A Story of Immigrants
This is the story of
immigrants. It is the story of immigration, re-immigration and of continuing
immigration. It is a story which expands
to three continents, lasts over a hundred years and, in fact never stops. It is the story of my family.
My grandmother,
Sarah Finch, immigrated from Antigua, British West Indies, to the Dominican
Republic in the early 1900s together with her brother, Robert Finch, to seek a
better life. Robert Finch started a
family there and made the Dominican Republic his home, while my grandmother
returned to Antigua with a son-- my father, Gilbert Romeo. My grandmother and
her brother were among many British West Indians who immigrated to the
Dominican Republic, Cuba, Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica to seek
work at the beginning of the 1900s. Many settled in these countries.
Decades later,
a rapidly developing tourist industry
in the US Virgin Islands (USVI) demanded an increased labor force. The islands
(St. Croix, St. Thomas and St. John) unable to supply the needed labor
themselves, therefore opened the floodgates to immigrants.
My immediate family,
the Romeos, was part of this next big wave of immigration. We left English
Harbour, Antigua in the 1950s. Back then English Harbour supplemented the
export of cotton and fishing and farming by smuggling rum from ships. By that
time my father had married my mother and they were witnesses to a generation of
young men falling victim to alcoholism. My mother, concerned for her son, supported
my father’s immigration. He departed ahead of us for St. Thomas, USVI. My
mother, my older brother, younger sister and I, followed in 1956. That began
the story of our houses and how they became our home.
Our various
residences, in St. Thomas, reflected our steady rise in social status within
the working class and these quarters would become transitional abodes for
family and friends coming from “down island” to escape hardship brought on by
droughts and cycles of destructive hurricanes.
My childhood
homes in St. Thomas accommodated a grandmother, an aunt, uncles, cousins, in-laws
and families of friends. They remained until their dry pasture began to show
signs of green— the garnering of a sponsorship, employment, marriage or a green
card. They came from Antigua, St. Kitts, Nevis, and as far away as England.
This initial
home was a three-room, wooden dwelling in Anna’s Fancy, a hilly area
overlooking the capital, Charlotte Amalie. It sheltered my parents and my older
sister, who later joined us, as well as my older brother and younger sister. My
older sister, considered an adult by then, had had to wait for special travel
documents before she could join us. She was twelve years older than I and four
years older than my brother.
Our initial home provided no indoor plumbing.
Cooking, washing and bathing were done outdoors. We collected rain water in drums. My older
brother often trekked downhill to collect water from a government stand pipe
that was open from six to eight a.m. Alternately, he drew water from a well in
a graveyard at the bottom of the hill. We had no room to accommodate lodgers in
this house.
At The Well
No one
has ever heard
buckets
gliding into the abyss
no one
has ever heard the splash.
They
are weighted down
rock-heavy
hauling up
then
something grudgingly gives way.
After
the prayer
to the
dead is said
pails
glide swiftly upwards.
People
scurry round graves
the
only sound
is the
flip flop of slippers on heels.
Basins
balanced on heads
water
drips and trickles
and
spills onto shoulders.
To the
brave who pull the buckets up
from
the center of the earth
they
hold a soothing water.
If the
spirits allowed
they
would trudge
to the
top of the craggy hill
basins
still three quarters full.
(Hampden
Sidney Poetry Review, 2004, p.32)
In addition to
the poor living conditions in our first home on Annas Fancy, our neighbor’s children created an atmosphere of fear
by filling our ears with stories of ghosts, spirits that lived in a tree down
the hill and a white horse that roamed the hills at midnight. My younger sister
and I often dashed past the tree when our mother sent us to buy ice. Naturally,
these stories often invaded our dreams.
One night my
older sister awoke screaming. She had dreamt that a man was standing over her.
It was the same night that neighbors had been out firing shots at a jumbie and
shouting “Look it dere, look it dere.”
We could not go back to sleep after my sister’s terrifying cries. The event is
forever stamped in my mind and I have attempted to capture the fear I felt of
this hill in a fictional piece:
When evening came inhabitants crawled into their
houses
like insects hiding
under rocks. Nothing stirred after eight
except for the wind. On stormy nights
the hills groaned,
cried and screamed.
(“Wimmelskaft Hill”, page 1).
My older brother
and sister found our second home, a costlier one. Since they were now working, they
persuaded our father that they would be able to contribute towards the rent of
the new dwelling. The sixty- dollars- a- month apartment was situated above a
grocery store owned by a Puerto Rican. Located near downtown on Kronprindens
Gade, in Charlotte Amalie, this apartment, the backyard hidden by a stone wall,
was vast in comparison to our previous house and had indoor plumbing. It
contained three large bedrooms, one of which we partitioned into two, an
enormous living room, a dining room and kitchen. The courtyard contained a huge
brick oven and a covered well near the gate.
My father
began to offer temporary shelter to newly arrived relatives and friends seeking
a place to stay--a home away from home. Some individuals’ personalities grated
on each other and they squared off in the living room to settle arguments.
Among them were my quick-tempered grandmother and an aunt-in-law in transit
from England to New York. Later, a heart-broken son of my father’s friend
attempted suicide in the courtyard.
While living
there, we experienced the worst flood in my memory. From our window we watched
furniture swirling down the street. My aunt kneeled and prayed loudly as though
the flood was comparable to the deluge that convinced Noah to build the Ark.
Here I bloomed early into the minefield called adolescence
and, like a fresh spring flower, attracted some unwanted bees. My mother gave
me my first, very brief and only lesson on the “birds and the bees” by pointing
at a young pregnant woman who resided opposite us and, in a cautionary tone,
said “That’s what happens to young girls who
hang around boys.” I remember being wary of boys after that and went out of
my way to avoid them.
Before moving to our third dwelling place, my grandmother, older
sister and brother had gotten married while my aunt had brought her husband to
St. Thomas and my uncle and his wife, who had formerly lived in England, moved on
to New York. Transient cousins and family friends found jobs at hotels and
moved out of our Kronprindens Gade domicile.
Next, we relocated
to Savan and resided in a three bedroom apartment with a large veranda. My
parents maintained the tradition of taking in family and friends. Three cousins
shared this home with us.
We did not
remain long in Savan. Lady Luck had struck my father with her wand while we
were living at Kronprindens Gade and he began to build our permanent home. The
three-bedroom residence, with a view of a mangrove, stood on a hill in Estate
Mariendal outside the city. Teenagers by then, my sister and I had looked at
the architectural drawings with excitement and chose the bedroom we wanted. We
were homeowners at last.
The third
bedroom in our newly built house was occupied at different times by an uncle, a
cousin and a family friend. Then came the time when my father, aware that my
younger sister and I were now young adults, turned down requests for interim refuge.
My parents
could not assist everyone in their transition to the “American Dream,” the
blood relationship being too distant, they could not apply for sponsorships or
green cards. A few felt my mother and father had withdrawn their generosity
and blame for hardship was laid. So discord sometimes flared up at family
gatherings.
We, the next generation,
were fed on stories of intolerable working hours and hardship suffered while building
roads and homes, cleaning houses, working as cooks, waiters, maids, elevator operators,
doormen and fleeing as immigration officers raided construction sites to arrest
illegal workers.
Overstay
You slipping like boil okra
when immigration ‘pon you heel,
bush, you kin, you home
when immi ‘pon you heel,
you mind ticking like cheap
clock
when immi grat ‘pon you heel.
You see you broddahs up de Fort
wid cattle chain ‘pon dey han’
all because of the immigration
man.
Tick tock, tick tock,
Man you goin’ alarm
when immigration man
goin’ do you harm.
Zip, okra feet tun on….
(Palaver, 1978, p.22)
After being
settled over a period of decades, homes are no longer places of temporary refuge.
Islands, from which family formerly fled are prospering from tourism. Everyone
has moved on to new lives.
What began as
a move from Antigua to the Dominican Republic in search of work has spread far
beyond the shores of this island. We are now separated by oceans and
continents. My older brother and sister still reside in the US, Virgin Islands
while I, having lived in Liberia and England, now live in Switzerland. My
younger sister has settled in Sacramento, California. Few relatives remain in
Antigua where my older sister maintains a home. Others are spread across the
USA in cities like New York, Miami, Sacramento, and in Toronto and Vancouver,
Canada. As time has gone by, we have lost contact with some cousins and have no
contact with their offspring.
Many
immigrants have died in their attempt to provide a better life for their
families. Their tragic stories are headlines in daily newspapers around the
world. We are the lucky ones.
The story of
immigrants is one of pain, survival and assimilation. We have passed the baton of hardship on to new
groups and can laugh at the tribulations shared by our family. Our experiences
are part of the US Virgin islands history.
At the Mercy of Gods
We
come in waves.
Our
boats, tiny specks
on
dark, fathomless oceans.
Driven
away by devouring drought,
scattered
by quakes, typhoons, cyclones, wars,
we
flee, fish in a storm.
Propelled
by dreams,
we
would walk on water
if
miracles could be bought.
We
are swallowed
by
sea gods demanding sacrifices.
Our
dreams are coveted by
who
wish to conquer man and land.
Do
the gods conspire?
Jealous
Wind and Sea pillage our crops
withhold
rain, wake Vulcan, fan his flames.
Belligerent
Mars whispers in man’s ear,
demands
he bathes in his brother’s blood.
Gods
cackle at fleeing men.
Ants
in their eyes,
they
set howling death upon us.
Our
exhausted Creator sleeps.
© Althea Mark-Romeo 2014
Personal essay published in The Caribbean Writer, Vol.28, Winter 2014
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