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‘nothing happens before its time.’
Her slanted eyes were golden brown and her skin was a deep black, which I loved because it was exactly the same colour as mine. In fact, we were the two blackest people in the village, something that I was teased about throughout my childhood.
‘Obeah man’.
‘Still mi kyaan promise de medicines will work fa every woman. If its fiyuh destiny to give birth, even wit all my powers, I kyaan prevent destiny!’
It was strange to reflect, many years later when Auntie Madge told me this story, that maybe her lack of maternal feelings had been passed on to me.
Grandma mostly had her own ideas about things, but there were some situations when she couldn’t think of a solution.
It was the sadness she felt in her heart that made her die.
‘Mi know seh a big ting dat Melba gone caus yuh nevah ave mada or fada, and mi know how much yuh di love and depen pon yuh grandmada.
The irony was not lost on me: despite the absence of my father’s name on my birth certificate, he was the only person who could give permission for me to leave the island.
‘I didn’t think you’d take any notice of what some old racist white woman told you, Erna! If we listened to people like that, most of us wouldn’t even bother to get out of bed.
But you can’t make them your responsibility forever.’
Mother seemed lost without him to anchor her in reality – no matter how awful that reality had been.
‘Like you fell off your island and there was no one there to catch you.’
‘I think the reasons why people hurt their own children are complex,’ Monica said, returning to her original theme, ‘but at the bottom of it, I’m convinced it’s to do with their own unresolved traumas. It’s like anything, I suppose, some people are very conscious about not repeating things that have happened to them, and others less so…’
I’d rather live in paradise with little money than in hell with plenty money.’
she nuh fond a gal pickney after she loss har first bouy chile.
Do you know, Papa, she was never able to show me one iota of love because I was a constant reminder, every striking day, of what you did to her.’
But I don’t want it to do the same to me, because I cannot regret my own existence.
