gates bringing pretty-dressed girls who also buzzed around in the light, giggling and chattering and hugging up old friends.
I was tired and hungry from my journey in the Daily Gleaner van. I had sat on what looked to me to be an upturned bucket. Eustace White, the driver, had somehow attached this implement to the floor for his passengers to sit on. All feeling was lost from both my buttock cheeks before the wretched van had even left Savannah-La-Mar. When I complained of the paralysis in my hind region, Eustace White informed me bluntly that he was not meant to take passengers in the newspaper’s van and only did so to supplement his income so he might have money to pay for the treatment of his mother’s eye complaint. Going on to explain the past, present and future of this eye condition in unnecessary detail for the rest of the long journey. By the time we arrived in Kingston my eternity had been lived listening to this man – I was convinced I had had no other life than that which took place on the upturned bucket in the Daily Gleaner van. The winding path from the road to the college grounds bumped and jiggled me for an infinity before leading us out into that floodlit fairyland that glowed before my eyes like salvation.
Mr Philip and Miss Ma had taken no more notice of my leaving the homestead than if I were a piece of their livestock whose time had come to be sent for slaughter. Had they forgotten that my father was Lovell Roberts? A man whose picture had been pinned to parish walls. Their cousin who, somewhere, was still a man of honour, still noble in a way that made him a legend. Those diligent years of my upbringing – feeding me with the food from their plates, dressing me in frocks made of cotton and lace, teaching me English manners and Christian discipline – were they to mean no more than the fattening of a chicken on best coconut, which, after they had feasted on its carcass, stripping it of all goodness, they threw out as waste? And their son, Michael, could have been anywhere on God’s earth: flying across the English Channel, sipping coffee in a Paris café, taking tea in London. The only place I could be sure he was not was at that joyless home, where the tamarind tree, the henhouse and the dusty walk from town were the only things that ever spoke softly to me of missing him.
It was Miss Jewel alone who waved me off when I departed for the teacher-training college in Kingston, standing in her best blouse, her legs bowed so that the hem of her skirt nearly touched the floor. As the van collected me, crunching along the stones of the path as always, she handed me a tiny parcel.
‘A likkle spell?’ I asked.
The parcel contained one well folded pound note and two shiny shillings tied in a white handkerchief that had been stitched, unevenly, with my initials in blue and red. ‘You nah need a likkle spell, me sprigadee. De Lawd haffe tek care a yuh,’ was all she said.
Like butterflies, we new girls dazzled in our white gloves, our pastel frocks, our pretty hats. Girls from good homes from all across the island. Girls who possessed the required knowledge of long division, quadratic equations. Girls who could parse a sentence, subject, object, nominative, and name five verbs of manner. Girls who could recite the capital cities of the world and all the books of the Bible in the perfect English diction spoken by the King. We new girls were to be cultivated into teachers and only after three years of residential study would we be ready for release into the schools of Jamaica.
The hall in which we waited on that first evening was loud with the silence of fear. Fidgeting was kept to a minimum, only necessary when someone needed to straighten the hem of their garment to prevent it creasing or wipe away a tear of sweat that had developed with the heat. Only one girl coughed.
Outside this room there was great commotion – the older pupils going about their business as raucous and shrill as parrots on
I was tired and hungry from my journey in the Daily Gleaner van. I had sat on what looked to me to be an upturned bucket. Eustace White, the driver, had somehow attached this implement to the floor for his passengers to sit on. All feeling was lost from both my buttock cheeks before the wretched van had even left Savannah-La-Mar. When I complained of the paralysis in my hind region, Eustace White informed me bluntly that he was not meant to take passengers in the newspaper’s van and only did so to supplement his income so he might have money to pay for the treatment of his mother’s eye complaint. Going on to explain the past, present and future of this eye condition in unnecessary detail for the rest of the long journey. By the time we arrived in Kingston my eternity had been lived listening to this man – I was convinced I had had no other life than that which took place on the upturned bucket in the Daily Gleaner van. The winding path from the road to the college grounds bumped and jiggled me for an infinity before leading us out into that floodlit fairyland that glowed before my eyes like salvation.
Mr Philip and Miss Ma had taken no more notice of my leaving the homestead than if I were a piece of their livestock whose time had come to be sent for slaughter. Had they forgotten that my father was Lovell Roberts? A man whose picture had been pinned to parish walls. Their cousin who, somewhere, was still a man of honour, still noble in a way that made him a legend. Those diligent years of my upbringing – feeding me with the food from their plates, dressing me in frocks made of cotton and lace, teaching me English manners and Christian discipline – were they to mean no more than the fattening of a chicken on best coconut, which, after they had feasted on its carcass, stripping it of all goodness, they threw out as waste? And their son, Michael, could have been anywhere on God’s earth: flying across the English Channel, sipping coffee in a Paris café, taking tea in London. The only place I could be sure he was not was at that joyless home, where the tamarind tree, the henhouse and the dusty walk from town were the only things that ever spoke softly to me of missing him.
It was Miss Jewel alone who waved me off when I departed for the teacher-training college in Kingston, standing in her best blouse, her legs bowed so that the hem of her skirt nearly touched the floor. As the van collected me, crunching along the stones of the path as always, she handed me a tiny parcel.
‘A likkle spell?’ I asked.
The parcel contained one well folded pound note and two shiny shillings tied in a white handkerchief that had been stitched, unevenly, with my initials in blue and red. ‘You nah need a likkle spell, me sprigadee. De Lawd haffe tek care a yuh,’ was all she said.
Like butterflies, we new girls dazzled in our white gloves, our pastel frocks, our pretty hats. Girls from good homes from all across the island. Girls who possessed the required knowledge of long division, quadratic equations. Girls who could parse a sentence, subject, object, nominative, and name five verbs of manner. Girls who could recite the capital cities of the world and all the books of the Bible in the perfect English diction spoken by the King. We new girls were to be cultivated into teachers and only after three years of residential study would we be ready for release into the schools of Jamaica.
The hall in which we waited on that first evening was loud with the silence of fear. Fidgeting was kept to a minimum, only necessary when someone needed to straighten the hem of their garment to prevent it creasing or wipe away a tear of sweat that had developed with the heat. Only one girl coughed.
Outside this room there was great commotion – the older pupils going about their business as raucous and shrill as parrots on
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