upon the lamp pole on which perched the long-neck-garlins, by the
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quiet street scattered with shady poinsettia trees bursting with bright red and orange bloom. I knew then that I would have had to get away from this valley of my childhood. This place was a rolling-calf in the dead of night when its chains clanked to the beat of the restless spirits coming down from Cemetery. These spirits would call out from their groves for the weary and lonely to come join them in the place of eternal rest. Come home, come home – ye who are weary come home – Good night- good night –good night.
I was determined to run far away from this place, to turn my back for good on the stories of my father, Mr. Selwyn Green, a man whom I had heard about through the whisper of the old men in the bar with the juke-box by the corner at the foot of sleepy Shelly- Hill across from Cemetery Corner. What a great place to tell tales, looking over at the yard with the mango tree, and the goats and donkeys feasting upon the shrubs growing over the bones of the dead.
They said that I was a bastard, that people were unsure about who my father really was, that a boy like me would most likely amount to nothing, just like my rumored worthless father before me. Speaking for myself, I had known no love that I could see from my foster mother who had only seemed to care about the few paltry government dollars delivered to the post office every month-end by the red Royal Mail van as it limped into town along the hot and dusty road, a pittance from the government for my care. The money was for flour, mixed-meal, rice, cod-fish, sugar and such-de-like.
And now here I was standing in this new great white city of dreams with its shimmering yellow lights, I Dan, happened upon the fair and the beautiful. I was here, the new man in hog-town, the city of endless dream, the country-man that I was, I had to take my chances. Instinctively I really wanted to touch her smooth looking hands, to feel if they were real. She did not respond to my hello. How could she, I being a stranger? But I was close enough to see what I thought was a strange desire in her eyes, a stranger standing alone on this
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near deserted street, a woman with a glimmer of curiosity in her haunting eyes.
Like I said, my name is Dan. I was born Danma Matthew Green around to a man named Selwyn, and to a woman who people called Jane in a place called Sherwood, another one-horse town a few miles away just beyond New-Forest, Jamaica. It was a sleepy one-street hill-top village far in-land on the north side of the Island at the foot of a lush green mountainside. My arrival into the world early one Saturday morning had been painful, and there had been no cause for celebration, based on what I had been told, and Jane, having failed to abort the baby early, gave birth to a baby boy. She had then given up the baby as soon as she could and had run away on a one-way ticket abroad a big banana boat bound for the United Kingdom, leaving behind her child, and covering her tracks as best as she could.
The past must be left behind, a new one to begin. After all, as I had been told, everybody who could, was taking the boat bound for “England”, to shake off the Island dust, to begin anew overseas in the seat of the Empire, with never a thought of ever looking back at this cussed place, with all of its hot sun and its shanty-town suffering, its zinc fences and its one solitary Nearer-My-God-To-Thee church on the hill. No more calling the faithful to Sunday morning worship. No more tolling of the bell.
England was the land of hope and glory, a place of great tradition and storied battles, a land that would give her a new look and a better life, my mother had said, according to the stories. After all, wasn’t she a loyal subject of the Kingdom? Wasn’t she a faithful subject of Missus Queen, the same queen on the shiny penny and the ha-penny, sitting on the big chair and beaming beneath the haloed crown of glory? “Who can blame the po chile? A bastard baby is a burden for a young girl,” and on and on the story went.
So it was no surprise that I would follow in the tradition, that I too would later go a foreign to escape the Island, “fe go to America” to seek my fortune, twenty-two years after my
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mother’s disappearance amidst the dew and the London fog of good old England.
I stumbled upon Kate late one evening. I did not tell her the full story of my family, certainly that I had had no real family that I cared to remember. At the heart of my untold story, I had developed a deep hard shell, and a stubborn scowl on account of the countless stories about the untold life that I had endured as a boy, then later as a man in the sleepy town of Sherwood, not far from the winding quiet river that flowed into the Caribbean sea looking far beyond the vast deep-blue horizon.
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Chapter 3
Kate
My past loomed large in front of me. In many ways, in North America, I met a very different life from what was my childhood. I was born in Calabria, a small town nestled between rolling hills and the Sea, not far from Rome. There is a saying that “you cannot die before you see Calabria.” This is how beautiful my country is. In any case, as a small child, my mama told me many stories.
As I grew older, Mama told me that she had been a member of some organization called the Euro Communist Party at home in Italy. She had been an admirer of some guy named Enrico Berlinger. I vaguely recall attending once, a big demonstration in Rome in the company of my mama, where this Enrico shot up a captive audience of followers. We listened to his gibberish on the communist revolution, about what needed to be done to challenge and defeat the government and all the capitalist state. My mama, who I believed to be the eternal idealist, had been fixed to his every word, believing with all her heart, though now I’m pretty sure she did not know what she believed. I tell this story because, on reflection, and given the way in which my mama’s life turned out, I am less confused as to what she could have believed in the idealism of Italian youth.
My papa was very practical and somewhat of a cynical man. He was always concerned with facts or actual occurrences. He had always said that all people were born to stick to their own. All people would try anything to rise above each other, without worrying about whom they trampled on. People were animals. Animals ruled by virtue of their size and power and life was the survival of the fittest. That is what my Papa would say. But Papa
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kept his “joie de vie”. Unlike many who immigrated here wandering like sheep, not motivated enough to learn to speak English or to scratch a few words on a blank page, he learned the language of the new country. I think he was confident that he would one day be among those who would own property, the symbol of power and success. After all, it was every man for himself, as he often said.
As was common among the generation of my papa, he had kept his extended family close by, as if they had not been extended at all. In fact, many of my family lived all together in the large farmhouse near a clear stream. It was away from the hunger and the homelessness that Enrico had talked about. I remember being the object of affection and fussiness in my family, in what had appeared to be a perfect world, until the letter arrived.
My
