Red Jacket (4 page)

Queenstown

Pa's first cousin, Miss Carmen, is older than him, well past sixty, while Pa is forty-nine on his next birthday. She is the straightest, tallest woman Gracie ever see. Her hair is all white, and she wear it in a long plait coil on top of her head like a crown. She wear clothes make out of African cloth in bright colours, blue and purple, green and red. Even when the colours wash out, the patterns are still striking. The large, loose tops go with long skirts and sometimes trousers.

“Miss Carmen,” Grace ask one day, “how come you wear those clothes?”

Miss Carmen look down on herself, “These? Why? You like them, Grace?”

“Yes, ma'am. I never see people wear day clothes that look like that.”

So Miss Carmen tell Grace how she is a long-time member of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, how she meet the great Marcus Garvey as a little girl and how she go with her mother to the plays and parades in Jamaica that he organize. Miss Carmen born in St. Chris, but she go to Jamaica as a child, and grow up there, returning to St. Chris as a young woman. Gramps long time tell Grace about Marcus Garvey, but Gramps was not so lucky as to meet Mr. Garvey.

“I love these clothes,” Miss Carmen say at the end of her story. “They are very comfortable, and they make me feel queenly.” She smile. “But,” she go on, “I also wear them so people will take notice. I want folks to learn about our heritage, about where our ancestors came from, and I want them to understand the struggles we've faced.”

Miss Carmen always talking about heritage: mostly African heritage, but also English heritage, which some Christophians have in their blood, but all have in their head. The English run St. Chris from they capture it in the seventeenth century till the island get Independence nine years ago. “Well expressed in our children's rhyme,” Miss Carmen say, “We talk English/we walk English/we run English/can't done English!” Now she is also studying her Asian heritage for she just discover her mother's grandpa was a indentured labourer, come from India to work in the cane fields of St. Chris.

Grace think a lot about that word, “heritage.” She wonder if a person's heritage could get into their blood. And Miss Carmen is not even as black as Pa or Gramps or Ma. She is brown, though her hair is kinky. Maybe one day she can talk to Miss Carmen about where her red skin and puss eyes come from.

25 March 1972

Dearest daughter,

Well, congratulations my teenager! You are now beginning your thirteenth year! The next thing I'll hear is you are a big married lady! I know you are growing up into a fine person and I pray that you are happy. Today I'm asking God to give you three gifts. I'm asking him to make you glad to be the person you are. I'm also praying you will always be assured that many people love you: God loves you, everybody in the Carpenter family loves you, Granny Vads and Granny Daphne love you, and I love you. Thirdly, I pray you find the reason for your life. The priest at Mass this morning said that there are two important days of your life, the day you were born and the day you know why.

For myself, I pray one day I'll get to see you and tell you how much I love you. I think you were the reason why I was born, and I long to see My Reason!

I am sorry I have not been so good at the news in my last letters. It's always the same thing over and over, and most of it is bad. The one good thing is that black people seem to be making some progress in getting their rights at last. I don't want to talk too soon, but we are all hoping and praying.

I'm sorry to leave you, but I have to hurry, as I want to post this on my way to work. God bless you, my daughter.

Your mother,

Phyllis

Grace is walking home from school, looking at the people around her and thinking that some of these town people look so mix up, she can't pick out any one heritage. She is thinking that life in Queenstown is very mix up too. For one thing, day and night collide, with people always on the street, cursing, laughing, shouting, dancing to sound system music. It so noisy Grace have to sleep with a pillow over her head and descend into a deep underground of sleep from which she wake drugged and headachy, instead of refreshed like in Wentley Park.

Mansfield Avenue is one long stretch of bar and dance hall. There is never room enough, so people dance in covered yards on dry hard-packed earth or on cement that they pour over dirt, so it break up and they have to patch it over and over. The bumpy floors of poor people ballrooms don't stop them, though. As night descend, people start dancing and sometimes, even in the days.

Grace never tired to see the plenty different signs inviting people to come inside and dance. She copy them down and send them to Stewie and Edgar because they are so hilarious. In one part of the avenue, the signs always rhyme. “Cosmo as President Taft, Carl as Chaka Zulu, and Fenton as John Shaft invites you to celebrate The Year of the Water Rat at Steve's Hideaway. A Nite of Passion in the Latest Fashion. Come Even If Your Bones Squeak. We Got the Tonic to Make You Feel Sonic.” And “Lord Niney Moon and Lord Tenny Sun with Don the Juan and Sancho the Pancho Call One and All to the Original Mansfield Dance Hall for a Night of Dance Till You Drop at Hal's Honeypot House. Pay the Cover and Be a Lover.”

Stewie and Edgar invent their own notices and send back. She hope neither Gramps nor Ma nor Pa see the dance party advertisements they are making up. As far as she is concerned, plenty teenagers in Wentley are parents already, and her brothers' rudeness is funny more than disgusting.

Stewie's English teacher say the class must write poems and send to the St. Chris newspapers. The idea of writing a poem is a big joke to Stewart, but he tell Edgar, who been writing songs and stories and poems since long time ago. So Edgar start to send poems to the paper. He make sure to enclose copies of them in his letters to Grace. No poems don't appear yet, but he is persevering.

Grace is truly glad for the letters from Ma, Pa, Gramps, and her brothers. Even Conrad, who not any fan of putting pen to paper, send a short note now and then. Ma also send a parcel every so often by someone coming in from Wentley: St. Chris spice cake or Ma special potato pudding as well as pocket money and toiletries that Grace figure are courtesy of Mr. Wong. She will go home when Christmas come. Till then she must live with the noise and confusion of Queenstown and make what she can of her school of first choice and newfound place of torture, the great St. Chad's.

It is such a struggle to focus her mind in the musical commotion taking place on Miss Carmen's street every night that after she board there one month, Grace start staying late at school so she can do some of her homework in the library. By the time she reach third form, Grace is staying at school every day to do homework. Now, in fourth form, she is starting the University of Cambridge's O Level Exam Syllabus and most days it take over four hours to finish her homework.

When November and December come, it is well past dark when she is getting home. As she walk down Mansfield Avenue, it seem to Grace that the dance party craze is getting more widespread. Nowadays the speaker boxes live outside for they take up too much space in premises that want to jam in the biggest number of patrons. The huge black rectangles come like small residences. Grace figure that anyhow a hurricane blow down your house, you could easy move into one of them! Not that Miss Carmen's house is in any danger of blowing down, for it is a sturdy concrete structure, with hurricane straps on the roof and plywood shutters for the windows, just in case. Because she has boarders, older folks especially, Miss Carmen say she cannot take any risk.

Stewie, Edgar, and Conrad still write her faithfully, and Ma, Pa, and Gramps too.
The Clarion
publish two of Edgar's poems, and he is proud as a setting hen. They even pay him a few dollars. She put the clippings of the poems on her wall.

“Mind how you staying on the street till late at night,” Stewie caution.

“Careful and don't take any chances in that Queenstown city,” Edgar write.

“Please, I beg you, take care of yourself, my Gracie!” Conrad is practising the intricacies of punctuation.

25 March 1974

Dearest daughter,

I nearly missed your birthday this year. Granny Evadne took sick in the middle of this month, the fifteenth to be exact and we had to call an ambulance and take her to hospital. It was bronchitis and it gave us a big scare but she came around quick-quick and was back at home in two days. You pay more for hospital care here than for good gold, so it was just as well she was home so soon. I never left her side after that for bronchitis is a serious business in a person of her age. Luckily the nuns gave me leave from work with no problem. Your Grandma Daphne and Lucille who boards here were Trojans. Daphne came and stayed for the first three days after Grannie Vads came out of hospital. Lucille stayed with a friend so Daphne could have her bedroom, but she came to help every day. After that Daphne came on Sundays so I could get a break. I had to mind Granny Vads for three weeks but eventually she was well enough so I could go back to work. Looking after Granny Vads is frustrating, especially making her obey the doctor's instructions. She keeps getting up and dusting and sweeping if I don't look sharp.

I said my usual prayers for you today, begging God to watch over and guide you. I truly wish I were there to celebrate with you, my daughter. Have a wonderful birthday! I have to hustle and finish writing this, for the letter cannot have a postmark later than month end. It's cruel, but that's the arrangement, and I keep my side. Granny Vads is calling me, so I really have to go. Have a happy year and study hard.

Sending all my love,

Your mother,

Phyllis

There are four other lodgers who live with Grace and Miss Carmen, for that is how Miss Carmen make her living. Two are sisters, old ladies with all their family gone abroad. Nobody connected to them is left in St. Chris, but they refuse to go to the United States, Canada, or England, where they have sons and daughters.

“We can't stand the coldness and furthermore we not able for anybody to treat us like we have no nose on our face.” So say Miss Isoline.

“We live here as human being for too long. Better to be poor and somebody, than rich and no better than a stray dog.” So say Miss Glosmie.

Miss Carmen do everything for Miss Isoline and Miss Glosmie: cook, clean, wash clothes, get medicine, write letters, take them to doctor, take them to church, see that every day they walk around the small yard in the back. Every month their children send money to take care of them. Miss Carmen manage their bank business too, pay their tithes at church, put a smalls in their savings accounts, make their contribution to Burial and Benevolent Societies.

Grace help Miss Carmen with the old ladies. She iron their clothes, fetch things from the grocery and the pharmacy, make them tea and lemonade, walk with them around the yard, read to them sometimes. Pa and Ma pay something for her bed and board, but this assistance from Grace is part of the arrangement, and Grace don't mind, for Miss Carmen is a perfect lady who, never mind Grace's help is her due, always say, “please” and “thank you.”

There is space for two other boarders, and in the time Grace been in Queenstown, two young lady students from America come and go. The two boarders who just arrive since September to take their place are connected to Miss Carmen distantly: Mr. Fillmore Buxton is Miss Carmen's dead husband's first cousin once removed. (Grace is not sure how that work, but she will ask Ma.) He look like he is maybe forty or so. Mr. Buxton's wife, Ermina, look plenty older than him. She is on leave from her job as a schoolteacher to get her BA degree, and she is in her second year at the Adventist College in Queenstown. He is supposed to be looking for work. They don't have no children.

Grace don't see Mrs. Buxton often, for in addition to her studying, she give extra lessons to make money. Mr. Buxton is not in the house very much either — Grace presume he is out hunting for a job — except on Sundays when Miss Carmen provide everyone with a dinner fit for a bishop, complete with special beverage and dessert. After Sunday dinner, the Buxtons are accustomed to visit Mrs. Buxton's sister that live outside Queenstown in a settlement called Freedom Heights, almost an hour's bus ride from Mansfield Avenue.

So one Sunday afternoon when Miss Carmen is taking her once-a-week sleep after dinner, and the old ladies are taking their regular afternoon nap, Grace is surprised to hear somebody tap on her door at the time when she usually organize herself for school. That is when she iron her uniform, darn any tear in her middy blouse or her school tunic, clean her shoes, wash and oil her hair. Sometimes, like today, she finish her homework early so she read and maybe have a little lie-down.

When she open the door, it is Mrs. Buxton.

“Miss Grace, I am sorry to disturb you.”

“It's okay, Mrs. Buxton. Something wrong?”

“I don't really know. Mr. Buxton leave after dinner, say he was going to the corner to buy cigarettes, you know, from those fellows that sell on the road?”

Grace nod.

“I don't see him since, and if we don't get the next bus to go to my sister, it will be too late, and we can't not go, for she count on us for certain little things …” She pause, like she not sure how to say exactly what she mean.

Grace nod again, this time to say she understand what Mrs. Buxton is saying delicately. “Certain little things” could mean they take her money or foodstuffs or toiletries. “Certain little things” could also mean she is simple, or not entirely in her right mind, or handicapped in some other way and the once-a-week visit is the only time she get help to clean, cook, or do her hair.