The Last Warner Woman (9 page)

Shhhhhhhhh

One morning when it was coming on to my fifteenth birthday, I wake up and all around me was work. Like Sunday morning work when everything smell of polish and sugar, and every corner in the house shining like it new. Mother Lazarus was grating sweet potato, grating nutmeg, grating coconuts. I notice bowls of sugar and flour and cornmeal already measured out. I know this mean dukkunnu, and sweet potato pudding, and toto, and grater cake. But I was confuse. I ask her,
what all of this for?
She smile at me and say,
Suppose I tell you that all of this is for you? Yes indeedy. Tomorrow is the day of your womanhood, and we has to celebrate it proper.
Everybody else was doing their own bit of work, and each of them come over and hold my hand and shake it every time I pass them, and say,
you is not a little girl no more. Tomorrow you will come into your womanhood.
I start feel scared. I too shame to ask them what is this womanhood exactly? What it will look like? What it will do? I did think womanhood was when you start to bleed from your woman-parts, but it was four years since I was doing that. And I think womanhood was when your titty start to swell up, but my titties was already firm and did look like two big grapefruits in front of me and men would make rude talk when I pass, so I think, wasn’t that womanhood? And if none of that was, then I scared to think what else was going to happen to me tomorrow. I remember a story Mother Lazarus used to tell me:

Once upon a time a young woman wake up with nothing inside her. Like if you did look inside her eyes you would see that no thoughts was left inside her brain, that they all had been scattered. I trying to say that when this woman wake up, she was mad as shad. But when there is nothing inside you, you become hungry for what is missing. So she get up and start to walk, and she walk, and she walk, and she walk till she walk all the way to the dungle heap. When she reach the dungle she throw herself on the ground and start to dig. She don’t have no shovel or no fork. Just her fingernails. And she dig, and she dig, filling up her fingernails with stone and pushing her own self deeper and deeper into the ground. Even the dogs and pigs did feel sorry for her and one of them ask, Lady, what is it you looking for? She never answer, but she didn’t need to, for every creature know that when woman can’t find part of herself, then it loss inside the dungle heap. So the pigs and the dogs just look on with sadness. It wasn’t no little bit of time that she was there digging neither, going deeper down into her own hole. She drink rainwater and she eat dirt. Moons did come and go, and the world did turn round, and is then at last that she finally find what she was looking for. A little pouch with her name write on it. When she open the pouch black pepper and dirt fall out, and the same time all of her thoughts come back. She had undone the evil that had been done against her. But when time she look up, she see a wall that was as tall as a year. There was no coming out of this hole. She spend all that time digging what she couldn’t escape from. Take warning, Adamine, that woman is still there today.

Shhhhhhhhh

That night when all the work done, and the food sitting down to cool, Mother Lazarus put on a fresh nightgown. She make me sit outside with her for a long time while she just mumble things to the sky. I know that Mother Lazarus was an old woman, but she never seemed so old to me until that night. I see that the skin under her neck was loose, and her lips was wrinkled. Finally she get up and she squeeze my hand and say,
It is your turn now, Adamine. You is a woman now. It is time.
And easy like that, she went to her bed.

Shhhhhhhhh

I find out that death comes unto us like a flattening. For if your face had lines in it before, if it did rise up in certain places, all that gone once you is dead. You face will fall like a piece of paper, flat and blank. Nobody else did cry when they wake up to see that Mother Lazarus was gone. Me alone was holding her hand and bawling my eyes out. Miss Lily wheel her way into the room and don’t even look at the body. She ongly look at me, like this was something she knew was going to happen for a long time.
Happy Birthday,
is what she say.
You is a woman now, and you is in charge.
But I never want it to be my birthday. I never want to be no woman. I never want to be in charge of nobody.

Shhhhhhhhh

That night I dream they was each calling out to me. Calling me, calling me every second. I dream that I could get no portion of quiet or peace. Not a minute to feel the breeze or to just sit back and watch Anansi-spider walking cross his web. Miss Lily and Maas Paul, Maas Johnny and Maas Johnson, and even Monsignor Dennis was all calling me to come quick, come quick. Come and watch us dead. Come and watch the flattening come upon us. I couldn’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes I hear my name:
Adamine! Adamine!
And for a week it was like this. So finally one night I jump out of bed. The air was cold. I run out into the yard and start to shout,
go to hell! Go to hell! Go to hell every last one of you!
They all wake up same time and come out looking so frighten. Miss Lily ask me,
what is wrong, child?
But I was still hearing the voice calling me so I get vex and I tell them some ten-shilling words. Still the voice never stop.
Adamine!
And then it say something else:
Lay down your burdens and follow me.
I press myself into a corner of the house and start to shiver, for I understand at last that this voice don’t belong to nobody I know. It was the voice of the Lord, and it continue calling and calling till I make up my mind to follow.

Shhhhhhhhh

Wherever you is hearing this now, please don’t make up your face as if to say I done a heartless thing. For it is written: if a man leaveth not his father and mother then how shall he inherit the kingdom? And it is written: no man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God. And the Master himself told us plain, let the dead bury the dead. So I leave them there.

Shhhhhhhhh

I wasn’t heartless, for when I hear what happened after, I grieve a terrible grieving. If I could wear ash on my head, I would wear ash on my head even now. If I had crocus bags to wear on my body, I would wear crocus bags on my body now. If I could rend my garments in two I would rend my garments in two, and in three, and in four, and in five. The newspaper did tell the story. Mr. Mac drive up one day to check on things and smell something awful. He find Miss Lily sitting there in her wheelchair, her eyes wide open. He say he think she was barely alive when he find her, but I think his mind was playing tricks and even then she was dead. She was sitting mongst the corpses of the other men and flies was walking on their eyes and laying maggots in their sores. Monsignor Dennis was dead in the backyard. For days and days people was writing letters to newspapers and they say how it was a shame and a disgrace that these people was abandoned, and that people was people whether they be sick or not. Half of me feel shame, but the next half was angry, for I think to myself they was abandoned so long they don’t even know what it was to be considered. Everyone finding it easy to consider the lepers now that they was dead. People even begin to demand autopsy. They want to find out exactly what happened in those last days, what disease, or what autoclapse it was that hit them. Well, if they did the autopsy I never hear the results, but what I think is this: that it come a time when people who been sick their whole lives just get tired of being sick, tired of waiting to die, and they just say chu, and they give up. Simple as that. The family who grow me give up because I leave them. In the end it was me who abandon them. O Mighty God of Daniel, forgive me. They say you must talk the truth and shame the devil. So here is the truth: maybe some of the things that this Writer Man has put down on his paper is true after all. Like maybe he find out things I been trying to forget my whole life. Like, once upon a time there was a leper colony in Jamaica. But such a time is only once, and no more.

Y
OU HAVE COME ACROSS A PICTURE OF ADAMINE, CUT IT
from an edition of the
Jamaica Star.
It is a grainy black-and-white photograph of a twenty-five-year-old woman. Her face is blurred in this picture, the flash of the camera seeming to distort rather than bring it out. She is standing behind a table, so is only visible from the waist up. The table is not elaborately spread—just a basin of water in its center. Behind her is the wall of the church in which the woman had risen to the position of Junior Mother. There are planks of board, and what appear to be two banners hanging on either side of her. On one of the banners a moon and star are the only things discernible. There is also writing on it, but this cannot be deciphered. The second banner is of such a dark shade that nothing beyond its general shape is clear. The woman is holding up a Bible, and while the flash of the camera distorts her face, it magnificently highlights her teeth—white and square, and so many of them.

You have thumbtacked this picture to your door, hoping that when she passes it, Adamine, the Warner Woman, will catch a sudden glimpse of herself, that the past will all come rushing back to her. You have been playing this game for a while—tempting her memory to come back. Paintings of Revival in your flat, this one early picture of Adamine, and also you make sure to print out parts of the story, hoping she will read these bits and maybe disagree; hoping that things will come back to her.

But of course, what you really want is that one day she might remember you.

PART TWO

in which the story prepares to travel, and then begins again

an installment of a testimony spoken to the wind

Shhhhhhhhh

S
OMETIMES I TIRED OF TALKING TO THIS WRITER MAN
. If I had my wish right now I would ongly talk to you. I would ongly talk to you because at least you hear me. I have said to Mr. Writer Man, it don’t take no great skill to write down a story. All you have to do is put one word after the next and you continue like that until it done. But it take a special skill to hear a story—to incline your ears toward what may seem like silence. For nothing in this world is silent, you just have to learn how to hear. And I would ongly talk to you because I cannot seee your face. I can neither see it frown nor smile. And because I do not know what shape your face has become, I do not have to change the shape of my words to suit you. So maybe you is there smiling. Or maybe you is there frowning. Or maybe your face has become a wide land of bepuzzlement. I do not know. You hear me like how Miss Lily hear Miss Charlotte Brontë. Miss Brontë done dead and buried, but when Miss Lily read
Jane Eyre,
she hear the voice coming to her as if from a great distance. That is how you hear me. And if I had my wish, I would ongly talk to you for a next reason. See, I have come to like this hour of talking, this darkest hour of night when life done forget itself. The world is as quiet as the grave right now, like it is making space for a story it has never heard. I come out on this balcony, always at this time, and I go back in when the sky begin to change color. When I go back to bed, is like I barely put my head on my pillow and fall asleep when Mr. Writer Man start to shake me awake again.
Top o’ the morning,
he say,
Top o’ the morning,
he say, top o’ the morning. He have manners, I admit. He always make me a cup of tea. He know by now that I start my mornings with green tea and not the bitter coffee he make for himself. The first time I refuse the coffee he come to tell me like he proud,
but it’s Blue Mountain Coffee. It’s from Jamaica.
I tell him that’s all well and good, but it wouldn’t make a goddamn difference if it did come straight from my mama’s titty. We take our cups and sit down. He turn on a little black tape recorder and ask,
Are you ready to begin again, Adamine?
I don’t think I is ever ready to begin again. Sometimes I get worried because I don’t know what it is he want to know. I don’t know what is the point of all this talking and taping and writing. Instead of beginning straight away, sometimes I let my eyes wander round the room. This living room is a room full of red, as if it is made to be a warning unto duppies: stay far! The couch, the rug, the flower vases—all red. And on the wall across from where I sit there is a painting. You can tell Mr. Writer Man is very proud of owning it. Once upon a time I used to think paintings was only of flowers, or bowls of fruits, or loose white women with just a little piece of shawl covering their woman-parts. But this painting is nothing like that. It is a painting of black women, and they is all wearing dresses, the colors as bright as the Garden of Eden. The woman in front have on a red dress of course. The one right behind her have on a green dress, and a next one have on yellow. The women are all tilting their heads way back, and their necks is as long as from here to tomorrow. It is a painting of black women, but when you see the group of them you think of queens or empresses. The first day when I reach here, I just stand up and look on this painting. Mr. Writer Man come up behind me and I hear him say,
Yes. I knew you’d like this. Do you recognize it?
I tell him no sah, I don’t know nothing bout art.
No,
he say,
I meant do you recognize what’s going on—the ceremony, these women? Don’t you see it’s Revival. Isn’t this what you were once a part of?
I just say Oh, and I keep silent. I wonder how he expect me to recognize women who have a portion of night where they supposed to have noses and eyes and faces. You cannot tell one woman different from another. You couldn’t say if one woman was maybe Bishopess Herbert or if another was Eliza, or if another was Sharon or Erna or Marcia. I have known Revival women, and I known the houses they have lived in, and the men who they did sleep with. But I don’t know the women in this painting. All I recognize is that these women supposed to be women like me, but I think the whole thing too pretty. And then an understanding come to me: that this is what Revival is for Mr. Writer Man. Something pretty. Something red and green and yellow that you could put up on your wall as decoration. I see how he smile at this painting and I see now that he don’t know plenty things.