In the middle of December one year, when the excitement was high, Miguel Street was in the news.
Hat showed us the paper and we read:
FOLLOW THE EXAMPLE OF THIS TINYMITE!
“The smallest and most touching response to our appeal to bring Yuletide cheer to the unfortunate has come in a letter from Mr Titus Hoyt, I.A., a headmaster of Miguel Street, Port of Spain. The letter was sent to Mr Hoyt by one of his pupils who wishes to remain anonymous. We have Mr Hoyt’s permission to print the letter in full.
‘Dear Mr Hoyt, I am only eight and, as you doubtless know, I am a member of the GUARDIAN Tinymites League. I read Aunt Juanita every Sunday. You, dear Mr Hoyt, have always extolled the virtue of charity and you have spoken repeatedly of the fine work the GUARDIAN Neediest Cases Fund is doing to bring Yuletide cheer to the unfortunate. I have decided to yield to your earnest entreaty. I have very little money to offer-a mere six cents, in fact, but take it, Mr Hoyt, and send it to the GUARDIAN Neediest Cases Fund. May it bring Yuletide cheer to some poor unfortunate! I know it is not much. But, like the widow, I give my mite. I remain, dear Mr Hoyt, One of Your Pupils.’
And there was a large photograph of Titus Hoyt, smiling and pop-eyed in the flash of the camera.
X
THE MATERNAL INSTINCT
I suppose Laura holds a world record.
Laura had eight children.
There is nothing surprising in that.
These eight children had seven fathers.
Beat that!
It was Laura who gave me my first lesson in biology. She lived just next door to us, and I found myself observing her closely.
I would notice her belly rising for months.
Then I would miss her for a short time.
And the next time I saw her she would be quite flat.
And the leavening process would begin again in a few months.
To me this was one of the wonders of the world in which I lived, and I always observed Laura. She herself was quite gay about what was happening to her. She used to point to it and say, ‘This thing happening again, but you get use to it after the first three four times. Is a damn nuisance, though.’
She used to blame God, and speak about the wickedness of men.
For her first six children she tried six different men.
Hat used to say, ‘Some people hard to please.’
But I don’t want to give you the impression that Laura spent all her time having babies and decrying men, and generally feeling sorry for herself. If Bogart was the most bored person in the street, Laura was the most vivacious. She was always gay, and she liked me.
She would give me plums and mangoes when she had them; and whenever she made sugar-cakes she would give me some.
Even my mother, who had a great dislike of laughter, especially in me, even my mother used to laugh at Laura.
She often said to me, ‘I don’t know why Laura muching you up so for. Like she ain’t have enough children to mind.’
I think my mother was right. I don’t think a woman like Laura could have ever had too many children. She loved all her children, though you wouldn’t have believed it from the language she used when she spoke to them. Some of Laura’s shouts and curses were the richest things I have ever heard, and I shall never forget them.
Hat said once, ‘Man, she like Shakespeare when it come to using words.’
Laura used to shout, ‘Alwyn, you broad-mouth brute, come here.’
And, ‘Gavin, if you don’t come here this minute, I make you fart fire, you hear.’
And, ‘Lorna, you black bow-leg bitch, why you can’t look what you doing? ’
Now, to compare Laura, the mother of eight, with Mary the Chinese, also mother of eight, doesn’t seem fair. Because Mary took really good care of her children and never spoke harshly to them. But Mary, mark you, had a husband who owned a shop, and Mary could afford to be polite and nice to her children, after stuffing them full of chop-suey and chow-min and chow-fan, and things with names like that. But who could Laura look to for money to keep her children?
The men who cycled slowly past Laura’s house in the evening, whistling for Laura, were not going to give any of their money to Laura’s children. They just wanted Laura.
I asked my mother, ‘How Laura does live?’
My mother slapped me, saying, ‘You know, you too fast for a little boy.’
I suspected the worst.
But I wouldn’t have liked that to be true.
So I asked Hat. Hat said, ‘She have a lot of friends who does sell in the market. They does give she things free, and sometimes one or two or three of she husbands does give she something too, but that not much.’
The oddest part of the whole business was Laura herself. Laura was no beauty. As Boyee said one day, ‘She have a face like the top of a motor-car battery.’ And she was a little more than plump.
I am talking now of the time when she had had only six children.
One day Hat said, ‘Laura have a new man.’
Everybody laughed, ‘Stale news. If Laura have she way, she go try every man once.’
But Hat said, ‘No, is serious. He come to live with she for good now. I see him this morning when I was taking out the cows.’
We watched and waited for this man.
We later learned that he was watching and waiting for us.
In no time at all this man, Nathaniel, had become one of the gang in Miguel Street. But it was clear that he was not really one of us. He came from the east end of Port of Spain, which we considered dirtier; and his language was really coarse.
He made out that he was a kind of terror in the east end around Piccadilly Street. He told many stories about gang-fights, and he let it be known that he had disfigured two or three people.
Hat said, ‘I think he lying like hell, you know.’
I distrusted him myself. He was a small man, and I always felt that small men were more likely to be wicked and violent.
But what really sickened us was his attitude to women. We were none of us chivalrous, but Nathaniel had a contempt for women which we couldn’t like. He would make rude remarks when women passed.
Nathaniel would say, ‘Women just like cows. Cow and they is the same thing.’
And when Miss Ricaud, the welfare woman, passed, Nathaniel would say, ‘Look at that big cow.’
Which wasn’t in good taste, for we all thought that Miss Ricaud was too fat to be laughed at, and ought instead to be pitied.
Nathaniel, in the early stages, tried to make us believe that he knew how to keep Laura in her place. He hinted that he used to beat her. He used to say, ‘Woman and them like a good dose of blows, you know. You know the calypso:
Every now and then just knock them down.
Every now and then just throw them down.
Black up their eye and bruise up their knee
And then they love you eternally.
Is gospel truth about woman.’
Hat said, ‘Woman is a funny thing, for truth, though. I don’t know what a woman like Laura see in Nathaniel.’
Eddoes said, ‘I know a helluva lot about woman. I think Nathaniel lying like hell. I think when he with Laura he got his tail between his legs all the time.’
We used to hear fights and hear the children screaming all over the place, and when we saw Nathaniel, he would just say, ‘Just been beating some sense into that woman.’
Hat said, ‘Is a funny thing. Laura don’t look any sadder.’
Nathaniel said, ‘Is only blows she really want to keep she happy.’
Nathaniel was lying, of course. It wasn’t he who was giving the blows, it was Laura. That came out the day when Nathaniel tried to wear a hat to cover up a beaten eye.
Eddoes said, ‘It look like they make up that calypso about men, not women.’
Nathaniel tried to get at Eddoes, who was small and thin. But Hat said, ‘Go try that on Laura. I know Laura. Laura just trying not to beat you up too bad just to keep
you with she, but the day she start getting tired of you, you better run, boy.’
We prayed for something to happen to make Nathaniel leave Miguel Street.
Hat said, ‘We ain’t have to wait long. Laura making baby eight months now. Another month, and Nathaniel gone.’
Eddoes said, ‘That would be a real record. Seven children with seven different man.’
The baby came.
It was on a Saturday. Just the evening before I had seen Laura standing in her yard leaning on the fence.
The baby came at eight o’clock in the morning. And, like a miracle, just two hours later, Laura was calling across to my mother.
I hid and looked.
Laura was leaning on her window-sill. She was eating a mango, and the yellow juice was smeared all over her face.
She was saying to my mother, ‘The baby come this morning.’
And my mother only said, ‘Boy or girl?’
Laura said, ‘What sort of luck you think I have? It looks like I really blight. Is another girl. I just thought I would let you know, that’s all. Well, I got to go now. I have to do some sewing.’
And that very evening it looked as though what Hat said was going to come true. For that evening Laura came out to the pavement and shouted to Nathaniel, ‘Hey, Nathaniel, come here.’
Hat said, ‘But what the hell is this? Ain’t is this morning she make baby?’
Nathaniel tried to show off to us. He said to Laura, ‘I busy. I ain’t coming.’
Laura advanced, and I could see fight in her manner. She said, ‘You ain’t coming? Ain’t coming? But what is this I hearing?’
Nathaniel was worried. He tried to talk to us, but he wasn’t talking in a sensible way.
Laura said, ‘You think you is a man. But don’t try playing man with me, you hear. Yes, Nathaniel, is you I talking to, you with your bottom like two stale bread in your pants.’
This was one of Laura’s best, and we all began laughing. When she saw us laughing, Laura burst out too.
Hat said, ‘This woman is a real case.’
But even after the birth of his baby Nathaniel didn’t leave Miguel Street. We were a little worried.
Hat said, ‘If she don’t look out she go have another baby with the same man, you know.’
It wasn’t Laura’s fault that Nathaniel didn’t go. She knocked him about a lot, and did so quite openly now. Sometimes she locked him out, and then we would hear Nathaniel crying and coaxing from the pavement, ‘Laura, darling, Laura, doux-doux, just let me come in tonight. Laura, doux-doux, let me come in.’
He had dropped all pretence now of keeping Laura in her place. He no longer sought our company, and we were glad of that.
Hat used to say, ‘I don’t know why he don’t go back to the Dry River where he come from. They ain’t have any culture there, and he would be happier.’
I couldn’t understand why he stayed.
Hat said, ‘It have some man like that. They like woman to kick them around.’
And Laura was getting angrier with Nathaniel.
One day we heard her tell him, ‘You think because you give me one baby, you own me. That baby only come by accident, you hear.’
She threatened to get the police.
Nathaniel said, ‘But who go mind your children?’
Laura said, ‘That is my worry. I don’t want you here. You is only another mouth to feed. And if you don’t leave me right right now I go go and call Sergeant Charles for you.’
It was this threat of the police that made Nathaniel leave.
He was in tears.
But Laura was swelling out again.
Hat said, ‘Oh, God! Two babies by the same man!’
One of the miracles of life in Miguel Street was that no one starved. If you sit down at a table with pencil and paper and try to work it out, you will find it impossible. But I lived in Miguel Street, and can assure you that no one starved. Perhaps they did go hungry, but you never heard about it.
Laura’s children grew.
The eldest daughter, Lorna, began working as a servant in a house in St Clair and took typing lessons from a man in Sackville Street.
Laura used to say, ‘It have nothing like education in the world. I don’t want my children to grow like me.’
In time, Laura delivered her eighth baby, as effortlessly as usual.
That baby was her last.
It wasn’t that she was tired or that she had lost her love of the human race or lost her passion for adding to it. As a matter of fact, Laura never seemed to grow any older or less cheerful. I always felt that, given the opportunity, she could just go on and on having babies.
The eldest daughter, Lorna, came home from her typing lessons late one night and said, ‘Ma, I going to make a baby.’
I heard the shriek that Laura gave.
And for the first time I heard Laura crying. It wasn’t ordinary crying. She seemed to be crying all the cry she had saved up since she was born, all the cry she had tried to cover up with her laughter. I have heard people cry at funerals, but there is a lot of showing-off in their crying. Laura’s crying that night was the most terrible thing I had heard. It made me feel that the world was a stupid, sad place, and I almost began crying with Laura.
All the street heard Laura crying.
Next day Boyee said, ‘I don’t see why she so mad about that. She does do the same.’
Hat got so annoyed that he took off his leather belt and beat Boyee.
I didn’t know who I felt sorrier for – Laura or her daughter.
I felt that Laura was ashamed now to show herself in the street. When I did see her I found it hard to believe that she was the same woman who used to laugh with me and give me sugar-cakes.
She was an old woman now.
She no longer shouted at her children, no longer beat them. I don’t know whether she was taking especial care of them or whether she had lost interest in them.
But we never heard Laura say a word of reproach to Lorna.
That was terrible.
Lorna brought her baby home. There were no jokes about it in the street.
Laura’s house was a dead, silent house.
Hat said, ‘Life is helluva thing. You can see trouble coming and you can’t do a damn thing to prevent it coming. You just got to sit and watch and wait.’
According to the papers, it was just another week-end tragedy, one of many.
Lorna was drowned at Carenage.
Hat said, ‘Is what they always do, swim out and out until they tired and can’t swim no more.’
And when the police came to tell Laura about it, she had said very little.
Laura said, It good. ‘It good. It better that way.’
XI
THE BLUE CART
There were many reasons why I wanted to be like Eddoes when I grew up.
He was one of the aristocrats of the street. He drove a scavenging cart and so worked only in the mornings.
Then, as everybody said, Eddoes was a real ‘saga-boy.’ This didn’t mean that he wrote epic poetry. It meant that he was a ‘sweet-man,’ a man of leisure, well-dressed, and keen on women.
Hat used to say, ‘For a man who does drive a scavenging cart, this Eddoes too clean, you hear.’
Eddoes was crazy about cleanliness.
He used to brush his teeth for hours.
If fact, if you were telling a stranger about Eddoes you would say, ‘You know-the little fellow with a tooth-brush always in his mouth.’
This was one thing in Eddoes I really admired. Once I stuck a tooth-brush in my mouth and walked about our yard in the middle of the day.
My mother said, ‘You playing man? But why you don’t wait until your pee make froth?’
That made me miserable for days.
But it didn’t prevent me taking the tooth-brush to school and wearing it there. It caused quite a stir. But I quickly realised that only a man like Eddoes could have worn a tooth-brush and carried it off.
Edd
oes was always well-dressed. His khaki trousers were always creased and his shoes always shone. He wore his shirts with three buttons undone so you could see his hairy chest. His shirt cuffs were turned up just above the wrist and you could see his gold wrist-watch.
Even when Eddoes wore a coat you saw the watch. From the way he wore the coat you thought that Eddoes hadn’t realised that the end of the coat sleeve had been caught in the watch strap.
It was only when I grew up I realised how small and how thin Eddoes really was.
I asked Hat, ‘You think is true all this talk Eddoes giving us about how woman running after him?’
Hat said, ‘Well, boy, woman these days funny like hell. They go run after a dwarf if he got money.’
I said, ‘I don’t believe you.’
I was very young at the time.
But I always thought, ‘If it have one man in this world woman bound to like, that man is Eddoes.’
He sat on his blue cart with so much grace. And how smart that tooth-brush was in his mouth!
But you couldn’t talk to him when he was on his cart. Then he was quite different from the Eddoes we knew on the ground; then he never laughed, but was always serious. And if we tried to ride on the back of his cart, as we used to on the back of the ice-cart, Eddoes would crack his whip at us in a nasty way and shout, ‘What sort of cart you think this is? Your father can’t buy cart like this, you hear?’
Every year Eddoes won the City Council’s award for the cleanest scavenging cart.
And to hear Eddoes talk about his job was to make yourself feel sad and inferior.
He said he knew everybody important in Port of Spain, from the Governor down.
He would say, ‘Collected two three tins of rubbish from the Director of Medical Services yesterday. I know him good, you know. Been collecting his rubbish for years, ever since he was a little doctor in Woodbrook, catching hell. So I see him yesterday and he say, “Eddoes (that is how he does always call me, you know) Eddoes,” he say, “Come and have a drink.” Well, when I working I don’t like drinking because it does keep you back. But he nearly drag me off the cart, man. In the end I had to drink with him. He tell me all his troubles.’