was not enough a cross to bear, an age-old torturer called arthritis has me pinned to the rack. My muscles, once steel-hard have become baby-soft. My eyes, once condor-sharp have become dependent on glasses; but why should I complain? Without the miracle of glasses I had seen nature at its best and worst. I had seen hurricanes and windless days, watery moons and scorching suns, shooting stars and ebbing tides – moreover, before my bones began to brittle I had run marathons aplenty, read books by the score, kissed pretty girls galore, and after most of my energy had sapped, the messenger, who had remained confined in the darkest dungeon of my mind, clearly manifested that I had become aware of my existence seven months before my forth birthday! More than that, his record also showed that I had been playing happily beneath the mango tree in the back yard. Iris had been wearing a drab dress that had fittingly known drab days, and it was while she had been hanging more drab dresses on the line that a reptile called Miss Tilda slithered unannounced into our backyard. The reptile was our next door neighbour (sob-sob) and no sooner had she made her dramatic entrance, like an unhinged banshee she howled at the top of her voice, ‘God be praise Iris! De war eez over! De war eez over!’ and I have never forgotten how the reptile’s unexpected but joyful cry had Iris standing tall and straight and as happy as an Egyptian obelisk.
Ah! But once Iris had loosened the screws in her joints, she did a dance of relief and responded with the usual coffee and milk blend of French and English, ‘Mon Dieu! God be praise, you hear!Oui, God be praise!’
Beyond my understanding was why, immediately after Iris’s praise to God, I became aware of my existence, my fatherlessness. That mindfulness had me trying to pin a face on him, but every face I pinned on the bugger seemed wrong.
Iris. I figured shehad to know something; so I waited until the reptile with the face that had once launched a thousand shits had gone. I waited until Iris had hung the last bit of drab clothes on the drab line, then I pounced. ‘Mam’– that was how I addressed her –‘wez ma fadder?’
My suddenly asked question had Iris in torpor. Reclaiming herself, she looked at me from above the rim of her glasses and casually handed me the cold facts in the hot tropical sun. ‘Earl, your fadder iza broad!’
‘Ma fadder iza frog?!’
‘Not ah frog you lickle fool! Ah said ahbroad! In anudder country! Now go wash de wax outta yer ears!’
‘What udder country? I asked, ignoring her pleasantries.
‘In anudder country, awright?’
The answer may have been awright for an uninquisitive dulch but it was not awright for me, so I persisted, alright? ‘Tell me, Mam, what udder country?’
‘Chile!’ Iris thundered, ‘you axe too motch questions!’ and at that particular moment questions were not all I wanted to axe, believe me. All told, realizing that she had bawled at me for no reason, she capitulated like a demoralized army and said quietly but dismissively, ‘I will tell you one day … when you get bigger. Now go rest yourself and don’ axe no mo’ questions, you hear?’
Yes, I took a rest, stopped axingquestions and tried to think of other things; but so filled I was with yearning to know my father, I tried again to mentally compose a picture of him. Unable to forge a convincing composite of the man responsible for one half of me, and momentarily forgetting that no mo’ questions were to kiss my axe, I slipped in the very question that was driving Iris and me coo-coo. ‘Mam, please, tell me, wez ma fadder?’
‘Chile! Ah’ll tell you for de las’ time! Your fadder iza broad!’
Obviously Iris had believed the non-existence of my father was none of my business and questions relating to him, discreet or otherwise, were for ‘when you get bigger.’ Iris had really meant older. With the passing of time Iris’ memory dimmed and she forgot to fill me in on my father. Then Madam Memory stepped in. Much older now, she took my aging hand and walked me down the crumbling road of yesteryear. She reminded me that the youthful me – determination to know what skeletons had cowered in terror in the family closet – had continued to eavesdrop on Iris’s chattering with friends and neighbours, hoping that the odd titbit or two about my father would drop in my eager ear. Nothing of consequence had dripped from Iris’s mouth about my father. Nothing. For a long time … man, I am out-sprinting my own shadow, so I shall back track a little and examine the seed that Iris had planted in me – the seed that was the making of me.
From day one, like a wrinkle-neck Kentucky turkey, Iris had been religiously force-feeding me with words from her bible. Whether the force-feeding had been for the benefit of preparing me for priesthood, she never let on; but I now suspect that I was being indoctrinated at that ridiculously early age for her own personal satisfaction.
Iris was in a hurry. Man, was she in a hurry? Now that she had made a literate child out of me, she shoved her bible in my hand, turned the page to the Adam and Eve lie and said with big bright stars in her eyes, ‘Chile, now dat you can read you’ll be able to understan’ de words of de Lord. Now read de beautiful story for me.’
Read? My tongue lapped up every word of the story as if I were a cat devouring a saucer of milk. At the end of my lapping-up, I probably had understood the Lord’s odd word or two, but I certainly had not been able to understand the words of his talking serpent. How could I when I had not been able to understand how the slimy slithering thing had mastered the art of conversing in the first place? How could I when I had not understood, even though I roasted with desire to know, why God had allowed his yapping agent to tempt his innocent children into ‘sinning?’ But yes, everything in God’s book was true, true as triangular Earth, and since everything was true I had not dared confront Iris with my doubting questions, especially since I knew that the price of doubt would have been branded large on my backside like an advertisement on a billboard. All told, that was the beginning of my perennial battle with God, religion, my fascination for the allegories of the bible, my scribbling every story on paper and the realization that we were poor – poor enough to live in a shack next to a mosquito infested river.
Man, the shack had stood on wooden stilts. It had boasted three tiny rooms; sharing those rooms were Iris, Alver, Alwen and me. In this shack Iris had taught me to be obsessively clean to the point of felony, for she had a morbid fear of disease and I too contracted this fear known as nosophobia. Absurdly fastidious, she always made sure that the shirt on my back was clean and well pressed, likewise my trousers and sliders –underpants. A born preacher, she needed no encouragement to preach and would remind me from time to time, ‘You never know when or where you eez goin’ to fall sick, so make sure your backside and sliders eez clean, boy,’ followed by the usual ‘you hear?’
With a brain that constantly screamed for learning and understanding, little passed me by. For instance, I understood without being told that we only had a few belongings, and those belongings, in monetary terms, was of no real worth. Not even Iris’ precious bible and rosary had qualified as vendible items and so, submerged beneath the grubby waters of penury, our heads rested only slightly above the hunger line.
How could I possibly forget that there was only one bed in our shack and only Iris’s plaited locks were allowed to rest on the pillow? Alver, Alwen and me slept on rags on the floor, and within those rags were more bugs than all the stars in the night time sky. Rest assured, tiny inconveniences such as being eaten alive by those nasty little critters were the least of our problems, for we had an even greater problem: running water, or the lack of. The life sustaining liquid had to be fetched from the public tap, two streets away. Electricity? Behave! A kerosene lamp was all we were able to afford. A proper flushing toilet? How we wished! A lucky few had the luxury of a deep hole in the ground in their backyards and they were happy to call those holes of glory toilets, but many more called those same holes latrines. The majority though, the ones with an acute sense of smell, were honest enough to call those
