A Short Story from the Archives:
Vol. 10, No. 38, Pages 78-88 (January–June 1964)
Suddenly, I could hear my mother’s voice bombarding the small room in which I slept. “Get up get up get up! boy, you too lazy! you think the morning waiting on you? get up and get! the sun almost half-way up in the sky, and you in there still sleeping? This is Easter Morning! blessid Easter. The Lord rise-up outta Hell long long time, so you get up, too!... and don’t forget to clean out the pig pens and the sheep pens. ’Cause yesterday morning you didn’ clean the pig pens proper, and you left back all my precious milk inside them sheep breasts. Come, boy! half the morning gone already! So get up!”
She had hardly taken a breath in all this time. I listened to the beautiful mountains and valleys of her surging voice, and laughed inside my heart. I was already awake. I had been awake for about three hours. I could not sleep. I could smell the fresh delicious smells seeping under my door from the kitchen: the roasted pork, the great cakes, the fruit cakes, the sponges, the bananas, the golden apples, the rum and the sweet drinks and the new coats of varnish and polish on all the furniture in the house. This was Easter in our house. Everything was cleansed. Even the pig pens were given a clean white resurrection coat of freshness; and the front of the house was sprinkled with white marl. Everything was new, was clean, was virginal. My new clothes had been bought months before; and my mother had pressed them many times over, and had hooked them on a hanger on to a nail, high in the ceiling of her bedroom—where they could be seen, but not touched. Every chance I got, I would watch them: the seams in the short grey-flannel trousers, keener than a new Gillette, the sea-island cotton shirt pressed without a wrinkle or blemish and, rich and creamy as milk from our sheep; my cork hat, white as snow, (although no one in our Village knew what snow was, except having seen pictures of it in a book; or in the foreign Christmas cards which trickled into the Village from Overseas), and stiff as a dead man with Blanco; and my shoes like two mounds of black pitch, and shining, Lord Lord Lord! like nobody’s business. And the tie. My mother never trusted her fingers to tie my tie: and she never trusted mine either. So, I always wore ties, ready-tied, with an elastic band around my neck. All my ties had a savage stripe in them. This was my Easter outfit: new and clean from my underwear out.
I would be wearing it to church this morning, at five o’clock. This was to be my first day as a choir boy in the Cathedral. No achievement of mine, in my eight years, had made so great an effect on my mother! Not even when, at seven, I had successfully fought off five girls, all sisters, with a thick piece of sugar cane. Not even when I won the long-distance race at the church outing. Not even when she and my step-father came home tired as dogs one afternoon, to find that I had cooked a meal for them—a meal which I wanted to stand out as a single landmark; but which they interpreted as a boast, with the result that I was cooking their meals, every afternoon since then.
“Jesuschrist, boy! You heard me say morning here? Well, get up!” And then I heard her opening the window of her bedroom, and talking to the darkness outside. “Lavignia! Lavignia? You sleeping, too? What time that clock o’yourn saying, darling? This blasted boychild I have in here still sleeping, thinking that the morning waiting ’pon him...the sun all up in the skies already! What time it saying? Thanks.” And she closed the window with a bang, and suddenly, I could hear Lavignia’s voice no more. And the barking of the dogs stopped: and the cackling of the hens ceased, as if someone had shot them dead.
I searched around in the semi-darkness for my clothes. I put on the ragged cap, now too old for me to remember its original colour and shape. Next, the shirt, patched expertly in many places and looking like the quilted robe of Joseph; and then, the trousers, my step-father’s, which my mother forgot to reduce to fit me, and which wobbled about my legs like a school girl’s bloomers. And then I rolled the crocus bag and the straw mattress from the floor, took them under my arms, and went into the Yard to hand them over to the sun, to dry. I had wet my bed again. But she found it out, nevertheless. “Pissing pissing pissing! Looka boy, you don’t know you too old for that? You not shamed?” I was glad it was only three o’clock in the morning; that none of the girls in the Village was awake; that nobody could hear her reproaching me for this normal behaviour. And there must have been something about this morning, this Easter morning, which held her silent, in crippled awe. For she did not strike me with the back-hand slap which she had perfected with such speed and accuracy, that it landed always, in the same fat spot of my face.
Again, the pigs and the sheep were on my mother’s side: they had filled the pens with mountains of their droppings. And all the time I cleaned the pens, and washed the pigs, I wondered if it was like this in Bethlehem in that stable where Christ was born; if that stable smelled half as dirty as this; and whether God had purposely made that the birthplace of Our Saviour, to remind Him always to be humble. Or whether it was to give him an inferiority complex. And I was glad that I was not born in a stable. The pigs smelled evil. And after the pigs, the sheep. Rank rank rank sheep, whose perfume would take a soap-factory of scrubbing to wipe off. And then I began to think of my first day in the Cathedral Choir. This morning, when Christ was supposed to have come out of the grave somewhere in a country so far from my little Village, I was going to walk up the aisle of the beautiful church to the sacred chancel, and send my prancing voice all over the church in a solo, in praise of Easter. And all the boys in the choir would envy me. Particularly Henry, who was only my substitute.
“Them pigs clean yet? You ’tend to the sheeps? Yesterday morning the sheeps had my milk lef’ back inside their bubbies! And you forget to sweep-up the Yard. Boy! You think you is a man, becausing you is this big Cathedral Choir-boy! But lemme tell you something. Your backside ain’ so mannish that I can’t give you a proper tarring this bright blessed Easter morning, yuh!” I could feel the sting of the whip in the threat of her voice. And I knew she meant it. I hurried through my work, making sure that my eagerness to wear the rich linen ruff, the crimson cassock and the pearly white surplice did not cause me to be inefficient. The sun pretended it was going to come up above the tops of the sugar canes. But when I stood and waited for it, it changed its mind, and continued to give a golden glow over the entire Village. My work done, I bounded into the house.
“You don’t intend to bathe? You intends to go in the people’ church smelling like a pig pen? Looka, boy, get outta my eyesight and go to the Stand Pipe and get a clean bucket o’ water and cleanse yourself with, hear?” Who could argue with a woman like this? Who would dare?
Across the pitchlake of the road, the canes were grumbling, and shaking their fists in my face. I imagined monsters coming out of them. Only last week, a boy had been beaten up by the Man in the canes. And as my head was swollen with monsters coming at me, I heard a rustling in the canes, and I dropped the bucket. And when I stopped running, I was beside our paling. My dog, Rover, came panting at my side. Again, he had frightened me. And I wanted to kick his head. But I only looked at him; and was very glad he could not talk. Holding on to his collar, I went back across the road to recapture my bucket, and get the water. A few malicious windows with heads and lights in them, were open. And I walked in the shadow of the canes this time—my dog was my guardian angel now!—so they would not see me.
“I thought you wasn’t coming back!” my mother said. “Is four o’clock. You not riding that bicycle outta this house today, bright Easter morning. You walking to church. ’Cause I slaved
and slaved on them clothes o’yourn and no damn bicycle seat and bicycle spoke’ going to mash-up my labours, you hear me?” And so, it meant walking two miles, two miles of canes, two miles of Men in the canes. In all that distance, I would pass only two houses, until I approached the Square in which the Cathedral was built. I would pass only two street lamps, which seemed to have been burning since the day the Island was discovered, and which were never repaired, and which seemed ready to go out. I would be alone all that time, all that terrible distance, with only the brightly lit church in my heart, and the rich beautiful music in my ears. You not riding that bicycle outta this house today. No passenger buses ran in my part of the Island on Easter morning. At least, not at five o’clock in the morning. And the Villagers were so poor, that only one family was rich enough to own a broken-down car. But since that family was not a Christian-minded family, I could not hope for a lift to church. I was the only one in my Village who belonged to a big church, who belonged to the Church of England. My mother, who was brought up in that church, had recently started to attend the Church of the Nazarene, because she felt its services were more like a part of life: were more emotional, more exciting, more tragic and more happy—something like that holy day when “those mens gather’ up in a room in the upstairs part of somebody house, and talk’ and talk’, Lord! in so many diff’rent kinds o’ language’ and dialects, that you wouldda think the world coming to a’ end!” There, she could stand up in her large congregation and open her heart to God and to them, and tell the world that yesterday, God step’ in, and Satan step’ out, Amen! and she was brought through pretty and nice. There, she could testify how God helped her, when she didn’ know how the hell the day would end up. There, she could clap her hands, and stamp her feet till the floorboards creaked, and she could jump up in the air and praise God. And for all that, feel as if God was really listening. But in the Church of England, she was regimented to a sit-and-stand exercise of dull droning religious drilling. And she always complained that she did not understand one word of the Word the minister was preaching. He used words that simple common, poor people like my mother, could not understand—as if there was some conspiracy with the Word of God. And never, never, had anyone stood up in the Church of England and said, “Amen!” to God. It was such a strange church to her!
My mother then began the careful ceremony of dressing me. My hair was ripped by the comb, which this morning seemed too fine to plough the tough roots of my rebellious head. And each time the plough stuck, my mother cursed and said she didn’t understand why the hell I couldn’t have good decent black people hair like everybody else. After the combing came the greasing. My hair would shine like the stars in the heavens. Then the powder under my arms, and the Bay Rum to make me smell “nice and proper.” And the new silk vest with the price tag still on it. And then the underwear. And all these things she herself dressed me in, suspicious always, that I would destroy them. At eight years of age, she did not think I was fit to dress myself on an Easter morning to venture into the powerful Church of England’s God. On went the three-quarter grey stockings, with a rim of blue and black. When I reached under the bed for my shoes, I heard her warning voice in my ears: “No no no no! You not mashing-up them shoes! You putting on them shoes, last thing! I want them shoes to return inside my house without one bruise, you hear? Things too damn expensive these days, boy! And if I see a mark on them, well, God help you, hear?” And she meant it! I had suffered because of this, before. And all I had been guilty of, was that I had walked in a pair of new shoes, and a pebble had scratched the tip of one. But she had examined the soles of the shoes, and had decided that I had not walked in them “proper”, that I had walked too much on the right side of the heels. This time, she would take no chances.
My shirt was the next piece of vestments in this ceremonial robing. I was made to stand like a piece of wallaba tree-trunk, not breathing, while she put my arms through the shirt, and buttoned every button herself. I could smell the richness of the cotton, and feel its warmth on my washed body. The ready-tied tie went on next, and then the trousers. Carefully, I put one leg through, and then the other, making sure not to touch the trousers themselves. She pushed the shirt gently into my trousers, and snapped the belt. Only my shoes remained! But I knew what to expect. For weeks she had made me drill about in the house, walking on old newspapers so that the soles would not be soiled, stretching the shoes which she always bought too small. I could never understand why. And even although she insisted that my feet were too big, that “big shoes don’t look nice ’pon a little boy’ foot”, I could not really imagine that my mother would purposely force me into these undersized shoes, just for the sake of this belief.
But I inhaled deeply. I rested my hand on her shoulder as she commanded me, balanced myself on one leg, and got ready for the punishment and the torture. The shoe was too small. But that was not the point. It looked neat. My toes went in. I could feel a savage sting against my instep. My heel suddenly became as long as a cucumber, and it refused to go in. And as I touched the back of the shoe to see what could happen, my mother shrieked: “Good God, boy! Don’t step on the back o’ the shoe! You want to throw my money down the drain? You mashing it up. And suppose I have to take them back!” But I knew she would never take them back. Intransigence would never permit her pride to allow me to take them even to the Shoemaker across the road for a stretching. I would have to make my feet get smaller. Not the shoes stretch bigger! “Come come! Eat this little food.” I pulled a chair out from the table, and was preparing to sit, when I heard her voice again. “Good Jesus Christ! Boy, I didn’t tell you to sit down and eat! Not in them trousers what I slaved and slaved so hard over, to press and make look nice for you, like if you is somebody decent! Stand up! Stand up and eat. It can’t kill you!”
And so, I had to stand up and eat the little food: about two pints of green tea, warm and thick and rich with sheep’s milk; a loaf of bread as big as a house, and a wedge of roast pork, enough for two people; and a banana. My mother believed in bananas. They “make your skin nice and smooth”, she would say. I could soon feel the heavy load in my belly; and I felt good. I would wear any shoe now. Even a size Seven, instead of a Nine. “Come come!” she said. “Belch! Belch! You belch good and proper’, while you home. ’Cause I don’t want to hear that you belch-out in public, in the people’ church, or in the street, like if you don’t have no manners, hear?” And I granted her her belch. A smothered, respectable belch, which although it did not quite satisfy her, yet it made her say nothing, since it was some assurance that I had already belched at home.
Now, the shoes! My hand was resting on her fat shoulders. I was balancing all my weight on my left foot. My right foot was said to be slightly larger than my left foot—although she never told me why. I knew the shoe would never fit. But I was not such a fool as to tell her so. “Put your weight on your instep, boy, do! Don’t put all your weight on the whole shoe, ’cause the shoe won’t go on, then!” Exasperated, she grabbed my foot, and forced it into the pincers of the shoe, while I remained silent, and in agony, “Hold there! Don’t you move!” she commanded. And she left me. Coming back with the large pot spoon which we used as a shoe horn, she said, “Push! Push hard! Don’t mash-down the instep. Push hard boy, like you have life!” The more I pushed, the smaller the shoe became. My face changed from black to blue to purple. Still, my judgement warned me not to comment on my pain, and certainly not on the smallness of the shoe. She would never believe. “Push! You pushing? Or you standing up there with your face like some ram goat?” At last, through some miracle, the foot went in. Never to come out again! Lord have mercy, I prayed in my heart, as the pain was already whizzing through my body. When the other shoe was rammed on, I was sweating. The perspiration stuck my sea-Island cotton shirt to my back. And she noticed it, and wanted to know why I was sweating. “You intends to sweat-up this clean shirt I just put on your back, boy?” I tried to stop sweating, tried hard, as if to stop it, I had only to turn off a faucet. “Walk off! Walk off, and lemme see how the shoes look on your foot, boy!” I held my breath, pushed my chest out, and asked God for strength. The shoes crucified me. I would never be able to walk on the smooth marble in the Cathedral. But I wanted to be at church this Easter morning. This was my Easter morning; and a simple thing like a biting shoe was not going to stop me.
“Okay! You ready now,” she proclaimed. And she dusted my handkerchief with some perfume, tucked it into my shirt breast pocket and secured it with a gold-coloured small safety pin. “Now, turn ’round, and let me see you. Christ! Boy, you look real good! You look just like the white man at the Plantation’ son. Just like a little doctor. Now, I want you to grow up fast fast, and be a doctor, hear?” And I knew that if I did not answer, she would want to know why. “Yes,” I said, wishing that I was already grown-up, and was thousands of miles from there. She looked at me again and again, and then she took me into her bedroom, and showed me my reflection in the life-sized looking glass. Back in the living room, the white, sparkling-white Blanco-cleaned cork hat, with its green undersides to field the driving rays of the sun, was clamped on my head. I was now ready for the Easter world!
“Since you not riding that bicycle outta here this blessid Easter morning, I going to give you twelve cent’, to put in your pocket. Now, walk down. I want you to look fresh when you enter that Cathedral church, so that when people look at you, they could know you is somebody’ child. Now, seeing that it is Easter, and you have friends, you must buy a penny in sweets...no, you hads better buy losengers to make your breath smell nice, and a pack o’ sweeties... Every child like sweeties. And you ain’ no damn diff’runt. And keep the rest for bus fare back home. You could afford to climb in a crowded bus, after church. It don’t matter then, if your trousers crease-up a trifle. Now come back inside this house, looking tidy. Not as if you went through a pig’ mouth. You hear’ me?” She put the twelve-cent piece into my hand, as if it was the last part of her inheritance, which I was to cherish for the rest of my life. I looked up at her, so large, so beautiful, so lovely and so black—a mysterious African Queen—with her hair braided neatly and long; with her white dress clutching the feminine twists and turns of her full body. She looked down at me, and she looked into my thoughts; and she smiled. She drew me close, close to her breast and her rolling soft stomach where I could feel the love and the blood pumping through her body. And she kissed me on each cheek, and said, with a voice that came from the depth of Africa: “I praise God that I didn’ throw you in a blasted dry-well when your father left me pregnant with you, in this terribul world, with not even a half-cent to buy milk with! Lord bless yuh, son. You is mine, and I proud o’ you!”
I was ready to go now. Outside, the morning was glorious. The sun had eventually decided to come up. And I could see its rays setting the tops of the canes on fire with a golden flame. The birds were scavenging for food. And the dogs and the chickens and the small children were quarrelling for their breakfast. My breakfast felt good and heavy and safe in my insides. “When you go ’cross the road, and you see Jonesy, say Goodmorning. Say Goodmorning to Stella. And to Lavignia. I going call Lavignia now, and let her see how you look.” And she moved away from me, and went into her bedroom, and called out for Lavignia.
“Why you don’t let me say my prayers to God, in peace, this blessid morning, eh, Mistress Carlton? I here bendding down on my knees before God asking Him who the hell he going send to lend me a shilling to buy milk with this Easter morning.”
“He coming out now,” my mother said, with pride.
“Who? God?”
“The bridegroom coming. Come outside, and see how he look’.”
And Lavignia, apparently convinced that her prayers would be in vain, left her spiritual complaining, and came out in front of her house to see me, dressed like a little doctor.
“Oh Christ, Mistress Carlton! this boychild o’ yourn look first-class! like something to eat! Boy, you should be grateful you got such a nice mother. I hopes, to-Christ, you don’t intend to forget her when you come to be a man, eh? ’Cause, if so, the birds o’ vengeance pick-out your blasted eyes!”
And I had to answer Lavignia with as much respect as I would have answered my mother, and say, “No, please, Miss Lavignia, I won’t never forget my mother.”
“Good!” she said, and adjusted my tie although it was already adjusted properly. “Now, you go on down in the name o’ the Lord, and sing that solo like if you is a born angel. Mistress Carlton!...but wait!...you give this boy some fresh crispy biscuits to help out with his voice? Biscuits good for the voice. If you don’t have fresh ones, I have some. Come, boy, these biscuits does do wonders for your voice. Eat them whilst you singing, and the people in that Cathedral-church going think you is Michael the Archangel.”
I took the biscuits and munched on them all the way down the road with the canes bordering it, mumbling mumbling, trying to take my mind off the torment of the shoes, and the threat of the canes. But the canes moaned, and the shoes burned. I walked in the middle of the creaking road, forcing my mind from my present predicament, and focusing it on the musty-smelling Changing Room in the loft of the Cathedral. I could see the ruffs, sparkling white. I could smell the starch in them. And they were ironed so many times by Henry’s mother, that they shone; and when you ran your fingers over them, they were as smooth as glass. And the crimson robe! And the white linen surplice—all of them made to fit me, so long as I remained with an unbroken voice in the choir of this heavenly Cathedral. And I could see myself coming down the steps from the Changing Room, with the other choristers, and standing at the entrance of the church, while the Lord Bishop and his assistants waited for a few late worshippers to settle in their pews. And I could see the faces of that vast congregation: almost half the population of the Island, who came to the Cathedral in droves whenever the Bishop was preaching. Some came to church, as they would every Sunday, because they like to come to church: others, because they like the resplendent robes and the university hoods of the ministers—all colours under the sun, so pretty and so impressive and so learned! And more than once, I myself wanted to become a minister in God’s Church of England, to swish my long flowing robes, and adjust my hood and hat, and large ruby-Cyclops ring every second of the service, and pour Communion wine at the rails, and mumble those few important indistinguishable words, while the sinners knelt before me and prayed to me and asked me for forgiveness, because they could not see God, or talk to Him, unless they had first asked me for forgiveness, and recognized me as His disciple. Now, I was walking up the aisle, so long and so smooth with its marble shining from the long-underpaid hours of scrubbing by the church Sexton; my voice warbling; and the men and women at the ends of the pews nearest the choir, nodding their heads and complimenting. How they raised their heads from their unmelodic hymn books, and nodded, and turned slightly with their eyes to locate the voice; and I, seeing them, raising my voice even higher and sweeter, until the organ seemed silent and voiceless as the dumb man who opened his mouth and sang aloud his soundless praise to his God, every Sunday at Matins. And then, my solo. The old heads nodding, and smiling, because they could not applaud in God’s presence, in God’s Church. And the organist, like an English spy, glowering at me, anticipating a wrong key or a blunder...and Henry, my solo-substitute, envious with praise. And then, when it is all finished, the choir and the Lord Bishop and the ministers walking down the washed-out, chastised church, with the congregation dumb and whipped by the sermon and the presence in the church of Christ’s body, come from the dead...rejoicing, because this is Easter. And then, the Benediction said by the Bishop, and the sign of the cross which he always made as if he was chasing flies from his face; and the limp people kneeling to say a last something, a last word or two, in thanks, to their God.
I passed the first street lamp, and continued into the desolate, black morning, cramped by the thick unsympathetic fields of canes which refused to let the sun through, to keep me company. On and on, in perpetual misery from my shoes. At last, I had to give in, I took them off. I tied the laces together, and strung the shoes around my neck. The stockings, I pushed into my pocket. And then I ran, hurrying to church before the street should be crowded before I could be seen, and detected, and laughed at. But nothing happened all the way: I reached the vicinity of the Cathedral: the tall tomb stones like diminutive skyscrapers, and the trees in the grave yard of the church, and the blackbirds playing hide-and-seek unmannerly from tree to tree, and the houses coming alive...and finally, the Cathedral itself, facing me like my mother, unapproving. I would have to put my shoes and stockings on before I could cross the threshold of the West Portico. But I had to find some place to sit.
The bells were ringing now. I looked up to see them; and their laughter and rejoicing filled my heart with joy. And I yearned to be in the choir, in the chancel, singing my solo.
The congregation was arriving. Women were dressed in the white of angels, white hats, white shoes, as if they were proud to be part of this great resurrection morning, as if they had remained all their lives, new brides, new virgins. They were standing at the West Portico, waiting for the service to begin, waiting for the men to pass and whisper little controversial words for their ears. And most of the men, in the black of the funeral, wearing their suits of long-ago-black-now-purple, which fitted them like coats of armour, and walking stiff and proud in the morning sunlight spinning through the lazy mists, hovered around the North Portico, talking about the Test Match which had ended in a draw. I could see Henry, my arch enemy, standing near them, loading his head with facts which later he would claim as his own; and with him were some of the boys of the choir. I lingered near the tall wall that kept the Cathedral from the fish cries and the whore-cries of the nearby Market. How was I to get into the churchyard and sit on a tomb stone and put my shoes on my feet again?
The organ began to rant and swell like a stormy sea swept by gales of Bach, breathing its powerful chords into the ears of the uninterested congregation. Everything was fresh. Everything was new. The organ was breathing now like a monster. Somebody important was arriving. From where I stood, looking over the tops of the short croton trees, and over the head of the white angel, silent and stationary in polished marble, I could barely make out the roosters sitting on the helmets of the Governor and his party. The Lord Bishop, his robes fluttering like the Union Jack in the breeze, came out to meet them at the North Portico. I could see the Prime Minister of the Island, his eyes red with sleep and rum; and his ministers standing uncomfortably in their official clothes; and the lords and ladies of the Island, all untitled, but all rich and white, coming to this old Cathedral so early in the morning. And they all seemed half asleep to me. As they disappeared into the church, I threw my shoes over the wall, and jumped behind them.
They were coming towards me now, coming up the aisle, towards the East Window. The important people, and the choir. I saw Henry, grinning into the pages of his hymn book. I saw the choir pass the multitude of people of all colours: the black, brown, light-skinned, light-brown and yellow-skinned and coolie, and approach the front pews of the church where the Governor and the poor white people and the rich black people always sat. And as they fled into their seats and into their stalls, all that was left was the wide white aisle, like a swath through a cane-field, running straight out into the road, through the West Gate. There was a beggarman standing in the silhouette of the Gate, in the road, drinking from a paper-bag with which he was conducting, as the music romped and played.
And all the time, my tears fell on the clean, freshly-ironed cotton shirt, and into my shoes as I struggled to get them back on my feet. And when I looked up, and saw Henry step into the middle of the aisle, in the chancel, my heart broke. And straightway, I thought of my mother, standing at the entrance of the gate of our Yard, waiting; waiting for me.