ALL CLEAR, 1928
- I was beating chaklata when someone
- came shouting: A stranger man come!
- I dropped everything. Same way
- in my sampata, my house dress,
- my every day head-tie, I rushed to
- the square wondering: could it be?
- How many gathered there so long
- after our men disappeared into
- the black water dividing us from
- Puerto Limón, Havana, Colón
- knew it was he? Not his sons lost
- to a father fifteen years gone
- There he was. Leather-booted and
- spurred, sitting high on a fine horse
- Never spoke a word. This Spanish
- grandee sat on his horse and
- looked at us. Looked through us.
- Never could lump poverty. Used
- to say: Esmie, when I strike it rich
- in foreign what a fine gentleman
- I'll be. And you with your clear
- complexion will sit beside me
- your hands stilled from work
- like silk again (silk of my skin
- my only dowry!) Ashamed now of my
- darkened complexion, my work-blackened
- hands, my greying hair, a loosening
- of my pride (three sons with Mr. Hall
- the carpenter who took me in) I
- lowered my eyes and tried to hide.
- I needn't have bothered. He looked
- so troubled, as if he'd lost his way.
- And suddenly, with nothing said,
- he wheeled his horse and fled.
- And ever after we talked of the
- wonder of it. The stranger never
- spoke to anyone. Forgotten the young
- man who left home with a good white
- shirt (stitched by these hands and
- a borrowed black serge suit (which
- the owner never recovered), a heng-pon-me
- with four days of ration of roasted salt fish,
- johnny cakes, dokunu and cerasee for tea
- to tide him over to the SS Atrato
- lying in wait in Kingston Harbour.
- All, all the men went with our dreams
- our hopes, our prayers. And he
- with a guinea from Mass Dolphy
- the schoolteacher who said that boy
- had so much ambition he was bound
- to go far. And he had. Gathering
- to himself worlds of experience
- which allowed him to ride over us
- with a clear conscience. I never
- told anyone. For I would have had
- to tell his children why he hadn't
- sent money for bread, why his fine
- leather boots, why his saddle,
- his grey mare, his three-piece suit,
- his bowler hat, his diamond tie-pin
- his fine manicured hands, his barbered
- hair, his supercilious air. Never
- was a more finely-cut gentlemen
- seen in our square. And I trembled
- in anger and shame for the black limbo
- into which my life had fallen
- all these years till my hands touched
- the coarse heads of my young sons
- recalling me to a snug house clad
- with love. And I cried then, because
- till he came back I had not known
- my life was rooted. Years later
- I learned that his gentlemanly air,
- his polished boots, manners, and Ecuador
- gold bought him a very young girl of very
- good family in Kingston. And they wed.
- He, with a clear conscience.
- She, with a clear complexion.