Blue cassava--unfit for cakes--about to be grated and pressed for its
starch; withering twigs, half-ripe turnips, _bolonjays_ a languid flush
of green and purple, a graveler--a watery, cork-light potato endwardly
dangling; a greedy sow, tugging at a stake, a crusty, squib-smoked
"touch bam"--hand-magic, earth-magic, magic of the sun, magic of the
moon, magic of the flowing Barbadian gap.
Soft, round, ash-gray, dark violet, purple peas--peas Alfie and Ona and
Din and Mirrie ate raw; grown by her own nimble, prolific hands.
Only--the soft quiet of Goddard's Village. Demerara (Mud-Head
Land) to Barbadoes ... on a barque, owned by a West Indian
"speckahlatah"--dealer in sweet and Irish spuds--aboard ship, ashore,
January to December, wearing thick British tweed, baggy, hairy,
scratchy and hot. On the zigaboo's boat April had taken flight. Soft
nights; nights of ebony richness; of godless splendor. On the shining
waters--blue, frosty, restful--a vision of Jesus walked.
An' crown-un-un Him Lahd av ahl
An' crown-un-un Him Lahd av ahl
An' crown-un-un Him Lahd av ahl
An' crown Him!
Crown Him!
Lahd!
Av!
Ahl!
The bow of the ship jammed against a brilliant Barbadian sunset, April,
a pique shawl swathing her aching body, saw a wiggling _queriman_
resist being dragged up on the smooth, spotless deck. Kingfish, sprat,
flying fish--sprang, fought, grew enraged at the proximity of sea-less
earth. On a half-dry mattress the children slept ... sucked on sour
plums.... One more sunset, and the noisy, dusty music of Bridgetown.
All for the remote joys of a gap in Goddard's Village, and of a rosier
one: sending the children to school and to St. Stephen's Chapel.
Accomplishing it had been a tear-drenching ordeal.
Up above the brace of stone, up above Waterford's, beyond The Turning,
up a dazzling white dusty road, sugar canes on either side of it, an
old ox cart driver at Locust Hall had had an empty shack crumbling
slowly on the side of the slanting grass hill. Under the rigid
hammering of the sun, with a strip of swamp land below--shy of lady
canes, with a rich ornate green--the green of fat juicy canes--the
shack was slowly perishing. On hot days centipedes, and scorpions, and
white mice, and mongooses prowled possessively through it. On wet ones
raining winds dumped on the roof flowers, tree-drips, soggy leaves.
Thirteen sovereigns the man had asked, and she had given him seven.
Parts of the house, visibly the beams and foundations, of oak, fell
to dust at the touch of the husky black movers, men used to the
muscle-straining task of loading ox carts with hefts of loose sugar
cane. Husky black movers moaning:
Jam Belly, Quakah Belly,
Swell like a cocoa,
Tee hey, tee hey--
Sally bring grass in yah!
Untouched by the noise, and the heat, and swarming of cane dust, a
centipede ran up one of the men's legs. Bawling. Scratching. Portions
of the gabling roof lifted on to the dray sagged and dragged all the
way to Goddard's Village. From Locust Hall it scraped the ground.
Behind it, April, and Alfie and Mirrie and Ona and Din--sagged through
the heavy oceans of stone dust.
Of the star apples and _dounz_ sunset carved a framework of purple
mist. Etched, flung upon the sky. On a stone step Bay Rum, a worker
in marl, twanged a guitar; beyond the dingy cabin the ragged edges of
an old mortar house were imprisoned against the glowing sky. In the
imminent dusk cane arrows swung to and fro, on some peasant farmer's
hedge. A donkey cart, wagged in and wagged on, down to the eternity of
the gap.
April explored the waterholes along the gap for stones to prop her
house on. Some had to be cut, shaved, made small. Hoisting it,
smoothing the floor--was a man's job. Plenty of stones, dug up, stolen,
at night or early dawn, from obscure vacant spots in the village, to
be used in myriad ways. That done, the hammering began. At Locust Hall
it must have been a magnet for rusty nails. It took more muscle than
was at the command of a woman to swing them out of their sockets. Often
an adamant one sent April reeling against the breadfruit tree. Did she
have to take them out, at all? Yes. No old nails in her house for her.
Wall pockets, too, had to be put in. The lamp, a brilliant one, was
crowned with a violet dome.