The Last Warner Woman (7 page)

Here is a theory you may have begun to turn around in your head: could it be that the sudden whisking off of Monsignor Dennis to Kingston was also part of Agatha Lazarus’s elaborate plan to fall asleep? Could it be that the old woman had spoken indiscreetly and caused a rumor to travel all the way to Kingston, which in turn caused Monsignor Dennis to have to leave the colony, following that rumor to where it had landed in the ears of his superiors? Could it be that when he left the colony before Pearline came, he was not simply taking his yearly vacation; it was not that he went back to England to visit friends and family? Could it really be that it was the old woman’s meddling that had caused his departure, as if she was trying to get him out of the way to make sure that Pearline’s arrival was unobstructed? You may wonder these things because of how easily Pearline slipped into life at the colony, and how broken a man Albert Dennis was when he returned.

Well, supposing you had the time and the money and the inclination, you could actually follow this story right back to its beginning. You could book yourself a ticket and go to Jamaica. Although, where does a story really begin? And what would you do on the island?

Perhaps you could start by going to the Registrar’s Office in Spanish Town. You might want to look for birth and death certificates. This would be a mistake. You would quickly realize that you just don’t have that kind of time. The line at the Registrar’s Office stretches on for what looks like days. And even if you were lucky enough to reach the counter you would then find three women with tight perms and tighter lips, who would speak animatedly and at length to each other about a show called Royal Palm Estate (you have never heard of it), but would look at you contemptuously above the rim of their glasses if you dared to say, Excuse me, excuse me please.

They would answer, One minute, sir. And then take fifteen.

And if you were so lucky as to be granted an audience, eventually, after your six hours of trying to get to the counter, and you were smart enough to measure your tone and still be polite, the nice women with the tight perms and tighter lips would ask you if you had brought a letter stamped by a justice of the peace, and your passport, and a proof of address, and a police record, and the required fee made out as a manager’s check, and the fifteen other useless things you should have brought with you, and if you had forgotten any one of these things, which you inevitably would have, they would lift their unimpressed brows and dismiss you.

“Sorry sir, we can’t help.”

And even if the next day you had everything, you would find out then that records are never located quickly in Jamaica. That files are unfiled. That some files do not exist. That to look for it yourself would mean being led to an enormous warehouse, to boxes and boxes exploding with records, piled to the ceiling and running on for miles. You would decide then, quite wisely, that maybe the story need not start here after all.

Next you could go the Office of the Archdiocese of Spanish Town. You would have to tell all manner of lies for half an hour straight, hoping the Lord would not strike you down dead for the brazenness of it all, before you finally gained access to the records detailing the activities of the diocese between 1940 and 1960. You would sit alone in a dusty room, taking down ledger after ledger, leafing through their pages hoping to find something, anything, relating to the leper colony that the church once ran.

You would maybe find a little piece of information here, and another little piece there, but nothing that brought the people back to life. And mostly you would squint, and then squint some more over the records because everything had been written down in pencil, much of it was now faded, or smudged into illegibility, or occasionally erased. You would realize then that this is what history is—a series of smudges, a ream of blank paper, a catalogue of events lost to the moments in which they happened.

But now your time in Jamaica is running short so you decide to follow a hunch and search for a man by the name of Ernie McIntyre. When you find this Mr. McIntyre he will insist that you simply call him Mr. Mac.

“Even my mother did call me Mr. Mac.” he tells you.

He will be an old man of an incredible size—a belly so big that his shirt cannot be buttoned; he’ll also have a great big head, and a sprawling set of buttocks, all of which will make you wonder if he can squeeze it all into the front seat of the Lada taxi he still drives for a living.

You have found him in a shopping plaza where he waits for passengers during the day, and as you walk toward him he will shuffle around to open the front passenger door.
“Where to, young man?”

You wave your hands.
“Cheers, sir, but no thank you,”
and he will look at you with annoyance.

You explain then that you don’t need a taxi, but you have in fact been looking for him, and you are willing to pay him for his time. And if you tell him then that what you really want is to know about the leper colony that was once in Stone Hill, St. Catherine, Mr. Mac will look up with a start.

“The leper colony? But how you even know bout that, massa? That is long time history. Long long time when I was a young strapping man like yuself. Once upon a time I used to drive people up there to see the ruins, and I hope you doesn’t take no offense when I say this, but it was always white people who was interested in going up there.”

You are so excited to have found a witness, but you try not to ask him everything at once. You start, of course, with the Original Pearline Portious.

He squints his eyes and shakes his head a little as if to loosen a memory.
“Yes, I remember she. Pretty young thing. She was one of those that dead too young. Long, long before her time.”
He will proceed to tell you everything that he remembers about her, but in all honesty it is less than you had hoped for.

“Mother Lazarus?” you ask hopefully.

“Yes, of course. She I remember plain plain. She was old as Methuselah as they say. Is she who did keep things going. And when she dead, everything just fall to pieces. The poor people them just dead straight off, and the place go right back to forest.”

“Monsignor Dennis?”

“That white man wasn’t a nice fellow at all, at all. Oh sorry, sorry sir, don’t get me wrong now. I got nothing gainst white people, but the man you ask me bout just now, Missa Dennis, yes? Him was a crabbit kind of fellow. And then, poor thing, his age did come upon him sudden and him wasn’t no use to nobody no more.”

“And the Warner Woman?”

“Well I never know her as no Warner Woman. She did become that later on. A very powerful Warner Woman. But when I know her she was just a little girl who did live mongst the lepers. She never pretty neither. Sorry to say, but is true. Ada she did name. Just a regular little pickney. I never pay her much mind then. But is she who did leave them to dead. I blame it all on her. She leave them to die there on their lonesome, and then she become big Warner Woman, and her name did get large in this country, and then just like so, she drop off the face of the earth.”

You want to explain that Adamine only dropped off the face of Jamaica; that she reappeared in England where, as she put it, she was made to till a hard ground. But you do not say this, and almost an hour later you are still trying to pry yet more information from Mr. Mac, to get him out of the reverie into which he so easily slips and is then lost to you. You remind him again that you are in Jamaica to do research. Yes, you tell him, a story you are writing, and that your publishers have paid for you to come here. You tell him again that you have traveled a long way. So please, what else might he be able to tell you? He will then sigh.

“Lawd, poor old man like me, I don’t have no big knowledge to tell you. I never know them people all that well. But once upon a time I used to drive people up there to Stone Hill. I can take you if you wants. And you know it was always white people was interested in going up there? I show them where I did find the last body—the woman who just dead in her wheelchair. Before my very eyes she did dead. No way I can ever forget that. And always is white people who want to know these things.”

But you have heard this already. Several times in fact. “Actually, I’m not white,” you might begin to explain resentfully, but you know Mr. Mac would simply continue as if you had said nothing.

“Don’t get me wrong sir, I not prejudiced against your kind, but a black man never ask me about those lepers.”

And he would start his story all over again.

So this is what you would have left Jamaica with: not a single record from the Registrar’s office; nothing substantial from the church’s archives; and a taped conversation with an old man, partially senile, whose story keeps looping on itself and never really goes anywhere. But perhaps in all of this you would take away the most valuable lesson, that to write down a story from the past, you must be loose with the facts; you must only be true to the truth.

Perhaps no one will ever know the extent of Mother Lazarus’s plans to fall asleep—how much plotting was involved, if rumors had been maliciously sown and people sent away. The point is this—Pearline Portious arrived at the leper colony. And her arrival was like sunshine after too many years of darkness. The place changed. And when Monsignor Dennis returned, it was as if he had not come back with all of himself. That afternoon he grunted something that may have been
hello,
or
piss off,
and then he turned around and went straight back to his gardening. Mother Lazarus shook her head sadly and said, “Is age. It has suddenly come upon him.” Of the tall, intimidating gentleman Pearline had met on the first day, she would see only brief glimpses, a faint resemblance.

Pearline spent each day on the patio with the four residents. There was Maas Paul, the oldest of the group, with his burnt limbs—a timid gentleman with a sweet spirit. Pearline knitted sky-blue bandages for him, and told him she thought he was the kind of man to whom birds would come willingly. There was Maas Johnson, the official joker of the group, a once-handsome man with skin the color of Mandeville dirt, burnt red, who did nothing but flirt with Pearline Portious, assuring her that although he had lost six fingers, he hadn’t lost the part of him that was most important; and there was Maas Johnny who was really Maas Johnson as well—he was Maas Johnson’s little brother, so they called him Maas Johnny to distinguish the two. Pearline made orange and red bandages for the pair, because she felt their skin was already the color of fire. And finally there was Miss Lily, the one woman, with no nose and no legs. She sat in her wheelchair each day, her head buried in the novel
Jane Eyre,
which she kept reading cover to cover. As soon as she finished the book, she would go right back to page one and start over. Pearline made deep purple bandages for Miss Lily, because she thought the woman sat there like a queen. Noble.

And so she fulfilled her promise. She transformed the place into a colony of colors. She made the lepers beautiful. And because of her presence, laughter would now occasionally rise up from the once quiet valley, and the people in the mountain wondered if the terrible sickness had finally left the place.

But it was Mother Lazarus especially who became a different person. She began to close her eyes and sing. Every day it was the same song.

Soon and very soon

I am going to see the King

Soon and very soon

I am going to see the King

Soon and very soon

I am going to see the King

Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I am going to see the King

It surprised everyone, this song of faith, so they asked her about it.

“You always say you don’t believe in God, Mother Lazarus, but now you singing that sankey every day like you suddenly find Jesus.”

“I not singing to no God,” she answered honestly. “I just singing to something I been waiting on for a long time. And it soon come. Soon and very soon.”

“Eh eh!” exclaimed Maas Johnson. “Mother Lazarus look like she soon going to get man in her bed. You think that old woman easy?”

Everyone laughed, but Mother Lazarus continued singing, and every day was like that. Laughing and songs; laughter and songs.

Then one day they noticed that Pearline’s belly had started to grow.

Mother Lazarus paused in her song.

“Pearline child, is pregnant, you really pregnant?”

Pearline smiled sheepishly. “It look so, don’t it?”

“Yes, it look so.” Mother Lazarus agreed.

Agatha Lazarus started her song again but there was a sadder note in it, if you listened very closely, as if she knew the “soon” that she was singing would not be as soon as she had hoped. Indeed, she decided she would have to wait on this child to be born. She figured she had already been awake for eighty years, and she could wait just a little while longer. Nine months is nothing at all. That is what she said to herself. And true enough, the months did pass quickly.

On March 18, 1942, everyone was sitting in their chairs. Pearline had begun the new task of sewing clothes for the baby that was coming. Then, in the middle of a stitch, she winced and leaned forward. Miss Lily noticed.

“You
OK
there, Pearline?”

Pearline shook her head to say no.

“Mercy me, what is the matter, child?”

“I think it is time,” Pearline said, her voice little more than a whisper. She gritted her teeth and let her needles fall from her hands. She was now gripping the sides of the chair tightly and rocking in a gathering pool of prebirth water. A contraction raced through her body, an earthquake ripping her in two. She shouted now for the whole valley to hear. “It is time! It is time! Lord have mercy on a sinner like me, it is time!”

Here are some other theories you have begun to toss around:

that maybe Pearline Portious finally understood these three words.
It is time.
Maybe she understood that time was always changing its shape and that one day it would assume a shape that would no longer include her. To say, “it is time,” was therefore a kind of prayer, a shorthand way of saying something much larger, like—it is time that occasionally smiles on us, it is time that eventually frowns on us, it is time that we are always bowed before and asking for more of, it is time that will one day leave us.