The Day I Fell Off My Island Read online

  Chapter 3

  Despite her bird-like size, Grandma Melba had managed to give birth to sixteen children, including three pairs of twins – though the twins had all died shortly after their birth. Her greatest loves were her grandchildren, her Bible, Grandpa Sippa and tending to her animals. She suffered from frequent headaches and was sensitive to any touch to her head, which meant she rarely combed her mass of matted greying hair and tended to keep it covered with a thick black net. But she had the gentlest of faces that was always ready to break into a smile. Her slanted eyes were golden brown and her skin was a deep black, which I loved because it was exactly the same colour as mine. In fact, we were the two blackest people in the village, something that I was teased about throughout my childhood.

  It was hard to be in Grandma Melba’s company without feeling happy. When she wasn’t smiling, she could be heard laughing, or loudly singing her favourite old spiritual, ‘We Shall Overcome’. She had learnt the tune and words from a radio on the other side of the deep gully that separated us from the neighbouring village. The words that the breeze failed to bring she would make up herself.

  One day, as I sat shelling corn with Grandma Melba and her younger sister, Miss Eula, I listened intently to my great-aunt speaking in a hushed voice about what she described as ‘woman’s trial’.

  ‘Is so tings go here on de island,’ she said. ‘When baby dem want fi born, nutting kyaan stop dem! Dem nuh gwaan wait for doctor to come all de way from town. Woman ave to be strong and be dem own doctor and deal wit whatever de good Lord trow at dem.’

  ‘Amen to dat!’ Grandma Melba responded. ‘Our mada help us born our children and a we hafi help our daughta dem born deres. A soh it go, sis!’

  ‘We still is blessed,’ Miss Eula continued. ‘De good Lord bless me wid two pickney. An yuh know seh, Carmen she dead five minutes after she born and mi only left with Aaron. But mi still ave much to be tankful for! Im bless me with six pickney of him own, soh what mi nuh have innah children, mi mek up in grand pickney dem.’

  Great-Aunt Eula changed the subject when she noticed how hard I was listening. I’d decided that I was never going to have any babies of any kind, ever, but I was still curious as to how my Grandma had managed to find sixteen. Yet, when I tried to broach the subject, they avoided answering me directly.

  ‘Calm, Erna!’ Great-Aunt Eula said, when I asked again. ‘Fi yuh grandmada is de calmest sumady in de whole place.’

  Grandma Melba gave her sister a slightly disapproving look. I well knew that whenever us children crossed the invisible line that we didn’t always know was there, Grandma Melba would be anything but calm – something she always reminded us of with the same refrain: ‘Oonoo pickney know seh me is not a woman quick fi angry.’ Then her smile would disappear to be replaced by a frown, which we knew meant trouble.

  Grandma’s smile did its disappearing trick one afternoon when I’d returned from an errand to Mass Baldwin’s provision shop, where I’d been buying salted mackerel. I made several mistakes that afternoon: first, I took the foolish decision to spend Grandma Melba’s change – a shiny thruppenny bit – on three dozen mint balls, all of which I devoured in record time. Then, I took a brief rest before first plucking out, and then eating, the eyes of the salted mackerel. Finally, I opened up the mackerel and picked away at its tasty salty flesh.

  When I got home, Grandma was sitting quietly on the verandah in her favourite old wicker chair. A snake length of rolled tobacco laid in a coil in her work basket, alongside her cutting board and knife. The large silky tobacco leaf spread across her thigh signalled she was about to begin her cigar making. I handed her the fish, carefully rewrapped in the greaseproof paper, having no idea just how much of it I’d eaten.

  Grandma took the parcel and placed it in the palm of her right hand. Elbow bent, she moved her hand up and down a couple of times. She had a unique ability to judge the precise weight of an item – be it a yam, or a half-devoured salted mackerel. I was about to be rumbled. I wanted to run, but decided that standing very still and waiting was perhaps a better option. My best hope was that Grandma would not burden herself with my little misdemeanour.

  She placed the mackerel on a nearby tin plate, then said, ‘Pickney gal, mek mi ave mi change.’

  ‘Mass Baldwin nuh give me no change, Grandma Melba.’

  I felt a trickle of pee seep into my panties. It felt like it wanted to be a gush, but Grandma had told me that I’d only ever wet myself once – and that was when I was three years old and had seen a great big green tobacco bugaboo with its horrible feelers doing a slow crawl up my dress towards my chest – so I squeezed my legs together and prayed that my face gave nothing away.

  ‘Pickney gal,’ Grandma Melba said again, ‘mi a go ask yuh one more time fi mi change and, while yuh a sort out de answer fi dat, yuh kyan find de answer for wat appen to de mackerel at de same time.’

  ‘But, Grandma Melba, it nuh lie mi a tell! Mass Baldwin nevah give me no change and a soh de mackerel did stay!’

  I’d forgotten that she hadn’t even looked at the mackerel.

  ‘So, tell mi, chile, is how de mackerel did stay?’

  ‘Me nuh know, Grandma, a so it did come wrap up, and, and!’

  ‘Stop, pickney! Stop right now wit yuh foolishness because yuh a mek mi blood pressure rise. Mi want you fi go down a gully an pick one switch and carry it fi me.’

  Relieved to be out of Grandma’s presence, I dashed off to the gully with a plan. Once there, I broke off the thickest piece of wood I could find on the switch tree. I calculated that there was no way Grandma was going to beat me with some great big piece of wood, and, anyway, she wasn’t the beating type. However, when I returned with my stick, I quickly spotted half a dozen of the slimmest, bendiest switches lying beside Grandma’s right foot. She ignored the piece of wood I tried to hand her and carried on rolling the cigar she was making. I stood and watched as she deftly rolled the perfect cigar shape, cut it in one swift movement to the right length, and sealed the end with her home-made paste.

  ‘Mi kyan go now, Grandma Melba? Mi ave fi feed de chicken dem before it get dark.’

  ‘Den is what yuh a wait for, chile?’

  I skipped away, hoping that Grandma Melba was no longer angry with me. Grandma was still rolling her cigars when I returned to let her know that I’d fed the chickens. The orange sun hovered above the horizon; soon it would make its sudden descent and plunge the island into darkness. I saw that the giant wooden mortar, used for pounding cassava and dried corn, had been dragged into the centre of the yard, but the pestle was nowhere to be seen. Lying next to the mortar were Grandma’s bendy switches, which had been tied together to make one big, supple switch. She rose from her wicker chair and walked slowly towards me.

  ‘Mi glad seh you come back innah good time,’ she said, as she took me by the hand and led me over to the mortar.

  My eyes searched again for the pestle, but it definitely wasn’t there, and I realised, with rising dread, that the mortar wasn’t going be used for its usual job. Grandma’s grip on my hand tightened as she bent to pick up the switch. Then she placed the fingers of my right hand at full stretch on the mortar’s edge and brought the switch down with a swish! But, just as quickly, I removed my hand before she could make contact. She made two more attempts before, exasperated, she clamped my hand firmly on the mortar and brought the switch down three times, swish, swish, swish! Then she swapped to my left hand.

  The sting from each strike drew a guttural scream from me. ‘Ow, ow, mi a beg yuh, Grandma Melba, please, mi beg yuh!’ I cried. ‘Mi won’t do it again! Mi a beg yuh!’

  Grandma threw the switch down just as I was thinking that one more strike and all my fingers would surely be cut in half. It felt as though my hands were on fire and the burning sensation crept up all the way to my head. It was hard to look at Grandma Melba after that, I was feeling so vexed because she’d never hurt me like that before, but when I did sneak a sideways glance, I saw that sh
e looked almost as tired and vexed as I was. She lifted her apron and used it to wipe away the beads of sweat that had gathered on her brow, before walking slowly back to her seat.

  Once settled, she called me over and covered my fingers with slices of aloe vera and then wrapped my hands in gauze. The cool of the aloe felt good.

  ‘Erna,’ Grandma spoke quietly, ‘mi did have to beat yuh. Yuh know seh, it nuh something mi do without reason, but a fi mi duty to teach yuh. Mi nuh want yuh fi grow fi be a liar and a tief! Yuh go an lie down now, chile, till de food ready. Yuh Grandfada a go come home soon a look for im dinner.’

  Evening time was when Grandpa Sippa was mostly at home. This made his presence special, not just for Grandma, but for us children, too. People in the village regarded Grandpa Sippa as a gentleman, and the general consensus was that he was a good husband to Grandma Melba and a good grandfather to his grandchildren. Grandpa would always talk to Grandma in a nice, soft manner. Whatever she asked him to do, he did it, and he always kept his promises. He wasn’t a big drinker, like some of the men in the village, but at the end of each day he would measure out a gill of white rum and drink it down in one single swig. Once quenched, Grandpa Sippa would sit down and peruse passages from his King James Bible, while Grandma and us children prepared dinner. On Sundays he took over all the cooking. Grandpa Sippa was a better cook than Grandma, not that anyone would dare to express such a view out loud. His red peas soup with salted pork was delicious and always generously flavoured with Scotch bonnet peppers. Sometimes, when Grandpa washed out the salt from the pork before cooking it, he’d miss a few of the fat little maggots that feasted on the meat, no matter how salty it was, so it wasn’t unusual to find a few well-cooked maggots floating on top of our soup. But Grandpa would dismiss any complaints by telling us, ‘Rememba, what nuh kill, fatten!’

  Grandpa Sippa was as tall as Grandma was short. And although he was a proper grown-up, he still bore the nickname ‘Leanside’. The widely held belief was that it was his great height that caused his body to lean slightly to one side. His crumpled brown face housed the softest of eyes in which I never once saw even a flicker of anger. In fact, I never knew my grandfather to lose his temper over anything. He had a preference for long-sleeved shirts, whatever the weather, even when working on the land, and his skin, when it was revealed, was a pale brown that contrasted strongly with Grandma’s ebony tone. Occasionally, after his evening wash way down by the old tank, Grandpa would walk back to the house wearing just his faded long-johns and old merino vest. That’s when you’d see how pale his over-long arms were. They were paler than his face and hands by far. It was years after we grew up that we found out from the family tree – compiled by a family member over a twenty-year period – that Grandpa Sippa looked the way he did because his grandfather was a Scottish slave owner. The tell-tale signs were also there in his short-cropped hair, which laid on his head in tiny straight strands, and in his eyes, which resembled the dull grey of sky preparing for rain.

  I never heard the story of how my grandparents came to be married, but I knew that Grandpa was born in the village of Falkirk, a village several miles away from our own. His mother, who was known as ‘Queen Mother James’, was rumoured to have had more children than any other woman on the island – twenty-three in total – and the records showed that she died when she was one hundred and eight years old. Apparently, Grandpa’s Sippa’s father died from exhaustion. The family tree also revealed that Grandma and Grandpa were second cousins.

  Since he was eighteen years old, Grandpa Sippa had regularly visited Cuba – the story went that, for that first trip, he and his younger brother Basil built their own boat and sailed it the ninety miles from our island all the way to Cuba; as a child, I had no idea how improbable that was, but it was never disputed by anyone in our village. Following the birth of his first six children, Grandpa Sippa travelled to Cuba again. After some three years away, he returned from this final trip and discovered that Grandma Melba had somehow given birth to two extra babies, a girl and a boy. The babies each had different surnames, neither of which were my grandparents’. Grandpa Sippa must have truly loved Grandma because, despite this turn of events, the marriage continued without interruption and a further eight children were born, all carrying my grandfather’s surname.

  After my grandmother, Grandpa Sippa’s next biggest love was for his land. He grew a variety of vegetables – from root staples, like yams, cassava and sweet potatoes, to corn and various types of peas and beans – as well as herbs and spices. There was an abundance of fruit trees all over his land too. One of our jobs as children was to climb the trees to pick and collect the fruit, as each variety ripened. It was a responsibility we revelled in, particularly in mango season. Then there were his fields of tobacco, which he grew for Grandma to make her famous Cuban cigars – at her most productive, she could make up to five hundred cigars in a week.

  The two of them were always up at the crack of dawn, awakened by the incessant crowing of Percy, our proud rooster. ‘De noise dat fowl mek coulda wake up de dead,’ Grandma often joked. Percy had a habit of keeping up his racket until everyone in the village was awake. Then he’d stop as quickly as he’d begun.

  Grandma Melba’s mornings started in the kitchen. Her first task of the day was to prepare Grandpa Sippa his Thermos of strong hot coffee. Then he’d take the cigar she’d rolled especially for him and set off to get started on whatever work was needed. At some point he’d be joined by Alfredo and Garfield, the two young village men who worked with him to do the digging, planting, lifting and moving that was required that day. Before getting started on breakfast preparation, which was the only meal that Grandma Melba was adept at cooking, she would gather us children for our daily dose of peeled bitter aloe, followed by a small tin mug of sweetened cerasee tea – although no amount of sugar was ever able to disguise its bitter taste. She was passionate about our health and she believed the aloe vera plant and the cerasee bush could rid us of any ailment and prevent others from developing. She would then set about making a breakfast of salted codfish and ackee. If ackee was out of season, Grandma would cook Grandpa’s preferred breakfast of callaloo and salted mackerel. Breakfast was always accompanied by a combination of root vegetables, fried dumplings and cassava flatbread, which we called bammy. Grandma always cooked our breakfast with love and she would sit and watch as we ate, listening to us murmuring constant sounds of enjoyment.

  ‘Mi see oonoo lick yuh finger clean again,’ she would say. She liked nothing better than to see us lick every last bit of taste from our fingers and then mop our plate clean with a piece of bammy.

  If we weren’t in school, we would head off with Grandma to bring Grandpa his breakfast, and then, while Grandma returned to make her cigars, we’d help Grandpa work the land. He trusted us with razor-sharp machetes and hoes, which were taller than we were, and we often worked alongside him and his workmen to clear the land in preparation for the new season. Our grandparents prided themselves on growing or making just about everything we needed – Grandma even made our own cooking and hair oil from coconuts.

  But our daily life was far from all work. Once we’d completed our chores, we were free to play to our hearts’ content. We ran impromptu races and climbed trees, daring each other to climb the highest and thinnest of branches. We created swings from slimy vines and made skipping ropes from sisal. We played hopscotch, Punchinello, dandy shandy, jacks, and a marble game called chinking. And Patricia and I developed our own small business, making spinning tops and toy cars out of scraps of wood and discarded tin cans. There were no restrictions on our play, and we took equal pleasure in creating grass dolls one day and then playing cricket the next, alongside all the village boys. Any child who could hold a bat and throw a ball halfway accurately was allowed to join the team. On the last Saturday of each month, we’d join our grandfather and the young men who gathered from across the district to play village cricket, unless a professional match was being played on the i
sland on the same day – then, the village games were suspended and everyone would head to the district cricket pitch to listen to the big match being relayed over a radio hooked up to loudspeakers.

  In our village no one owned a radio, so sometimes we joined the other village children and entertained ourselves by singing songs that were meant for funerals, because they were tuneful and full of nice words. We argued and play-fought and sometimes had real fights, drawing a crowd eager to take sides. Someone would give themself the role of referee, while everyone else jumped around giving advice to the fighters on where to land a good punch: ‘Go on, Erna, punch him innah im big mout now, man!’

  In the evening we’d gather in our yard under the massive breadfruit tree to listen to Grandpa Sippa tell duppy and Anancy stories. These were the only times that Grandpa got involved with us children at a playful level, and we listened, captivated.

  ‘Duppies,’ Grandpa explained, ‘are long-dead humans who are said to return from their graves during the hours of night in order to right a wrong, or to torment a wicked person. The dead can return in any form. Human, animal, and even birds.’

  Grandpa told us that one of the scariest duppies was known as the Rolling Calf – a cow that had the ability to turn itself into any animal. It never actually attacked anyone, but anyone who had the misfortune of encountering it would definitely end up in the madhouse. I often begged Grandpa Sippa to tell us one of the Rolling Calf stories as we gathered with other village children under the breadfruit tree. Grandpa would start every story as tradition demanded with a call and response.

  ‘Mi seh crick! Yuh seh crack!’ he’d say.

  ‘Crick!’ he’d shout, and ‘Crack!’ we’d respond.

  ‘Once upon a time, a man was walking in de street one night when him met up wit a Rolling Calf. It was a duppy with fire and flames coming outta him eyes. But de man didn’t know it was a duppy, so him ask him for a light. De duppy started grinning im teeth at de man. De man get frighten and start to run. But when im reach de other end of de road, de Rolling Calf was right dere again. “So we meet again,” said the duppy, and de poor man him fall down dead wit fright.’