< Situations and Revelations of Passing Notice in Guyana >
Locket # 35:
My Aunt used to be the person I turned to with my growing up, living in the
District and what would become of me problems. She was just over forty,
and not married.
She lived in New York for awhile and when she came back she had this funny
accent that annoyed a lot of people. In Georgetown she got a job with a
Chinese company. That annoyed more people who wondered what she was
doing there, back home and acting like some kind of traitor working for
foreigners. She said she was a liaison official. Nobody knew what she meant.
On account of her “connections” my mother got this job at the front desk of
a private Georgetown hospital. “You’re a commuter,” she told my mother,
who had to catch a minibus back and forth from Canal District. It helped out,
because my father lost his job at the sugar estate.
She encouraged my mother in Georgetown ways, like the two of them meeting
for lunch at a restaurant. After awhile Mum stopped taking a wrap-up roti to
work. She started paying attention to her weights. I could tell from the way
she patted her tummy, leaning close to the bathroom mirror to examine lines
and little puffs, she was concerned now about how she looked.
My father got suspicions. Is who you going to meet in Georgetown? She told
me make sure his food was ready so he didn’t complain. When she got home
the first thing she asked was if he had eaten.
He loved his hassar curry. And horse racing. And playing dominoes with the
other laid off workers waiting for the factory to start back grinding again.
He didn’t pay attention to all the things clogging the arteries that they warn
you about now. He used to brush off his chest pains. “Is just gas, it does
squeeze you tight, bloat you up, but it always pass.”
The doctor warned him for a long time, Cut out this, cut out that. He was
stubborn. “Is best they cut out my heart and put in a new heart.” One day
his forehead got damp; he grabbed his chest and passed away.
I had finished my final school year and was planning to sign up for courses at
our university.
When Dad died, people in the District were surprised how fast my Aunt showed
up, with her bossy accent and her cell phone, organizing everything. As family
she had every right, but when it come to sickness, death and funerals,
neighbors, friends, everybody in the District want to get involved.
Mum met people at the gate offering comfort. My father’s friends showed up
with alcohol and dominoes for a last farewell session at the back of the house.
My Aunt was like a total stranger to them. She asked them to “show respect
for our privacy.” Their kind of recreation was inappropriate. And maybe they
should concentrate on finding new employment. They grumbled, Like this
woman running everything here now. They decided not to take her on.
Sadness hung over us like a soft lamp. We went to sleep early. I would catch
Mum crying in the bedroom, legs drawn up and squeezed tight. They gave
her a few days off. She was moody. I let her hug me for comfort now and
then.
But I was really impressed by how Aunt took control, businesslike, not one
tear in her voice or her eye. She helped us move on, or in Mum’s case start
over. She kept us positive.
She wasn’t a frequent visitor to our home. My father didn’t like her. It started
when he decided to build a little extension at the back, with galvanize roof,
table and chairs, for him and his friends.
Aunt came one quiet Sunday, took one look at it, and condemned it as a
hazard; and how sooner or later the walls and the roof would fold in and
collapse, crushing the dominoes players and scattering the dominoes.
“Try hand carpenters pounding in the dark is how this happen. Fooling
themselves they can build something to last,” she said. To which my father
told Mum, Some people in your family think they know everything. Skinny
legs in baggy trousers. Unemployed down there, no wonder she can’t find a
man. He stopped talking to Aunt after that.
Some District sisters you can’t keep apart. My mother went to my Aunt with
her problems. Told her everything that was going on at our house. Things I
had no idea were happening and I was right there in the house.
"You know why you’re an only child?” Aunt once asked me. “The doctor had
to tie your mother’s tubes after she had you.” For what reason? “Because
having another child would have been risky.” So how come Mum never told
me that herself. “We were waiting till you were old enough to understand.
Just pray you don’t inherit her condition.”
And because she told me not to, I didn’t confront Mum to remind her I
wasn’t a child anymore.
Why did I listen to Aunt? She had more experience for one, and she had this
confident way of speaking. She wasn’t a mandir regular like people in the
District, though she told me she was involved in something called meditation
therapy.
This lady from India landed in Georgetown, rented a building, put up this
sign, Tender Touch Meditation Therapy, and got my Aunt to spread the
word. You have nothing better to do in your spare time? Mum said.
Plenty people in Georgetown, with nothing better to do, signed up. “If you
must surrender mind and body to anyone here Tender Touch Therapy is the
best bargain,” she told people. “It will put you at peace with the world.”
She told me not to worry about my bottom. “Your butt looks nice and perky,
but your brain should be racing far ahead. At your age you should focus on
developing talent and beauty inside.”
And I shouldn’t stress myself over school exams; getting my picture in the
papers for passing over a dozen test subjects. “It’s all about trust in yourself.
You don’t want to be a scholarship girl.” But I want her to be a scholarship
girl, my mother said. “No, you shouldn’t want her to be anything like that.”
She gave me the pyramid plan. She said it worked for her. I should think about
what I really want. Make that the tip of the pyramid, and build up, build up
from the base to the pyramid tip, to higher things.
I looked at Mom. You hear how she talking? Like if her sister need help raising
her only child? Mum turned her head to hide a smile.
“And look around at women in the District,” she went on. “You don’t want to
end up like them, punishing in the dark.” Again with this punishing in the
dark. Still, I wanted to believe she knew secrets about how to succeed in life.
Another time she asked, “Did you ever hear your mother praying?” I said I
didn’t think so. “Well, she prayed every day. Especially at night when your
father came inside. You ever hear what went on in their bedroom?” What
kind of question is that? “Well, did you ever hear them having sex?” No, I
didn’t. “Can you imagine what it was like?” I didn’t want to imagine anything
like that.
At which point she slipped in her “There’s this woman I know” story. This
is a thing with her, she stops getting straight to the point, and sidetracks to
some person she knows. This time I knew who she was talking about but I
didn’t say anything.
“Some men don’t want to hear about problems down there. Things could get
difficult.” I didn’t think my mother and father had problems. “Well, with this
lady I was telling you about, life was pure pain.”
The man would come home and make her try harder. At night before they
went to bed, in the morning before he went to work. “Trying and trying was
like punishment.” I didn’t hear anything like punishment. “Some women just
lower their heads, cows to duty.” I refused to believe Mum was one of these
women lowering herself for pain.
Anyway I think she’s a braver person now, still modest about her hemline;
looks at herself sideways (my Aunt must have got to her about nice perky
butts); fixes her earrings with new anticipation. I don’t think I could be like
her ‒ curve in the shoulders, believing life is hard, such is life.
"You will know when it’s time to invest your time and body, when you’re
ready to engage the world,” Aunt told me once. And you know what? I think
the time is here, sooner than expected, for my engagement ‒ to the world,
its money and its manure (Aunt’s words).
What happened? Well, you weren’t there to see or hear but it came like
lightning and now the dry season for me is over. Time is in and out and then
it's up (my words).
I know I can be stubborn like my father about certain things. Right now
murder and desire are like rivers raging around me. She don’t know what
she want ‒ you hear that? crabs and their hairy arms reaching.
One day I will tell you about this girl I know, who grew up in Canal District,
and her father died when she was young. A good person, good story.
Bibi C.
Canal District, Guyana
FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN 