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Authors: Paule Marshall

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To staff the place and spread the wealth, I hired a housekeeper and a cook, as well as a cook’s helper to do the daily marketing in town: everything from soup to nuts purchased fresh every day. A Mrs. Bishop came to do the laundry three times a week. There was also Mrs. Bishop’s husband, a carpenter who couldn’t find steady work. I hired him as a combination handyman, yardman and gardener.
After a number of interviews, I also found a suitable nanny for my son. She was a pleasant and capable older woman named Mrs. Charles. Better yet, Mrs. Charles had a grandson my son’s age. A playmate. The book-party baby was three years old by then and had been traveling around the islands with me practically since his birth. Toddler by one hand, Royal portable by the other, and the Delancey Street suitcases in tow, I kept returning to the West Indies as simply the best and cheapest place to get the writing done.
Paule with Evan, “the book party baby”
Also, before the inevitable divorce, my husband occasionally came to visit us in the West Indies. He was not an island person, however, a reaction perhaps to growing up in clannish Bajan Brooklyn. A sociology major in college, he had long been at work on a seemingly interminable doctorate whose focus was the ever-increasing youth gangs in New York with whom he had worked. His city, New York, was his great love.
 
 
S
ettling into Grenada would not have gone as smoothly if not for a friend I made shortly after arriving. Odessa Gittens was her name—or Miss ’Dessa, as she was called. A transplanted Bajan in her fifties and a classic civil service type, Miss ’Dessa had long worked as a health and social services officer in the poor, underserved little villages of upcountry Grenada. Odessa Gittens was a high-energy, take-charge, unapologetic maiden lady. Having seen my name and brief bio in the “Visitors to the Island” column in the local newspaper, where I was described as “an American writer of Barbadian parentage,” she had promptly descended on me and taken over the settling in.
In a little over a month, then, thanks to her, we were installed in the house, a smooth-running daily routine had been established, and my son was clearly happy with Mrs. Charles and her grandson. Also, as a gift to myself, I created my own private workspace apart from the house by using the servant’s room out back. I put Mr. Bishop, carpenter plus factotum, to work transforming the dark, cell-like room, with its one window and miserly cot, into a bright, airy, freshly painted workspace. It was my Virginia Woolf “room of one’s own,” to which, Woolf insisted, every woman writer is entitled.
In no time I had a functioning office, dominated by a large new desk purchased in town with Miss ’Dessa doing the bargaining for me. On the new desk sat the equally new Royal portable I had bought just before leaving the States—the latest model. The ample drawers of the desk were filled with enough writing supplies to last me the year I planned to spend in Grenada. Also, on top of the desk in plain view was my most valuable possession: the dozen and more steno pads containing the research material I had spent months amassing
for the book I intended to write. What I had in mind was something of a historical novel, although not in the strict sense of that genre. It would be set in the present, the characters would be modern-day folk of various races and backgrounds, yet their lives, their situations, their relationships, their thinking and politics would reflect the past four-hundred-year history of the hemisphere and its continuing impact on them. In applying for the Guggenheim I had been required to submit a summary of the proposed novel. Receiving the grant seemed a stamp of approval for what I hoped to do. Moreover, I was determined that all of the historical references would be absolutely correct. Hence the stack of steno pads with their precious research notes.
In relatively short order everything was set for the writing to begin. Or so I thought. I had foolishly neglected to take the gods into account, especially the most cruel breed among them, those who delight in bestowing a gift such as a Guggenheim with one hand, only to snatch it back with the other.
The “snatching back” in my case took the form of a writer’s block more massive than any I had ever suffered through before. In fact, the term “block” was woefully inadequate to describe the paralysis and impotence that came over me the moment I sat down at the desk each morning. I tried defining the cause. Was it the projected novel? Was I so intimidated by the scope of what I hoped to do that my mind, overwhelmed, had simply shut down? Perhaps it
was
too large and complex a subject for someone like me to attempt. I was still a novice, after all, someone with only one novel and a collection of stories to her name. . . .
Or could it be guilt at the Guggenheim largesse that had brought me to a standstill? Those checks in the thousands of dollars that regularly arrived from New York! And with no strings attached! No questions asked! No report on work-in-progress required! I took to blaming my woe on the bonanza of a grant. Perhaps money
did
kill creativity after all.
Or did the paralyzing guilt have to do with my being away again from the ongoing Struggle at
home? When I left for Grenada there were plans to organize another massive campaign to help spur the voter-registration drive in the Deep South, especially in Mississippi. I should be on one of the buses heading southward; either that, or back in New York raising funds to support the campaign through the Artists for Freedom Organization and the other support groups to which I belonged.
Guilt over my absence from the Movement might well have been responsible for the present shutdown.
Not that I didn’t try to break the paralysis. One strategy I employed was something I call “throw-away writing.” I would churn out page after page of the story I desperately wanted to write, but in prose of such poor quality it was fit only for the wastepaper basket, which is where it ended up. Although inferior, the “throw-away writing” could at times offer up a word, a phrase, even a sentence that made for a breakthrough.
This was not to be the case this time.
Another tactic I tried came again from Mrs. Woolf’s manifesto. “The female writer must be allowed
to sit and stare, and for however long she chooses. . . .” The act of simply sitting and staring into space, she believed, allowed important information, direction, ideas, inspiration and whatever else is needed for the work at hand to emerge from the subconscious. Creative writing is, after all, both a conscious and an
unconscious
act, the two spheres of the mind working in concert to create the novel, the story, the poem.
I took V. W. at her word and, at times, simply sat and stared, waiting to be rescued by that deeper level of the self.
I also repeatedly sought help from the stack of steno pads containing my priceless research notes. Hours were spent poring over that wealth of material: I just might come across something there that would lift the paralysis and get the writing underway. I became addicted to leafing through the steno pads, hoping for a breakthrough.
All to no avail. I might as well have sought help from the lizard that took to visiting me soon after I moved in. Ever so often what seemed to be the same pale-green little creature, all five inches
of it, came and encamped itself on the windowsill near me. It often spent the entire fruitless day with me. The tiny dewlap under its throat, used for mating or marking its territory, would hang there like a suspended teardrop. A gesture of sympathy perhaps on its part.
Come the late afternoon, I called a halt to the torture in the V.W. room—
Enough is enough!
—and, returning to the house, I would gather up my son. Together, just the two of us, we would set out for the nearby beach. This was our private time together each day. The beach, in this instance, was Grenada’s magnificent Grand Anse, known to be one of the truly great beaches in the world. In the colonial scramble over the islands, France had lost Grenada to the British. Grand Anse, however, had retained its French name, as had much else on the island. Grand Anse meaning Great Bay. And it was just that, a wide, curving inlet over two miles long, graced from end to end with a flawless white sand beach that looked as if it were laid down fresh each morning. Equally flawless was the blue-green water of the bay—water so clear the golden mica on the seabed could be seen with
the naked eye. Flawless, too, the great sweeping backdrop of palm trees that hid the one small hotel on Grand Anse at the time.
My son romped and splashed in the surf, built and destroyed any number of sand castles, chased every tiny sand crab he caught sight of back into its burrow, all the while chatting away with me. Along with the paradise of a beach, he helped me to recover, if only in part and if only temporarily, from the punishing, unproductive workday.
Our daily outing ended at sunset with the two of us sitting close together at the water’s edge, our eyes trained on the horizon. We were awaiting the phenomenon Grenadians called “the green flash.” The local folk swore that when the last bit of the sun vanished below the sea, there was a green flash, lasting less than the blink of an eye. This green flash, like a last hurrah to the day, occurred only at Grand Anse Beach, they said. However, not everyone was capable of seeing it. You had to be able to truly concentrate and to believe.
I never once saw the green flash, due perhaps to my frustration with the writing. On the other hand, my son, all of a sudden leaping to his
feet, a small forefinger pointing, always swore that he did.
 
 
M
id-morning, and I was on the veranda taking a much-needed break from the torture chamber out back, when an old rattletrap lorry filled with country people went roaring by, horn blaring, in the direction of the capital, St. George’s. A second lorry, equally packed, quickly followed, then a third, a fourth. It was soon a veritable convoy, each truck with an overload of barefoot country folk standing jammed together on the railed-in truck bed, their heads bared to an already sweltering sun. No one there seemed to mind the overcrowding, the hot sun or the deafening horns. In fact, the riders were adding their voices, a loud, happy mix of patois and English, to the din. Their repeated outbursts of laughter were like so many colorful banners they were waving to announce their descent into the capital.
A political rally. Thanks to Miss ’Dessa, who had given me a crash course in Grenadian politics just days after my arrival, I understood the significance
of the convoy. I had learned that politics on the island were synonymous with one man, the long-standing chief minister, Eric Matthew Gairy, a man disdained, even hated, by the white planters and the small black and Creole bourgeoisie in town, while adored by the masses of poor black country folk. They were the majority who returned him to office each time he ran. Whenever there was the least threat to his power, he was known to dispatch a fleet of the rattletrap lorries to the countryside to round up his supporters from the canefields and spice plantations and bring them, en masse, into the capital, there to be treated to one of the spectacular rallies he held at various sites in town.
I didn’t hesitate. Once the convoy ended, I informed the household that I, too, would be attending the rally. I had the cook prepare a sandwich for me to take, and with a kiss for my son I set off down the main road on foot, not bothering to wait for the public bus.
It eventually caught up with me halfway into St. George’s.
I
n addition to the beach at Grand Anse, Grenada’s other showpiece is its pretty little colonial capital. Built on a series of low-lying hills, St. George’s is a picture-perfect collection of Old World French and English townhouses complete with the classic red-tiled roofs. Above the terraced houses stands Parliament, with the queen’s standard aloft, while higher up, on a pair of separate hills, rise the capital’s two cathedrals, Anglican and Catholic. To complete the perfection, St. George’s also boasts a horseshoe-shaped deepwater harbor that is known to be among the finest in the Caribbean.
It’s a favorite with the members of the yachting set who sail the West Indies during the winter.
According to what the bus driver had heard, the rally today was to be special and would therefore be held on the
carenage,
the local name for the long curving wharf that faithfully repeated the horseshoe outline of the harbor.
By the time I reached town, it was well past noon and the entire
carenage
was packed to overflowing with the chief minister’s supporters. The only standing room to be found was on a narrow
roadway above the harbor, where a small group of onlookers from town had already gathered. I joined them. Behind us the picturesque little capital seemed eerily quiet, deserted even, the gentry having retreated, perhaps behind their closed jalousies.
What followed was an endless wait in the crucifying mid-afternoon heat. Until, finally, what sounded like an awestruck hosanna welled up from those among the country people on the wharf who stood closest to the water. Alerted, the throngs behind them immediately joined in.
BOOK: Triangular Road: A Memoir
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