FARJOURNEY CARIBBEAN

 

 

       < Situations and Revelations of Passing Notice in Guyana >

        Locket # 36:

       What to do with this body of mine? Arms and legs, the caves; marriage and child-
       bearing years still far off but coming. I used to lie in bed and wonder.

       We live in a three-storey building, tall as the tallest mango tree in Georgetown.
       I used to worry as a child someone might scale the gate, jump on the car roof,
       climb the walls up to my bedroom window.

       You can’t hide or rise far above other people. They always in your view or range.
       Through my window I could see one block away a wooden house from the old
       days; still standing on stilts, with the galvanize roof, front and back steps, the
       pokey rooms and habits. Like the builders never thought anything would change.

       Some days I see a man in a hammock under the house, calmly eating. A woman
       hanging out clothes in the backyard, grateful for the burning bright sun; getting
       older and fat, talking to a child. I don’t know what reason she has to smile or
       laugh; what parts of her life she might be dying to change.

       I’m sure she looks up at our house from time to time. I don’t think she sees me.

       When she goes inside she has to undress for someone, the man living there
       having her when he wants, how he wants.

       I heard on the news about women living with men they have to undress for
       getting killed. It happening regular now.Last time this man stab up this woman
       sixteen times. I tried to imagine what went through his mind ‒ the knife in his
       hand, the woman’s eyes filled with terror; still angry at him or pleading with
       him.

       She must have done something bad, or maybe nothing bad. Refuse to undress
       for him, or maybe she undress for somebody else and he only now find out.

       I hoping to go to Toronto soon. Stay with relatives. Their neighborhood is quiet.
       The view from the guest room window is of backyards. You don’t see much of
       anything to disturb you, they say.

       I am at the stage where clothes and style matter, what I wear, how I look. I’m
       not going to lie, I can’t wait to live in a city where I can dress and walk as I
       please. My grandmother said back in her bicycle days in Georgetown you could
       go riding or window shopping, and trust people wouldn't grab you or look you
       over with resentment.

       I think a lot these days about Ranji. He’s the son of the Rajpauls. He lived
       here only five years, then his family migrated to Toronto. He was here recently
       on vacation. Came by us. He brought magazines about cars and fashion and
       home improvement, thinking maybe we back here need to see what modern
       life looked like.

       He’s near forty, a family doctor; not yet married, everybody wondering what he
       waiting for. My mother made some stupid joke he was waiting for someone like
       me. He’s almost twice my age!

       He came into my room one afternoon, he didn’t knock. He must have noticed
       my bare arms, the two tiny butterfly tattoos on the left neck; and he must
       have assumed, well, I don’t know what he assumed.

         Next thing I know he was pulling off my shorts. Didn't ask. What are you doing?

        My legs were in the air, my ankles on his shoulders, helpless and irrelevant.
        To this day I still hear the sound of his fingers pulling on his rubber thing. What
        are you doing? And, like a surgeon all rubber gloves and ready, he answered,
        “The future is here.”

        I heard his breath grunting like it was counting money. I turned my face away.

        He was quick and efficient and done before I could find more words to protest.
        I felt so stupid searching the floor where he’d tossed my pants and panties.

        How could this happen? in my room three storeys up in the air? Even now my
        face goes sour when I think about it, my mouth gets numb when I start telling
        my friends. They go quiet. I can hear them thinking, How come she not in
        shock? She not telling us everything! Going nowhere with jealous pussies.

        At our dinner table, all dressed up, all smiles and politely passing plates ‒ and
        this was the day after the room and bed invasion ‒ he was carrying on like there
        was some “confidentiality” thing between us now, and neither of us should say
        anything to anyone about what happened.

        Sounding like he’s this big expert on breast removal and certain procedures 
        and how easy it is (not yet in Georgetown) to do this or fix that. “Yes, the
        future is here.”

        It burn me the way he flashed those words like playing cards performing magic
        tricks in our house.

        You ask, how people get stabbed? one time, sixteen times? It starts with a
        realization, and one day it erupts like an infected tooth, and now you in
        serious pain and you have to do something.

        I was all set to stab Ranji. With one of the forks on the dinner table. Seriously.
        I reached for it. All I had to do next was walk quietly behind him, and with
        one quick down stroke bury the prongs straight in his neck.

        Before he know it, blood spurting and staining the tablecloth, the chair
        crashing back, somebody screaming, O gawd, what you doing?

        Just for the look of surprise on his face. Yes, is me. Remember? No more future
        for you here.

        One act ‒ I see it now, and tools are everywhere within reach ‒ one simple act
        could change everything. Sooner or later, balance comes back into the world.

        I took a picture of my vagina with my phone the day after Ranji barged in. I
        wanted to look at little Elle. In her spoony baby curls she's a survivor. I took
        another picture and looked again. She is clearly not ready for lust and love,
        duty and pain.

        Duty and pain are like handcuffs. The other couple, like brother and sister
        always fighting, could be a problem. Little Elle is just there ready to help 
        a host so used to doing what she’s told, so determined to get ahead in this
        world. I think I know her better now.

        Weeks before Ranji did his pull off your pants and enter thing, I was thinking
        of doing something really stupid, something I might not have lived to regret.
        The quiet slip away, yes.

        Thinking like that creeps up on people as they hang clothes on the line or
        look out the window. It could blow through all of a sudden like strong wind,
        rattling your roof, especially the galvanize you think nail down real good.
 
        EIleanna G.
        Georgetown, Guyana

 

 

  

  

       < 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

         

 

         < Situations and Revelations of Passing Notice in Guyana >

            Locket # 34:

            Well, the speculation has started again. Almost ten years after the
            disappearance, there has been a sighting. There have been sightings before,
            mind you. This time an American visitor who went up there, all backpack
            and sandals, now swears he met Robert, the Mormon young man who went
            missing. “He’s grown a beard and he looks as bronze as the native Indians,”
            he said.

            We have Mormons in Georgetown. White shirt sleeves and tie, walking and
            working in pairs through our streets and heat. One day, one of them just
            took off and vanished.

            Somebody wrote to the newspapers suggesting Robert might have been
            “abducted” by bandits for ransom, or by aliens for research. If you think
            that was stretching things, that that sort of “abduction” couldn’t happen
            in these parts, well, at the rate things going, mind and body grinding dry
            cane, is only a matter of time. Our days getting shorter, our nights really
            dark.

            They didn’t publish a photo of Robert. Just a report he was last seen in
            the Northwest District. If he was a Georgetown boy you would hear his
            whole life story, from birthday to vanish day.

            Our local investigators were alerted. They interviewed his work companion.
            His story was, they were staying at a rest house at Mabaruma, in the
            Northwest. He woke up one morning and Robert was gone.

            He stepped outside, not sure where to start looking. He asked around, did
            anyone see him? How could someone not notice Robert’s white shirt,
            Robert’s white face?

            He heard someone’s personal belongings had been found near the river.
            When he got there he discovered they were in fact Robert’s things, his shirt,
            pants, shoes, bible, a letter with foreign stamps; arranged neatly and
            laid out on a towel held down by stones.

            Everybody supposed the young man had taken his own life by drowning.
            They couldn’t find a body.

            Everybody assumed the perai got to him.

            Perai, for anyone who don’t know, is a species of fish said to have three
            rows of teeth. Sharp as tiny sawmill blades. If a perai find you floating in
            our river, it sneaks up. It strips your flesh starting with your buttocks. A
            A family of perai could have feasted on Robert leaving only bones and
            astonishment.

            A fellow flew in from the US, saying he was a private investigator, and how
            he come her to “investigate”. In no time at all he managed to antagonise
            our police investigators.

            A prominent politician, lawyer, Comrade (and permanent rascal, if you ask
            me) got involved. Ever since the Jonestown horror camp, he said, he didn’t
            trust any “charitable” activity by foreigners. Like these Mormons, running
            a church with no church bells! Starting up a farm project when in truth
            under the canopy, talking like they care, they work to enslave the minds
            of vulnerable people. He expected action to follow his words. 

            I was surprised the boy’s parents didn’t show up, declaring this was a
            tragedy, and wondering how the head of our country could allow sonething
            like this to happen.

            The whole thing, the whole story, just fade away.

            My good friend at the police station, Sargie, who keeps me informed of
            developments, told me he knew two persons who had information about
            Robert. A mother and daughter, living on the East Bank (they were
            interested in joining the church). They were the last people to see Robert in
            Georgetown.

            The two Mormons, they said, stopped by every Wednesday. Came all the way
            to their house for a “finger food” lunch break, in this case a dish of Roti and
            Curry. And a glass of mauby. Which they could purchase anywhere, but they
            liked the home setting and preparation. (Unknown to the boys, the meal
            was prepared elsewhere and “home” delivered.)

            They remembered Robert, the quiet one, leaning over his plate to bite in,
            and reaching for a napkin. “I keep telling this girl, her life need direction.
            She should learn to concentrate like him. Find some regular activity to put
            her mind to.”

            The last time they visited, something unexpected happened. Robert asked to
            use the bathroom. There was an encounter, you could say, with the
            daughter. She was nineteen then.

            He just open the door and walk in, just like that, his fingers unbuckling.
            Which I find hard to believe. And her towel just happened to fall at the same
            time. Also hard to believe.

            I could just imagine the fight his eyes put up to stop looking. For as long as it
            takes a stranger to say Imbaimadai three times his eyes looked.

            The young woman insists, nothing happened. Caught off guard, her
            nakedness ‒ breasts, belly, thighs, loose damp hair ‒ plastered on his face,
            Robert turned into a cherry of embarrassment.

            Sometimes people does get their feelings mixed up. Important feelings like
            faith and lust suddenly flaring up in one ungodly struggle. I not saying that
            is what happened here. But one little drama does lead to one big drama.

            Personally, I don’t believe this young man is dead. I don’t believe any harm
            come to him either. All that identity stripping by the river, carefully
            arranging his personal effects so they could be recovered and returned ‒ if
            there’s logic in that, I don’t see it. Just don't see it.

            People like Robert the Mormon come into this country, they feel
            untouchable; they free to do the craziest things, things we ourselves can’t
            imagine doing.

            That display by the river was not the end. More like the beginning, if you
            ask me.

            The Northwest District, I never visited. Canal, yes, but the Northwest? with
            the steamer rising and plunging through the Atlantic all night, arriving the
            next morning? Not me and that.

            Call it my mid-Atlantic insecurity. But there’s always a first time. And
            always a good reason. So I heading out there.

            If you want to understand why, you should read “Shadows Move Among
            Them”. It’s a book by Edgar Mittelholzer.

            Apparently, Robert left a copy of this book with his things near the river.
            A stunning development, yes. The investigators must have flipped through
            the pages, looking for clues, like a suicide note or something. They probably
            just put it aside,

            I kept thinking, this young Mormon comes here, starts reading “Shadows
            Move Among Them”; then he “disappears”. Where’d he get this book? Did
            his walking buddy know about this book? Why leave this book with the rest
            of his things?

            And what did his hands grip now ‒ a field shovel? a canoe paddle? Did
            rectitude still steer his walking days? Maybe he was just hiding out. That
            young man has plenty explaining to do.

            I heard the name Mittelholzer, how he was this famous author. I’m ashamed
            to admit I never read a word he wrote. Not one word. Searching on and off
            for a copy of his book took years. I gave up at one point. I’m reading it now.

            It contains language people in Georgetown no longer find useful. Too many
            of us don’t read, never heard of Mittelholzer. And when time come to gasp
            and think, most of us fall quiet, fall in line with the tribe.

             I’m beginning to understand, though, why people feel they must
             “disappear”. At least for awhile, and not with any river drama.

             Something inside you says, you have to move! Away from conditions that
             keep you on edge all the time. Like ignorance and its cell mate ‘a little
             knowledge’; the blows people take every day, not saying anything, now
             that our morality gone with the perai.

             Believing is one thing, moving and seeing for yourself is another.

             So I heading out to the Northwest District ‒ yes, me on that steamer,
             ploughing through the choppy waters of the dark Atlantic. Mittelholzer
             style.

             No, no big plan. Just a short trip. Hoping to see for myself the forest and
             the river, the strange behaviors they say happen there sometimes.

             Human nature is human nature. Dressed or undressed, people don’t change
             much despite what they do, where they go.

             Malcolm De Abreu
             Georgetown, Guyana

  

 

  

         < Situations and Revelations of Passing Notice in Guyana >
  
            Locket # 33:

            I have a Canal District story for your readers. Happened many years ago.

            Full disclosure, right off the bat. I was born in that District, but I lived there
            only until I was five years old. I don’t remember much. In fact, I had the
            vaguest of memories of anything that happened in those years.

            I told my wife I was curious about where my life began. I wanted to see the
            land. We live in Toronto. She didn’t understand. Our son was about to enter
            university. I took him with me, my way of rewarding him for being accepted.

                 It was meant to be a short trip. I had the name of a contact person in
            Georgetown. A friend of a friend of my dad.

            He met us at the airport, Prem Ghosh. “Call me Prem,” he said quickly.

            Leather sandals, wearing a Havana style shirt, he taught at the local
            university. He said he was doing research in sugar estates in the 1930s. “My
            dad lived near a sugar estate,” I told him. “He’s writing a book about the
            old days. Maybe you two could get connected, share notes and memories.”

            He gave me a strange look. He was cautious about “sharing” anything with
            anyone. A professor from England came down once, claiming he was doing
            research in the same area. “They take your notes and disappear. Next thing
            you know, your notes turn up in an article or in one of their books,” he
            explained.

            It became evident he wasn’t too pleased with my lodging arrangements. I
            had made reservations at a Georgetown Hotel. “I know the place. Wood
            frame and Demerara windows. The colonials lived there back in the days.
            The new owner give it some fancy name ‒ luxury suites ‒ and turn it into
            a hotel.” I hope they upgraded the plumbing from the old days, I said. He
            didn’t think that funny. “I don’t know why you choose to stay in a place
            like that,” he said. Well, I’m not you, I said, then regretted saying that.
            I hear there’s a village called Westminster. Wonder what that looks like,
            I continued, sensing that humour ran the risk of causing unseen offence.
            There was an edginess in Prem.

            The following day I was off on the trip to Canal District. Prem had offered
            to take me there. Same workday leather sandals and the Havana style
            shirt. “My time is yours today.” 

            He had a plan. First, we’d stop at his workplace at the University; he would
            show me around.

            I didn’t respond with proper enthusiasm. I had no idea how long the “stop”
            would take. I didn’t know there was a campus. I didn’t feel like being
            “shown around”. I just wanted to see the District.

            I was worried, too, about my son. He decided he wasn’t coming with us.
            Less than 24 hours in the country, and he had contacted someone. A girl.
            Offering to show him around Georgetown. How, when did this happen?

            He was old enough to survive on his own, he protested. I needn’t worry.

            It took an eternity getting to the District. The road was crowded with every
            imaginable form of transport. Prem’s car had airconditioning, but he was
            “saving” it, preferring to lower the side windows and let the coastal breeze
            work.

            He waved at people he knew. He slowed to make purchases from roadside
            vendors under rickety structures. “You notice the fruit variety we have
            here?  Fresh from the farm.” We continued like this, his toes switching in
            anticipation from gas pedal to brakes.

            “There is a huge cloud hanging over this country,” he started talking. “The
            whole question of domination and resentment.” I had no idea what he
            meant. “Certain pathologies from the past have not gone away. Terrible
            things going on here, murderous things. But you know, maybe now is not
            the right time,” he stopped.

            For Prem, I realized, just listening was as good as sympathy. Right now he
            had a lot of showing to do. I had questions, not as weighty as “the whole
            question” on his mind. I stayed quiet, and adjusted my sunglasses. I let
            the scenery outside flash by ‒ coconut trees looking heroic under the sun,
            traffic heading the other way as if in flight from the murderous things
            going on.

            Eventually, off the major road, we drove down a narrow road strip, a canal
            running on one side. We stopped in front of a modest dwelling. It was the
            home of an estate worker. A man with a massive belly, his face puffy from
            comfort or medication. He seemed to be expecting us.

            Turned out Prem had arranged a meet and talk with him, followed by a
            drive around a sugar estate. It was more than I had come ready for.

            The estate drive-around didn't happen. Prem told us he had one important
            stop to make; he’d be right back. Took off and never returned.

            The Ramdins offered refreshment. The afternoon light faded fast. We
             waited.

            We talked about my parents, about people my father might have known.
            Kumti was busy in the kitchen. In his fifties, his face shiny with delight, Mr.
            Ramdin invited me to try the local beer.

            We changed conversation ‒ beer brands, a lettuce farm project he wanted
            to start, his back problem. “When he complained about his back, they sent
            him home,” Kumti looked in. “They told him not to exert himself.” Still no
            Prem.

            A phone rang. His car had broken down on the main road. He was watching
            it being repaired. He didn’t think he would get it back that day. It seemed
            we were “stranded” in Canal District.

            He asked to speak to me. Why not stay overnight at the Ramdins, he said.
            They had a spare bedroom. Not a “luxury suite”, but comfortable. His car
            should be ready for a late morning drive back to Georgetown.

            As for my son, I shouldn’t worry. He would find a way to contact the young
            man, tell him, Your Dad is okay. Spending the night with friends. He wants
            you to stay inside the hotel.

            I was puzzled by this sudden development. Had he planned for emergencies
            like this? His voice with high-pitched urgency somehow made it sound like
            a challenge. “Okay,” I told him. I’ll manage. I was adaptable.

            The bedsprings felt worn, but sheet and pillows were made ready. “Just
            make yourself comfortable,” Kumti said. “We have mosquito coil if you need.
            We eat a lot of garlic so mosquitoes don’t bother us.”

            I slept in fits and short stretches. Unusual noises woke me, a brief rain
            shower on the roof. My cell phone lit up the room and the hour. At five
            o-clock, still dark outside, I stood looking through the  glass louvre windows,
            hearing the first roosters, feeling as if another moment of lost childhood, 
            like my bare feet on the floor boards, had returned. 

            Someone appeared from behind a shed at the back. A woman, in
            nightclothes, moving unhurriedly toward the backsteps. That profile of face
            and hair. It was Kumti. That was her full head of hair, loose around her
            shoulders.

            There was a bathroom in the house, so this was no trip to an outhouse.
            Lifting the hem of her night clothes she climbed the back stairs, fully aware
            of where she was, what she was doing. I heard the kitchen door close.
            Footsteps to the bathroom. That door latched shut.

            Hardly a minute passed, I would say; enough time for me to wonder what on
            earth was going on. Then fresh movement. A young man, in short sleeves,
            short pants. Just as casually, not worried someone might be watching, he
            strolled to the front gate and disappeared on a bicycle.

            Kumti prepared a wonderful breakfast, fried fish, plantain and bread slices,
            coffee. Her voice percolated a bright morning feeling. The movements I
            happened to see through the window, phantoms slinking away in the night,
            no longer needed explanation.

            With one finger in his ear, unplugging, as if he’d been swimming all night in
            bed, her husband emerged. He asked if I slept well. “Very well,” I told him.
            Once my head touch the pillow, I out like a light, he said. “Sometimes he
            does sleep till midday, now that he not working. I have to wake him up,”
            Kumti explained.

            Did I want to take a morning shower, she asked, offering a folded towel. And
            put back on his yesterday clothes? Wha’ wrong with this woman? her
            husband said. She smiled and ignored him. I smiled my solidarity with her.

            And that was how my day and my night in Canal District ended, in that
            moment, in smiles of understanding.

            I wouldn't say I had the time of my life there. And I haven't told you
            everything.

            Prem didn’t take us back to the airport. Something must have happened, or
            maybe nothing happened. We got a driver from the hotel. He said he was
            born in Canal District. Spent his childhood there until he moved closer to
            Georgetown. Like Prem, he wore a Havana style shirt. But he drove very fast.

            I asked, Do you normally drive this fast? hoping to slow him down. “Don’t
            worry yourself. I know the road like the back of my hands. These are
            hands of a champion.”

                 My son in the back seat, head buried in his device, couldn’t care less about
            car speed. I placed my trust in his lighthearted pilot's arms, set to spot and
            dodge any recklessness approaching.

           We got to the airport without incident. Hands of a champion.

           In the years between that visit and now, a lot has happened. My son went on
           to university; did very well. His mother and I have separated. He’s all grown
           up, and engaged to a Canadian girl. Her family came from Guyana. I think
           the Canal District trip, at least the Georgetown part, helped break him out
           of his shell.

           I never asked him what happened the night he was all by himself in
           Georgetown. A young man is entitled to keep secrets from others. Certain
           transactions, like certain breath holding moments kept to oneself,
           become vital; in some cases necessary, as you grow older, now that I
           recall.

           J. Anthony
           Toronto, Canada

 

  

                
          Home from house cleaning Margarita moans ‒ skip
          the glass to ceiling sweep hours : Madre of can't forgiveness!
          wanting every part hind tight : the carrots grated right
          down to the wordless last shrivel . toss no paid up stub
          out.

          Finger subtleties aside, the core designs : when prune
          blades snip our flora even far along petal back; primrose
          bloom thanks hatless curates . wouldn't say.

                                                    Whose signature for trade
          soft wipes . what baby bottom contract? husbandry gluts
          in around bake bowls we stir.

                    As lumps test breast, longings wait . cheeks kiss
          whisper, No, no Patron! please hold . release, don’t drain
          the pool! after all the wet dressing hands resume the hill
          side taking good as ‘done’.

          Splayed out of prayer our grace tirades . me too much
          blue shifts bitchery to mean . the thread resigns the needle
          fine lines fabric slits under over :
                                                                                        *else
          war long shovels oven troubles . ankles cross palms
          spread for nails; death vans veer scat cleavage mount
          biometrics over tears.

                                              Tango, si ~ thigh churn to flatbed
          pending ~ Who are you?  momento, I come.

                                                                         – W.W.

               

           

             

   

           LESSING

           Sometimes Lessing looks at beauties and sees through
           Their layers of decisions about Beauty,
           Sees through the bluffing masks that invent that thing,
         Sees gangly angling aliens rather than sexy girls
           Floating around in their angelics of flesh,
           Lines of paint to finish their not-quite faces,
           Rags and cow-hide to mask their leaking balloons.

            (from “Charon’s Anchors” by Brian Chan, 2018)

  

 

         If you were restless and lucky to be creatively talented in the 1960s, living in
      Georgetown, Guyana was the best of place and times. Prominent Guyanese
      writers and artists visited, or found residence there. Martin Carter on Lamaha
      Street. Donald Locke in Kitty Village. Melody, not percussion, waved the air.

      And there was the hinterland fiction of Wilson Harris, a magnet for feverish 
      imaginations. His work proved exasperatingly difficult. His language elevated
      you above triumphing daily news delivery meant for the people's enlightenment.
      On board flights of symbol to heavens discourse.

      You felt intrigued by his personal development ‒ who starts as a land surveyor
      in Guiana’s hinterland, then transforms into a serene author of difficult prose?

      You could wait till eternity, though, for clarity in his sentences. When he spoke in
      Georgetown he used the same tortuous language of his fiction and essays, sparing
      not one brief breath for audience levels of handling ideas.

      His fiction almost capsized you in its rivers of metaphors. Gradually reader
      reverence slipped away, leaving only career building scholars clinging to its
      subsurface layers. He was either an unchallengeable genius, or one hell of a
      performance artist, head sunk in his delvings into Anthropology or Carl Jung.
      Either way you understood what it meant to be truly “radical”, as in departure
      from same old blind fold.

      “Palace of the Peacock” (1960) is for many his fiction masterpiece, the way
      “A House For Mr. Biswas” (1961) is undeniably the signature work of Trinidad’s
       V.S. Naipaul, and “In The Castle Of My Skin” (1953), the high watermark from
       the Barbados author George Lamming.

       "Palace" dealt obliquely, it seemed, with Guyana’s need to discover mature
        interdependent relationships. Harris might have sensed that for a nation to
        emerge, mistrustful communities had to find ways, out of constituent
        “entanglement”, to build nets of (less leader serving) work platforms.

       In the novel, a multiracial boat crew on a Mission into Guyana’s Interior was
       constantly in conversation. They spoke disarmingly familiar Guyanese
       sentences, "Ah dream you done dead already, Jennings… And the hole close up
       for good for you a million years ago. You is a prehistoric animal”. They endorsed
       our youthful suspicions, “Every man mans and lives in his inmost ship and
       theatre and mind.”

       Harris could flip your next-door neighbour’s disposition into “the strangest face
       we’d ever seen”, inviting readers to look again, look closer: the fall marks, the
       eye lids on desire. 

       He left you battered by images, his startling depiction of crew mates, and those
       moments like lightning flash on the page when you thought you recognized
       someone you knew.

       From the 80s through the 00s, Guyana’s creative energy passed through its tribal
       identity phase ‒ the poetry of ships and sorrow, the fiction of victimhood, of
       lives tethered to the sugar belt ways ‒ enabled by favourers who promised their
       intervention would help reconstitute body and soul, make village poverty 
       embraceable.

       Interest in Harris and his rainforest excavations seemed to diminish in that
       period. One after the other his books presented more obscure, heavier slopes.
       His inventions struck some readers as “really dreaming” stuff, like the stories
       circulating back then about the possibility of oil basins off Guiana’s shores.

       Mercifully, his novels were short. You could hop and skip through “Heartland"
       (Faber 1964, 96 pgs); decide to try again, at stop and think pace. Access to
       its meanings remained restricted.

       Today ‒ with chat screens and mobile keys ‒ readers might show no interest
       in his dense spanning the globe words. Tech silence has displaced jungle
       silence.

       Packed tight, with a strange fluency of ordinary speech and wrought iron
       prose, that amazing first novel was definitely on to something about the birth
       pains of nationhood. You felt his characters were conducting a difficult but
       necessary conversation. Just not with everyone.

       What has not changed in Guyana is ‒ in the words of one character ‒ that
       "oldest need and desire for reassurance and life”, for protocols and ideals
        higher than what tribe comfort might provide.

       In “Palace” Harris was Guyana’s world standard lifter. He invokes from left to
       right an interwoven mythos as Guyana continues its growth from wary residents
       to confident citizens of a nation. Back then you took his word for it; you settled
       through his fiction for “the experience of his experience”.

       Artists and writers who stayed spiritually in touch with his work, however
       intermittently, will admit they were somehow altered. You could say he passed,
       to generations eager to move on, the dare to be difficult and different for one’s
       time.

       Traces of this daring are evident in the incredible vibrancy of that 60s generation
        ‒ in, for example, the work of Brian Chan, John Agard (poetry), Victor Davson,
        Carl Anderson, Andrew Lyght, Carl E. Hazlewood, Dudley Charles, Terence
        Roberts (art, media installations).

        Seeking individual assurance, new ideas on how to fill and chart a life, they
        stood at his gate, or wandered his Palace grounds. They experienced their own
        self-transformations, and like the great man eventually found a way in the
        world.

        From Harris they borrowed the strongest tools ‒ empathy, a fear free vision,
        an eternal Amazon resolve ‒ with which to engage the difficult intimacies our
        planet presents, and the old uncertainties its future now disperses.

        Wyck Williams
        New York, 2018