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  Gracie know the Maroons still blow the conch shell, and also the cow horn they call abeng, to send messages, and that long ago, Arawak people used to send messages by blowing the conch shell too. As they leave the beach, she beg Gramps to blow the shell through a hole in the top so it make a sound. Gramps take a deep breath, put the shell to his lips, and blow. The sound is low, thick and steady, not like any horn she know. She want to learn to blow the shell, so all the way home, she puff and puff into it, but all she hear is the phoo-phoo of her own breath.

  “Gracie,” Gramps eventually say, “give it a break and try again later. You will do better. No use puffing and blowing when your lungs are tired.”

  She put the shell one side like Gramps say.

  Early the next morning Gramps leave the barracks house to find her sitting on the big boulder at the back of the yard, hard at work trying to make the shell sound.

  “Any better luck?” he ask as he approach, same time searching the sky as he do every morning for signs of the day’s weather.

  She nod, put the shell to her lips and produce a faint, dithery sound.

  “Good for you, Gracie! I am going to crown you Miss Determination! You keep trying, and it soon going be loud enough to call the clans together.”

  “What’s the clans, Gramps? Why we calling it together?” So Gramps sit beside her on the stone and tell her about Scottish clans and African kinship groups, and how families can stretch across the world, and how one time, in the army in England, he meet a man who look so much like him they could be brothers, except the man was fair.

  “You know what we discovered, Gracie?”

  “That your grandpa was brother to his grandpa?”

  “Exactly right, but for a generation. His great-grandpa and my great-grandpa were half-brothers. Can you believe that?”

  Gracie grin, nod, and then she ask, “So a bit of you is white then, Gramps?”

  “I suppose so, Gracie. In this country, chances are a little bit of almost everybody is white.” He look at her for a moment. “Why? Does it matter?”

  She shake her head to say no, and right away feel bad because she know it is a lie, a big lie. But if a little bit of Gramps is white, then perhaps she don’t need to feel bad about the fact that she don’t look so black. Maybe the colour you are is just a matter of luck. Maybe there is lots of black in her that don’t manage to find its way out. Maybe, if she ever have a son, he will be a proper black man, dark as Gramps and Pa.

  25 March 1966

  My dear little daughter,

  Happy birthday! Today you are six years old! You must be going to school now maybe even big school. I wish I could see you in your uniform with a red ribbon in your hair and your school bag and lunch pan. I am so proud of you. I know you are going to be a good girl and learn as much as you can for sure I am praying for that. I have some news. Your Grandma Daphne my real mother is getting married next month and it is a big thing so she don’t have time to think of much more than that. The man has four children and two are small ten and eight years. We don’t meet them yet but she say soon. Once she is married she going to live with the whole of them in New Jersey for those children need her. That will leave just me and Granny Evadne. Granny Vads, for is so we call her is mother to Daphne and Granny to me. I am trusting God that we will able to manage. I am eighteen years old now and working at school to make a little money. I help all around sometimes in the kitchen sometimes in the office sometimes to make the new girls feel confortable. Sister Agnes say if I work hard maybe there is a job for me. I will wait on the Lord and see how things turn out. Lucille Gray who live here with Daphne a long time is still boarding so we make someting from that and Daphne say she will help us. I think her husband have money. They drive a big new car and he have his own house. At least that is what Daphne say.

  I have some other news for you. Last time I say I would tell you when I can swim all the way down the swimming pool by myself. Well I can do that now. I remember how I was so scared when I start. Maybe if you can not swim yet one day I can teach you.

  Sister say take a interest in what going on in the world so here is the news. Things still don’t go so good here in this America. Last year August they have a big palampam in a place name Wats in California. Plenty people die and get injure because police beat up two black fellows bad bad and people get vex and make a riot. I don’t know why these police think they can carry on so.

  I send you all my love.

  Your loving mother,

  Phyllis

  P.S. There was a big outage here in November last year. Imagine no light anyhere in this big New York City. I have to laugh because they are so boasy saying those things happen only to poor countries. But it happen here for true.

  2

  The Boys to the Rescue

  Gracie feel from she is small-small that she will never be like Pansy, eldest child of all, strong and facety, fearing nothing. Pansy talk her mind, sometimes even to Ma and Pa. Not Gramps though. Gramps can fix her with a look. Mostly, Pansy just go where she like, do what she want, and don’t care what follow.

  Gracie will never be like that. She is not strong and fearless. She don’t fit with the rest of them. She is skinny: “bird bones,” they tease her. Her hair is flimsy and red. She have freckles — dots of red-brown colour on her cheeks and nose. Everybody say her nose and lips are “fine,” which is to say they are thin like white people own. And her eyes, which are sort of greeny-grey, are the wrongest of all. “Puss Eye,” they call her at school.

  Ma, Pa, and the others are good and black, with thick heads of hair, and nothing pointy on their face. To Grace everything about them is steadfast and strong: lips and noses and cheeks and chins, strapping shoulders and arms and legs. Ma can carry anything on the cotta on her head: baskets of provisions from market, pails of clothes to wash at the river when the standpipe is dry, planks of board to mend the house or batten it down in storm and hurricane. Pansy can balance a good-size basket on her head too. She have her own cotta, make from part of a old frock that she wind tight on itself to form a rope, then round and round to make a cushion for the basket to rest on.

  “Not the only cloth I use now,” Pansy announce with a secret smile, when she see Grace one day gazing at the cotta with envy. Grace can make a cotta, but Ma not going to let her put any basket on her head. Grace don’t know what Pansy mean about any other cloth, so she just wait till Pansy turn back to her homework, then long out her tongue as far as it will go at her back.

  Grace badly need to discover something that will make her feel special, something she is excellent at, something that will make people think good things about her. For a long time she think and think, and she finally make up her mind to learn to read best and fastest, and to practice to recall what she read with the highest powers of remembering. Gramps help her, but he have no idea as he sounding out words with her, how much she is taking in. The first day Ma catch her ciphering out things from The Clarion, reading aloud “Five Children Left Alone Killed in Fire,” Ma make to grab the paper, and then stop and address Grace with a square, inquiring look. “Grace, you can read that?”

  “Yes, Ma.”

  “Come, read some more,” Ma say, turning the pages quick, looking for something a small child can safely read.

  That is a long time ago. Now Grace can read anything. She study her tables too, so she can add, subtract, and multiply in her head, no counting on fingers. Mr. Wong say her head is fast as the cash register in his shop. And from the day that she hear Gramps say sempervivum, she store the word away in her heart like the mother of Jesus in the Bible story and she take it out and touch her tongue on it now and then. Every time she taste it, she is more sure that something will come of it. She know Gramps will explain about this other language, and he will teach her more words that are strange and juicy on her tongue.

  25 March 1967

  My dear daughter,

  Sister Magdalene say seven is the age of reason. I think I was reasoning befor
e I was seven but maybe St. Chris children are smarter than the ones up here. Smile! I am certain you are very smart and behave good and work hard. I know because I pray for it every day. I pray believing I will get what I am praying for which is how Jesus say you should pray. I expect you to do great things when you grow up maybe be the Prime Minister of our country. There is going to be lots of Prime Ministers in the Caribbean and I don’t see why you should not be a lady prime minister, that is if you want.

  Granny Vads and me are managing not too bad and we see Daphne and her husband from time to time about once a month maybe. One time I took the train with Granny Vads to the town of Edison where they live but even though we take a taxi to the big train station here and they pick us up over there in their car it was hard for Granny Vads, so we not going do that any time soon again. She is feeling stronger now and the cold don’t so much trouble her but she is not strong like she was in St. Chris.

  Granny Vads would send love if she know I was writing, but is a secret between Mr. Carpenter and me. God bless and keep you always.

  Your mother,

  Phyllis

  As they grow, and Grace is looking more and more different from Pansy and Stewie and the others, one and two people in the district not bothering to talk behind their hands any more. Don’t mind that they are standing right beside her, they throw their remarks into the air like Grace is deaf and can’t hear them. The things they say make her feel bad, though she try not to pay them mind, so she is glad for her brothers, Stewie (first boy, tall and stringy), Edgar (third child, thick and solid), and Conrad (after Grace, short and stringy) that help her not to heed these people too much.

  Those boys behave like somebody give them happiness sweeties with their cornmeal porridge in the morning, porridge that Grace hate like poison. But the boys sneak and eat her porridge between them, and then they pick whatever fruit is in season from the trees they pass on their way to school — mango, orange, redcoat plum, June plum, pawpaw, starapple — and give to Grace so she don’t go to school hungry. Either that, or else they thief out Gramps allotment of brown sugar for his cocoa-tea, for Grace can just see her way to eating the porridge if it have plenty brown sugar in it.

  Again and again Ma ask where is the sugar she set out in Gramps cup, first thing.

  “No, Ma!” the boys say in chorus. “You don’t set out Gramps sugar for his tea yet. We would know. We would see.” That time the sugar done melt down into her porridge and she eating it, one small spoonful, then another.

  Then come one of those awful, dark days that make Grace believe in hell for true because this is what it must be like when the light and presence of the Lord is withdrawn. From time to time she is mountainously afraid, she don’t know why, and with the for-no-reason fearfulness come dark weather days when her head thump like a drum, her stomach want to jump out her mouth, and her skin feel clammy. Today is a day like that, plus today she have a job she hate above all. She is at Mr. Wong’s shop. She dash there during a break in the deluges that scouring the sky for more than two weeks now, so bad there is flooding all over St. Chris and four people dead. The sheets of The Clarion Ma give her to cover her head soak through in two seconds so she is cold and wet and fidgeting from foot to foot, trying to remember Ma’s shopping list, for fear, which is the only thing that can do it, fry up her brain.

  She hate the damp, smelly shop full up with people panting their warm breaths above her like a herd of animals in a pen. Ma say she is growing, but she still have to fight for space. She tip on her toe, gripping the coins that sliding through her wet fingers, stretching forward to rap on the counter loud enough so Mr. Wong will hear and notice her, for then he will serve her before the big people, and curse them in his Chinese language if they make any complaint.

  That afternoon, Mr. Wong is looking hard at the woman standing beside Grace, his nose trembling like a sniffing mouse, like he know before she open her mouth that she going say something nasty. Grace is trying to make room beside Mrs. Sommersby, careful not to interfere with the woman’s plentiful self or step on her fat toes. When Mrs. Sommersby glance down and see Grace beside her, a look like she taste something bad pass across her face, and she start to broadcast her mind, as Gramps would say.

  “What-a-way this child colour is red and the rest of the family so black, eh? Just go to show, you can never know how pikni will turn out. And look her fine-fine hair! Her mother must give thanks every morning for this chile’s soft hair. No fighting with kink and krinkle. And soft hair is not usual with redibo, for you know those St. Philip red people, their head dry, with hair that sparse and picky-picky!”

  Same time as Mr. Wong is glaring from his low height, drawing himself up like he getting ready to do a kung-fu move on Mrs. Sommersby, braps! Conrad arrive like a little body bomb.

  “Oh, God! Get off me! Get off me, you wicked boy!” Mrs. Sommersby turn into a gigantic bottom as she bend over and grab at her pink stockings. She wear them roll down to the knees and with the roll twist into a knot to make them stay up, but now, sake of the collision with Conrad, they are sliding down her fat legs and meeting up with the contents of his schoolbag: exercise books, string, stubs of crayon, marbles, jacks.

  Conrad’s red rubber jacks ball bounce right between Mrs. Sommersby’s gigantic breasts when she bend over, while his skinny limbs are twining about her fat legs like a wiss vine, tangling everything up in a busy confusion.

  Stewie and Edgar enter and start quarrelling with Conrad.

  “Cho, Conrad, man. Make you can’t look where you going?” Stewie ask.

  “Conrad, how much time people tell you to walk and don’t run?” Edgar follow up. Two of them put on a song and dance, insisting that Conrad apologize to “Miss-triss Som-merz-bee,” meanwhile she complaining about bad boys that love to gaze up under big woman skirt. When she say that, Mr. Wong suck his teeth.

  “After no likl boy not so tupid,” he mumble, but loud enough for people to hear. “Dat one dry up, drop off de tree, long time.” Still, he scrape the woman up and make a show of asking if she is all right.

  She sniff, pat down her skirt, roll her stockings up and twist the tops, push her bosom back into place.

  After he serve her, Mr. Wong send his son to pull her goods home in his cart.

  She leave with a last lick. “Little red jacket! Like we all don’t know how the hair so reddy-reddy and soft!”

  Mr. Wong make another long suck-teeth and then speak to Grace kind and consoling while he serving her. “Not a nice lady. Not like your Mama, no sir.” He frown at the boys as he give them peppermint balls and hurry them home. “Run quick. Rain soon fall! Take care of Miss Gracie!”

  Outside Edgar and Stewie help Grace with Ma’s groceries, the three of them jumping over orange patches of watery dirt and ditches of dark red mud, dodging the on-and-off, heavily falling rain.

  3

  The Burning Tree and the Balloon Man

  25 March 1968

  My dearest little girl,

  I wish for you a peaceful and happy eighth birthday in this world of trial and trouble. I know Ma and Pa Carpenter and old Mr. Carpenter will do something special to make it a happy day, and I hope you have fun with your brothers and sisters and friends.

  In some ways it pains me that you are growing bigger for the older you get, the more you will know that the world is not the place it should be. All the same, there are plenty good people. If I could, I would send some books especially about great men and women from our part of the world, like Marcus Garvey and the wonderful nurse, Mary Seacole, and Sarah Grandby, a great lady from St. Chris who worked with Mrs. Seacole for a while.

  I have a sad story to tell you. I met a woman at a convenience store on Broadway where I sometimes go to pick up things I need in a hurry. She was beside me doing her shopping. I heard some crying and when I looked, tears were running down her face. I asked what was wrong and she said that she just heard that her one remaining son was killed in the Vietnam War. He was the third one to di
e over there. I helped her finish shopping, and I walked home with her.

  So never mind I would love to have you with me, every single day, I am glad you are far from all this. I pray one day all the children in the world will grow up in peace. You are lucky that you are growing in a quiet place. Till we meet, God bless and take care of you.

  With all my love,

  Your mother,

  Phyllis

  When the old machine cut off Pa’s fingers at the sugar cane factory, backra look around quick for a next job to give him. So sake of the missing fingers, Pa get a new work counting the loads of cane that come to the factory from the small farmers nearby and also from Wentley Park Estate. Pa let them know he can write with his sound left hand for he could always use the two, and they give him the tallyman job that he is better than qualified for. It never last long, for when they see what they have in Pa, they move him up again quick enough. Is liaison with cane cutters and small farmers that Pa response for now, and that is plenty, plenty people. Nobody don’t call him no liaison officer, for money would have to go along with that, but Pa know that if they never have him listening to complaints, discovering small-size trouble before it grow up and come of age, the whole of Wentley Park Estate would not be like it is now.

  Grace never forget what Pa answer when her turn come to ask about the fingers, for they are not entirely gone, little finger-ends remembering what was once there. “Is not so bad, Grace,” Pa say, and he wiggle them and make her smile. “Make me think of my own life, how one day it will dwindle like these two, then vanish once and for all, like this little one here. It’s a good lesson.”

  After prayers the children go off into one room with Ma. Pa and Gramps take to their special corners of the larger space, the “big room” where they eat and pray and do homework at the mahogany dining table, their one good piece of furniture. The big room is where Ma keep her treasured things: the family Bible; a good set of plates (not matching but with no chips); a “Home Sweet Home” oil lamp; a statue of Jesus in lignum vitae wood; and a transistor radio for listening to the news every day and religious programs on Sunday.