She took her first steps on paperbacks lining the rugs—on the face of Javier Marías, on the back of Derek Walcott—and even as Jamaica’s knees began to buckle, under narcotics, under voodoo politics, and the sidewalks began to choke with the homeless, the drugged, and the cracked out, her parents held her close, filled her ears with what comfort they could. She grew up loved. She never forgot that.
