Althea Romeo Mark, winner of The 2023 Vincent Cooper Literary Prize

By: aromaproductions on 10:47 AM

Share it Please

Tweet

 Althea Romeo Mark, winner of The 2023 Vincent Cooper Literary Prize 

These prizes, no matter how big or small, are a source of inspiration, and motivation.

 Please find the winning short story at the end of the article.

The Caribbean Writer Announces Prize Winners for Volume 37

(TCW), an international, refereed literary journal published by the University of the Virgin Islands (UVI), College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences each year, has announced its prize winners for Volume 37 published in December 2023 under the theme: “Carrying: Recognition and Repair.”

Volume 37 boasts insightful and exciting poetry, short stories, personal essays, interviews and book reviews by established as well as emerging writers from within the Caribbean and its diaspora. TCW extends its abiding appreciation to its prize sponsors and recognizes the winners of the 2023 literary prizes.

The 2023 Vincent Cooper Literary Prize recipient is a prize-winning poet and fiction writer educator Althea Romeo Mark for her short story, “Saving Papa Rojas from the Deathbed Flirt.”   Romeo-Mark is an Antiguan-born educator and internationally published writer who grew up on St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands.  She has lived and taught in the Virgin Islands, USA, Liberia, England and Switzerland since 1991. She writes short stories and personal essays in addition to poetry and has been published in the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, the USA, England, Germany, Norway, Portugal, Colombia, India, the U.K., Kenya, Liberia, Romania and Switzerland. Her last poetry collection, “The Nakedness of New,” was published in 2018.

The Vincent Cooper Literary Prize is awarded to a Caribbean author for exemplary writing in the Caribbean Nation Language (a term used by celebrated post-colonial Caribbean author Kamau Brathwaite to describe the vernacular language born in the Caribbean).

The Marvin E. Williams Literary Prize goes to Mervyn R. Seivwright for his poem, “Senses I Recalled a Decade Ago.”  Seivwright writes to balance social consciousness and poetry craft for humane growth. He is a nomad from a Jamaican family, who was born in London, England, left for America at age 10, and now resides in Schopp, Germany.

His performance poetry highlights include events in nine countries, with features at the Jazz Café and a finalist at the UK’s Word for Word National Poetry Slam. He completed a writing MFA at Spalding University and has appeared in numerous literary publications, receiving recognition as a 2021 Pushcart Nominee.  He has a pending publication due in Autumn 2023. This prize is sponsored by Dasil Williams, wife of the late Marvin Williams, UVI professor, and deceased editor of The Caribbean Writer.

The Daily News Prize for a U.S. Virgin Islands or the British Virgin Islands author goes to British Virgin Islands award-winning author, poet, fiction writer and educator Richard Georges for his short story “A Useful Skill.”   This $600 prize to a prose or fiction writer is a longstanding prize sponsored for over two decades by The Virgin Islands Daily News.

The Canute A. Brodhurst Prize for best short fiction goes to Tsahai Makeda for her short story “For Generations.”  Makeda is a Jamaican American author, who earned her MFA in fiction writing from Sarah Lawrence College.  Her work appears in several publications. She is currently working on her debut collection of essays focusing on the dynamics and impact of relationships between fathers and daughters, specifically within the Black community.

This $500 prize is offered on behalf of the founder publisher of the St. Croix Avis. It has been offered for more than three decades by Rena Brodhurst, owner and publisher.

Unfortunately, this prize will be discontinued with this edition of TCW, since this decades-old newspaper closed its doors in January of 2024. The Brodhurst Prize was one of the first prizes awarded with the inaugural publication of TCW, which was first published in 1987.   Writers in the Virgin Islands and the rest of the Caribbean diaspora will sorely miss the grand opportunity to vie for this prestigious prize.

************************

Alexis Camarena is the versatile and skillful cover artist for this edition. Camarena is an emerging Virgin Islands artist who has carved out an impressive artistic space on the landscape of Virgin Islands art. Camarena graduated from the University of the Virgin Islands with a degree in public administration.

Alscess Lewis-Brown continues in her role as editor-in-chief of this decade’s old publication. To maintain its high standards, the 2023 editorial board includes published authors and members of UVI’s College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences: professors Patricia Harkins-Pierre, Chenelle John-Heard and Anthazia Kadir. Also continuing on the board is Berkley Wendell Semple, an award-winning author from Guyana.

The newest board member is Alicia McKenzie, an award-winning author residing in France. McKenzie’s first collection of short stories, “Satellite City,” won the regional Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book (Canada and the Caribbean).

Her fifth book, “Sweetheart,” a novel, was the Caribbean regional winner of the Commonwealth Book Prize 2012. In 2020, her novel “A Million Aunties” was published in the Caribbean and North America, and it went on to be longlisted for the 2022 International Dublin Literary Award. Her stories have appeared in several anthologies and literary magazines.

Copies are $30 and are available at Undercover Books in Christiansted and The Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts in Frederiksted, My Girl Friends’ Closet on St. Croix and St. Thomas Best of Books (Antigua, W.I.), Novelty Trading Company (Jamaica, W.I.), Papaya Café’ and Book Store (St. John, VI) and both UVI bookstores. It can also be ordered on the TCW website and digitally on the website: www.thecaribbeanwriter.org  or through PayPal.

For more information, contact the TCW offices by email at thecaribbeanwriter@uvi.edu.

https://stthomassource.com/content/2024/02/02/the-caribbean-writer-announces-prize-winners-for-volume-37/

                 

         

Saving Papa Rojas From the Deathbed Flirt

 

“You mudda in a coma, come.” That’s what Rose and Marigold, Samuel Rojas’s daughters mostly remembered from the long-distance call. They were relieved that telephones on St. Phillip were working again after Hurricane Eunice had ravaged the Caribbean Island.

The call from their father was numbing, yet unsurprising.  Their mother, Camelia’s health had drastically deteriorated after Hurricane Eunice had raged across the Leeward Islands some months before. It had deprived many of homes, food supplies and jobs. People were living on canned goods handed out by humanitarian organizations. Medicines were in short supply. Some,  islands, being American, English, French and Dutch overseas territories, survived on aid from colonizers.

On their island, St. Phillips, part of the newly-built hospital had been blown away, its ripped structure now scattered debris found in alleyways and dead-end streets in surrounding neighbourhoods. Hurricane Eunice had temporarily wiped out the tourist industry that most islanders depended on for their income. And for a while, no planes were landing, no enormous tourists’ ships were docking, there were no shoppers to buy discounted alcohol, jewellery and souvenirs. Taxi drivers were begging for passengers.

Rose and Marigold, both educators in their forties, had immediately begun to rearrange their lives. Their teenage children would be under the supervision of their fathers. They had to find teaching substitutes, make flight plans, Rose from the UK to the Caribbean and Marigold from Canada.

They were looking forward to visiting the island they had abandoned in their late teens.  It was Rose who first needed to widen her horizons, spread her wings.  The island seemed a small space. So, she had written to her uncle, her mother’s brother, in Canada, to enquire about universities there. She had flown to Vancouver and had settled down with a Canadian husband after completing her MA in Education Administration.

Marigold followed suit four years later, after completing high school. The go foreign bug had bitten after spending holidays in Vancouver with her older sister.  It was beautiful, like St. Phillips, with mountains, beaches,  a blue ocean, but immense compared to it. Her island was populated with people whose complexions covered every spectrum of brown, having arrived in the world carrying the blood of Tàinos, Caribs, African and European ancestors.  She carried the history and culture of her people in her blood and bones.  It influenced her to study Caribbean history. Marigold settled in the UK where she lectured in Caribbean history at university and eventually married and started a family in London.

Their flights landed on St. Phillips one hour after the other. Their older sister, Azalea, picked them up from the airport. Azalea, older than Rose, by ten years, had not been as adventurous as her younger sisters. She had married young, become a certified accountant, and was now the government’s financial comptroller, seeing to how it spent its money, surviving changing administrations,  becoming the mother and father to her work, as she had no children.

“I could feel the sun embracing me when I got off the plane,” Marigold said, wrapping her arms around Azalea.  They were at baggage claim collecting her luggage.

“Marigold, said the same thing,” Azalea said, “when she hugged me. Almost threw me down, too.” 

They chatted and cackled loudly as they carried Marigold’s bags to the car.

“So how the politicians behaving themselves?” Marigold asked.

“ Old administration, new administration, same old, same old. Welcome home!” Azalea replied, as they climbed into her car.

They were once again struck by the islands beauty as Azalea’s drove higher and higher across the hills to the western side where their father still lived in their childhood home. The sea, aqua, dark blue, or green, in some areas, was a refreshing sight after their long tedious flights. Cheerful, red flamboyant and bougainvillea trees lifted their spirits. The sisters could see where Hurricane Eunice had left its mark. Many rooftops were covered in blue tarp and trees were still bent from the force of the fierce wind and rain. But the terrain, once burned brown by the converged whipping of rain and salty sea, was verdant again. Their mother’s garden, which they called her other grandchildren, was in full bloom. She usually tended to her flowers every day while Papa looked after the banana, sour sap, sugar apple, mango, pawpaw trees, pigeon peas plants, corn stalks, and other vegetables which he defended with stones from voracious gangs of iguanas.

Rose paused to inspect the garden before entering the porch and going through the front door. The hibiscus, frangipani and gardenias were flourishing.  Marigold was already in the kitchen, searching the cupboards for ingredients to make Johnny Cakes to go with the saltfish soaking in an enamel bowl on the kitchen counter. Papa Rojas needn’t worry about meals while she was at home.

 *   *    *    *

            On their fourth visit to the island’s only hospital, Rose and Marigold still held their breath as they walked down the corridor which led to their mother’s room. It reeked of Dettol. Azalea had arrived earlier coming directly from work. Their father, who had gone to town that morning on business, had got there ahead of them, too.  They watched their mother sleep deeply, her chest quietly rising and falling. They watched the way first time moms watched their new-born child, afraid for its delicate life.  

Azalea was gently brushing their mother’s hair. Her copper-brown hand moving slowly up, then gently down as she stroked her mother’s long, grey hair. Azalea had already known what it was to experience loss, losing her husband in a car crash years earlier.  She lived in an apartment some thirty minutes away from her father.

             “You think mommy can hear us?,” Rose asked after they had been talking about their mother’s prospects for some time.

            “Oh, Lord!” responded Marigold. “Hope we didn’t say anything to hurt her feelings.”

            “You mudda doin’ alright considering, a loud voice nearby interrupted. “Hol’ her han’, no,! An’ wha’ ‘bout yo fadder. How he feeling today? You ga to tink ‘bout him, too, you know.”

The voice had come from Mavis Lindquist, who was visiting, Mrs. Schneider, the other patient assigned to the room. Mavis visited her friend daily and had been chatting like an open tap since she arrived. Mrs. Schneider had lost her voice as a result of a stroke and could only listen. 

             The girls stared her down and sucked their teeths….. chuppssseee

            “Mind you’ business,” Rose spat back.

            “Just tek it easy,” Papa responded, standing up and slowly raising his palm-down-hands up and down.

          Mavis Lindquist, Miss Mavis to many, had made her status clear when she introduced herself to Rose and Marigold on their first visit to the hospital. She kept repeating that she was a widow.                                                          

                                                           *   *   *   *

 

           Back home Papa answered Rose and Marigold questions about Mavis Lindquist.

            “You know, dat woman  married three times. All ah dem ole, ole. An’ she bury all three ah dem.. Her fadder was a half-Danish man. He marry she mudda in he late years. Her mudda was much younger, a nutmeg-brown woman. She used to be a sales woman in he perfume shop. Mavis take after she fadder--beige-skinned, lanky, but get her mother’s smooth skin.”

             “So how old is she, Papa?” interrupted Rose.

             “You know is hard tell her age because of de black wig she wear. Eighty knockin’ me door, but she younger dan me.”

              The girl’s laughed.

             “But one ting,” Papa said, “when she start talking you can’t get a word in. She glide from one topic to de udder. Mavis talk all she old husbands to death.”  Papa chuckled.

              “Maybe they chose death just to shut her up.” Marigold slapped her knee.

              “You know,” Papa said, “When we first meet in de hospital, she start to chat up Azalea an’ me in Spanish.  She think we Puerto Ricans.  She say I remind her of she last husband. He was Puerto Rican. She say we de same height, same light complexion, same curly hair. Her spirit tek to me right away.”

              “Papa, you’d better mind that woman.” Rose said, hugging him.

               “Then, Mavis start to bring me food daily. Papa continued. “She kyan cook you know. Ah put on few pounds.” He patted his belly and smiled. “Mavis know dat de way to a man’s heart is through he stomach,” Papa laughed. “She good company, yo’ know, and Camelia, dere, just sleeping. Hope she na vex.”

             “Hmmm,” Marigold responded. “Bet she’s vexed. If only mama could talk.”

Rose,  the taller of the younger sisters, whom everyone called the, coolie-looking one, wondered if Mavis Lindquist made her rounds in the hospital just to sit at the bedsides of potential widowers.

            Marigold, the red one, didn’t trust her either.

 *  *  *  *

Two days earlier, when they had arrived at the hospital, Mrs. Lindquist was sitting next to their father, massaging his shoulder “to ease de tension,” she said.  Then, she offered to come to his house to help cook and tidy-up, run errands, if needed, while smiling widely at him.

Dad quietly said, “I all right, me daughters here to help. And, Camelia goin’ come out of it.  She strong, you know.”

They watched  Mavis Lindquist scrunch her lips up to her nose. “Ah like to keep Samuel company,” she said,” “Me spirit tek to him.” Then, she returned to her seat next to Mrs. Schneider.

“Mr. Rojas, to you,” Marigold had responded rolling her eyes.

“ Conniving bitch,” Rose muttered under her breath, her heart beating rapidly for Papa.

 *   *   *   *

             Camelia who was rooted in old West Indian tradition had taught her daughters a lot about the old ways. She grew all sorts of medicinal bushes in her garden… fever-tea leaves for fevers,  bitter senna bush which you drank to clean you out, lemon grass to aid digestion and reduce high-blood pressure,  dried sour-sap leaves, packed in a pillow, for a good night’s sleep, the periwinkle plant for diabetes and aloe for healing wounds.

           Camelia turned a broomstick upside down when she spotted Jehovah Witnesses and unwanted salesmen climbing the hill that led to their home. She had turned the broomstick up after relatives had died, too, to avoid the unwanted visits of their ghosts. She had told them that in the old days men and women used devious ways to capture the hearts of those they fancied.  The most popular was “sweat rice,” where a person cooked rice and sat over it so that it was immersed in body sweat in order to make the victim compliant.

            Rose and Marigold felt Mavis Lindquist was capable of using “sweat rice,” to trap their father. The daily dishes she brought, in Tupperware, always included rice. The food was accompanied by her broad smile and non-stop chatter with its potential of putting their father and anyone else into a trance.

 *     *    *    *

At home, they slept in their old bedrooms which held their dairies, photo albums, drawings and paintings from art classes, school uniforms. In the living room, old classics, Grimm fairy tales, Greek and Roman mythological collections still filled the bookshelf in a corner next to a brown record player console. Papa’s rocking chair once rocked them and their children who had competed to sit in his lap when they visited the island on holiday.

Mavis Lindquist called frequently, since they arrived, to find out how Papa was doing, sometimes twice a day, although she saw their father daily at the hospital.

“This woman is a damn nuisance,” Marigold told Rose out of their dad’s earshot.

“What we going to do if mom dies?” asked Rose. “That woman will talk her way into moving in, take over his life, his savings. She will be working her spells on her fourth husband.”

 “We have to find a solution now,” Marigold agreed. “Azalea works full time and only manages to visits Papa on weekends.”

 *    *   *   *

But Camelia, forced their hands, departing that night, fed up with the chin hair she couldn’t trim, tired of having to lie still, and hurting with bedsores she couldn’t tend to, bored with conversations she couldn’t partake in, and sick of being an object people came to stare at. Weary of being looked after when she had cared for others all her life, she decided to bid adieu.

 

Suddenly, the sisters and their father were making funeral arrangements, picking out a coffin, composing inscriptions for a headstone, planning a booklet of memories and favourite hymns.

And Marigold and Rose were making separate plans. One that concerned their father not living alone.  He had become prey. Mavis Lindquist, the chicken hawk was circling, ready to snatch the unsuspecting.  She had shown up in a taxi at their house.  A neighbor had been walking up the craggy hill when she saw the taxi waiting, engine running, on the gravelled turn off that led to their home. Mavis Lindquist stood at the gate to the veranda shouting “Inside, anyone dere?” They were certain it was her from the neighbour’s description— beige-skinned, lanky, black shoulder length hair.

While their father napped, they pulled Azalea aside and sat with her on the living room sofa. “We are begging you to move in with Papa”, Marigold and Rose pleaded in unison.

“Mavis Lindquist has been sucking up to papa, rubbing him down, bringing him food, sweet-talking, and calling him twice a day, preying on him like he is a wounded animal”, Marigold said, folding her arms. “ She showed up here, when we were away seeing to mom’s funeral arrangements.”

“What?” Azalea gasped, “I hardly noticed. I’ve been so busy with work. My brain half-way there because of this end of quarter accounting at the office. I thought she was just being extra friendly with the food and all that. But calling and harassing him? That’s outrageous.” Her eyes widened.

“Please move in with Papa,” Rose begged, tears in her eyes. She stood up and paced around.  “He’s alone here in a four-bedroom house. He loves his gardening but that’s not enough to keep him from dwelling on Mother’s passing.  He’s going to need an ear, companionship.  Besides, it would save you paying rent. We’ll come to help as often as possible.”

“We need to keep that vulture, Mavis Lindquist, away,” Marigold pounded the back of the sofa with her fist.

Azalea pursed her lips. Alarmed at Mrs. Lindquist’s boldness, she didn’t need much convincing. “Dad and I get along like two peas in a pod,” she said.  “He is easy going and independent.  I will move in after the funeral, sleep here while I sort out my apartment. I’ll take good care of Papa, she assured them. I want to be like Papa when I get old.”

The sisters embraced, tears streaming down their faces, not just for saving Papa, but for the mother, whom they had just lost. The pent up river had broken its bank and now there was a raging flood. Their crying, which had enveloped the home, woke Samuel from his nap. Shuffling over to hug his daughters, he joined in, holding them tight in a binding of flesh and blood, a unit of loss.  Papa thought they were only crying for his wife.

      *    *   *   *

Azalea, who had worked for the government for over thirty years, took early retirement. When she, Rose and Marigold had last spoken, they caught up on Azalea’s and Papa’s adventures on the balcony and in the garden.

“Mother’s garden’s blooming better than ever,” Azalea said. “Papa had a good harvest of mangoes, sour-sap and pawpaw.”

“Mangos knocking dog,” Papa Rojas butted in. “ We eatin’ alright. An’ we tekking turn stonin’ dem damm tiefin’ iguana,” he said chuckling.

“Papa’s grandfather was French and not Spanish,” Azalea revealed.

“Oh, and all this time, we thought he was Cuban,” Rose said.

“Papa walking way down memory lane,” Marigold said, cackling.

“And guess what?” Azalea said, “Miss Mavis, tired of me answering the phone and turning away her impromptu visits, stopped calling and coming. I hear there is a new male patient sharing Mrs. Schneider’s room.”

Loud whoops burst through their phones………..

© Althea Romeo Mark 08.04.22, 13.04.22 , 18.04.22,  22.04.22, 28 04.22, 12.06.22 words, 2, 873

NOTES

1.     go foreign- to go abroad

2.     “Hol’ her han’, no,!”- Caribbean English meaning Why don’t you hold her hands.

3.     “chuppsed”-sound made by sucking your teeth.

4.     “coolie one,”- in the Caribbean, a reference to a Caribbean person of Indian descent.

5.     “the red one”-in the Caribbean, a reference to a light-skinned person of mixed descent.

6.     “senna bush” -a Caribbean purgative

7.      A johnnycake is a Caribbean version of a fried dumpling.

8.     Saltfish-In the Caribbean, salt fish, also called bacalao, bacalhau, baccalà or dried fish, is fresh, meaty white fish (typically cod) that has been preserved for longer storage by salt-curing and drying until all the moisture has been extracted.

9.     Taíno…The indigenous peoples of the Caribbean included the Taíno, the Island Caribs of the Lesser Antilles, and the Guanahatabey of western Cuba.

10.   Mangoes knocking dog—Trees are so heavy with unpicked mangoes they are dropping everywhere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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(West Africa), England and Switzerland since 1991. 

Althea Romeo Mark, who writes poetry, short stories, and personal essays, is the author of two full-length poetry collections, The Nakedness of New and If Only the Dust Would Settle, (English-German), and four chapbooks On the Borders of Belonging (2023), Beyond Dreams: The Ritual Dancer, Two Faces, Two Phases, Palaver, and Shu-Shu Moko Jumbi: The Silent Dancing Spirit.