Several
Poems and an essay published in WomanSpeak, A Journal of Writing and Art by
Caribbean Women, Vol.7/2014
WomanSpeak, A Journal of Writing and Art by
Caribbean Women, Vol.7, 2014, edited by Lynn Sweeting, brings together 30
contemporary women writers and painters of the Caribbean in a new collection
especially themed, “Voices of Dissent: Writing and Art to Transform the
Culture.” Includes works by Opal Palmer Adisa, Lelawattee Manoo Rahming,
Vahni Capildeo, Althea Romeo-Mark, Marion Bethel, Danielle Boodoo-Fortune,
Sonia Farmer, Angelique V. Nixon and more. Founded in the nineties in The
Bahamas, revived in 2011, WomanSpeak is the Little Journal That Could, in the
beginning Sweeting’s personal labor of love, growing now into an international
literary journal with a Caribbean focus. A must read for women writers and
painters everywhere, as well as students of women’s studies and those who love
women’s writing and art.
Flawless
She strolls the
beach,
combs white sand
in search of
pebbles.
Each one
she has found
fails to meet
her measure,
and is hurled away.
There is a pebble
fetus-shaped,
one a replica
of a bird’s egg,
another pocked-marked,
one lesion-covered,
some too dark,
others too light.
Though all, while
imperfect in form
and rough to the
touch,
smell of the salty
sea
she loves.
Still searching,
she has not yet
found the one.
© Althea Romeo-Mark 2013
Play-mamas
I Dreamers
Beaten down by drought and hurricane,
driven by dreams of colonial promised lands,
our mothers and fathers left us in play-mamas’ laps
when white men scoured Caribbean Iles
in search of cotton and orange-pickers,
cane cutters and construction workers.
Our parents, scattered in Panama,
Santo Domingo and Cuba,
in Georgia and Florida,
left play-mamas to hold
the fort at home while they
went off to toil in fields and on roads
to become builders of nations.
Money, salted away and remitted,
held our flesh to our bones,
but we shared the fear of marooned
Crusoe and Gulliver.
The sunshine in our own Lilliput were
the “aunties” who wrapped us
in reassuring words as they listened
to our hearts beating to suspicions
of desertion.
Play-mamas became permanent mothers,
when our parents, their dreams deflated,
refused to walk the plank of shame
and spared themselves their villages’ disdain.
II Sinners and Saints
Play-mamas were distant kin
in the next village,
in Miami or New York
who took us in
when mothers shunned
pregnant daughters
as they were spurned
and papas professed
they had never sown
wild seeds in their youth.
Shu-shued.
The Scarlet Letter H
that branded
hypocrites
the first to cast stony words,
and banish sinners in their midst.
Our “aunties,” had hearts bigger
than their religion allowed,
and forgave those deemed unforgivable,
opened doors to prodigal sons
and fallen daughters.
They are our surrogates,
when life’s cup runs over,
they are our surrogates
when life runs us over.
*Shu-shu-to keep quiet or something to be kept a
secret.
Desirée’s Revenge
the seaside all night.
Rain-soaked clothes
cling to her frame.
Cold gnaws at her shoulders.
Her beige skirt, grass-stained,
is hemmed in mud.
Dark clouds have crossed her moon.
Her thoughts are scattered leaves
after a storm.
She rolls, slides
down a sandy bank
towards the sea.
Pebbles and shells
bruise flesh,
satisfy her desire
to wound herself.
It’s his loss, she thinks
wading deeper into the ocean.
It drags her forward,
pulls her like debris
into the abyss.
Dark clouds
swallow the moon.
Neighbors in the Wood Shack
Scrawny chickens cackle.
Mangy dogs bark at Winston’s
and Maggie’s raucousness.
Aunty grumbles
“de wutless vagabond”
when Maggie rushes over
and shows her welts.
Winston follows, wielding
a shack-shack branch,
voice booming
“Ah go kill you.”
Uncle Ben cracks
his whip of words,
and soon tames
Winston’s anger.
“Is only dat a love her,”
cries Winston
smothering Maggie
with kisses.
His arm
half-nelsons
Maggie’s neck
as he walks her away.
© Althea Romeo-Mark 2009, 2013
A Kind of Refugee/Living in Limbo
Althea
Romeo-Mark
Our children, Malaika, Cassandra,
Michael and I arrived in London, May 1990, having flown out of Robertsfield
Airport on one of the last flights leaving Liberia. I could still hear the
warning issued at the last social event held at the American Embassy: All American citizens should evacuate the
country immediately. The neatly folded map, which pinpointed safe houses if
the rebel army rolled into the city sooner than expected, was now a crumpled
piece of paper. We disembarked holding one suitcase each. I was in
charge of passports, birth and marriage certificates and diplomas, now more
valuable than gold.
Aldin Mark, my husband (Emmanuel)’s
sister and resident of London since 1960, met us at Heathrow airport. She took
us to her home on Ifley Road, Hammersmith, within walking distance from
Shepherd’s Bush in London. It would be the first in a series of temporary
homes. I shared a room in the crammed, narrow, two-story apartment with
my three children. When my husband arrived six weeks later via Sierra
Leone, Guinea and Belgium, he joined us in the bedroom where two single beds
joined together was our private space.
Soon after Emmanuel’s arrival,
we went to the Citizens Bureau where our status was established and legal aid
provided. My husband was born in Grenada, a former British colony, and still
held a British passport which allowed him to obtain British passports in
Liberia for our children.
We were placed in a B&B in the
Bayswater area. It was home until we could be resettled elsewhere. My family
was assigned two rooms. My husband, I and our six year old son shared one
room. Our daughters, aged, nine and eleven, shared another. We were
ashamed to be in this position but the civil war had determined our fate. We
drew solace knowing that the situation would be temporary.
Like the other families, we were
seeking to begin a new life having lost all we had. We were happy to be alive.
Starting again from scratch, although daunting, was a second chance. We had
sacrificed everything. My husband had abandoned his medical practice which he
had run with his cousin Dr. James Thomas and his wife, Gloria Thomas, a nurse;
he had also vacated his teaching position at the A.M. Daglioti Medical College
in Monrovia and the eight roomed home he had built.
I had given up my teaching position
at the University of Liberia. I barely had time to say goodbye. We had
withdrawn our children from school and had left family and friends behind. We
wanted to survive the atrocities, the shameless ethnic killings, the burning of
villages and sometimes, it occupants, the gleeful killing of intellectuals and
anyone for whom a grudge was enough to be sentenced to death.
Our B+B, once assigned in Bayswater,
the children travelled by train to attend school. I had enrolled them as soon as we arrived. The
younger two, Cassandra and Michael were at Brackenberry Elementary School and
the older, Malaika, at St. Mark’s Anglican Secondary school in Parson’s
Green. I worried about them. Until now I had driven them everywhere. Now,
I accompanied the younger ones to school; the older child, Malaika, had adapted
to travelling alone.
The cook who
dished out breakfast in the B+B on Queensborough Road, was a Jamaican
immigrant. I remember finding this odd. Officials of Countries, where people
ranted against immigrants stealing jobs, still hired immigrants to carry out
delicate duties. Just as I found it odd that a Haitian once guarded our hotel
room in New York when my husband was detained for not having a transit visa.
We were flying from the Caribbean via New York back to Liberia and he
didn’t think he needed one.
Our fellow
refugees included a Somalian family who had fled an uprising in their home; my
family--my husband, Grenadian, carrying a Liberian passport, our Liberian born
children and me, a US, Virgin Islander, and an Irish family. Why the Irish were
placed in the B&B I never found out. Perhaps they were fleeing the
Protestant/Catholic clashes in Northern Ireland.
We ate our
dished out breakfast, read about the horrors that were taking place in Liberia,
searched for work, shopped for clothes and books in second-hand stores, to
sustain our family of five.
After three months in the B &B,
we were assigned a two bedroom apartment in St. Clair’s Mansion near Shepherd’s
Bush. We needed several trips by train from Queensborough
Road to Hammersmith to transport our belongings. Financial
assistance was expected to last until my husband and I found employment.
I was eager to stand on my own feet. Staying at home was not an option. I
had been working since I was fourteen and very independent. I could not
conceive being dependent on my husband or a government. While searching for
teaching job, I sought temporary work and found one at H. Samuel’s Jewellers
that hired extra staff for the Christmas season.
Here I was, a trained university
teacher, working at a jewellery shop, with people, for whom every second word
was “fuck.” I was appalled at the language. In Liberia, people cursed when they
had been provoked or angered. Here curse-words naturally attached themselves to
nouns. Everyone hung out at a pub after work. I couldn’t join. I was a
mother of three with limited funds and an unemployed husband.
My husband was told that
because he had a Swiss Medical degree, he was required to sit exams and to
familiarize himself with British medical culture. While contemplating his
next step, he also sought temporary work and was often told he was over
qualified. I remember he had applied for a vacancy at the post office and was
turned down. I imagined the people at the head office thought he was a
mad-man who fancied himself to be a medical doctor. Why would a doctor apply
for a position at the post office?
During my free time, I volunteered at
my son’s primary school and was privileged to chaperone classes on field trips
to Kew Gardens, the Natural History Museum and other places. We allowed
ourselves simple pleasures and took our children to the Planetarium, Madame
Tussauds, parks, zoos and fairs. We made small sacrifices, took advantage
of the rich surroundings so that we could have a normal life, and educate our
children
The New Year, 1991, brought a
brighter outlook as I had been offered work as a substitute teacher at Fulham
Cross Secondary School, an all girls’ school. I was unimpressed by their
lacklustre attitude towards education. Attending classes was a chore and a bore
for these girls. Their goal was to finish school at the voluntary leaving age,
have children or work in a shop. Students lacked motivation and teachers showed
little interest. They felt these students were a lost cause. A bright
spot was the students from India and Pakistan who studied seriously. Second
generation West Indian immigrants were already falling into the trap.
The urge not to fall into complacency
coincided with an embarrassing encounter with a student one Saturday afternoon
when I was on my way home. She asked me if I lived in the neighbourhood.
In answer, I pointed to the building in which I lived. “You live there?” I heard
the emphasis on THERE. My new home was marked, a place where homeless people
were housed. A big scarlet H had been plastered on my forehead. I vowed
to get out as soon as possible. I learned that it was an unmentionable place.
If I had known, I would have lied.
The temporary apartment at Sinclair’s
Mansion had given us more room and privacy. My job as a substitute
teacher allowed me to give up the government stipend. I felt better about
myself. I was no longer accepting handouts. It was a step away from
dependence, a step away from “homeless.”
After six months we obtained British
residency. My children were settled in school—my oldest studying German.
Despite my husband’s large,
supportive family, whom I got to know well, and despite being surrounded by a
West Indian community, I felt unsettled. Our social rug had been snatched
from under us. However, birthdays, parties and weddings helped to make us feel
at home. I wondered how these “West Indians,” who had left the Caribbean thirty
years ago, still sounded like they had never left the islands. Markets
and shops, run by East Indians, sold tropical food, and other familiar
products. A visit to them was taking a little trip to the Caribbean or Africa.
Our children had attended a private
school in Liberia and received the best education available. In the
London schools I taught, learning eagerly was discouraged by other students.
Working as a substitute teacher, I witnessed the students’ lack of will
to learn and I worried about how this attitude would affect my
children.
My own previous experience with
adolescents and teenage students had been discouraging. I had taught teenagers
in inner city Connecticut, watched them stare out of windows despite the
innovative teaching methods that had been introduced. One lasting impression
was a student lifting a chair and threatening the classroom teacher with
it. And I had taught at Addelita Cancryn Jr. High School, a middle school in St. Thomas,
Virgin Islands, nicknamed “Vietnam.” The administration building at that school
had been set on fire twice. Adolescent hormones were raging war.
I had vowed not to teach that age
group again. And here I was teaching in London in an environment where
students also shouted abuse at teachers. Once a student arrived drunk and had
to be held up by her classmates. I later learned that her parents were
alcoholics. The last straw was a class that displayed their dislike for
the presence of another substitute teacher, me, by screeching until the head
master arrived. Teaching had become a nightmare which I hoped to escape.
My prayers were answered when my
husband was offered a position at the University Children’s Hospital in Basel,
Switzerland. But new problems would surface in a country whose language
and culture was foreign to us.
Bravo!
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