Ms. Parker Pays a Visit

Dear Aunt Annie lived in the same yard as my cousins in a wooden house adjacent to theirs. As is typical of the Caribbean, and the demands of the flood-prone nature of the city, it was perched on long, slender stilts. In this respect, it stood in contrast to the modest yet cosy bungalow that was raised disconcertingly just inches off the waterlogged yard.

Said home was on more than one occasion made into an island after a heavy tropical downpour. Every year the lawn was slowly but invariably flooded to the point that the water, which had itself become a medium for the neighbourhood rubbish, would lap teasingly at the threshold of the front door.

My situation there was utterly hopeless. Like a beetle forever entombed in an amber prism, I bore steady witness and was all too often just bored, of her seemingly endless supply of yarns. For her part, Auntie’s regaling spanned the breadth of human experience from the familial (like the story of how my maternal grandfather broke his aunt’s neck when she tripped while chasing him in an ankle-length dress), to the mawkish and agonising descriptions of the lives of Mexican telenovela characters, to as we shall discover in a moment, the bizarre.

This particular narrative had the usual locale as its setting. That is to say, the tiny kitchen cum dining room where Auntie’s arthritic yet nimble hands would transform the spoils of a morning’s outing to the market into a meal worthy of royalty — or a non-fussy border at any rate.

Seated in the middle chair of the dining room table perpendicular to Auntie, my peripheral vision caught glimpses of her deftly carving perfectly semi-circular slices from an onion that would make an Iron Chef proud. Each new strike of the freshly sharpened blade upon the worn oak cutting board had a metronome quality in this domestic symphony slowly reaching its crescendo.

Likewise, the steam emanating from the simmering stew-filled blue enamelware on the foil-covered range added its mystique to the now sacred space we shared. Each bubble bursting on the surface of the broth seemed to release vapours that not only flavoured the air but congealed it into a mist that piqued the senses and awakened a latent, some might say primal, part of the mind.

Lastly, and far from least, there was her — Auntie. Perhaps it was the rhythmic, trance-inducing chorus of metal striking wood, or perhaps it was the intoxicating aroma that had by now been transformed into a rarefied ether that unleashed the archetypal bard that lay dormant in her genes; a concealed yet potent hallmark of her winsome enslaved West African ancestor.

Or perhaps it was the hazy late afternoon sunlight that filtered through the window slats. Sunlight whose golden rays seeped like spilt honey into every line and crevice of her wizened face so that the ridges and folds of her skin, bathed as they were in this mid-afternoon glow, evoked the peaks and dales of the Stann Creek Valley she frequented on holidays as a child.

I honestly can’t say for sure what unknown forces played host to Auntie’s reminiscence that day, but somehow, the womb that had hitherto enveloped us became heavy with the weight of a reality not entirely our own. Little did my aunt know, however, that she was to play the role of midwife.

“Toby?” she started, her hand still firmly grasping the knife that until that moment emitted the very pulse of the room.

“Yes Auntie?” came my polite but mostly mechanical response.

“Toby, I ever tell you ’bout a strange thing that happened to me as a little girl growing up here in the city?” her tremulous voice now carrying clear as a siren in the vacuum between us.

“No Auntie, I don’t think so” was my automatic reply to what I felt would doubtlessly be another winding tale.

Inwardly I cringed for allowing myself to fall for what by now was a predictable pattern to her musings. Still, this was Auntie, and you didn’t just brush off a matriarch of the family lest you were willing to stomach the inevitable upbraiding that would ensue from Mom.

“Well Toby”, she continued, “let me ask you something. You ever know that you see something, but nobody want to believe you just because you small and they think you lying or imagining things?” she began in a measured but defiant tone.

“How you mean Auntie? What kinda thing you talking ’bout?” my interest now being somewhat aroused to match the growing pangs in my stomach.

She now swiftly turned to face me, and with that sudden adjustment of her person, another change occasioned itself in our little bubble of breath and brew. The contents of the womb shifted.

It was here and now also that I began to fully appreciate the magnitude and sincerity of her demeanour. This was no old wives’ tale or feeble attempt from an equally feeble senior to garner an ounce of fleeting attention in an otherwise lonely existence — not in the least bit.

No, as Aunt Annie’s gaze aligned to meet mine a measure of the stateliness and grandeur that she was able to summon on occasion was transferred to me from those rheumy eyes of hers, and I knew in that moment that every word to proceed hereafter was to be taken with the same degree of gravity, if not absolute veracity, as her morning prayers.

“Hear me now bwoy, ’cause this is something I only done tell a small handful of people.” Her free hand was now drawn delicately to the gills of flesh hanging loose around her neck, while the other held firm to the stainless steel timekeeper.

“Okay Auntie” was the only thing I could muster without betraying either my newfound sense of awe or the seed of unease she had so casually sown in me.

“When I was just a little girl and Belize Town finished right at the end of Freetown Road, this area we in now was pure bush and swamp.”

“Not like now the way everybody yard full up with sand, and at least the politician them half-pave the street when election time soon come. Nah man! This was halligator and tiger’s backyard, full up with buttonwood tree them, good for fire hearth bread and bun” she expounded with a rap of the knife.

“Well papá, in those before-times it wasn’t like now when you don’t even know who yu neighbour is, much less say ‘good mawning’ to one another. Back then everybody did know everybody, and everybody help one another — hand wash hand — you know?” she expanded.

“So now, my mumma does be friend with an ageable lady name Miss Parker, and she always does come to we house to talk with me mumma,” a hint of the bittersweet rush brought on by childhood memories surfacing in her already strained voice.

“And Miss Parker she does always come by the front of we yard and holler for me mumma and,” she paused “if I was playing in the yard I would run quick-haste make-haste to me mumma and tell she that Miss Parker come to see she,” a passing spark of vigour ran down her stooped form as she recounted this episode.

“Well you know that was the time we pikni does like the best, cause that’s when we go do almost anything we want while mommy she entertaining somebody in the parlour” she chimed with glee, her dentures gleaming like the walls of the hospital where she gave over thirty years of her life as a registered nurse.

“Sounds like it was fun Auntie,” I ventured while not breaking the umbilical cord of our mutual gaze.

“Bwoy it was fun, fun, fun I tell you,” she paused once more, “but don’t make my mumma catch you tryin’ to eavesdrop on the big-people conversation going on, cause your bottom goin’ be sore for the rest of the week for sure, sure!” she exclaimed.

Piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiing! Piiiiiiiiiiiiing! Piiiiiiiing! Dat, dat, dat, dat, dat, dum!

Thus intruded the shrill clamour of the cheap, tin, Mennonite-crafted ladle that, up until now had been perched as lightly on the edge of the counter as a john crow on a bough after a rainstorm, but that now lay handle side down on the freshly scrubbed wooden floor.

Was it this seemingly mundane yet aberrant incident that led to Auntie’s countenance going from radiating an almost palpable mirth of one recalling the cusp of their youth, to a visage appearing near instantaneously marred by time and a life of unspoken tragedies? Your guess is as good as mine.

What I can tell you in no uncertain terms, however, is that as Aunt Annie stooped with considerable effort to retrieve the fallen utensil, another change quietly settled in the air.

“This damn pot spoon!” griped the old soul while simultaneously attempting to realign a spine that had come to be contorted over the course of several decades.

“Accidents happen, Auntie,” was the best that I could quip.

Here Auntie’s story proceeds at a pace befitting a woman of her age and social standing; not that she was by any means wealthy or a member of “high society” as such, but that her years of mending the wounds and hearts of those she saw each day elevated her to a status that all the money and good blood of those in the local country club could only dream of.

“So Auntie,” I began cautiously enough, having given her enough time to set the ladle on the countertop.

“What happen with Miss Parker? And why you say it’s a funny thing when people don’t believe you when you small?” I egged on.

Here she took a few more moments to regain her composure, as well as balance on her good leg. Our chrysalis of serenity may have been ruptured but it would take more than a mere jab to still the life within. She had been a pillar to those who lacked strength, and she would be the column that bore this tale’s burden.

“Well papá,” issued her tempered response, “a funny thing ended up happen to me one day.”

Her eyes, having risen with her frame from the ground, were now fixated on something beyond the farthest wall of the room, beyond even the space and time we inadvertently were lodged in. Those cloudy eyes were no longer of this world, and neither I was convinced, were the events she recounted.

“One day, I was playing in the front yard like usual,” she whispered.

“I remember it good good, just like it was yesterday” she managed to sputter out, “The day was hot, but I was a young gyal in those days and I never cared.”

“I was building a house for my corn husk dolly out of coconut leaves and some little sticks that was on the ground when,” and she gasped briefly for air “I see she standing there — Mrs. Parker.”

“But it was a funny thing Toby, a funny, funny thing, eh” she gasped again, and then went on “It was Mrs. Parker, but she behave different that time.”

“Funny how, Auntie?” I half-whispered for reasons unknown even to myself.

“Funny because this time Mrs. Parker she never say nothing” then biting her lip in a moment of hesitation continued, “nothing at all. She just stand up there stiff with she face looking serious, serious like she just done come from church, and, and, and…”

“And what Auntie?” I croaked from my plastered position on the chair. In moments such as these social conventions flew through the peeling paint windows of that house and my curiosity overcame my duty to display deference.

“And she stare ’pon me hard, hard Toby” mumbled Auntie in a voice that was barely an octave higher than that she used to tell her rosary beads every morning.

“She stare ’pon me hard, and she eyes them was dark and cold like me puppy Benji after ’31 hurricane when we find him swell up in we yard.” Auntie was now visibly fighting back tears and using every ounce of her being to keep her arthritic knees from giving way to gravity and the weight of decades of writhing emotion.

Another moment passed for her to regain command of her person. Another pause in the labour-like pangs that this story had extricated, leaving my aunt literally gasping for air though it had been only days since her last check-up, and the doctor declared her lungs as fit as could be expected for her age.

“So,” she resumed, only somewhat replenished with breath “so I did what I does always do, and I run quick inside to tell me mumma that she had company waiting for she at the gate.”

“But this time does be different Toby, really different,” she gasped.

“I run to we kitchen where I know me mumma was frying plantain and chicken for we dinner, and I tell she,

‘Mommy, mommy, Miss Parker she outside by the front yard and I think she come to come see you!’”

“But me mumma she just cut she eye at me like I imagine the Pharisee them must have cut them eye ’pon Jesus before he get crucified.”

“Then me mumma look ’pon me and she says:

’Don’t try take me for your Poppy Show child, unless you want to feel the back of my hand this same day!’” Pain now seeped from her in the form of a single tear from each eye, the valleys of her face now nourished by saline streams.

“I, I, I was so confused in that minute Toby I feel like I never know whether to say A or B because me mumma was not a lady for you to take for your fool, but same time I knew it was never a lie I was telling she.”

“So then what happen Auntie?”, I whispered without wanting to.

“Well then me mumma look ’pon me and she say without blink, ‘Miss Parker she dead and bury last week child, me and Miss Brown who sell fudge gone to the burying ground’, just like that she tell me”. She paused once more just long enough for the gravity of her words to seep into our amniotic sphere.

“So I do the only thing I could do as a little pikni Toby, I say ‘yes ma’am’ to me mumma and tell she it must be the heat that make me see thing”.

“And what your mom tell you, Auntie?”, needless to say I was enrapt at this stage.

“She tell me say everything alright, but that it was not a nice or proper thing for a little girl to go around telling lies, because she would never bear the shame if anybody tell she that she daughter only good for spreading story”.

“But as for me Toby, me never did gone back to play with me dolly in that there yard, not for the rest of the whole blessed week!” she announced in a resolute tone, followed by a weak chuckle.

“Still, to this day Toby I know what I did see that day, as sure as I sure Jesus Christ will return someday, and” she continued, “I hope I never have to see another thing like that ’til the day I go meet the Lord above”.

As for me, I was speechless, awash as I was in equal parts awe at the tale I had just borne witness to, and the afterbirth of a dimension that, if only briefly, had seeped into ours.