“The Waterfront’s Women and Men”
I am pleased to share with you my short story, “The Waterfront’s Men and Women,” which was republished in Bookends, in The Jamaica Sunday Observer on May 7th, 2023. This short story is a revised version of the original first published in Seasoning for the Mortar: Virgin Islands Writers in The Caribbean Writer in 2004.
Doris, whose laughter is the cry of seagulls, sits most late afternoons on a wooden bench on the waterfront. Her face is plump, rubbery red, her hair a shaggy, straw-blond. She listens intently to the sea lashing the wall. She is not alone. She sits with Gladys, a tall, sturdy, chestnut-brown woman in her mid-fifties who works at Gonzalo’s Minimart across the highway
Anyone who frequents that area of the waterfront will be sure to meet them. Both had become afternoon monuments. Sailors from cargo boats and their customers know Doris and Gladys are part of the scenery—the brown and the red woman in wide-brimmed, straw hats, amid the taxis, tourists, traders, and the blue-green bay.
Island folks thought they had lost a few marbles due to the loss of their loved ones. Gladys’ daily visits to this spot started after her only son had fallen while repairing the main mast of a ship and drowned.
Sailboats
glide across the horizon. A seaplane hovers low and flounders like a sick bird
before it skirts the seaboard and sputters to a stop. White froth rims
the sea’s surface. The bay is a giant beer mug visited by a fly.
Today,
Gladys, shaded by her straw hat, sits alone on the wooden bench in the warm
afternoon sun. As usual, she is
unwinding after a busy day at the minimart where she has worked for over twenty
years. Doris, who works in a bakery in the town center, will shortly join her.
Together, they will search the sea and find the faces of their men in the lapping waves. When the area is deserted, both walk in circles three times and pour rum from a bottle over their shoulders. Today, a bottle of Cruzan rum will be emptied into the sea. “Can’t forget you,” they will whisper. “Can’t forget you.” The sea faces will appear and slowly fade as they retreat with the rum in suddenly swirling water.
Gladys has a heart as big as the Caribbean
Sea. When alone on the bench she lends
her ear, or sometimes her shoulder, to anyone who needs them.
Cat-eye
Scatliffe, who had stumbled over the waterfront one night a year ago, was one
of those who had been a welcomed gadfly. He was one of Glady’s favourite
strays. She kept mangoes and bananas in
her handbag in case he showed up for a mouthful of friendly scolding. Scatliffe
was a six-foot-tall, copper-brown man with a greying receding hairline. His
eyes were a greyish-green like that of her son, Sonny; eyes, the colour of the sea on
an overcast day. Scatliffe reeked of perspiration and rum and was often dusty
and dirty from sleeping anywhere that seemed safe.
To Gladys, Cat-eye Scatliffe was
the once handsome, drunk who had stumbled over the wharf to be overpowered and
swallowed by its rough waves. Her son,
Sonny, had been a young man who followed bad company and drank too much. When
he knocked his head while repairing a mast, he was too drunk to save himself
from falling.
Scatliffe had surrendered to the sea the day after she had taken him to her home on the eastern end of the island. She had fixed him a hot bath and made him a hot meal.
“Dis rice an’ peas and goat stew, good, good. Is like I in heaven,” he had said. “Ah feel like ah king.”
“Why you
doin’ dis, Gladys, ” he had asked after she handed him a large mug of coffee.
Gladys had only smiled.
Earlier that day, the handsome drunk had
come up to her and perched upon her bench like a disoriented bird. When he fell
off and could not lift himself up, she pulled him to his feet and sat him
down. His alcoholic breath expelled a
hearty “Thank you.”
Scatliffe had bombarded her with a patchwork
of stories about his youth.
“Twenty years ago, ah would ah marry you,” he
had said. “Ah had speed, man. No dance would pass me by. Ah was de best damn dancer in the sixties.
Nobody could beat me cha-cha an’ merengue. De gurls dem
used to line up to dance wid me.
Good times, Gladys. Good
times. Ah was de best bellhop at de
Hilton Hotel, too. An’ de tips man…..” A passing motorboat drowned out part of
his monologue.
“You get rid ah you gurlfriend?” Gladys had asked, fanning the air between
them with her hat.
“Me gurlfriend? Me geh gurlfriend? What woman
going wan’ me? In de ole days……”
“ I talking bout de rum,” Gladys had said.
R U M. De Don-Q you hugging to you chest. She not good company.”
“Ah Donna Q is me best friend,” said Scatliffe. “She always dere when ah need er.”
“Donna Q dragging you dong. She
goin’ kill you, you know,” said Gladys.
“No, she won’t do dat,” Scatliffe replied. “but to make you happy, Gladys, ah
goin’ get rid of ‘er. You’ll see.”
Gladys’s eyes had sparkled.
At her home,
she had allowed him to rest his head on her shoulder after he had had
his bath. He had promised that tomorrow he would stop drinking. She thought she
could make him her own.
“Cat Eye Scatliffe gone to keep Sonny company,”
Gladys says to herself. She has seen
their faces smiling at her in the seawater.
She could hear them singing, Back to back, belly to belly. Ah don’t
give a damn. A done dead ah ready. Was a jumbi jamboree, a popular island
song.
Gladys and Doris watch a cargo boat loaded with produce chug along to the wharf, its bottom slugging the water, its bow high and proud. The crowd waiting for it to dock surges back and forth. The cargo unloaded, fruit and vegetables from Santo Domingo, are sold off in the midst of shouts, haggling, laughter, and the exchange of news brought by its few passengers.
A seagull scuds the air and then dives for dinner. Not far away passengers clamber out of a seaplane and steady themselves on a shifting ramp. On the road behind them, the traffic drag on like tired seniors.
Doris’s fleshy hands grab Glady’s shoulder. Gladys did not immediately respond as she was absorbed by the spectacle of passengers being splashed by angry waves riled up by another unapologetic seaplane. But she grabbed the fat hand and held it until passengers had reached the safety of a ramp.
“Gladys,” Doris’ high-pitched voice said.
“I think I kill Clement. I think I kill Clement,” she repeated.
“You mad?” Gladys responded.
“Ah do what you say.”
“Wha’ ah say?” asked Gladys.
“Bang him up wid de cast iron pan.”
“Ah didn’t mean it,” said Gladys.
Doris continued, barely pausing. “ So de week
before Clement dead, ah mean disappear, ah come home from de hospital to fine
he wid a woman. She deh, brazen, sitting
on me bed. Well, fire catch me head.”
“Wha’ you do?” Gladys regrets asking. She knows
the answer.
“Ah went straight to de kitchen and grab de
cast-iron frying pan, then ah bang he head. De
woman scatter like a frighten chicken.”
“ Kyah,
kyah, kyaaaah,” Gladys laughs,” then stops as suddenly as she started.
“But dat not de end,” Doris continues. “Back home, mama hug me tight while ah bawl.
Mama was bawling, too. An’ later that
night, ah sneak back to de house. Clement was fast asleep. And ah bang ‘im some more.
Ah run ‘way while he was howling. Ah no see him since.”
Gladys wipes sweat from her face. Her hands,
suddenly clammy, lay heavy on her lap as she takes in the weight of Doris’ gut
spilling.
Meanwhile, a glass bottom boat empties its
cargo of tourists; taxi drivers mark time like vultures awaiting a meal. Sun-tanned
visitors, rum in hand, lift the lid off the quieting afternoon with renditions
of their favorite calypsos.
“Nobody see him since,” continued Doris. “Ah kill ‘im, ah kill Clement. Das why as see he face in de water. He still
have a place in me heart.”
“He
have to dead to see him,” said Gladys cooling down from the initial shock of
Doris’ confession. He dey in de sea wid
Sonny and Cat-eye Scatliffe. He not
haunting you?”
“No,
replied Doris. Why he goin’ haunt me? Ah see him. Maybe you don’t. Ah come see
him every day. Ah bring he rum. He happy where he dey.”
“Dey
happy where dey be,” said Gladys.
Gladys
and Doris continue their ritual….turning around three times in a circle, tossing
rum over their shoulders into the sea. “Can’t forget you, never forget you,”
they mutter. Reflections of blurry faces
appear, linger briefly, then retreat with the receding waves and rum. And voices audible to some ears, can be heard
singing. “Back to back, belly to belly, ah don’t give a damn, ah done dead
already.”
Nobody knows what happened to Clement Querrard. It has been five years since he vanished. There have been sightings of him since his disappearance. Some revellers claimed they saw him late one night on the waterfront in the company of two men. All three were staggering in the rain. They remembered the square-jawed, blond-haired Clement with the crooked nose.
The faces of the others, holding Clement up, were blurs. Fishermen from French town also saw him one morning on the beach as they were readying to take their boats out. His companions were helping Clement to push his red boat out to sea. Another townsman swore he saw Clement leaning against a coconut tree with a bottle of rum and his prized conch shell lodged under his arm. Rumours say Clement went into hiding after inflicting another drunken beating on his wife, Doris. She had ended up in the hospital. Neighbours had broken down his door only to find a deserted house; the living room floor carpeted with empty Heineken beer cans.
The
mystery of the missing Clement Querrard has become part of strange events that
occasionally occur on the island. Lately, fishermen know when fish is plenty.
Some swear they see Clement’s missing red boat, the Bastille. The sea becomes
black with schools of fish ready to be caught.
They are certain they hear Clement blowing his conch horn….three long blasts,
then two, short ones. Islanders know
that call…a fresh catch is a good day for all.
© Althea Romeo Mark
1. Conch is a common name for a number of different
medium-to-large-sized sea snails.
2.
Conch shells typically have a high spire and a
noticeable siphonal canal. The shell is also used as a musical instrument known as the seashell
horn or shell trumpet. It often signals a fisherman’s return from the sea with a fresh
catch. Upon hearing the unique sound, buyers head to the seaside to purchase
fish, conch, lobster, etc.
*https://genius.com/The-charmer-with-johnny-mccleverty-calypso-boys-back-to-back-belly-to-belly-lyrics
Born in Antigua, West Indies, Althea Romeo-Mark is an educator and writer who grew up in St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. She has lived and taught in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, USA, Liberia (1976-1990), London, England (1990-1991), and in Switzerland since 1991.
Althea Romeo Mark’s upcoming publication, On the Borders of Belonging, summer 2023, a chapbook, is expected to be published in the summer 2023. She is the author of two full-length poetry collections, The Nakedness of New(2018) and If Only the Dust Would Settle, (English-German) 2009, and three chapbooks, Beyond Dreams: The Ritual Dancer (1989), Two Faces, Two Phases (1984) and Palaver(1978). Shu-Shu Moko Jumbi. The Silent Dancing Spirit (1974) is an anthology that includes poems by Althea Romeo-Mark and prose and poetry from participants in a Black Writers’ workshop conducted at the Department of African American Affairs at Kent State University.
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