. Why are they doing this? he thought. He could never understand why the slaves wouldn’t stir themselves into bloody revolution.

One afternoon, while lying in the long grass just outside the fenced perimeter of the plantation and refreshing himself with a water coconut, Kofi heard a melodic humming. He went to investigate and was struck by its source – a beautiful brown-skinned girl of about fifteen years of age. She was collecting felled sugar cane and placing it in two baskets that were balanced upon her shoulders with a piece of stick; her back bent beneath the burden. He watched her for many days, trying to capture her attention but couldn’t get close enough without being detected by the overseers.

Kofi decided to risk using his Abeng horn, hewn out of a cow’s bone. It was nightfall and Kofi had inched as near as possible to the perimeter fence. Seeing her, he blew softly so only she could hear. Startled and not detecting Kofi’s presence, she dropped her baskets and screamed, believing she had heard the agonised wail of a tree demon.

The next day, Kofi concluded that he would have to show himself. In the morning he had hunted and killed a boar with more energy and determination than he usually exerted; he sustained a
wound in his side and treated it with a smoking, charred ember and herbs. He roasted the boar on a spit before carving it up and placing slices of the meat in cowhide pouches that were strapped around his waist; he suspended the remaining carcass from a tree for further use if he cared for it; the boar’s tusks were hanging from his necklace of twined reeds. He journeyed to the plantation, reaching it only when the sun was falling. He bided his time until he seized the opportunity when the girl he so much admired was isolated and no danger was in sight. He clambered over the fence, ran towards the girl and hurriedly presented his hard-fought game to her. He said nothing but gazed into her eyes for a long second, thinking if he uttered something she wouldn’t understand his Coromanty words. Stunned and before she could nod a thank you, Kofi was already climbing over the fence, his lithe legs and sculptured torso glistening in the moonlight. The girl smiled as she watched him disappear into the Jamaican night.

And so it continued for many days, Kofi waiting for nightfall before stealing cherished seconds with the girl he believed would carry his children, giving her ring-tail pigeons, land crabs, slices of hog meat and other game he had hunted in the wild. He would only half-smile at her, touching her cheeks and lips with his long coarse fingers, marvelling at her brown skin. Then he would scarper away without whispering a sound.

One moonless night, Kofi was finally seen by an overseer. Someone trained the barrel of a musket upon his back but the aim was untrue and Kofi escaped. Thanking the spirits of old African rivers for protecting him, Kofi decided he would have to think of a plan to free his girl. Two nights later, taking more care upon his approach to the plantation, Kofi was aghast at what he saw. Laying down outside her hut, which she shared with three other families, was Kofi’s girl. Kyeisha was her name. She was in acute pain for her master had cleaved off her ankle and achilles tendon, totally disabling her. The back of her leg, treated with fire to stem the bleeding, was a seared, dry, bloodied mess. An overseer with a musket at hand was patrolling nearby. Kofi, twenty yards away, blew on his horn softly, signalling to her that he would return,
although he doubted if she understood. Kyeisha looked up, spotted Kofi and shook her head in despair, her cheeks smudged with tears.

In the next two days, Kofi roamed the wild, blowing his horn, using a tone and pitch that promised war to Maroon ears. It was a summons that no Maroon within hearing range could ignore. Twelve fellow compatriots from his settlement answered him, each responding with their own unique calling sound, each armed with spears, machetes, cleavers and sickles, all of them well apprenticed by their fathers and grandfathers in guerrilla warfare, ambush and covert raids. Two men raised doubts over Kofi’s proposed revenge, arguing that they were about to dishonour an agreement following the last Maroon war with the white planter class. Kofi talked them around, reasoning that the lands they had received as part of the contract were not bountiful.

Following the sacrifice of a hog, they invoked the spirits of the obeah underworld. Kofi and his band then marched barefoot and silently to the plantation in the dead of the night, their faces daubed with blood drawn from one another’s palms and their bodies covered in leaves and twigs. Only the patus, the gossiping crickets and the rasping cicadas saw and heard them coming.

The warriors found that four house-slaves were sleeping in hammocks on the master’s verandah. Oil lamps showered light upon the mosquitoes who buzzed around their faces. Awoken by the creak of timber, one of the house slaves was about to raise the alarm but before he could do so, his throat was neatly slit from ear to ear. The Maroons didn’t take any chances with the other house slaves. They covered the slaves’ mouths with their hands while severing their heads with three powerful swishes of their cleavers. The house-slaves were left to swing gently in their places of rest. Mosquitoes gorged on their blood.

Gaining entry to the mansion via a window, Kofi left six of his men to stand guard outside as he and the rest of his brethren crept upstairs, their minds fixed on revenge. Overseers were still asleep in their own homes dotted around the plantation; some of them sleeping with female slaves of their choice. Before the master was aware what was happening, a rough black hand was held tight over
his mouth. Many other hands grabbed his body and he found himself being carried down the stairs. He could only watch from the base of the stairs as other raiders dragged his wife from bed, ripped off her night-gown and hacked off her head with five swings of a meat cleaver. The slavemaster’s two children, too afraid to scream, were hauled before their father. Their eyes spoke of a dread that Kofi was unable to dismiss from his memory to his last waking day. The boy was aged nine and the girl was no more than seven years old. They were soon efficiently decapitated. Blood dripped down from the bare staircase and was forming in a pool that was staining the slavemaster’s knees. Slivers of human tissue smeared the bannisters. Kofi then hacked off the slavemaster’s feet before chopping off his head. The headless bodies were dumped in a nearby pit toilet.

His thirst for vengeance satisfied, Kofi ran to collect Kyeisha and made good his escape. His brethren only followed him after they had daubed the front of the slavemaster’s house with the family’s blood. They placed four grisly heads upon the verandah, their faces angled in such a way as to face the morning sun.

Kyeisha, who was named ‘Firefoot’ by the Maroons, produced nine children for Kofi. She never walked again. Bent with age and after the passing of Kofi, she told the story of her rescue to her many grandchildren – one of them included Joseph’s great grandmother. Joseph’s mother, Panceta, had heard the tale from her mother and she had passed it on to all of her children. They were left in no doubt that it was Africa where they came from and they swore that they would never allow themselves to be enslaved again.

It was only after hearing this revelation that Amy and Carmesha guessed that David must have put up a great resistance in his Spanish Town jail – it was in his blood.

Finishing his mother’s tale, when he revealed that he was given the name of Kojo at his birth, Joseph paused and studied the eyes of his audience. He spotted Preacher Mon stealing away, shaking his head. Neville, sitting beside Joseph, took out a pound note from his pants. He held it aloft theatrically so everybody could see before slamming it against Joseph’s forehead – an African tradition
that meant Joseph had told the story well. The audience raised their bottles and clapped their hands, shouting their approval. Joseph, relief flushing through him, told the remaining tale of his family’s history. Meanwhile, Amy looked on with a satisfied smirk, her pride recovered. Joseph concluded the story-time session by detailing his whereabouts for the last two years.

Following his disappearance, Joseph had returned to Accompong Town where he found that his mother was living alone and ill. Only one of his sisters, Shimona, had remained in the town and she had her own family but she looked in on her mother every day.

Seeing that the house needed repairing and that the land that his family toiled on was now barren, Joseph set to work. Daylight hours were spent ploughing grooves for new seed. He decided to plant corn and scallion because they quickly agreed with the soil. He also planted flowers around the home. At night, by the light of the kerosene lamp, Joseph patched the roof with long grass, dried mud and straw. He would then sit by his mother’s bedside and feed her with herb teas mixed with rum, but watched the strength of her body slowly depart. Trauma was still in her eyes and Joseph recognised the same loss of children that Amy bore.

Panceta revealed to Joseph that Abraham, his father, had always felt uneasy with the fact that his own father had died a slave and was owned by the white man. Abraham couldn’t offer heroic tales of his forefathers ‘putting up a mighty resistance’. He was unaware of what part of Africa his family hailed from and with the knowledge that Panceta could trace her roots back to the Akan districts of Ghana, Abraham banned all talk about Kofi and Kyeisha in his household. Panceta had to choose her moments carefully to inform her children of their heritage.

Every evening Shimona arrived with the evening meal – neither Joseph nor anyone else wanted to cook dinner in the outside kitchen. She continually rebuked Joseph for leaving at the family’s greatest moment of need but she finally forgave him. Breaking down in tears, Shimona said that she had thought Joseph was dead. She had imagined that his skeleton was hanging from a tree
somewhere in the wild.

Bedridden and with the knowledge that in the Maroon tradition it was the women who worked in the fields while the men hunted game, Panceta’s final wish was for her to bless her eyes upon the family’s plot of land. Joseph carried her out and she saw rows of golden corn, scallion, yam hills, lettuce, pumpkin, sweet potato and callaloo. She managed a smile and kissed Joseph’s forehead. She said, “tomorrow me will bless me eyes ’pon Naptali an’ Menelik again at last. It’s been ah long time. Now, Kojo, yuh affe return to ya family. Give dem me blessing an’ nuh let nuh curse worry ya head. Like me yuh ’ave lost ya first born but yuh still ’ave ah wife an’ two daughter. Yuh ’ave fe live fe de living. Don’t worry ya head about de dead. Even when dey used to chop down de giant, silk cotton tree, de seeds find ah way to born ah new sapling. Remember dat. Now it’s time fe me final rest.”

Panceta died the next day. Joseph buried her in the family grave. Feeling safe with Shimona’s promise that her family would continue working the plot, Joseph returned to Claremont.

Claremontonians, satisfied with the night’s entertainment, went up to Joseph to congratulate him on his storytelling skills. Whether his tales were embellished or not didn’t matter to them. As long as they had ‘ah long peep inna Moonshine’s soul’ they were content. Joseph was now one of them.

Hortense was preparing to depart but Cilbert insisted that they should both congratulate Joseph. They approached Joseph who was still accepting handshakes and pats on the back. “Papa,” Hortense called. “Me an’ Cilbert gone now.”

“So soon?” Joseph answered. “Yuh don’t waan to stay here fe de night? Neville waan de family togeder so we cyan talk an’ reason about t’ings. Me so glad! Me don’t affe look over me shoulder when me walk down de hill where de poor people ’ave dem hut.”

“Papa, Cilbert affe leave Sunday marnin. So me don’t waan to waste any time. Me place is by him side. Cilbert me first priority. Yuh affe understan’ dat now.”

Embarrassed, Cilbert shook Joseph’s hand before leading Hortense away. In contrast, Jenny wouldn’t leave her father’s side. She was smiling at him in adoration as Jacob looked on at a distance. He finally decided to walk home, realising that Joseph’s return had brought him down a notch in Jenny’s estimation.

Kingston, Jamaica
July 1957

Shaken by the bus driver’s refusal to slow down when he negotiated corners and bends, Hortense peered out of the dirt-stained window as the bus approached the junction of Half Way Tree. Through the city haze, she saw a multitude of bobbing heads, heading this way and that. Hortense saw unsmiling faces that were coloured from light-honey to midnight-brown. They had uncompromising expressions, almost threatening. Now and then Hortense spotted the odd pink dot but when she tried to look again at these white faces, they were lost like a grain of white sugar in a jar of demerara. Hortense scanned the bruised shop fronts and peeling buildings as the bus inched forward and wondered why the capital of Jamaica was not glossed in brilliant white as in her dreams.

Hortense watched men of leisure, their palms wrapped around warm bottles of Mackesons and Red Stripe beer. They were standing outside rum bars, sucking on their Four Aces, Buccaneer and Camel cigarettes while eyeing the young women who went by. A select few, most of them caramel-skinned, peered through their sunglasses, sporting pastel-coloured jackets and silk-banded, straw boaters. Hortense glared as they looked down at the chaos below them from rooftop terraces, sipping cocktails served to them by black waiters wearing ultra-clean white jackets and black bow ties. Thick Havana cigars slid between the corners of the diners mouths, arched by delicately trimmed moustaches. Her eyes returning to road level, Hortense could see shoe-shine boys, their heads almost drowned by cloth caps, waiting patiently with their buffers and
boxes at the exits of drinking clubs and fine restaurants, their palms as dark as the back of their hands. Taking off her own shoes, Hortense spat on them and gave them a quick rub with her handkerchief. Slipping on her footwear again, Hortense resumed looking out of the window.

She could see many men idling, walking in no particular direction while scanning the passing traffic with defeated expressions. “Lazy good fe not’ing people dem!” she muttered under her breath. A few of these men chanced their luck by beseeching the shiny-shoed and the clean-shirted, pleading for a shilling. They were ignored. Topless, grey-footed scavengers came into Hortense’s vision. They unashamedly searched the refuse bins for half-eaten snacks and discarded cores of fruit. The clientele of the bars paid them no mind. “Dey shoulda go ah country an’ do some hard work,” Hortense whispered to herself.

Hortense studied the filthy streets, grimacing as she did so. Garbage was packed tight against the kerbs, spilling onto the pavements; squashed tin cans, crushed cartons, flattened cardboard boxes, smashed bottles, yellowed newspapers, fowl bones, goat carcasses, broken household appliances, unusable push carts, warped wheels, tyre strips, rotting vegetables, stains of soured milk and failed Chinese betting slips.

Hortense’s view was intermittently disrupted by cyclists playing Russian Roulette with the traffic. They were transporting and selling all manner of produce, the ninety-five degree Kingston sun bouncing off their reflectors and the wing mirrors that they had retrieved from the many abandoned cars that lay strewn throughout the city, all stripped bare of anything remotely usable. Other pedal-pushers advertised their religious beliefs in the form of flags, badges, stickers and any other means they could think of as they hollered their religious convictions to whoever would care to listen and to those who didn’t. “Crazy, crazy people!” Hortense laughed.

Truck drivers – transistor radios blaring out American Rhythm and Blues standards from their cabins – announced their presence with impatient blasts of their horns, the black smoke that their
engines emitted adding to the close and choking atmosphere that hung above Kingston in a shimmering veil.

Hortense began to tap her feet. She waved to country hitch-hikers, scantily clothed in reg-jegs, who were balanced precariously upon crates of rural produce atop pick-up vehicles. They returned Hortense’s greeting from their vantage point. Most of them had no personal belongings whatsoever, save the fruit they were munching, but they all shared a dream of prospering in the capital, despite not knowing where they would sleep for the night. Many of them had seen the farming lands they worked upon bought out by bauxite companies and only the fortunate few gained employment with the new corporate enterprises and the hotel chains that were being built on the north coast. Inevitably they would swell the Kingston slums for they could only offer their farming skills. Without any form of social security, the unfortunate country hitchhiker would need all his resolve and his faith to repel the immediate attractions of a life of crime.

Hearing an altercation behind her, Hortense turned around and looked at the drivers. Motorists, jostling and tooting for space with fly-encircled donkeys, bewildered goats and tug-along vendor carts, harassed and harangued each other as if they were gladiators manacled to each other a minute before they duelled. Quick-eyed and cautious pedestrians, who dared to cross the busy roads, were encouraged to do so with the utmost speed by the threat of Jamaican swear words or the manic revving of engines. Unlicensed taxi drivers kerb-crawled the streets opportunistically searching for fares. It was no embarrassment to them that their vehicles had a door missing, no visible evidence of an exhaust pipe and no front windscreen. “Taxi fe hire!” they shouted, exposing the gaps in their teeth.

Hortense smiled as she spotted a special constable adopting a rigid stance. He was wearing black pants with blue stripes and a checked shirt. He was standing on patrol outside a government building, his two foot-long truncheons dangling from his belt. Mesmerised by her surroundings, Hortense clapped her hands and smiled broadly. Suddenly she thought of David. She wondered if
David’s first sight of Kingston was just as thrilling as hers. She then collected her bags from the luggage rack and hoped Cilbert would be there at the bus depot to meet her.

Parking at the Parade bus terminal in downtown Kingston, the bus driver ordered his passengers off the vehicle with an impatience that could only come from a man born in the city. “Come people, yuh t’ink me ’ave time to waste? Get off me strikin’ bus before me look fe me whip! Me waan me rest before me affe drive back ah stinkin’ country where yuh people shoulda stay! Me don’t know why yuh come ah Kingston, becah we ’ave not’ing fe offer yuh an’ de ghetto is preparing her welcome.”

Burdened with three bags, Hortense offered the bus driver a lingering eye-pass as she departed. Cilbert, dressed in capacious blue trousers, a sweat-stained white Fred Perry T-shirt and a brown pork-pie hat, was waiting on the pavement. He was lipping a bottle of Guinness while darting his eyes as if wary of peril; his ready grin had departed him sometime during his studies in Kingston. Hortense briefly smiled with relief when she saw her husband but her long journey from Claremont had made her weary. “Cilbert! Don’t jus’ stand up der so wid ya licky licky self! Come help me wid me baggage!”

“Ya journey alright?” asked Cilbert, collecting two of Hortense’s bags and offering her a kiss on the cheek.

“Nuh, mon!” Hortense replied, making sure the bus driver heard her. “Me t’ought me was gwarn to dead about six times. Me don’t know how some people get dem employment.”

“But yuh reach Kingston safe an’ ’pon time,” the bus driver riposted.

Kissing her teeth, Hortense offered a choice glare to the bus driver, then turned to Cilbert. “Come, Cilbert. Me cyan’t wait to see de place where we gwarn live.”

“
Don’t
expect nuh palace,” warned Cilbert. “It’s small an’ we ’ave about sixty neighbour living inna de yard. But de rent nuh too bad an’ when yuh start work we coulda save ah liccle. Who knows? Mebbe widin two years we coulda forward to England.” Cilbert closed his eyes for a second, his head tilted upwards. “Yes, sa.
England
! Ah fine ambition.”

From the bus depot, a cautious Cilbert led Hortense due west of the city. Their destination was Trenchtown. Hortense noticed that most of the downtown grocer shops were owned by people of Chinese origin and she wondered if they had to tolerate the same abuse as the Chinese family who ran a grocer’s in Claremont market. Once out of the shopping area and the general hubbub of downtown Kingston, they found themselves in a bewildering network of alleyways and dusty, narrow lanes where skinny goats, scrawny chickens and fat cockroaches were fellow pedestrians. The heat seemed to grow more intense. Hortense felt her soles crunching hard-backed insects. Her white frock was now flecked with fine dust and soot that drifted from the many fires of the shanty dwellers. She noticed that Cilbert didn’t strut with the same cocksure assurance he displayed in the country. He was constantly checking behind him, his eyes on permanent alert. “Hold on to ya t’ings,” he advised. “Robber-mon an’ all kind ah criminal der about.”

Fifteen minutes later they arrived outside a two-storied stucco building of twelve apartments. It was encircled by a seven foot concrete and zinc wall. Surrounding this and other government yards, hugging the outside of perimeter walls, were squatter camps where the denizens fashioned their homes out of termite-ravaged timber, levelled oil drum cans, jagged, bitten sheets of corrugated roofing and fourth-hand bed sheets. Hortense looked on the poor wretches who lived in the shanty huts and shook her head. A barefooted woman, three small children about her feet, was stirring a blackened pot full of banana slops over a flickering wood fire. She didn’t bother to swat away the flies that were lapping around her head. An elderly, white-whiskered man, dressed only in a soiled pair of shorts, was unashamedly crawling on the dusty ground, collecting cigarette butts. Cilbert took Hortense by the arm and led her inside the government yard.

Hortense found herself in a horseshoe-shaped forecourt, at the centre of which stood a water standpipe. A few of the female residents were still taking their midday siestas in the shade offered
by the perimeter wall. A young woman was breast-feeding her baby outside her front door. She was singing to her child, regarding her two-month-old son as only a mother could.

Next door to the mother, an older woman was scrubbing her walls. Another head-scarfed woman was stoking a fire with strips of tyres. Beside her were the four communal toilets and four shower cubicles. Hortense, turning around on the spot and guessing that the men must be at work, commented. “Dis not too bad. De only t’ing is since we walk from de bus depot me don’t see nuh green or big tree. Ah shame. Me sight nuff cacti an’ acacia ’pon de narrow lanes ’pon de way here, but nuh mighty Mahoe ah stan’ proud like inna country. Me gran’papa would nah like dis place at all! But me realise why dey call dis place Trenchtown. De smell from de open sewage pit dat de shanty people use nearly tek off me nose!”

Uneasy about something, Cilbert led Hortense to their ground floor apartment. Hortense nodded with approval when her shoes echoed off the tile flooring. She lifted her eyes and discovered that the apartment consisted of one room and a kitchen shared with a neighbour. There were two double beds situated against opposite walls, a pine china cabinet and two cane chairs that required remeshing. A tired-looking, beaten up sofa was pushed against another wall.

“So, dis is it,” said Cilbert matter of factly, secretly thinking of Mr DaCosta’s spacious home and grounds back in Claremont. “But wid de grace ah de Most High, it’ll only be ah short while we stay here. But at least we togeder at last, under we own roof. Now we cyan mek ah fine life togeder.”

Closing the door, Hortense went up to Cilbert and tossed his hat to the floor. “So, Cilby,” she said seductively. “Yuh don’t waan to christen me ’pon me first day inna de big city? Me need ah massage becah de bus seat tough like police station bench. Yuh gwarn give me ah massage, Cilby?”

Forgetting his dislike of his new environment, Cilbert lifted Hortense off her feet and carried her to the bed. “Me had to tek ah day off from work an’ dem nah pay me. But der is nuh better way of spending me free time.”

Next morning, sitting together on a city bus that wound its way through the downtown area then up towards the hills that backdropped Kingston, Hortense and Cilbert were watching the bare-footed children who were stationed at traffic lights and bus stops, selling nuts, guinep and naseberries to motorists. Hortense noticed the desperate look in their eyes.

“Yuh sure dis Miss Martha is kindly?” Hortense asked. “Me never talk to ah white person before. She related to de new Queen ah England? She ah millionaire? She wear dat shiny somet’ing ’pon her head? Her face blister from de sun like dried red pepper? Yuh cyan see de blue vein inna her feet? She ’ave ah liccle flat bottom? She ’ave legs full of mighty dimple? She sweat like rainwater ah run down de trunk of de mighty Blue Mahoe after hurricane ah lick?”

Cilbert couldn’t help but laugh. “Nuh, sa. Her husband is ah captain at de soldier camp up der inna de hills. Well past Stony Hill. Ah place call Newcastle me t’ink. Miss Martha is fine. When me connect her phone she give me tip to buy two drink. So she well kindly. She tell me dat she need ah cleaner to help around de house an’ me tell her dat me wife soon come from de country. So she tell me to bring yuh come. So, Hortense, ah fine opportunity dis.”

“How do me talk to her? Me affe call her Lady Martha? Me affe bow? Me affe wash her foot-bottom?
Nuh
way me laying down fe her husband!”

Cilbert chuckled again. “Nuh, nuh, sa. Jus’ call her Miss Martha. She easy to talk to an’ she nah gwarn wid high graces an’ look-down-nose dat some white people love to do. She fine. Yuh will see.”

Not convinced, Hortense opted to peer out of the window. “Hmmmm.”