The Last Warner Woman (3 page)

Devon appeared in the doorway of the small house and stopped to scratch his dark balding head. He was confused. He considered the form of his wife, muttering and fanning herself under the tree. He was going to ask her sternly,
Dorcas, why in God’s green earth you want the chimmy pot? You is really going to doo-doo out there, in the broad and living daylight, for the entire world to see?
But one look at her face, the mixture of anger and strain contorting it, made him swallow his questions and scamper inside.

This then, was the surest testament of a mother’s love for her one daughter—that in the broad and living daylight she had shat under a guava tree, her only privacy the floral skirt she was wearing that fanned out covering her lower parts and the chimmy pot she was stooped over.

What a conundrum of colors Pearline had suddenly found herself in: she was afraid because the man kneeling before her was white; she was afraid because now that he was looking up at her, with even more annoyance in his eyes than had been in his voice, she saw that these eyes were blue; she was afraid because she had been walking all night and her own eyes were surely red and she was suddenly conscious of her whole disheveled appearance; she was afraid because the doily in her hand was purple and she wondered if this would offend the man as it had apparently offended everyone else. She wished now that the doily was white so she could hold it out to him like a flag of peace.

“I never mean to disturb you Mister Man Sir. I have this doily here selling. I was just wondering if I could interest you in it. I am …” and the words stuck. Pearline began to doubt herself. But finally she finished the sentence, “… I am very good at knitting, sir.”

Albert Dennis got to his feet, taking hold of the purple doily in his slow climb up toward the sky. His lean height now made her feel small and instead of looking down on his stooped figure, she now had to shield her face from the sun. Pearline was familiar with men of the clergy—deacons, reverends, pastors, parsons, and lay preachers. They were part of her village, and she had seen them during the week in their dirty water-boots just like everyone else. She had also seen them on Sundays, freshly scrubbed and wearing their one good suit. But Pearline Portious had never before seen a priest, though they had been described to her in detail:
mi dear, dem wear a big ugly frock just like woman, and one something on top them head that you can’t even call a proper hat, and to hear them on Sunday is like torture, for is a long drawn-out sermon in Latin or what-have-you because that is how high-standing people believe the Savior himself talk.

Albert Dennis was not in a frock or a strange hat but Pearline still knew he was a priest because of another distinguishing feature that had been described—a large wooden cross dangling from their necks, and on that cross a tiny crucified Christ.

Monsignor Dennis kept his eyes on Pearline but his fingers were inspecting her work, pulling the doily, feeling its surface. She awaited his verdict.

“My dear young lady,” he said finally, “you indeed are very good at knitting. I believe the Lord might have sent you to us.”

“Oh yes, sir. Oh yes. The Lord him own self call me down here today.”

She suddenly imagined an abundance of furniture filling the three bungalows—nightstands, coffee tables, dinner tables, desks, bureaus, whatnots, chest-of-drawers, dressers, cabinets, shelves; all of them wooden and bare, just waiting for her knitted creations to cover them.

“I was saying my morning prayers in bed this morning, sir, and I hear when God say to me, Pearline girl, mek haste and go down to the valley today today. They need a girl like you.”

“Very well …”

“Yes sir. I can do mats too, tablecloths, doilies, blankets, even clothes like sweater and all them things there, and even …”

“Then, my dear,” the priest interrupted her sharply, “you will be able to do something much simpler.”

“Sir?”

“Just a band, my dear, about this wide.” With his thumb and index finger, he indicated the width of about three inches.

“And this tall.” he indicated the length from the ground to his waist. “And it must be white.”

Pearline’s excitement vanished. “Ongly that, sir?”

“Only that.”

“Ongly that. One so-so …” She didn’t even know what to name this thing she was being asked to make. “One so-so something that is this wide and this tall?”

“Not just one. As many as you are able to make.”

“But ongly that sir?”

It was the simplicity of the request that was disappointing, a mere twenty-four stitches across, chaining and turning, chaining and turning, row after row until she reached the required four feet.

“Only that, young lady. Come back next week about this time with what you’ve done and I will buy them from you. Now, good morning.”

The priest bowed his head politely and Pearline understood she had been dismissed. She turned to leave but then remembered her mother.

“Beg pardon, sir, but the doily you have there is not free.”

He looked down in his hands and gave a slight start having quite forgotten what he was holding. Indeed, he hadn’t intended on purchasing a thing so … so purple, but he fished into his pockets nonetheless and deposited thirty cents into Pearline Portious’s proffered hands. This was, of course, once upon a time when thirty cents was worth more than it is now.

Arriving back at the yard that she had left the day before, Pearline Portious found that her mother was still underneath the guava tree. She had fallen asleep in the dirt, her head resting on the pillow of her clasped hands. Pearline carefully placed the three ten-cent coins on her mother’s cheek and watched as her eyes fluttered open at the cold feel of metal on her face.

“See there!” Pearline hissed triumphantly, towering over the confused woman. “I tell you I would get the doily sold.”

Two teardrops sprang up from her mother’s eyes. They rolled horizontally to meet the coins, and Pearline’s arrogance vanished. She understood now why
she had been successful: it was her mother’s prayer—a desperation that had gone out into the world to accomplish what had never been accomplished before. She sat down while her mother lifted herself to a sitting position.

“You really get it sold, child?”

“Yes Mama … but you was right too. It is time I grow up.”

an installment of a testimony spoken to the wind

Shhhhhhhhh

I don’t know who you is. I don’t know where in the world you even is right now, but I believe you is there, sitting down, comfortable as you please, and that you is hearing me. I need to talk what I talking soft. I must not wake up the samfie man who I discover is writing down all manner of lies for you. He is writing down my story as if that story was a snake—the snake from the garden—twisting, coiling, bending this way and that. But hear me now, if his words is a snake then mine is a mongoose chasing after him, a terror of teeth that him will be scared of. I going to set the record right. I going to unbend the truth. So listen close.

Shhhhhhhhh

That sound is the wind, and this is what I going to write my story on. I was made to understand this from I was just a girl—be careful what you talk, Mother Lazarus used to tell me, careful or else the four winds will take it up like a kite that loss its owner, take it far, far to those whose ears you never want to hear it. But I don’t care who hear me tonight. I ongly care that somebody does. So I standing up on this little piece of balcony like how the queen sometimes stand in front of her palace. I standing up in this terrible cold without a shawl or a coat to brace me. I standing up in this country where I have come to till a hard ground. It so dark I cannot even see the snow falling, but when I open my mouth the snowflakes fall like dots on my tongue. Like little full stops. As if even the snow is trying to say,
end your talk now, lady, and don’t say those things you is bout to say.
But it has always been like this. Whenever I did get a word or a prophecy, whenever I did feel the spirit jump on me, whenever I did feel the crossroad drawing me to its pulpit, begging me to stand in the middle-road and say onto all who did have ears to hear,
Consider the words of the Lord
… well, those times it was like the whole world want to close its ears and its eyes and its doors. The sons and daughters of earth always trying to run away from warning. But understand me now, I going to stand up and talk same way whether your heart is stone or it is feather, and whether this snow tell me to stop or to go on. I going to stand here every night and talk my testimony. I ongly hope that the wind will take it up, and that you is somewhere in the world listening, cause if you read what I did read, that Once Upon A Time There Was A Leper Colony In Jamaica, then you need to understand something straight away: that is a make-up story, a lie from the pit of hell.

Shhhhhhhhh

It wasn’t once upon a time. It is still there today and I can go back and visit anytime I wants to. If my mind take me and I decide to finally leave this godforsaken country and go back mongst my own people, I could do it, and all of it would be there: the veranda, the rocking chairs, the smell of Detol. There is no evidence to say that such a time was once and no more. And something else you should know: it wasn’t no colony. It was just a simple house. A hospice is the word they did call it. It was on Queen Margaret Drive, number 35, in Spanish Town. You have heard me right: Spanish Town. Not no valley between Stone Hill mountains. Not no deep back-a-God country part of the island with cow and callaloo and yam. Just the ugly squalor of Spanish Town—same place the news today say is full of gunshot and gullies. Full of galvan houses squashed on top of each other. Full of poor people who have to live their lives in fear, because the city just too full of tief and liars and murderers. I used to give warnings to that city. I warn till I was tired. I would go down near the market and stand up mongst all the buses and say what the Spirit did lay on my heart to say. Even the prisoners up there, high above the cricket ground in them cages, would listen. Most days they used to make fun by calling out to people below:
Hey you! Yes, you! I see you and I mark you, and when time I get out I going to massacre you every which way!
They was ongly teasing people, but people would still get fraid for true. And if you was a woman they would tell you bout your woman-parts, and how much man did breed you already, and all manner of slackness. But when they see me, not a word. They quiet down and listen to whatever it was I had to say. One time I even hear a terrible cowbawling, like it was coming from the sky. It was one of those boys up in that prison, like he find out that day that he wasn’t badder than God. Like God break his heart and make it soft, and he catch the spirit from my words. He was up there in the towers bawling
JEESUS, JEESUS FORGIVE ME
, like he know that the earthquake I was calling for would rock him even up there and rock him straight into hell. I warn that city like how Jonah did warn Nineveh, and like how the angels did warn Gomorrah.

Shhhhhhhhh

But you need to know something about Jamaica. There is a time when prophecies take root, but another time when the same prophecies turn to dust. One day the government and the
CIA
start to hand out guns instead of flour or rice. People realize they was hungry for something else. We was a people who did beat down too long, and the guns make some of we feel mighty. First we use the guns to kill each other, then we use the guns to kill our own country, and we would have used them to kill God if God could be killed. We wasn’t afraid of nothing no more, and the wickedness start to rise. That is the Spanish Town that I grow up in, and where the lepers did live.

Shhhhhhhhh

I grow up in that house on Queen Margaret Drive and in truth it was a better street than most. Every house was painted a soft color—blue or green or pink. Maybe people did live a hard life and they wanted to look onto their houses and see something soft. Number 35 used to be pink, but when I was growing up the paint did start to peel and the latticework did start to fall down. This lattice wasn’t just for decoration. It was put up round the house so that nobody from the road could see onto the veranda. People was mighty inquisitive and would always fast into things they had no business fasting into. The lattice was there so that no biblewoman passing, or no postman dropping off letters, or no pickney walking home from school, could just look and see the kind of people that did sit on that veranda every day, in their rocking chairs, with feet ugly and swollen beyond the possibility of shoes. It is plenty years now that I don’t think of these people, but once upon a time they was my only family. Maas Paul and Miss Lily, and Maas Johnson and Maas Johnny. And of course there was Mother Lazarus.

Shhhhhhhhh

But look at how I forget my manners. I talking up a storm and I don’t introduce myself. Well the name you can call me is Ada, which is short for Adamine, and that is my true, true name. It is the name my mother did intend for me to have, and what everyone call me when I was growing up. But since then I find out that this name is not on my birth paper. The name written down there was Pearline Portious, and I figure this would make me, not the Original, but Pearline Portious the Second.

Shhhhhhhhh

I tell you what though—when Mr. Writer Man did start to write this story, he should have put down two words to begin it all. Crick, Crack. And if he did start the story like that we would all know that his world was just make believe. We would know his world was the world of Brer Anansi and Brer Tiger and the magic-pot and what-have-you. If I was to start my true true story, I would start it like this

My name is Adamine Bustamante, and I did born amongst the lepers.

P
ERHAPS IT WAS THE MAN’S WHITENESS, FOR IN THOSE
days which black girl would dare question any man of such pedigree? How else to explain the utter lack of curiosity that infected the Original Pearline Portious? For six months she, who lived in a rainbow room, slipped into a kind of life as monotonous and dull as the “ongly thats” she had begun to knit. She was making them in great abundance. Every Saturday she would scrape them into a plastic bag and make her way back down to the colony, along the path that smelt always of wet grass and mangoes. She would step through the open gate where Monsignor Dennis seemed always to be waiting on her. She would give him the bag of knitting and he in turn would give her money. This exchange was not even accompanied by words—no howdy-do, no good-afternoon, no see-you-same-time-next-week, and certainly no questions from Pearline about
what kind of place is this? What is it that goes on here?