When the Bitter Bush Blossoms

By Jean Goulbourne

It's 1959 in Cross Keys, Jamaica, and Janelle is excited to go to Portsea and spend time with her cousins, Selena and Diana. But things are not all going well. At home her baby brother Mikey is showing worrying developmental delays, and her parents are arguing over the nativity play her dad wants to write. She's also struggling to find friends at school, and, worst of all, cousin Diana seems to have joined a cult. Janelle writes everything down in her diary in this touching and sweet historical story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jean Goulbourne
• Release date: Jan 4, 2024
• ISBN: 9798223923527

Book preview

NOVEMBER 15, 1959 — CROSS KEYS

Today I picked up the first hogberry that fell from the tree over the road. Christmas is coming. The Christmas bush is in bloom with its yellow flowers on the vine and the bitter bush is beginning to blossom. Soon we will be feeling the fresh Christmas breeze that heralds the coming of the festive season. School will soon be out and the school exams which come before that, will be over. I can begin to dream of Christmas at Portsea and hope that no chickens will be killed for Christmas, that we will have beef instead.

That will have been bought from the butcher so I will not have known that cow. So I can eat that meat. Maybe there is still money left over from the summer’s pimento crop to

buy the presents and the ham to take to Portsea. Wonder what Christmas will be like this year? Fun! Lots of it. I love Christmas at Portsea.

I got a letter from Cousin Selena today and she waxed poetic about Portsea. This is what she said in the letter.

Portsea with its rolling common in front of the house with the blue paint and the tiny portico in front. Portsea with Grandma and all the aunts and uncles and cousins. Portsea with the large thatched kitchen, and whitewashed walls and its hard-beaten dirt floor. Portsea with Esmie in the kitchen making bammies every morning and the chickens that roam about the yard slipping into the bankra baskets that hang at the sides on the kitchen to lay their eggs after the huge tumult of a cackle announcing the birthing of the egg. Portsea with the numerous babies that sit in the dirt yard without underwear enjoying the dirt and the mess. Portsea with its big red dirt yard and the mango tree over the large white stone on which we sit to wash out feet before going to bed and on which we sit to listen to duppy stories and anancy stories and old time tales on moonlight nights and then creep into bed too frightened to sleep….

What a description! And how correct! Portsea with its tall coconut tree under which my navel string is buried and the tombs down on the common where the dead family members lay. The dead which includes my own twin brother who died just after we were born.

I am looking forward to Christmas at Portsea. The journey down Plowden Hill from the Manchester heights down to South St Elizabeth. It will be cool there too as it is here and the air will be fresh with the good old Christmas breeze and Grandma will be like the queen of the village with her own bun bakery, and the yam and cassava gardens that she dug and planted herself. Gungu peas will be bearing and that means gungu soup, thick and delicious. It will be good to see Grandma with her bandana tie head, her clean cotton dress with the apron over it under all of which we all know are her three slips, her long drawers tied with a string and her thick flannel vest to keep off the colds.

NOVEMBER 17

Just remembered something else that Selena wrote to me in the letter. She says we must have a concert this Christmas on Christmas Eve night. Not just carols now she says just maybe a few poems recited, and maybe even a Christmas play or short skit. How can I plan this with Selena so far away in Westmoreland?

Selena says maybe even my baby brother can do something like be baby Jesus even though he would be too big. He is two years old. Then maybe my sisters Louise and Jennifer and Joan and can sing a little song together. I know. I will teach them a Christmas poem and we can do some choral speaking. Mama is good at teaching choral speaking and Daddy knows some good poems. Maybe he can help me to choose. Yes. Maybe he can help to write the skit and show us how to act it out. Maybe they will understand if my little brother is baby Jesus I just hope that he does not cry and spoil the show. He cries so much these days.

There is