The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir (29 page)

She holds me and mutters that I could still change my mind. There must be another way around this. I wrap my arms around her and squeeze. It isn’t fair. In my heart of hearts I don’t want to leave either, but I don’t see a way I can stay. Plus the wheels have been set to turning and I am already on my way.

When I go to see Grandma, the lump in my throat almost makes me call the travel agent to cancel my ticket. When I tell her I am leaving for America, she wipes her eyes with her handkerchief and nods. Her hands are gentle on my shoulder as she begs me to be careful. “America is a
very big place, and you was never very big. But me will be here praying for you. Every day that God send I am going to put you safety before the Lord—God bless the day that you was born…” She buries her face into her hands and sobs.

I put my arms around her and hold her until she stops shaking. I remember how easily I left her crying at that tiny bus stop in Bethel Town. I wish I could tell her how sorry I am about that, how wrong I was to think we would have been better off without her. I want to be nine again so I can hug her, say how grateful I am that she looked after Delano and me for all those years. I want to explain to her that I am not my mother, that I will come back. But I am twenty-four years old and I know better than to make promises I’m not sure I can keep. So I just rub her face and tell her that as soon as I get a job I will send her some money. She makes me promise that if she dies I will come home for the funeral. I promise, though I am not certain I will ever see Jamaica again. I need to be far away from the things that have happened to me here.

As I board the plane, the attendant accidentally drops my passport on the floor. “Oh, I’m sorry, dear. Looks like somebody doesn’t want you to go today. How long will you be gone?”

I smile as she hands me my boarding pass. It takes all my willpower not to say that I intend to be away until it is safe for Jamaicans to be openly gay. I try not to think of how long that might be. From my window seat on the plane the world seems small, manageable. And as the ground falls away, a feeling of excitement wells up inside me. Suddenly it dawns on me that, though leaving is hard, this is something I want to do. The choice to go is
my
decision. For the first time in my life my leaving is something I
want
to be happening to me.

T
oday my relationship with most of my family remains somewhat estranged. But now there exists an odd symbiosis of phone calls and very short visits dictated by scheduling and distance. In the effort to connect them to each other, I pass photographs and messages and facilitate three-way calls between people who have not seen each other in decades. Delano has settled in a valley somewhere between the snowy mountains in the Alps. My mother, who also remained in Europe, has become an interesting character. Her third and youngest child is sixteen years my junior, and already my sister has given the family a berth wide enough for all of us to drown in.

Over the years Grandma changed very little. Except for getting older and older and more fascinated with predicting her own death, she was the same old woman who told me stories of my past and encouraged me to lay my troubles at the feet of Jesus to make everything all right. Every time I went home to see her, she would say the same things. “Remember, now, Stacey, God save you from that pit toilet for a reason. No matter what worries you have, don’t forget, you have many blessings too. Make good use of the breath of life. Time is passing, and the Heavenly Father soon call all of us home. I tell you, you might not come back and see the old lady sitting here again.”

Having heard this speech a million times before, I would nod and snap photographs of her as she got warmed up. “Look at me, look how me old—Stacey, you know that me nearly a hundred year old now?”

“Me know, Grandma, me know.”

“Me know you know, but me still telling you. The Bible only promise us three score years and ten—I wouldn’t have a thing to complain about if the good Lord decide to take me home tonight.”

But when she passed away in September 2007 I was still unprepared for her leaving. I felt as if I had suddenly become an orphan. Her physical absence from Jamaica has forced me to examine the ways in which Jamaica is still my home. And when I bump up against seemingly insurmountable obstacles she remains the voice of encouragement in my head, urging me to at least
attempt
the impossible, to let the record show that I did not shy away from any task simply because I was afraid. Her life stands as the example of how much one can do with so little.

Junior Chin and I still speak occasionally. When I ring, our talk is of economy and politics.
Yes, Obama’s victory is historical. No, McCain is not as good-looking. Or as smart as Hillary. I know, I know, but it’s a real shame about the foreclosures, eh? Jamaica is bound to bear the brunt of the recessional aftershock.
He still maintains that I am not his biological daughter and he refuses to do a DNA test. But for better or worse, he is the only father to which I can lay any claim. And outside of a mild curiosity (to know for sure), I am not certain that such scientific knowledge is necessary. Perhaps I am only in denial, but there is something wonderful in the muddy gray that informs our spirited interaction.

I am learning that one never really puts a turbulent childhood completely to rest. As an adult, I have been very lucky. As soon as I got to New York City I discovered the culture of performance poetry. From the very first moment I stepped to the microphone, I have been telling bits of this story in verse, in prose, and, later on, more fully in autobiographical one-person Off-Broadway plays. The constant examination of the life I have lived has made it clear to me that the events of those early years were not my fault; I did nothing to deserve being abandoned or assaulted or otherwise abused. After that I began the business of managing my defense mechanisms, neuroses, and general feelings of worthlessness.

More than ten years and thousands of dollars and countless romances later, I am mostly proud of the path I have taken. A few regrets linger among these pages. I wish I had found a way to remain closer to my brother. And I wish I hadn’t been as hard on my friends when I came out in Jamaica. I also ache for my mother to find a place where she feels at rest. I have yet to find a way to let her know that I understand that she
was young and under the siege of poverty when she left us. In a way, she saw a choice between trying to save us and saving herself. The fallout was massive, but I cannot say that under similar circumstances I would have done differently. These days, she spends our phone calls lamenting that she does not deserve my kindnesses. I am hoping that if and when I have a child, she will have the room to be a doddering and doting old grandmother. Perhaps she can find forgiveness for herself in an easy relationship with a child who wears my face.

In some ways, the tools I developed as a child have served me well in my career. I go from place to place spouting the gospel of courage and survival. I encourage victims to take hold of destiny and chart it for themselves. But I know that not all of us have the emotional or financial resources right at our fingertips. Some people will have to work much harder than I did; others will suffer more permanent scars. Many of the characters in the early part of this tale remain impoverished and without any discernible escape from that poverty. And when I visit them in Jamaica, I am often caught between anger at the suffering I endured in the years I spent with them and understanding that, more often than not, people did the best they could under remarkably difficult and pressing circumstances.

My friends say I am mellowing. And at the risk of proving such a statement true, I must admit that, these days, I am more inclined to kindness than rage. Most mornings I become conscious at dawn, with my cat stepping on my head as if I am not there. But if I want to enjoy a moment of stillness before being pounced on, I keep my eyes closed, pretending I am still asleep. For when I eventually stir, my dogs, London and Kingston, will come sailing at me missile-like through the air, excited and insisting that I get up and fill their empty bowls.

New York City has been good to me. It has been everything I needed and more. Between Broadway and Brooklyn, Far Rockaway and the Bronx, I have kept pace with its teeming, changing, grueling skyline. I continue to be grateful for the friends who consistently show up at Thanksgiving and Christmas and Kwanzaa and Hanukkah and Easter and all the other holidays when biological families usually gather. Sitting with them over smothered chicken and stuffing and fried plantains and sushi, I can safely say I did more than just survive.

A
s it reads, this story would not have been possible without my friend and editor, Alexis Gargagliano. A believer in my awkward poems and my self-indulgent, multicultural identity, she followed my career and waited till it was possible and prudent to bid on this memoir. She has read draft after draft and navigated my doubts and neuroses, my sorrows and my small triumphs for three years. She has cooked for me and cried with me. And when my grandmother passed away, she was patient and sometimes far gentler than was required as she encouraged me to stay with the process. I had no idea how well I was choosing when I decided to trust her, and Scribner, with the disconnected patchwork of narratives that has become this version of my survival.

The other hands that stirred the pot of this story have been many and varied.

Frances Goldin, my agent and friend, finds time to kiss my face, read unfinished drafts, travel to see Mumia on death row, do yoga, cook soups for sick friends, and tell all her clients how lucky she feels to represent them. I know that it was my good fortune to have met you and your trusty sidekick, Ellen Geiger.

I tip my hat to my friend and mentor, Walter Mosley, who mandated that I
write for two hours every day.
Thank you for listening to my fears and giving me the best advice in the business.

I could not proceed without saying thanks to those who gave me permission to write my story, even when they were not sure how kind my pen would be. I remain grateful in that trust for my sister/friend, Racquel
Bremmer, my mother, Hazel, my brother, Delano, my cousins Elisha and Annmarie, my Auntie Olga, and the others who, out of respect for their privacy, I have decided to keep anonymous.

My Jamaican cheering squad remains undaunted by those who would rather I keep my counsel. To them I extend my most heartfelt gratitude: Kerry-Jo Lyn, Camara Brown, Maziki Thame, Vivette Miller, Karl Williams, Dane Lewis, June Lewis, Deean Fontaine, Lana Ho-Shing, Colin Channer, Natalie Bennett, Aliya Leslie, Sandra Mullings, Lisa Mullings, Natasha Gracey, Nkromo Ross, Ysanne Latchman, and the sea of others who would speak alongside me if they could.

Then there are those who first encouraged the story through poetry and theater: Kamau Brathwaite, Roger Bonair-Agard, Lynne Procope, Eric Guerrieri, Guy Gonzalez, Allan Buchman, Ira Pittleman, Carolyn Allen, Ruby Sales, CC Carter, Soyini Dyson, Jackie Anderson, Greg Polvere, the late Peter James Conti, his mother Carole Conti, and the plethora of activists and artists I have met and worked with since happening upon New York life. I don’t think I would have had the courage to write this book without those early years of being onstage.

Others who do not fall so easily into neat categories but have been invaluable to my process as a writer and a functional human being include Michael, Dionne Brand, Leleti Russell, Asha Punnett, Andrea Barrow, Angela Williams, Gloria Bigelow, Shontina Vernon, Kalamu Ya Salaam, Laini Madhubuti, Tiona McClodden, Bernadette “Ebony” Brown, Alana Proctor, Asha Bandele, Carmen Grau, Mark Chung, Michelle Hampton, Shawn Carter, Lisa Schwinghammer, and Larah Mills-Moller. To you and the host of hands who have kept me sane and smiling, I owe my best self.

And finally, to the voices who have been listening from afar and waiting for this story, thank you for waiting and making me feel like there would be palms open enough to receive this tale. I hope I have done the telling justice. I hope it rings clear with pieces of your own truths, your own stories, your yearning for the other side of your very own paradise.