The Polished Hoe (2 page)

“When there is a full moon, people behave strange. But tonight, with no moon at all, my behaviour was still strange, granted.

“Tonight, the thirteenth, a Sunday, in spite of no moon, the act that I committed, however the people in this Island wish to label it, is not a act, or behaviour of a woman ruled by a full moon; nor of a woman who chooses darkness over light, to move in, or to hide her act in.

“My footprints that you say might be evidence, was, in the darkness, strong footprints, if not stronger even than my temperriment itself. And my act went along with that. I was determined. And deliberate. Because I knew what my cause was. And I had a cause.”

The lights dip from their brilliance; and for just one second, it is dark in the front-house, where they are; dark, as when, long ago, the wind would run through these same windows, and brush aside the flames from the mantles of the large acetylene lamps that have
Home Sweet Home
printed in white letters on their polished lampshades. Just for one moment, that moment that it takes for a mouse the same colour as the carpet to steal into a corner.

But wind cannot play those tricks with the electric lighting. The two bulbs hang low, just above their heads, from two long, ugly brown electrical wires, on which, during the day, and especially late at night, flies and other bugs make their homes, and their graves; and are stuck to death.

The wind continues pushing itself through the windows, and brings on its breath the smell of flowers, poinsettia and lady-of-the-night and the strong smell of sugar-cane juice from the Factory. And the lingering intoxicating smell of burnt sugar canes; and the pungency of burnt cane trash, comes into the front-house with them . . .

“From the time, way-way back, when Ma, my mother, out of need, sent me while I was still a lil girl, seven or eight, to the Plantation to work in the fields, from that time, I had a cause. And in particular from that day, when the midwife delivered Wilberforce, I have had a cause.

“And I am very sorry to have to talk this way to you, a Constable, sitting in my front-house, on a Sunday night, filling in for Sargeant, who promise me faithfully, to come later, and take my Statement.

“Incidentally, Sargeant and me, went-school together. Did you know that? He was always inquisitive. Always hunting-down answers. And lizards which he put in cigarette boxes, as coffins, to bury them. Now, we are from two different sides of the paling. But . . .”

“How I should write-down your name, in its official status, ma’am?”

“My name is Mary-Mathilda. My full name is Mary Gertrude Mathilda. But I drop Gertrude because of my maid.”

“The whole Village know your names and your surnames, ma’am. And they worships you.”

“It began, this whole thing, many-many years ago, on a Sunday. A Sunday morning, close to midday, about ten-to-twelve o’clock. We were in the Church Yard of Sin-Davids Anglican Church. Near the graves and tombs and tombstones; where they buried Englishmen and sailors from Lord Horatio Nelson’s fleet that went down in these waters.

“I remember that my shoes were burning my feet. And I had slip them off. To ease the pain. All through the sermon that the Vicar, Revern Dowd, was delivering from the pulpit, so high and powerful; above my head; high as the water tank in the Plantation Yard . . . I couldn’t follow one word that Vicar Dowd was talking, from so on high. His words were too big for me.

“Some words passed my ear, though. I remember that Revern Dowd had-take his sermon from One, Sin-Peter, three, seventeen. Whether I remember it on my own, or Ma had-remind me afterwards, Revern Dowd was saying how it is more better for a man to suffer for his.Well-doing, than for his evil-doing. I remember only those words, from that Sunday.

“It is better, if the will of God be so, that a man suffer for.Well-doing, than for evil-doing.

“Those were the words. I have walked with that text in my heart, since that Sunday. And if, right-now, you open my Bible there on that mahogany centre-table with the white crochet-cloth on it, you will see the text, mark by a palm-leaf cross from last Palm Sunday, One, Sin-Peter, three, seventeen . . .

“It is better to suffer for.Well-doing, than . . .

“I was a lil girl, then; no more than seven or eight; in such pain from my new shoes. My new shoes weren’t purchase new, from Cave Shepherd & Sons, the Haberdasheries store down in Town. They was a pair that the youngest daughter of Mr. Bellfeels had grown outta. Hand-me-downs. Not through inheritance; but castaways. They were new to me, though. Mr. Bellfeels daughter, Miss Emonie, was the same size as me, in clothes and in height. But her shoes pinched like hell, because her feet were white feet; and very narrow.

“That Sunday morning was in the Easter season! It was Easter Even.”

“If you don’t mind me saying so, ma’am,” the Constable says, “Easter is the time I like best outta the whole year o’ goingchurch. Easter! Easter morning, with the singing of carols and psalms!
‘O, all ye beasts of the sea!’

‘Praise Him, and glorify Him, forever!’

“And the sermon does be so sweet. But long. And then, after Easter, is Easter bank holiday! And flying kites! And holding goatraces!”

“The Collect that Sunday, the morning of Easter Even . . . though I can’t naturally call-to-mind the entire Collect, I remember this passage:
‘. . . and that through the grave, and the gate of hell, we may pass to our joyful resurrection . . .’”

“What that mean, ma,am, “the Constable says.

“Resurrection,”
she says.

“Amen!”
the Constable says.

“We may pass to our joyful resurrection. Amen.’”

“For the carol-singing and the sermons, gimme Easter to Christmas, any Sunday morning, ma’am!”

“So, it was that on that same Sunday morning, Ma introduce me to this powerful man. Mr. Bellfeels. He wasn’t Plantation manager then; just a field overseer. A driver, as we labourers called such men. Mr. Bellfeels the Driver.

“Ma was in the gang of women weeding in the North Field. In time, that same North Field was assign to me. And in time, because I was young and vigorous, I became the leader of the same gang of women.

“The sun was bright that Sunday morning of Easter Even. And it was in my face. So, I couldn’t see his eyes. Mr. Bellfeels looked so tall, like the pulpit or the water tower, that I had to hold my head back, back, back, to look in his face. And still, I couldn’t see his face, clear. This man who looked so tall, and me, a little girl, in pain from wearing his own daughter’s shoes that was killing me.

“The sun was playing tricks in his face, too. So, neither of the two of we could see the other person too clear. But he could see my face, because he was looking down.

“Then, Mr. Bellfeels put his riding-crop under my chin, and raise my face to meet his face, using the riding-crop; and when his eyes and my eyes made four, he passed the riding-crop down my neck, right down the front of my dress, until it reach my waist. And then he move the riding-crop right back up again, as if he was drawing something on my body.

“And Ma, stanning-up beside me, with her two eyes looking down at the loose marl in the Church Yard, looking at the graves covered by slabs of marble, looking at the ground. Ma had her attention focused on something on the ground. My mother. Not on me, her own daughter.

“I could smell the rich, strong smell of the leather, just like the leather in the seats and upholstery of the Austin-Healey motor-car that Mr. Bellfeels own. Like the smell of new leather rising in my nose, when I stand in the shoemaker’s galvanized shack, and watch him stitch-round the sole, with his awl, making a pair of boots. That smell. That smell of leather. And the feel of leather of the riding crop, passing over my dress, all over my body, as if it was his hand crawling over my body; and I was naked.

“That Sunday morning, in the bright shining sun, with Ma stanning-up there, voiceless, as if the riding-crop was Mr. Bellfeels finger clasped to her lips, clamped to her mouth to strike her dumb to keep her silence, to keep her peace. From that Sunday morning, the meaning of poverty was driven into my head. The sickening power of poverty. Like the smell of leather, disintegrating from animal skin into raw leather, curing in water; soaking in clean water that becomes mildew, before it is tanned and turn into leather, when it is nothing more than pure, dead, rotten, stinking skin. From a animal.

“‘So, this is lil Mary!’
Mr. Bellfeels say.

“‘
Yes,’
Ma told Mr. Bellfeels, ‘
This is my little Mary.’

“
‘Good,’
Mr. Bellfeels say.

“And not a word more. And then, all of a sudden, the sun that had-went suddenly behind a cloud came out again, and was shining more brighter, and the light had-changed the same way, as in the story that we listened to in Sunday school from
Bible Stories for Children.
Like a miracle of light, this brightness . . . and in this brightness cut short, there was this darkness; and in this blackness, Mr. Bellfeels disappeared.

“And me and Ma walked home. Not a word pass from Ma to me, in our entire journey from the Church Yard, passing the houses on the Plantation property, the Great House, the cottage made from two stables, passing the Pasture some distance from the Harlem Bar & Grill rum shop, cross-over Highgates Commons and Reservoir Lane, the crossroads that divide the Village from the Plantation, through the cane-brake, through the gully, through the other gullies growing Guinea grass and Khus-Khus grass; circumventing the North Field, and fields and lands of the Plantation . . . it was the season for dunks. And we picked a few, and ate them while walking, as our journey consisted of a distance of some length, a mile, a mile and a half from Sin-Davids Anglican Church, to our house beside the road, but in the tenantry, on Plantation land.

“That Sunday, we had the usual food after Church. Me and Ma. Dry-peas and rice. The peas was prepared as doved-peas. The rice cooked with a lil salt beef boil-down-in-it, to add flavour.

“Yes, that Sunday afternoon, after we left the Church Yard and Mr. Bellfeels, we ate roast chicken, doved-peas, and some sweet potatoes that Ma had-stole from the very North Field, the Friday afternoon; one-or-two potatoes, hide-way in her crocus bag apron. We had to steal from the Plantation, to make-do.

“‘
I borrow these offa the Plantation
,’ she told me the Friday, smiling and happy. ‘
In other words, I steal them, Mary-girl!

’ “Constable, you don’t know those days! Lucky you! Days of hardships. But days of great joy and spirit, nevertheless. The joy of a tough life. Cutting and contriving. If you didn’t have it, you found a way to get it. Or a neighbour would come to your rescue.

“Or you steal it. All of us, regardless to position, place, complexion, the Ten Commandments, we-all exacted something from the Plantation. A head of eddoes pull-up outta the ground; you brek-off a piece of cane and suck it, to bring up the gas outta your stomach; pull-off a few red-tomatoes offa the vine in the Plantation kitchen garden; and hide them in a crocus bag.

“Every last man-jack, all of us, devout Christian-minded men and women attending Sin-Davids Anglican Church, three times a Sunday, going to Mothers Union every Wednesday night as God send, we all extracted our due from the Plantation.

“But we paid. We paid dear. With our lives. Every-last-one-of-us!

“Well, you shouldn’t be a stranger to this history. You were bred and born right here, in this Village, in this Island of Bimshire. You see? Here I go, wandering-off again . . .”

“I learning a lot o’ history from you, ma’am. My mother and my gran-mother tell me some o’ the history of here.”

“You remember Clotelle, then? Clotelle who leff-back three nice lil girl-thrildren, when death grab her sudden, and unaware?

“Clotelle, who was always dress in black. From head to foot, mourning like a N’Eyetalian-’snora, as if mourning for a dead husband? Only thing, Clotelle never had one.

“But the Sunday morning, just before Matins, they found Clotelle henging from the tamarind tree in the Plantation Yard? And nobody didn’t know how she got there? And it was Ma who Mr. Bellfeels ordered to cut down Clotelle, cause the Plantation-people was too ashamed and embarrass, and too scornful to touch a dead-body? And how, following after all the fuss that Clotelle mother made over the sudden death of her only child, they held the attopsy. And lo and behold, the attopsy disclose that Clotelle was five months’ heavy, in the family-way! But it didn’t take tummuch for the whole Village to know who the father was? And . . .”

“I hear this from my gran-mother. They made a calypso on Clotelle.”

“It climb to number one on the hit parade. It was a sweet calypso, too. It lasted one week . . .

“Ma tell me she was sixteen when that sad tragedy happened to Clotelle. Ma tell me that she saw Clotelle laying down in the canebrake, with her face washed in tears; and bleeding; and that it was later the same night, in all the rain, that Clotelle climbed up the tamarind tree; and how Clotelle had-use pieces of cloth that she rip-off from her own dress, with all the blood and all the man’s semen staining it; and how Clotelle make a rope outta her own dress, and wrap-it-round the highest branch she could reach in the tamarind tree, and the rest you know. Yes. The rest you know. The
ironies
of history and of life, as Wilberforce like to say. Henging from the tamarind tree, in broad daylight the next day Sunday morning, they found Clotelle, just as Mr. Darnley Alexander Randall Bellfeels, and Mistress Bellfeels, and the two girl-thrildren, Miss Euralie and Miss Emonie, was stepping down the verandah of the Plantation Main House, to cross the gravel path, to get in the Austin-Healey motor-car, the chauffeur holding the door open for them to get in, to be driven to attend Matins at Sin-Davids Anglican Church, ’leven-o’clock-in-the-morning; butting and bounding the schoolhouse building where you went to Elementary School.”