From Dead End Alley to Willow Bend: A review of Joanne Hillhouse’s The Boy from Willow Bend by Althea Romeo-Mark

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From Dead End Alley to Willow Bend: A review of Joanne Hillhouse’s The Boy from Willow Bend

Althea Romeo-Mark

The Boy from Willow Bend, the second of novel by Antiguan, Joanne C. Hillhouse, was republished by Hansib Publications LTD, UK in 2009.

This brilliant ninety-five page novel, set on the island of Antigua, exposes the small brutal world in which the central character, an adolescent named, Vere, exists. It also delves into themes of abandonment, economic migration, parent surrogacy, abuse and the coming of age.

Environment

The setting and “home turf”, Dead End Alley, which the character battles daily, is at the end of a narrow alley reached by walking on “the hard earth and stones of a nowhere going road (p.90).” It is a location his mother describes as a grave, a place where she felt she would be “buried alive with all the ghosts and skeletons and secrets (p.90).”

It is in this environment that young Vere Joseph Carmino manages to thrive and survive under the watchful eye of women who would play a significant role in his upbringing. Vere, abandoned by his mother, who had fled her violent father, his grandfather, is taken under the wings of Tanty, his grandfather’s long, suffering, childless wife. Tanty, who does not whip him regularly as expected, is accused of being soft on him by his grandfather and neighbors.

Abandonment

Vere is representative of many children in the former British West Indies whose parents migrated to the United Kingdom, United States of America and Canada to seek a better life after a series of hurricanes and droughts devastated the Caribbean Islands. These children, left behind in care of relatives, often felt they had been disowned by their parents. Vere, like these children, wondered when his mother would return. “She had said she was only going for a little while, but that was years and years ago (p.14).” The Buckley children were more fortunate in that their parents sent for them just as the age where bonding is critical to bringing a child into a stable young adulthood. Vere loses his social support one by one and is left to fend for himself until the death of his grandfather signals his mother’s return home.

Surrogate mothers

Vere is left to be raised by Tanty, his grandfather’s barren wife. Tanty has had the burden of bringing up some of her husband’s,( Franklin), illegitimate children. As though paying for her sins, she protests his callous behavior but does not rebel. “How much of your children an’ dem, an’ their children you done bring here to me as though you trying to shame me for not givin’ you none? (p.13)” She tolerates her husband’s volatile drunkenness but tries to protect Vere as best as she can from Franklin’s constant raging and sees to it that he gets a good education. Tanty insures that the money sent by Vere’s mother is used for his education despite his grandfather’s disapproval. Franklin, although a respected policeman in his heyday, had withdrawn Vere’s mother from school at the age of thirteen. Vere’s mother felt that she owed her son that which she was deprived off. Tanty is Vere’s rock until he is deprived of her love and protection when she succumbs to cancer.

Hovering on the edge of his life is the neighbor, Mrs. Buckley, with whom he spends time during Tanty’s absence. Described as “the busybody type you didn’t need to send for (p. 36),” she, too becomes, a substitute mother since she was one not “to shirk her Christian duty(36).” Also a believer in whipping people into Godly, good shape, she frowns on Tanty’s “softness,” and feels his grandfather “is a no nonsense man, is one good thing you can say about him (p.31).” Her grandchildren, Kim and Kendall, are Vere’s schoolmates and daily companions until they are sent for by their parents who had immigrated to Canada. When Vere’s grandfather falls ill, Mrs. Buckley offers him a roof over his head if he needed one.

Although June, Vere’s aunt and Franklin’s illegitimate daughter, walks irregularly in and out of his life, he grows to depend on her. June is brought one day despite Tanty’s protest. Until June’s arrival, Vere’s almost only constant companions were the Buckley children.

June, too, had been deserted by her mother who had left for Chicago. Unschooled and shucked from home to home, Tanty’s door was her latest stop in series of revolving doors. Just as Vere is grudgingly accepting June, the grandfather digs a fork is her arm because she split his dinner. She is taken to the hospital and disappears from Vere’s life as quickly as she had come.

But June is back again when Tanty falls fatally ill. June tries, without success, to nurse Tanty back to good health. We learn June had been placed in the home of a Reverend and Mrs. Quashie.

June, who had been nursing Tanty during the day, returns permanently one day with her suitcase and pregnant with reverend Quashie’s child. Not long after, she rages against Dead End Alley. “So many dead end alleys in Antigua. An’ this is the one to get burdened with the name. Why? Nothing can grow in a place name so. Can’t raise my child in a place like this. Everything just rot and die here (49).” Then she announces that Tanty had died. Despondent and feeling alone after Tanty’s funeral, Vere’s is given a pep talk by June. Although she is uneducated, she too wants to fulfill his mother’s and Tanty’s dreams. She tells Vere that “… nobody ever push me…Nobody ever cared. But Tanty told me how your grandfather took your mother out of school…She never forgave him…..That’s all your mother ever wanted for you… You have to stay in school because is what Tanty wanted for you, is what she fight for (p.53).”

June, his temporary stabilizing force, gets work with Mrs. Buckley, but leaves because of intolerable conditions to work at a hotel. She permanently disappears when her mother sends for after she gets pregnant a second time, thus leaving Vere alone with his abusive grandfather.

After Vere’s grandfather head-butts Mr. Buckley, Vere’s bond to that family is severed. His relationship with Makeba, a young Rastafarian woman, develops. Makeba, who lives in the nearby bush with her husband, Djimon and other “dreads” introduces him to “Jah music.” She talks “to him as if he was an adult,” and asks him questions like “What you want to do with your life?” Makeba urges him to study and “for her he kept up. Because he likes to fantasize that she was his mother, or his girlfriend, or his sister (p. 74).”

Abuse

His Grandfather, Franklin, belongs to a generation brainwashed into believing that one had to be whipped into obedience. This mentality is a carry-over from the sadistic method of control imposed on slaves by slave masters. Franklin is first introduced to us as he slams his fist into a partition, cutting off Tanty as she complains about him bringing home his illegitimate children. “Look at me, sixty-three an’ still with likkle bwoy to raise! An’ you bringin’ more, a near teenage girl on top of dat! When it goin’ stop? (p.13). And Vere’s predominant memory of his grandfather is that of beatings. “Seemed the only time his grandfather ever spoke to him was when he was beating him (p.15).” He recalls that “Every other day he felt the man’s rough, hard hands graze his check and backside. Every day the voice barking him into shape (p.22).” Whatever demons the grandfather faced, he finally comes to terms with them on his deathbed.

One of Vere’s last memories of his mother is her being kicked by his grandfather. Our dominate image of June’s relationship with her father is he digging a fork into her arm and she not wincing or crying.

Coming of Age

Vere is a young, light-skinned boy with “good hair,” whose birth father is unknown and speculated upon. Molding his character are series of women and a supportive Catholic school system bolstered by school fees sent by his mother from America and monitored by Tanty. His education is placed in jeopardy when his mother’s whereabouts temporarily becomes unknown. The school steps in until his mother’s identifies her new location. He is described as not being particularly close to anyone except Kim and Kendrall Buckley. “But he was pretty popular with everyone….making everybody laugh…..Almost everybody thought he was funny (p34).”

His greatest fear was being abandoned by everyone he cared for. His fears multiply when Tanty becomes ill. He had already been abandoned by his mother. June had gone and his friends, Kim and Kendall had deserted him when they went to Canada for summer holiday and did not return. It is Tanty’s near death that brings June back into his life.

He concludes, after Tanty’s death and June’s moral boosting talk, that the “quicker he got through school, the quicker he could dust Dead End Alley off the soles of his feet(p.54).”

He is eventually left to battle his grandfather and discover life on his own. June “had left him, too, but he didn’t hold it against her any more (p.57). By now he was in a high school in which he did not socially fit, flirts with playing pan until his grandfather stops him. Fortunately for him, Makeba comes into his life and serves as a stabilizing force. His grandfather’s best friend is now alcohol and a series of women whom he seeks to replace Tanty with. The house is no longer a home as it is falling in disrepair. The discovery of music brings balance to his life. Vere, as a teenager, fleetingly loves and loses, but the loss of this young, women does not mark him deeply.

Vere gets to know his grandfather whose roar is weakened by approaching death. He “wondered why he keeps coming back (p. 86)” to see this man for whom he was convinced he had no feeling” During one of Vere’s visits, his grandfather admits that Tanty “died alone because he couldn’t stand to lose her” and he confesses to burying his own talent. He warns Vere. “Just see to it you don’t waste the talent in a hotel. You have the potential to create art (p.87).” This last advice, by someone who pretended not to care, by someone who admits that he was cowardly, will probably become a potent influence and a driving force in Vere’s future.

With her nemesis gone, his mother comes to his rescue, and takes him to the USA to begin the next chapter of his life.

Joanne Hillhouse has written a novel that not only teaches a lesson for life, but it also unveils psychosocial problems faced by children who daily cope with abandonment, unstable homes and abuse in the Caribbean and other areas in the world. Parents immigrate in search of a better life, thus leaving children behind to face an uncertain future. Isn’t it ironic?

(c) Althea Romeo-Mark

Oh Gad!Joanne Hillhouse’s most recent novel, is now available at Amazon.com and other sites.
http://www.amazon.com/Oh-Gad-Novel-Joanne-Hillhouse/dp/1593093918/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=

More on the impact of migration on children can be found on the following sites.

http://www.unicef.org/barbados/Impact_of_Migration_Paper.pdf
http://rimd.reduaz.mx/documentos_miembros/19447manuel_orozco1.pdf
http://www.migration4development.org/content/impact-migration-children-caribbean
http://www.eclac.org/dds/noticias/desafios/0/41510/challenges-11-cepal-unicef.pdf