Take This Journey with Me: Bermuda Anthology of Memoir and Creative Non-Fiction

By Community and Cultural Affairs, Government of Bermuda

The stories in this collection of memoir and creative non-fiction delve into the sometimes humorous, often painful reflections of sixteen Bermuda writers – young and not so young; male and female; black and white; exploring Caribbean and Portuguese roots; telling stories that cumulatively reflect the cultural mosaic of Bermudian life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781927750476

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Contributors

MINISTER’S REMARKS

This collection of memoir and creative non-fiction, Take This Journey With Me, is a welcomed addition to the collection of new writing by Bermudians that has emerged from the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs, primarily as an offshoot of their Writer in Residence Programme. The stories in this collection delve into the sometimes humorous, often painful reflections of 16 of our writers — young and not so young; male and female; black and white; exploring Caribbean and Portuguese roots; telling stories that cumulatively reflect the cultural mosaic of Bermudian life.

I would like to offer my sincere appreciation to the editor of this publication, the award-winning author Rachel Manley. We were fortunate enough to have Ms. Manley here in Bermuda during a three-week period in March of 2013, when she served as the Writer in Residence for Cultural Affairs. Given the intensely political family that she hails from, it was a wonderful opportunity to meet and talk with her when I did, a few months following my election into public office. She expressed genuine interest in my role and intentions as the Minister responsible for culture and many of Bermuda’s social programmes, and we enjoyed lively conversation about her experiences growing up as the daughter and granddaughter of two of Jamaica’s best known Prime Ministers, Michael and Norman Manley.

I would also like to thank Folklife Officer Dr. Kim Dismont Robinson for taking the lead on this project and working closely with Ms. Manley to see it through to fruition; as well as Assistant Director, Creative Services Jackie Aubrey for the design of this publication.

Last but not least, I applaud the writers whose work appears in this book. It takes a great deal of bravery to put one’s lived experiences under the microscope for public consumption, particularly in a community as small as ours. However, despite the scrutiny that authors of memoir may encounter, it is important to tell the truth of what we have seen and felt. It is only through telling our truths that we come to a better understanding of our island home, this world within a world that we inhabit.

The Hon. R. Wayne Scott, JP, MP

Minister of Community, Culture and Sports

PREFACE

I have always wondered why Bermuda hadn’t been part of the Caribbean federal dream. I had never been to Bermuda before 2013, but I have known people from Bermuda and I have felt their familiarity the way one does in families — a long chin or deep brow, the angle of a thumb; a laugh, a recklessness or humour, a musical talent, things we can identify from a genetic pool — and considered them Caribbean siblings.

So it was with great curiosity and pleasure that I received an invitation from Kim Dismont Robinson, Folklife Officer, on behalf of the Department of Community and Cultural Affairs of Bermuda to conduct a three-week non-fiction writers’ mentoring course. Here was my chance to meet these longed-for relatives. Ten of my class are represented here and six from both the wider community and the Bermudian diaspora. All are Bermudian, most by birthright, the rest by choice of heart.

What I have learned and love about Bermuda came from my students. If I was able to help them with their craft and structure, they in turn taught me their culture and country, and I say country because the mistake we all make about islands we don’t know is thinking about them uni-dimensionally, as small or romantic or isolated or simply entertaining in some endlessly uncomplicated way — pink sand or cute harbours. And islands, all islands that are populated, are countries. Countries with histories and geographies and cultures and traditions and phobias and habits and loves and hates, ambivalence and bias, and their own humour and laws and idiosyncrasies. It is all these complicated relationships that make a people distinct. It was this distinctness, these differences, these attributes that, sometimes with cajoling, my students came to share with me, in our conversations and in their work. So, as they performed their dance in the wind of memory (Manuel and Margaret), I was introduced to Bermuda.

Memoir is harder for islanders than fiction or poetry. Memoir hasn’t got the hiding places. With fiction you can disguise in any way you wish, having the wide prairie of imaginative possibility. With poetry you have a structure within which to keep enigma safe. But memoir, by its nature, calls on us to tell our stories with a promise of familiar truth. And this I think was the greatest challenge for the writers featured here, to own and share secrets of their island, their families and their own.

I learned old things I knew in new ways — the universal themes of love and loss, of childhood and motherhood, daughters and sons relating to their fathers and father figures; I learned about the Bermudian wrinkles etched by the colonial experience and how those in powerful positions can colonise in politics, in schools, in families, in day-to-day life. In choosing for this anthology, I had to consider whether those pieces written about the world beyond Bermuda — St. Kitts as in Mount Liamuiga, Belize as in Back in Belize, Jamaica in Marche de Funebre and My Bermuda Landing and even beyond the Caribbean region, stories that touch Florida as in The Handover, Canada and Paris in We Almost had Paris, and even Egypt in Lone and Level Sands — stories that hark back to original countries: Portugal, England, and stories that look at colonialism from the other side of the wall as in Pink. Living with them I recognised what I have known all along, that this is the Caribbean experience — the coming and going of water and people, the tendency to migrate and return, the endless ebb and flow through time — and that at the heart of our creative impulse often lies the instinct to collect that proverbial scattered skeleton the great Guyanese poet, Martin Carter, wrote about.

This is not the first of these anthologies. In fact, in this series this is the fourth. But it is the first collection of memoir, and as such I think it profoundly tested the insight and honesty of these voices. I have always heard the myth that of the British West Indian Islands, Barbados alone lacked displays of open protest. Further north, this too is said of Bermuda, as though steeped in the colonial experience, the relationship with England was somehow more profound, and these islands more subservient to the colonial legacy. But not all voices shout; some people pick their moments. In works like An Underworld Education, Margaret and Manuel and the heartrending As We Forgive Those, the subversion has simmered for a long time, waiting for a moment of artistry to make its most powerful impact.

Then there are the moments of truth that are merely personal, traumatic or serendipitous, as in The Bicycle Accident and A Real Mother, or historically haunting as in Night, or just touchingly idyllic as in the Bermudian childhood with a beloved grandmother remembered in The Lizard! or the portrait of a friend in She Called him Grandpa.

And as always with islands, the sea is everywhere, tides that push or pull, that harm or heal, in an endless paradox: keeping Bermuda both separate and yet connected.

This anthology ends where almost everyone started, as in the ever-haunting Lone and Level Sands the author begins, I was born in Bermuda. Those who were not born here, those that may not end here, still hold Bermuda close. This is the common loam from which these memories have sprung.

I left Bermuda the way I left Belize, the way I often leave Trinidad or Barbados, the way I leave Jamaica my home, comforted by the fact that though we may never achieve the formal legal marriage of our archipelago, the region has a commonality of culture and voice with many aspects and accents, and that washed as we are by common water, the Caribbean Sea flowing into the Atlantic, and linked as we are by common history, our music and writing and stories, though each singularly nuanced are yet connected like voices in a chorus, whether we sing together the refrain or whether we choose to warble our solos eloquently by ourselves over time.

I invite our readers to share this new work of these voices — some you have heard before, some which may be new to you, gathering their world into a true shape of itself, one that Bermudians and all of us beyond can recognise as complex and complicated, with its shallows and depths, its ability to be both day-to-day and profound.

It has been my honour and pleasure to work with the lovable and ever-resourceful Kim, who is a talented writer and editor in her own right, and with Minister Wayne Scott who gave me moments of his valuable time to share his views and a clear and always practical vision for his country, and with the writers who have inspired me to take this journey with them.

Rachel Manley

February 2014

AN UNDERWORLD EDUCATION

Joanne Ball-Burgess

All water is blue so sometimes it is hard to tell which water is trying to pull you into the undercurrent and which water is drifting you to safety. Swoosh. I watched the current rush under the bridge and out into the waiting ocean crescent. The magnificence of the winding current circling the rocks and hugging the passageway that encapsulated it almost made me forget about my school bag straps that were digging into my shoulders because of the heavy books inside. School today wasn’t unlike any other day. My back began to hurt as my heavy homework books dragged me down, but the weight in my chest was heavier. I watched as four speckled stingrays flew into the air against the rushing tide and then back into the water, disappearing.

As the waves crashed under the bridge on which I was standing, the swirling sound faded into the distance and I thought about the events of the day.

In me Lord, in me Lord

Thy will be done

In me Lord

Over and over we sang that song today. I don’t know how many times we sang it. With my eyes squinted shut, hands clasped behind my back and head lifted to the sky until my legs felt numb, we repeated that song. In my school, in my home, in my church, in my life...Thy will be done in me Lord.

Crash. The thunderous waves brought me back to the present. I felt sorry for Joshua. They’d said he was a bad boy and needed to be disciplined. As another wave crashed against the rock, I thought about how he must have felt up there, sitting in that cold, dark church. Sitting there all alone until he confessed to colouring on the school building with a permanent marker. He said that he didn’t do it, but the teachers knew that he did. They always know because God tells them.

Grumble. This time it wasn’t the sound of the waves but my tummy rumbling. I remembered how hungry he was. Josh. We knew that he was made to fast to get the devil out of him. Although I wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do, I secretly gave him half of my tuna fish sandwich. Sure, he needed to fast to get the devil out of him, but perhaps God was as sad as I was to see him so hungry.

As I continued to watch the tide ebb and flow underneath me, my eyes became fixated on the tiny island that stood beyond me and the current. Perhaps I could swim to it. The bus arrived, and the school children got on. As the bus pulled off with me, my eyes stayed fixed on the current and the tiny island until it faded out of view. Perhaps tomorrow at school would be a better day if no one made the teachers or God angry. Thy will be done in me Lord.

Ring-a-ling-ling. Mrs. Ball appears in the doorway and begins ringing the school bell. It’s a handheld bell and when I get to ring it I use two hands. Mrs. Ball only uses one hand. Her puffy fingers grasp the bell while numerous golden and silver rings glitter on her fingers. Mrs. Ball has the same name as me but she is not my aunt. She is my teacher. Even though she is married to my uncle, she will always be Mrs. Ball and never Aunt Eleanor.

Mrs. Ball’s stern face glances over the playground as she motions for everyone to line up to come inside. She wipes a few gray strands of hair away from her forehead and inspects the students’ uniforms. Angelo, pull up your socks! Maceo, fix your tie! Caljonah, you look nice today. Shayna, your skirt is too short. Mrs. Ball yells with military fervour until she is satisfied at the look of her student subjects. As her voice grows silent, the sound of sobbing can be heard from the middle of the line. Mrs. Ball turns around quickly and sees Samaya crying almost uncontrollably. Someone snitched that Diana, the mini-bully, hit Samaya while on the playground before school. Diana is scolded for her behaviour as everyone files quietly inside for morning devotions. I’ve heard that at other schools it is called morning assembly, but not at Christian Academy. Dr. Landy tells us that we are not children of the world, so we use heavenly terms, because we are children of God. I feel proud to be a child of God and am happy that my school clothes look neat in front of Him and the teachers today.

Inside the classroom for morning devotions Dr. Landy knows what Diana did on the playground this morning. She always knows. A look of disgusted displeasure appears on her face as she speaks about the need to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Diana has not done this. Diana has sinned. Diana needs to know what Samaya felt when her hand slapped sweet Samaya’s face in careless anger. Dr. Landy’s mouth is quivering now. She is pacing the floor back and forth in rhythmic motion as the creases on her cheeks seem to sway with her winding movements.

Bring the dunce cap! she hollers to Vance. He runs to grab the cone-shaped, beige coloured hat. In bold, permanent marker letters running diagonally downward is the word STUPID. Dr. Landy calls Diana to the front of the classroom. Unlike the aggressive outgoing energy that we often see from Diana on the playground,