The Mothers of Memory (The 3rd Version)

for Kai

“We need to dig and jump into the land we come from; one woman after another, one dream upon the other, calling up who we are.”
—Ntozake Shange


“As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.”
—Mary Daly, Pure Lust

For a girl to be born in the shadow of her foremothers is no small thing for their lives are stories that together form a river and she is this continuation of their story, an undamming of their lives, to ensure that they never die, to show that the river continues to flow.
And this is what Trinity reckons with now as she stands ankle deep in the crashing Caribbean ocean under the scorching sun. She beckons her great-grandmother Frances from out of the past, from out of the sea and hopefully into her soul to dwell so that she can scratch away at the myths and set her women free.

First Movement

Mummy! Mummy! I scream and struggle against the thin yet stong arms which seem like the roots of a tree wound about me. I don’t want to go but yet, as I continue to cry and look up at the sky and wish myself a bird so that I could fly, Granddaddy keeps his grip firm around my bony waist and continues to wade further and further out into the water. His chin, rough with stubble, burns my young skin as I continue to struggle. He smells like rum and cigarettes and it is the closest he has ever held me, and a part of me want to relax into his arms and allow myself to enjoy the closeness he is allowing me to his physical body, but the other part of me, the fear and distrust of the water is overwhelming and encourages me to protest—loudly. I want so much for his firm face to relax and show some love, relent to me-- and if it did, perhaps it would have calmed me. But his continual vexation only fuels my fear more, because as a child, I equate his anger with his not accepting me.
“Child, shut up nah!” I can tell Grandaddy is unhappy with me and I wish I was strong enough to subdue my fears, be quiet, trust him and let him take me out into the water because there is a chance that I could please him and perhaps make him love me, but alas, I cannot. I bite my tongue hard and the tears fall as the water slowly creeps up my body and I slobber, calling Mummy, Mummy, Mummy, because I know that my grandmother could and will save me. Just then it begins to drizzle and I make out my grandmother swimming out to us.
Gladstone! She admonisihes, as she takes me into her arms, “If the girl say no, she mean no. Why you don’t just leave her alone?” I hold onto my grandmother’s neck tightly and she begins to wade back to the shore. The drizzle stops, the gray cloud goes and the sun begins to shine again.
When we return to the beach my grandmother still holds me in her arms and never lets me go. My grandfather is not too far behind and I can see from the look in his eyes that he is angry. Again all I want him to do is to melt into a smile and not be so angry at me. Just for once.
“You not a real Trini girl. Nah, you a real yankee girl. You loud, first of all. And how many times I tell you that young ladies must be seen but not heard? And then second of all, you don’t like the sea.”
But I do, I want to yell, I love the ocean. I love watching my grandparents swim in the water and I too envision myself floating in water one day. It must be close to flying, no? But he doesn’t give me time to answer as he continues to Mummy Clarisse, “When this girl going back to she mother?” A cigarette dangles from his lips as he sits on the navy blue cooler and jingles the ice in his glass of rum and coke. Water glistens from his firm legs and his hair is wet against his scalp. “You know Gladstone, when Rose fix up everything up there, then she will send for the girl. Calm down nah?” Clarisse hugs me and winks to tell me that everything will be okay but I know it won’t because one day my mother will send for me and I will have to leave my grandmother, and go back to my father who everyone says is crazy.
“Well she better hurry up. I don’t see why I have to take care of that nigger man’s children. If she want to be with him, fine, but she don’t have to make that my problem.” My grandfather avoids my stare but continues, “And while you here, you must try and be like your cousin ---, now that’s a real young lady in the making.” My grandmother rolls her eyes and dismisses my grandfather with a wave of her hand, “Girl, don’t listen to him.” And then she leans closer to me, “But why you so fraid of the water so? The water is your friend and it only is when you try to fight it that it can hurt you. But on the other hand, if you trust it, relax, it takes care of you.”
I raise my hand and put it to my brow to shield the intense sun rays that seems to pierce my head.
“Besides, Trinity, you are a fish, jus like your ma, and fishes love the water.” I smile and lean my small body into hers and she hugs me and for a moment I forget the fact that my grandfather hates me because it seems that my grandmother has enough love to keep me alive. I also smile because I love to hear stories about my great-grandmother, Clarisse’s mother, Ma.
Although I am only eleven, there are many things I love about my great grandmother. First of all, we share the same birthday and I suspect that is one of the reasons why my grandmother loves me so much. Secondly, she is very dark and beautiful. And thirdly, hers is story clouded in mystery; mysteries that I hope to one day unlock and so be provided with an alternative to being rather than the one my grandfather forces upon me, in his words, “to be a young lady.” If young ladies are like my cousin Metta, who lounges about and reads Mills and Boons romances, then I don’t want to be like her. If young ladies do not have opinions and are not allowed to express them, then I don’t want to be one. If young ladies are not supposed to touch boys or let boys touch them, then I don’t want to be one. I want to be myself but my courage is dampens when I look at my grandfather who still continues to reckon me invisible and I realize how much I just want to be loved and accepted by him.
I lay my head on my grandmother’s lap and she strokes my hair. “you have real hard hair girl.” My grandmother teases. I do not like how she says these things, but there is no disrespect in her voice, just years and years of ideas that comes out of her mouth and it’s almost as if her ignorance quiets the protests I have for her choice of words. Instead, I think instead of Frances Lopez, her mother, the woman who I have pledged an unwavering allegiance to. Not the same allegiance that my grandmother Clarisse claims, an allegiance of silence that threatens to keep her story far away from me. It is important to Mummy Clarisse that Frances is always remembered as a “good” woman, but I cannot help but wonder why her definition of good is so one-dimensional, so passive, so unrealistic. I want proof that there are other women who have the same goings-on in their hearts as I do mine that are in my family. I want to hear stories of women in my family that let me know that I am normal and “good”, not in their boring ways, but in ways that incite life and spark lust and erupt forth, impregnating everything with passion. My grandmother attempts to maintain Frances’ good name, to portray her as a good Catholic. I hope I will never be as guarding of my mother’s character (especially if I have a daughter, why would I want to dam the truth?) For me, womanhood, pure womanhood, contains no mistakes, just pure, unadulterated possibility—just like the universe where everywhere you look you see configurations of things no man can ever conjure. Fish that don’t swim, mammals that do, why can’t I have that?
Time and time again, I have begged my grandmother, “Mummy Clarisse, please tell me the truth. You can not be Pa’s daughter, how could you be?” Pa, my great-grandmother’s husband was a dark-skinned man whose family came from India while Ma was what Trinidadians called “Creole”, African Creole whose strength and grace told of direct connections to passages from Africa which I love to imagine because my family, like most colonized minds love to talk about links to Europe, or in my family’s particular case, India but never to Africa but for me, it is what I see most when I look in the mirror and it is what I most love about.

On the drive home to Diego Martin from Maracas, through the lush hills and on the relatively new asphalt road, as the car sways and I attempt to keep car sickness at bay, I cannot help but ponder the harsh words my grandfather used to describe my father and I wonder why is it that he seems to hate him as well. I look at my grandfather’s profile as he holds the steering wheel with one hand and smokes a cigarette with the other. He is the color of red dirt and his hair is just as much gray as it is almost black. His chin is strong and his nose a result of his East Indian parentage, or so I think in my small mind. I lean my body against the leather of the car door and cherish glimpses of the beach as our car dips and raises along the road. I see three girls, smaller than I, walking alongside the road with baskets of pomme cythere balanced on their heads, hoping that someone will buy it and I wonder what my life would have been like if I was forced to go out and sell fruit for the family? They smile at me as if they have mistakenly equated my appearance of material wealth with happiness and all I want to tell them is that they have what I would never have and that is a heritage.
Granddaddy puts on the radio and the sound of calypso is cantankerous yet familiar and I remember that I have been accused all too many times by my family that I cannot wine—which is in fact just another way to tell me that I am different. My grandfather quickly changes the music, he has little patience for it and settles for the BBC news.
The wind whips his cigarette smoke towards me in the back and I am sick from the smell. I take my damp towel and place it to my face so that I can breathe into it and hopefully filter some of the air. My grandmother stares steadily out of the window and every now and then she says, “See there, over there?” And I will follow her finger and find myself staring at thick bushes and she continues, “That used to be the way we got to Maracas before, on the old road.” Then she continues, “But hear nah Gladstone, what ever become of Lorna?” My grandfather shrugs his shoulders and she continues, “Let’s go and see if she home nah, ah sure she would love to see Rose’s daughter.” And before I know it, we have pulled up under a mango tree laden with fruit and unloading from the car.
“Good evening, good evening.” My grandmother announces that we are there and a woman walks out onto the gallery. She wipes her hand on a flowered-print apron.
“Clarisse, that you girl?” And a smile immediately replaces the look of confusion on the brown woman’s face as she walks down the wooden stairs towards my grandmother and takes her into a hug. “Lord Bless, Lord Bless, it has been too long girl! And you bring Gladstone too?” She opens her hands to include my grandfather and he too seems melted by the sight of this woman. A large man comes out onto the gallery not too long after and he and my grandfather exchanges greetings as we all make it back up to the to their porch.
“And this is Rose’s youngest one? Oh, but she resemble her plenty boy.” I always feel proud when people tell me that I look my mother because I know that she is very beautiful, at least to me.
“Yes girl, this is Trinity and she Rose’s youngest. She living here now, you know?”
“Okay, how long time now she living here?”
“She just get here, a couple of months ago.”
--Brooklyn, 1996