With You Tonight: A Story of My Life

By Judy Boucher

St. Vincent is part of a chain of islands in the Caribbean. ¬ The group stretches from Grenada in the south to St. Lucia, the third of four Windward Islands. ¬ e fourth is Dominica. While the entire archipelago is referred to as the Grenadines, St. Lucia and Dominica is an independent state. ¬ e mainland, St. Vincent, is approximatel

• Language: English
• Publisher: URLink Print & Media, LLC
• Release date: Aug 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781643677651

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CHAPTER ONE

Dickson

ST VINCENT, ARE PART OF a chain of islands in the Caribbean. The group stretches from Grenada in the south to St Lucia, the third of four Windward Islands. The fourth is Dominica. While the entire archipelago is referred to as the Grenadines, St Lucia and Dominica, is an independent state. The mainland, St Vincent, is approximately 133 square miles, with a population of just over 110,000. Add in the ‘gems of the sister islands’, the Grenadines, and the population rises to just over 120,000. I might be biased, but if there are more captivating islands anywhere in the Caribbean, I would gladly pay to visit them.

Mainland St Vincent resembles a heavily pregnant woman. If you imagine her resting on her side, the leeward coast would be her eight-month load, the windward, her spine under serious pressure, as we say in the West Indies. The sea is serene and calm on the leeward side, placid and delightful beneath its rugged volcanic terrain. On the opposite side of the island, however, it rages and pounds the land mercilessly, especially during the hurricane season. Just over half way along the windward side, a mile inland from the main road that clings to the coastline, a tiny village welcomed a beautiful girl into the world.

Time of delivery? Weight? Any special characteristics? I wish I had got at least one of these details from my mother, but, having given birth to so many of us, that might have been expecting too much from her. The first and last might have stayed in her mind, but, unless it had been a difficult birth, those in between must have faded from her memory over time, I imagine.

A neighbour, a slim woman with two glaring nostrils in place of a nose, a condition no one could ever explain, delivered me. She wasn’t the village midwife, but she had a reputation as the woman who knew the remedy for every ailment. Colds, flu, headache, cuts and fractures, she possessed the widest and most intimate knowledge of the herbs and bushes in the district. If the official midwife was a mile too far from an impatient baby, mothers were happy to put their faith in this slender woman with no formal training, and who laboured in the fields by day alongside her fellow villagers.

I can still visualize her, this wisp of a woman who ‘cabbed’ each of us hard on the backside to get us to open our frail lungs. She loved children, I’m sure, but she was also wary of them. In her eyes children were noisy and mischievous, little nuisances to be taught their proper place, even those she had brought into the world. I suppose she had good reason. For as soon as our limbs had developed sufficiently, we would steal into someone’s backyard, climb a tree and pluck the fruits that tasted so much sweeter and juicier for being stolen.

To prevent us doing this she would hang a clear bottle with the figure of a man inside it on a branch of her fruit tree to scare us off. Obeah, some of the older children warned, causing our hearts to thump away, the little man would do all sorts of things to us. The hand that picked the fruit might snap off at the shoulder, the guilty fingers might turn blue overnight. The fruit might take root in our stomach, it might sprout branches, they would grow out of our ears and sleeves. Obeah indeed! We were terrified to begin with, but when we realized that it was all nonsense, we got brave and raided the trees on her land as we pleased!

My mother was originally from a tiny corner of our little village. She was a proud woman, the bearer of nine children, five girls and four boys. The fifth of her children, I didn’t feel special in any way. The elder children had to take care of the young ones, and I sometimes felt like I was left in the middle without a role.

My father was strong, tall, a man to look up to in every way. He owned some fruit trees next to our neighbour, and we often helped ourselves to the grapefruit, oranges, bananas, plantains and mangoes that covered the acre or so of fertile land. If my early life seems to have been taken up with filling my stomach, then I would plead that I was no different from the scores of children who, in their little groups, raided a tree then sat in the shade of another to share the spoils.

My father lived across the road from my mother’s house, an arrangement which didn’t strike me then as odd: for which child is concerned with such matters when he or she can spend sunny days playing with friends from dawn till dusk? He worked as a carpenter at the sugar factory, and my earliest memories are of him bringing home half-bottles of salted peanuts and ‘bodyline’, a tough cake that had to be soaked before you could bite into it. ‘Bodyline’ was coarse but filling, and, best of all, ‘bodyline’ was cheap. Cheese and bread were a treat for us children, and my father never disappointed us. I remember that he had a sister, who also lived in the village, but what became of her, I’m afraid I don’t know.

Apart from my parents, my eldest sister, was probably the strongest influence on my early life. Ten of us managed to find space in our little ‘board house’, of the kind that was common to families throughout the village. Our house stood on stilts, a strong gale would have had it dancing like a drunk with five legs.

I imagine that we children ‘paired off’ somehow, younger with elder and, for good or ill, my eldest sister got me. At age five or so, I can still remember her taking me on a donkey to a fertile tropical garden a little way into the mountains, which produced fruits and vegetables of every kind. Ripe bananas, juicy aromatic mangoes, yellow guavas, passion fruit, tangerines: I ate until my tiny stomach could stretch no further. These visits to the mountains gave me my first taste of watercress, the tiny green buds bobbing and weaving at the edge of a stream. Even now, I still love their crunchiness and slightly peppery taste.

Happy, happy times these were, with my elder sister and her fiancé! Her ‘young man’ and future husband, always accompanied us, and it is testimony to their love that they are still together to this day.

Being older, and responsible for looking after us, she made sure that we carried home baskets of dasheen, yams, tannias, plantains, maugh-faugh-baugh and other food that were our staple diet. She knew, also, that we could sell these produce for the corned beef and bread that we loved.

Looking back I can see that mine was a typical childhood in where I am from in the 1950s or indeed the Caribbean, from the accounts of my friends from the other islands. In no way did I think of my family as poor or disadvantaged. We didn’t have a lot of money, I knew even then, but we ate well and were happy. Our small board house stood proudly on family land, ten of us crammed into three rooms without a single word of complaint. And it was a similar picture with the neighbours to our left and right, and for those in front and behind. Green bananas, yam and breadfruit were plentiful; neighbours shared when their land bore a good crop, the fowls that roamed in the yard provided our supply of meat. No one in our close community could complain of going hungry, for sugar cane, mangoes other fruits were abundant, only the lazy or drunk wore sour faces.

The adults in the village looked after us children, scolding us if we got out of line. That was the way then, and still is today, but to a lesser extent. They informed our parents if they caught us doing something especially naughty, they chased us if they thought we were getting up to mischief that could land us in serious trouble. No child would dream of passing an adult without saying ‘Good Morning’ or ‘Good Afternoon’, for fear of the look or the beating they would get when their parents found out about this lack of ‘manners’.

But the adults were more than people who told on children who didn’t have ‘manners’ or ‘behaviour’. They cared for us, I could see now, although I didn’t then, they wanted a better life for us than they had been given. Most of them worked long hours in the fields weeding, planting and digging yams and arrowroot, or cultivating bananas for a miserable wage. Determined to pass on the knowledge that had seen them through tough times, they enforced discipline and insisted on good ‘manners’ and respect. A child without those qualities was one to avoid; in their eyes, such a child had already started on a slippery downward slope. We were to learn to enjoy ourselves; they were clear in their minds although they didn’t think to tell us, we were to appreciate life, to ‘study our books’, to learn to be content. But most of all, we were to be happy.

On moonlit nights throughout SVG at the time, the sense of magic and wonder touched the dullest child. The moon cast its light so low and bright that it might have been the middle of the afternoon. Like childbirth, such a night is one of the wonders of this beautiful world. These precious nights, before widespread television and radio, still linger lovingly in my memory. What joyful singing, what a beautiful noise we made! Even now their power can bring tears to my eyes. Children and adults sang old folk songs together, they played ‘ring play’, we got to see our parents throw off the cares of work, of failing or fading relationships, of the struggle to make ends meet.

Old rhymes, nonsense stories, suggestive and lewd songs, what a pity so many have been lost. ‘The man in the moon, oh, was digging potato’, ‘Miss Caine had a baby’, ‘Jane and Louisa’, songs handed down over generations. Villagers chanted at the top of their voices merrily before falling asleep, two or three to a bed, with one under the bed if the family was especially large. Dickson village was like that. We were deliriously happy in our world, mingling easily on moonlit nights, gazing in wonder at the trillions of stars that blazed in the night sky, sure that somewhere in the vastness, there were people just like us, marvelling at the heavens.

We children played ‘pound stone’, where you had to be extremely quick or your neighbour’s stone would crash down on the back of your hand. At dusk we played ‘coop’, where we would hide in some shady spot in the village praying that we wouldn’t be found. ‘Corkins’ was a favourite game. We would make a ‘ball’ from whatever material was available and pelt it at one of the players with all the force which our young hands could muster. The lime or grapefruit wrapped in a bit of cloth would sting the victim’s back, and we would scream with laughter until we got hit ourselves. Some children cried from the blow but most enjoyed this bit of harmless fun.

Each child in the village had a nickname, as did the adults. If someone caught you eating a fig they might call you ‘Fig’ and the name might stick. A child who wet the bed might be known as ‘Piss-a-bed’, one who was greedy would go by the name of ‘Pang gut’. I can’t remember what my nickname was, although I must have had one.

Both my parents worked hard, all the adults did. In the fields digging arrowroot, planting yams and weeding, tending to bananas to ship to England or cutting plantains and other produce for the market. I suppose my parents were luckier than most. They were spared the fields and toiling under the sting of the midday sun that prematurely wrinkled the face and hands of the other villagers. The intensity of the sun seemed to suck the blood from some of the workers, it sapped their strength, each year of toil added to the dragging of their hardened and calloused soles. My father made the short journey to the sugar factory each day, but my mother had a longer walk to earn a living.

There was a magnificent estate property in town from a wealthy family with lavish lifestyle. They were the type that could afford to import an E-type Jaguar, so we are talking about serious money here. My mother worked in the great house and my earliest memories are of her rolling home so tired late at night that she would fall asleep with her dinner on her lap. When she recovered, she would feed us the stories of the meals the guests took and the amount they drank, and we would listen and pray that one day we too could own a grand house with servants and maids. The leftovers from the feasts ended up in our grateful stomachs, and we wished they would have a banquet every day, not realising that this would take its toll on our dear mother.

Like many other West Indians before, and the thousands who would follow, my elder sister left for a ‘better life’ in England when I was young. Her leaving didn’t really register with me, for I was too young to understand its significance. One night she invited her friends and neighbours to share a meal, the next day there was a gaping hole in our lives.

The eldest sister, who was seventeen, had to help to look after us now, and she took to the task without complaint or grumble. My younger sister, helped too, looking after everybody. They prepared our meals, washed our clothes, and got us ready for school. But a few months after my seventh birthday, my mother, too, had a gathering at the house with food and drink aplenty, and before I could grasp what was happening, she too was off to England.

With the two people I was closest to gone, it was now up to my two elder siblings, and to some extent, my brother had to look after us. I got on with my little chores – washing the dishes, fetching firewood, sweeping the yard – but something was definitely missing in my life. I was too young to put a name to it, but it was obvious to me that my situation had changed; and even more terrifying, that I had no choice but to get used to it.

The task I looked forward to more than any other around this time was going to the post office in Georgetown to collect the stiff blue and white striped envelope my mother mailed monthly from England with our allowance. Even now I can still feel the firmness of the envelope in my little hands, the stiff edges sharp against the fingers. You couldn’t beat the feverish excitement of a registered letter. We queued at the post office for days in the hope of hearing our name called out by the postmaster. If we were disappointed twice, the third day was bound to be our lucky one. And I was, month after month. For I knew that tucked inside the blue letter saying how much she missed us would be a twenty-pound postal order which would soon turn into crisp purple twenty-dollar notes. That pristine smell of rustling notes: can you ever beat it?

At school I didn’t stand out. I made no impression on the teachers, and it would be stretching the truth to say I have fond memories of a single one. Even the names have gone. No female member saw anything but another village girl; to the male staff I was probably invisible. Many of those who drew their monthly wages were happy to let children drift unless they were exceptionally bright. I wasn’t a dunce, was not rude like some of the boys, or aggressive, so they probably didn’t regard me as someone to work with. Where others of my generation have fond memories of their teachers and those who had an influence on their early lives, I don’t remember being praised for a good piece of arithmetic or scolded by one because I hadn’t done myself justice in a story I had hastily scribbled.

Apart from teaching me to read and count, school didn’t have any significant impact on the young me. It was a place where children were sent, or had to go to, so I obeyed the ritual. No one took the time to point out that a good education could open up possibilities; the teachers at our school didn’t search for the talent within a child and try to nurture it. They were a sour lot, as far as my memory would allow me to recall them. A child with a talent for singing or reciting poetry would have escaped their notice, who knows what might have happened if I had gone to a primary school where teachers saw themselves as people with a mission to draw out the goodness in their charges and truly inspire them.

Being an obedient child, I must have recited the times tables and had my nails and hair inspected before entering the school building; but the lessons must have washed over me. What I do recall clearly is being taunted by other children. They mocked my ‘red complexion’, calling me ‘red head’, ‘picky head’ or ‘dry head’, ‘mulatto’. Their teasing nearly drove me to cry several times, but I held out; I wasn’t going to give them that satisfaction.

Yet it hurt. The taunts, the mocking, the funny looks; how I wished that my mother or elder sister were around to protect me from their cruel mockery. A word from either of them would have put the naughty children in their place. But, despite their dreadful behaviour I knew that life had to go on. I scrambled home at midday for my lunch of lime juice and bread, I ran back for afternoon lessons under the full glare of the sun. Dad continued to bring us food, I especially liked the cheese and salami, our lives in the village trickled by as if it would never change.

What about my singing? At the time I had no idea that this would play such an important part in my future. My brother was the one with the voice and my mother was quite good too, humming her hymns and serenading us when the mood took her. We are a musical family though; it is simple now to trace the source of this gift. My younger brother has his own band in Fifth Street. My brothers would put together a band in England, but I would have laughed at anyone who suggested that one day she would earn a living from music. To suggest that her name would be recognized by Europeans, South Africans and Brazilians might have terrified her.

Like the other children, I loved to listen to the rousing services at the gospel hall in the village. Only the deaf or stone-hearted could fail to be moved by the power of their songs. And which child isn’t struck by the way a tune could draw in a ‘converted’ congregation and drive them into a trance? The little plays they put on at school made a strong impression on me too, but watch, listen and applaud, that was me. Taking part in performing or singing was not even a dream: I was happier as a member of the audience, centre stage was for those whose talents screamed out.

So my life as a young girl from a small village rolled slowly on. Hot days, stifling evenings, nights when you had to leave the windows open for fear of suffocating. Rainy days as well, the raindrops like dull nails thudding against the roof. Storms and high winds during the hurricane season, being stuck indoors, feeling restless, praying for the dry times to come round again, my days and nights obeyed the seasons, and I fell in like the obedient child I was.

I had my friends no matter what the weather, and my siblings were close by should anything happen. At weekends or during the school holidays I went to the mountains with my brother to dig yams or to gather aromatic nutmegs whose smell I can still conjure up 60 years later. We would fish for mullets, lobsters and crayfish in ‘Texeira Deep Hole’ one day, and my brother would lay traps for manicou the next. Back then there was no hunting season so it was open season all year round. I preferred the days when he placed the traps, for which child doesn’t enjoy watching and listening