woman who had given life to me was called Anthea; the midwife who had helped with the traffic was christened Gloria, and this undiplomatic woman was the product of a fetid joke. Hardly a glory to God as her name suggested, after smacking my arse to evoke cries that confirmed life, and knowing that my mother had a great love for America and all things Americana, in memory of the Pearl Harbour calamity, she figured that I should be named Pearl!
Fock-off!
At least that is what I like to think my five foot nine, born and bred Caribbean mother had said or thought. I mean, had I been born a girl my mother would have had no soup naming me Pearl. Pearl is a lovely name; a respectfully wicked name; a name that conjures all sorts of romantic songs by Frank Sinatra; a name that dances coolly in the moonlight, but man, I belonged on the gut-ripping side of the battlefield so my mother rejected the midwife’s suggestion with an abrasive ‘no!’ then treated herself to a wee glass of the giggles. The giggles worked. Damn right it worked, because the midwife was left as confused as an orange cabbage on a mango tree. To compensate, she silently swore beneath her breath and vamoosed.
View this: Gloria’s suggestion to label me Pearl had been a serious one and she had expected my mother to see it as such, but then, upon realizing that my mother would not bend like pliable bamboo in a ferocious wind, she displayed he mule-like stubbornness and decided to dig for gold again. Poor Gloria. Just before big dig number two it dawned on her that she had not explained to my mother whyPearl should forever be my tag. Okay, that was fine, but now the time had come to remedy the situation. And man, with the remedy on the tip of her lemon coloured tongue, she skilfully poured the medicine into my mother’s ear. ‘Woman!’ she began with faux theatrical drama, ‘Lemme tell you somefing. Today de wicked yellow Japan people drop de bombs on de heads of de pink Yankees in Pearl Harbour, hundreds die and hundreds hurt.’ The nullipara, the childless woman, paused just long enough to gauge my mother’s reaction then continued unmoved by the shock that was so visibly stamped on my mother’s face. ‘Ma dear Anthea,’ she groaned in a begging tone, ‘maybe now you’ll un’erstan’ whyAh tell you to name de lickle chile Pearl, eh?!’
My mother’s heart bled. The little drum of life bled like an over-ripe beetroot that had been crushed underfoot by a size twelve boot – the ridiculous explanation, you see, had been responsible. All told, the midwife had meant well; but partly out of respect for the American servicemen that had lost their lives in the atrocious bombing and partly because the name Pearl was more suitable to the opposite sex, my mother kept her cool under her cotton blouse and once again refused the woman’s insane demand.
Rancid Gloria, did she up the white flag? Ha! Undeterred she changed the tone of her voice to make it sound more human-friendly and, trying to make the best use of garbage psychology she asked my mother, ‘Your surname … eez Harber, yes?’ In spite of being conscious of the midwife’s foolish ploy to entrap her, my mother acknowledged the so-called question with a nod and a grin and allowed the midwife to retain her starring role in the pantomime. Encouraged, the silly woman concluded by pleading, ‘So go on Anthea, go on. Let de whole worl’ know how motch you love America. Call de boy Pearl …pleeese!’
Man, at a time when death and destruction was ubiquitous, at a time when the sound of raucous laughter could easily have been construed as uncaring and insensitive, the midwife had chosen to display her stupidity and asininity with such intense seriousness, my mother shovelled all caution out of the hospital window and indulged in a large blast of laughter. The midwife pretended to be hurt. The silly bitch rolled her eyes around their sockets like the little ball on a roulette table then dramatically threw her hands in the air as if a Texas cowpoke had poked a Colt 45 in her upside down ribs. As if that farce had not been entertaining enough, she called my mother an ingrate in a voice that sounded as if she had whiffed helium. Completely satisfied, she turned her back and walked away, probably to harass some other unsuspecting soul.
It was no lie, though. My mother’s great love for America and all things Americana had no equal, and as much as she would have loved to display that love and fealty for America by naming me Pearl, she also knew that she could not make a jackass of me – so what did my sweet mama do? She decided right there in the hospital bed to compromise: she named me Earl Cassius PrimusHarber.
It could have been worse. Mama could have chosen for me the names of some of Rome’s most cruel emperors: the likes of Nero, Caligula or Commodus. Fortunately she had never heard of those historical men. However, later in life her well-meaning compromise had me feeling like a knackered bullock with a heavy yoke around his neck, so much so I ceased to disclose my middle names to anyone and yet, the question still haunts me: had my mother thought that one day I would miraculously revert in time, discard my first and last name and become Rome’s first black emperor?
On the other hand, whether the mid-wife had thought the compromise a good one after hearing the news of my Roman names, I shall never know. What I do know from whispered talk was this: at the very second of my fatuous naming, Earth was reprieved! The grey and grimacing skies turned blue again and a grinning sun came out to play – and guess what? Every religious man and woman on the island danced the dance of the thirteen voodoo veils, and they praised Him. Realistically the praises should have been heaped high on thatbrute, that sometimes despicable and unpredictable brute, for it was he who had spared the little island from total annihilation.
A quick look in the rare view mirror tells me that all I have written so far reads like the first instalment of a bullshit story, and yet, and yet, every word is true. I mean, every crab-face pillock knows the more unbelievable the crap the truer the crap, and the pile that I now wade through barefoot had been obtained through endless eavesdropping – a skill I mastered at an early age after accidently learning that almost immediately after my birth, my mother handed me over to Iris.
Iris? Yep. The lady was my mother’s bosom friend and the mother of two growing sons, Alver and Alwen. Short, stout and proud, with neatly plaited hair and turtle shell glasses, she was but a thimbleful of years above my mother and lived her life according to the hatchet-like words of the bible.
Unlike Moses, I had not floated down a river in a waterproof wicker basket to be discovered by a rich princess. As I have already said, I had been physically handed over to dirt-poor Iris, who subsequently became my surrogate mother, and with this unceremonious handing over my biological mother was now free to gather wind in her patched-up sails.
Man, times were harder than biblical bread. Dollar bills were rarer than duck’s teeth and, not blind to the facts, at an opportune moment my never-say-die mother, her sails already pregnant with wind, climbed aboard a semi-battered vessel and landed squarely at the feet of a tall iron lady with spikes in her head and a torch in her hand. The lady was called Liberty, and with nothing better to do, Lady Liberty stood high on a podium and simply gazed at the wonder of New York Harbour.
Oops! Almost forgot. Before my mother departed she said that she would be away for only as long the war lasted. The war ended. For the sake of mankind the allied armies had marched through Hitler’s turf and silenced his blaring guns; peace had become the order of the day; the world had once again settled down; the munching on the bread of contentment had been resumed; nectar had been sipped from the cup of optimism, and through the scratchy lens of my toy binoculars mama was nowhere to be seen.
Did I pine for that woman? Man, did I ever cease wondering when she would be coming home? With little option left to me, I waited. Time sped by with velocity unknown to the speed of light and stillno mama. Then one day, when my atom-size brain had grown to the size of a coconut, for some strange reason a disturbing question popped into my head. Hey boy, the question had asked, how young were you when you become conscious of your existence? How the F would I know?! I replied annoyingly. Later though, with the passage of time and without as much as a tiny knock on my skull’s door, a messenger came barging in with the answer.
The messenger, who had remained confined in the darkest corner – whoa!
