Cece Chapman
Illustration by Cece ChapmanThe Mistress (excerpt)
Rebel Mama...the Rituals of Revolution
It was a red-hot night and about to become hotter. Hurtling through midnight cane fields from the airport, sweat poured down my neck as Gregory talked about the accident killing his father, and his father's legal family, the wife and three sons, his half-brothers. Their deaths made him sudden heir to the largest sugar cane plantation in the islands. Gregory prepared me for the crowd assembled in his house as he was about to give most of the estate away.
When I apologized for my call from the airport begging an invitation just seven hours ago, Gregory said, "Jean, don't apologize, you are my little cousin, we were children here, this is true home to both us. When I returned two months ago to fix my family affairs I did not expect to be still here now. After 20 years absent, what did I expect? This land and house is a great burden of the soul for me, the beauty of it, built on blood, is it's sadness. Now I have made a life for myself far away from here. And I am happy you are here, we will celebrate the changes in our lives, and you can tell me about yours. But, please, tonight remember how you left these islands, they are still like that this day. This is why I sign most of the estate to the island, why I invite all these politics in my yard, remember this when you see you are the only woman in the house."
Field torches lined the driveway between cars, trucks, jeeps, stripped station-wagons, dusty sedans. Everywhere pit-fires were circled by crouching, serious men. Horses were tied to flamboyant and breadfruit trees. Muddy cane carts lined the driveway, and salt-rusted bicycles lay in the hibiscus garden. Motorbikes leaned on the four hundred year old stone wall. Gregory dashed inside, leaving the car in the alley, keys hanging from the ignition. No. I was not ready for the crowd. First, I was the only woman. Second, the men were big. Men I don't see about on the mainland. Men shaped by carrying water, cutting bush, climbing trees for food, fishing, work done with one tool, the machete.
In the house, island politicians strained their custom-cut clothes dealing arms to smoky guerrillas puffing on fronta, the hand-tended tobacco that still knocks me flat. Field workers leaned against walls. Sweating, wild-eyed, rebel hill-rastas nervous within any walls, stood by exits, doors and windows. Sun-tarnished fishermen bent on gaining legal coastal access watched pale merchants watching everyone carefully. Political revolutionaries crowded the desk where the deed-manifesto was laid out with the mark of every person there, where they signed to agree to work together. Few could read. The governor, farmers, cane cutters, merchants, revolutionaries, fishermen, rebels and politicians were celebrating the island's business arrangement with Gregory, the take-over and running of the plantation by the island. The estate comprised ninety-five percent of island land, ninety percent of island economy. They were celebrating the act which would make the island the only native-owned and governed island in their seas. They were celebrating Gregory's release from his life-long fear of running a business dependent on an ancient slave system. I was unaware of Gregory's political intrigues, but I understood his motives.
I drank a green coco with rum talking to old men who remembered me. Later I found a hammock in thick banana plants, at the bottom of the garden, just above the beach, below the celebration and noise. Looking out on the bay towards town, I saw the sky exploded with starlight, except in the volcano's shadow. I was still sweating in the thick, dense, salt air, sliced by bay, ginger and lime, scented with smoke; it pushed me down, covered me, held me like a mother. Island history was being made in the house, but I was removed by my own frenzied years, culture shocks, transatlantic moves, bad relationships, and the recent job-firing that had left me reeling and running home. I watched the stars wheel into position to unlock the heavens for the sun's appearance, waiting deliriously for my first sea bath in island waters in sixteen years. Until I heard helicopters.
Search-lights stabbed the house from every direction as they descended. I heard yells, people running, things knocked about, thumping. It sounded as if the old stone house was breaking, ripping, tearing itself up. Finally I heard gun shots. Astonished, I thought I saw an enormous big-breasted, full-bodied figure, in window silhouette, pick up a man and toss him into the garden where he jumped up and ran off. After a few minutes of silence there were orderly sounds moving through the house, commands, shouts, murmurs. Lights snapped off in the big house and darkness rippled down the bay.
Stunned, I rolled out of the hammock into the bushes, slithering through dirt towards the garden-wall beach door. I slipped into the sand, into the sea. Treading water, I saw that most of the activity was leaving in helicopters and trucks. Red lights blinked from town, and fires erupted below the volcano suddenly ringed with flashers. Distant shots echoed off the water, sirens screeched, lorries slammed down the road. The cane factory was dark, usually burning 24 hours a day every day. I hid in a cove, until broken windows eyed me floating down-shore in pre-dawn light.
I rode currents south, towards the most deserted part of the island, hugging coast and cliffs until they ended, and climbed up and walked through cane fields. Finally I looked down on the tiny south-coast town on a hot Saturday morning. The pure-white sands of the beach were covered in a sinuous wall of swaying bodies, following the surf as it came in and went out. Farmers were in town, bathing after the bus ride, their children selling produce in the street market. Most swimmers kept their clothes on: turbans, dresses and fabric floating around them like huge jellyfish.
I thought, 'they cannot know what has happened', as I climbed down the cliff, floating around to the beach over velvet, sea-moss covered reef, coming ashore, hoping no one noticed me.
But someone did, a surfer, sitting under the big beach rock roasting a fish.
I told him, "My boat was stolen by thieves. I jumped into the water and swam ashore."
"The island has been invaded by the U.S.," he laughed, "There's gonna be trouble for a while." He was on the island without papers, and figured he'd wait things out.
"No one knows or cares about politics on this side of the island; their lives won't change." He led me to his solitary shack far out on a cliff. He had little but a laptop, radio, a beautiful chunk of coral he was using as a water filter, seven surfboards, gourd bowls, hanging hands of bananas.
When his very pregnant, dread-locked girlfriend arrived she brought news that Stanford, a local revolutionary, was kidnapped with other leaders. And she brought a very pale, cane-sliced, sweating young man wearing glasses, a shirt and tie.
"Listen to this man," the girl-friend said, "he tells a bigger truth".
The perspiring man told us "Rebel Mama done it, not the U.S., I seen them drop down. A field boy told me about mama when we was running through cane. He said 'don't let those girls get ahold you' and I ran to town.'"
He was a medical student from another island, with sailing friends who took him to the house, smoking a cigarette outside when the helicopters arrived. He thought he was going to a party with lots of island women; he was surprised when he saw some really big girls rope down from choppers. He never found his friends. He figured they'd left, or been kidnapped, when he saw their boat was gone from the harbor. He paid the surfer's girlfriend to drive him to the other side of the island. They forgot me; they had their own problems. The biggest was the husband of the girlfriend. After bathing from a bucket and eating a handful of roasted fish and breadfruit, I tried to rest. But all I could think about was what the medical student said, and what did he know? What could he really know?"
Rebel Mama must be about eighty now. When I first saw her I was under ten. She was riding a donkey toward me in the road. Jumping off the donkey, she swung a sixty-pound bag of yams onto her head with one hand, grabbing sweat-polished saddlebags with the other hand. The bags were filled with marijuana, and she gave me some for my golden mangoes. She bragged she had twenty children all by different men, and was thus, blood-related to every island. All her children were still alive, healthy, strong, and they had grandchildren. She made enough money selling herb, so she sent her children and grand-children to foreign schools. They became politicians and doctors, teachers, judges, wealthy businessmen, artists. Some brilliant children. And still Rebel Mama sold marijuana, lived in her shanty in the bananas, selling produce by boat to other island markets with her daughter, Regine. She had children who developed businesses selling drugs in other countries, and still she sold bananas, coconuts and marijuana. It was said she owned hills covered in fruits and herb on every island. No one knew the real truth about her anymore. Mama was not a person someone interviewed for screen or print news. Hers was not a road you ventured up alone asking questions.
I convinced the medical student we should leave the island together. I kept the secret I was Gregory's cousin, that I was there, what I saw. On the in-flight questionnaire I had filled out my destination as Gregory's house, all my belongings were still there. I didn't know if Gregory had enemies, or the rebels acted crazy like they sometimes do, or the U.S. invaded, or even if there was a consul on the island. I was too shocked to think clearly, but I talked the medical student into paying a fisherman to take us to St. Christophe twenty miles away. The medical student was so grateful for my help getting back to school he gave me $300 and we parted ways in the harbour. There was still no news of any invasion, only rumours of a three-day blackout and failed coup, after which regional leaders withdrew support of the island's take-over of the estate. The Governor relinquished his office after being severely critisized for his plantation agenda.
As I turned to leave the fish docks I saw Rebel Mama, a smaller, older, condensed version of herself, and her daughter pushing off from the jetty. I ran over. "Mama, Regine, how are you? I'm Wollcott's girl, Jean." Her eyes narrowed.
"What you doing here, girl? I see you just like Wollcott's bony face. How is that man? Where you going? Where is your mama and where you living now?" She laid her solid arm on my shoulder, grasping my neck with a hand like a rock and shook me.
I said, "Rebel Mama, I come from the house of Gregory since last night, where there was noise and I run off without my papers. Some boy says you mixed up there. I think to ask you now I see you here, before I go off to the government house, declaring what I see, fixing my papers lost in the confusion."
Mama laughed, "Wollcott, I send most them men home to they children. Gregory back to Dover to Eugenie and he family, that boy about to ruin his life with politics. I send that sad governor thief to work plantation business, before he cause fighting trying to run things and fussing over politics. They can find another governor quick. Do you think I want those boys all vexed and righteous, politicking over cane fields, maybe starting to thieve among theyselves or kill? If bigger countries sees fighting, they come in here quick with guns, put down concrete eating my feet all over the island. On top, hotels where nothing grows. Big cars chasing down roads. Make me stop drifting to islands, tie me down. But soon I not going to be here, and then what you going to do?" She looked at me, old eyes, clear as coral reef waters, pulling on fronta, puffing and staring me down.
