Ms. Charlmagne sucked her teeth loud drawing the attention of the other teachers. She didn’t care. They’d been eyeballing her the moment she started teaching at Priscilla Prescod Memorial School with her tight-up skirts and long weaves that she let fall down her back like a white woman or one of dem chabine girls. But she was good at math. That’s why they hired her.
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With hands clasped around his gut, my father and I cruised down the wobbly lanes of Pouyatt and Crooks Street where the zinc fences that made homes glistened in the eventide light and old women sitting outside on multicolored buckets smiled at us in between thick, hearty laughter.
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Come 5 am, I was always awakened by the smell of ‘black disinfect’ (if you know you know) the sound of water hitting the pavement just outside the door and My Grandmother humming her church songs (her favourite was “One day at a time”) as she washed away the jumbies of the night before.
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I think about my upbringing and how I was not raised in the part of Kingston where the legendary aspects of Jamaican culture were born and built. If we are being geographically specific, I am really not from Kingston at all. I can trace my upbringing to the 5-kilometre bubble in St. Andrew where language is policed, appearances are judged…
Read MoreBehold Couva’s Sam Manning,
audio farmer and Caribbean spy,
splicing honey into singers’ mouths
throughout the Americas.
Jane Jr. thinks she has escaped but she hasn’t. She joins a colony of people like us, plastic people who inject smiles into their mouths and their cheeks. She takes pictures in flitting white linens and wide-brimmed hats and posts them to social media. Her partner does not hit her with his fist, or hit her at all, she says on the phone to Jane, while she applies the powder extra-thick below her eye.
Read MoreGEOFFREY PHILP For Scratch Filing past to offer respect to the remains of the giant who slept in a casket so small you would have thought it was built for a child still dressed in his red schoolboy cap and rings that bedazzled...
Read MoreAMARA AMARYAH 1 you are medicine. you tell me, my head weighed down water dripping slick paths down my neck. i inhale, squint eyes, resemble someone 2 with dainty palms you weave strands back to their wildness detangling, i...
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Did you know Raymond Chandler lived here in Forest Hill? he asked. I grinned because he remembered Chandler was one of my favourite writers. Suddenly it felt good to be in a car driving along unfamiliar roads with a friend. It was early evening, chilly but not too much, and we saw trees that had turned red, orange and gold. We saw blackbirds on fences, and pigeons on old buildings. There were houses and gardens and libraries and museums.
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I stepped inside, the aroma of the air filling my flared nostrils; it was a combination of mangoes, something floral like perfume, and a dash of myrrh. I walked through the house under the warm orange glow and watched as you threw your heels off your feet, and our heights equalised. You unclipped parts of your pink wig and reached for the zipper at the back of your dress.
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