The Last Warner Woman (12 page)

Shhhhhhhhh

When time I say all of that to him, I see like a sadness wash over his face. He sit up. He turn off the tape-recorder again and start to wring his hands round and round, and walk in a circle like the first time I meet him. Finally he look up and he look me straight in the eye. Him lips start to tremble again. Him say his words slow slow, as if he want me to catch every one. Even now his words is like a haunting unto me. I don’t understand their meaning. He say,
You may not remember this, Adamine. It was twenty-five years ago. But the first time it was you who came looking for me.

B
ISHOPESS HERBERT LIVED IN A JAMAICAN TENEMENT
yard—an inner-city squashing together of people. At times it seemed the yard had even more people than mosquitoes of which it had the usual swarms, their buzzing, black bodies fatter than the children from which they sucked. There were six bedrooms. In these six bedrooms there lived four families. Between these twenty-two people, there was only one bathroom and one kitchen. The mathematics became difficult. On most days the yard felt like an oven, so despite the fact that before Adamine arrived the Bishopess had lived by herself and was the only resident of the yard to enjoy the luxury of a room that was all her own, it had still become her habit to pass the evenings sitting by the gate, a damp rag on her face and another on her enormous breasts. When Adamine moved in, effectively doubling the population and temperature of her single room, they both began to pass the evening in this fashion. Under the shade of her two rags, Bishopess Herbert instructed Adamine in the mysterious ways of God.

“Just as every donkey have him sankey, so too everybody have him own gift. And according to what gift each somebody have, that will determine what color they wear. One man maybe get the gift of oils and baths and herb mixing, and so he will wear a white head wrap. One woman will have the gift of talking deep Africa talk, she will able to call on the ancestors, and so she will custom to wear blue. Still another person might have the gift of song, a next one the gift of miracle working, and so on and so forth. And they wear yellow or black or green according to what manifestation of gift they have inside them. But Adamine girl, women like you and me have the most specialest gift of all. We get the gift of warning.”

Adamine had never before considered herself the kind of person who was talented at something. She never thought she was destined to be anything. She thought her life was simply a matter of surviving each day, until the day she no longer could do that.

“Ada, you is the woman who will wrap her head in red.” “Like you.”

“Yes. We both have the same gift. But still, we is the women who have the largest portion of grief in this world. Is we who band our belly and bawl tears for people whose eyes too dry and whose heart too hard. We is Warner Women. Plenty people fraid of we, but that is because they fraid of truth. We is daughters of Jonah and of Legba.”

“Who that?”

“I see you don’t know nothing. Tonight you must read the Book of Jonah before you go sleep. Jonah was a Warner Man from bible days. It was him who almost dead inside the belly of a whale. And I tell you what: the whale did swallow Jonah because Jonah did swallow the warning that God give unto him. Don’t you ever make that mistake, Ada. Learn that now. Don’t ever fail to utter the word that God giveth you to utter, for people have to consider the words of Jesus.”

“I know bout Jonah. Is the other name I never hear before.”

“Papa Legba. Not plenty people call him by that name here. But that’s what he name. Legba. If he had a book it would be long from here to there. Is Legba who stand at the crossroads and speak the language of God and the language of man, and everybody understand him. Angel and demon and man. Legba come to us all the way from Africaland to speak message to we. Yes, learn that.”

Adamine nodded. It was a lot for her to take in. And then she was curious. “So what warning feel like?”

“Every somebody who have the gift feel it different. One woman will tell you it feel like when time you have a baby up inside your belly, and your water break. Such a woman will tell you that warning is like the baby coming out fast fast. That is why some Warner Women scream out loud. Another Warner will tell you she don’t remember a thing when it come upon her. Her eyes will roll way back deep in her head and if she look on you, all you see is white. But is Legba who jump into her skin. That kind of woman won’t know where she walk, or what she talk. When she come back to herself, all on a sudden, she find that she standing up in the middle of a strange road, and people all around is bawling their repentance unto God. To me, warning is like a heaviness in my mouth. It is like a stone on my tongue. It is like my tongue have a new balance and I don’t know how to speak with it no longer. Those times I know it is best to just relax and make the spirits talk through me. But you, Ada, you will feel it in your own way.”

“But how you know I have the gift of warning then, Mother?”

Bishopess Herbert observed Adamine carefully and then shook her head. “Because all day I been seeing the spirit of Legba all over you, child.”

“Yes.” Adamine nodded, “I think I see him too. When I wake up this morning and look in the mirror, I see an old man right there on top my head. An old man with a leg twist up like him want to dance DinkiMini.”

The older woman was taken aback. In her experience a young convert took months, even a year, before they could see and identify their attending Spirit. But the girl had described Legba perfectly.

“Yes, daughter, that’s him. The one and the same. Legba all over you, child. Him trying to whisper something to you. When time warning come, you don’t need to listen to no weatherman to know bout storm or breezeblow. You just feel it in your spirit. But Legba been at your ears all day, and if you can see him, that mean it won’t be hard to hear him. He trying to tell you something, Ada. Listen to him, mi child. Listen and warn.”

So Adamine inclined her ear toward the old man who floated above her head. The old man inclined his lips to her ear. He began to whisper and Adamine began to frown. Her heart was tight in her chest.

“No,” she whispered.

“It always hard to hear the first time,” the Bishopess said serenely.

“Please, no.” Adamine trembled.

“Sometimes it will be like a burden on your spirit. But still, it is the highest of gifts. You is highly favored to receive it, child.”

“No!” Adamine shouted.

“Yes.” Bishopess Herbert whispered, looking off into the distance. “Whatever Legba say is true. Whatever he say, it always go so. Don’t fight it.”

“Jesus Christ have mercy!” Adamine shot up and was running.

Bishopess Herbert shook her head slowly, watching the fleeing figure of the girl. “Poor thing,” she muttered knowingly. “It always hard the first time.”

Adamine’s heart felt like there was a cow trapped inside her ribcage, like it wanted to come out of her chest right then. Still, she kept on running. Her feet stamped panic into the ground. Gravel, concrete, and grass bore the imprint of her distress. She wondered why it was called a warning if you couldn’t stop it happening. She ran across the market. She cut across people’s yards. Then at last she was running up into the green mountains behind Spanish Town. Four and a quarter miles she ran. She was skidding down a path as familiar to her as her own life. She saw the perimeter fence. She saw the gate that was always kept open. Then she saw Mr. Mac running out from one of the bungalows. “Help!” He was shouting, as if there was someone in those mountains who could hear him. “Help, smaddy call the doctor, get the ambulance quick!” as if such things existed so far inside the island.

Adamine did not bother to step through the gate. Her prophecy pushed her down to her knees and she began to tear at her hair. Her scalp bled. She spread her arms wide, the tufts of hair like black cotton caught between her fingernails. She stood up then and began to spin furiously, she and Legba shouting together, “Death Warrant! Death Warrant! Death Waaarraaannntt!”

an installment of a testimony spoken to the wind

Shhhhhhhhh

If you ask any school pickney what they want to be when they grow big, they maybe tell you doctor or lawyer or politician, or any number of topanaris jobs. But not a one of them would say they want to become a Warner, because they know that is the hardest job of all, and one that is full of persecution but not so full of pay. And besides, some things in life you can strive for, but other things you can ongly be called into it. And warning is a thing like that.

Shhhhhhhhh

The two most famous Warner Women from Jamaica was one that did name Bernicey, and another whose name was Maud. One morning in the year that was 1907 Bernicey tie her head and walk up and down Kings Street, and she bawl out,
A lion stretcheth forth his paws under the earth, and this lion roareth, and this lion pre-pareth himself to run underneath our feet. So repent, my people, before it get too late!
Same time Maud was walking up and down Parade, shouting out,
A dragon cometh from the sky to breathe a terrible breath of fire. He breathes a terrible breath of fire unto the city. Repent!
But nobody pay neither of them no mind. Everybody continue with their wickedness. So the lion and the dragon come for true. When the Great Earthquake rock the city that same evening, people would say,
is like a lion is running underneath the earth.
And when the earthquake did done and the fire start to burn, people would say,
is like a dragon come down from the sky to breathe a breath of fire unto us.
To this day no one know quite how many did dead in that earthquake, but I know of two. Bernicey and Maud. Like their own warnings wasn’t enough to save them. Their houses fall on top of them same way. And so tell me which pickney would want such a life, to always know what is on the other side of Now, to always hear the future coming on its unstoppable hooves, to wake up one night in a terrible sweat, knowing,
behold, the end approacheth!

T
HE CRY OF THE WARNER WOMAN IS WARRANT. YOU MAY
imagine her as a kind of policewoman who has come from a country in the sky, who has spent her entire morning waiting in a dusty room. In this dusty room a ceiling fan makes revolutions as slow as the hand of a clock. The Warner Woman waits. Letters have been stenciled on to the door outside, and together they read: Bureau of the Affairs of Men. Angels in suits specially tailored to accommodate their wings are sitting behind oak desks. They have severe gray eyes and their balding heads have been polished bright, so bright they are often mistaken for haloes. The angels carefully read through thick books. The Warner Woman waits. The angels at last begin to write up warrants. The warrants are handed to the Warner Woman. She rides down to Earth on a silver cloud. The spinning of her head, wrapped in its red turban, is like a siren. The Warner Woman cries “Warrant,” and if you have the ears to hear her cry, her warrant has been served.

The cry of the Warner Woman is Storm & Hurricane & Flood! You may imagine her rising from the ocean floor, her naked body encrusted in barnacles. And now she is standing on the water; the white froth of the waves is obedient and follows subtle instructions from her toes. The Warner Woman is like a vessel. She carries people inside her. A mother perhaps, and grandmothers, and great-grandmothers, generations of prophets inside her. But also she carries the drowned. A crew of drowned niggers who gave themselves over to salt, who have been patient, who have sat on the ocean floor and waited for their beautiful legs to rot down to bone so that they could step away from the balls of lead they were chained to. They have sat, as children might sit, in a classroom, and have mastered the movements of the tide, have learned how to control and turn it into something terrible, something like a vengeance. The Warner Woman’s cry of Storm & Hurricane & Flood is also their cry. It is a conjuration of salt.

The cry of the Warner Woman is Earthquake. You may imagine her walking on tectonic plates. She shakes. She passes on her shivers. The Warner Woman causes tremors in the hearts of men. Her words can be measured on Richter scales. She says to you, “You have been living on a faultline. The faultline has shifted. You are falling through it even now.”

The cry of the Warner Woman is Consider. She draws you into contemplation, saying consider that, and then consider this. Consider yourself, and your deeds. Consider the consequences of things. Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of them. Consider the ant and be wise. And consider the ravens who neither sow nor reap nor have storehouses or barns, and yet the Father feedeth them. So consider yourself, and your place in the world, how ye are but a speck of dust.

The Warner Woman walks on normal roads. She travels on normal buses. Like everyone else, the Warner Woman must go out from her house to buy bread. She must get a cylinder of gas for her stove. She has a normal job. She works at the garment factory. Or she washes clothes. Or she is in your kitchen preparing your dinner. The Warner Woman would look like everyone else, but for the headpiece she occasionally wears. But for the rulers in her headpiece. But for the pencil stuck behind her ear. Most days as the Warner Woman walks on her normal roads, and travels on her normal buses, she keeps her own counsel. Like everyone else she must get through the day’s trials. But when the Warner Woman cries out suddenly, her cry enters people’s blood like a freezing. No longer is she just another woman on the road, or a woman on the bus. She has become the Warner Woman. The Terrible Warner Woman. Her whole body becomes rigid. She dips. She comes back up. When the Messenger Spirit is upon the Warner Woman you must look every which way but in her eyes, because in her eyes you will see Port Royal, you will see Kendal, you will see Kingston besieged by cholera, you would see the single grave for one thousand men, you will see the fires and the hangings of 1861; you will see it all. You must make the sign of the cross while the Warner Woman spins, hoping the Warner Woman will say to herself—here is someone who has considered all that needs considering, someone who does not need further warning. When she bolts toward someone, you will hope it is not you, but if it is, you will have the respect to freeze on the spot and try not to mess yourself in public. The Warner Woman lays her hands on the forehead. Her cry is Warrant! Storm & Hurricane & Flood! Earthquake! And more terrible than any of these.
Ward 18! Ward 18! The Messenger Spirit just come tell me that is Ward 18 for you!