Mas Does Start at Memorial Park

by Camille U. Adams

Why yuh doh wear yuh cute lil Carnival suit, she said. This mother who read my reluctance to go down de road and moved on to persuasion to goad me into wanting to deliver her from her husband’s fists and feet by reaching in the parlour to buy a tin of pigeon peas that she suddenly say she need to make Sunday lunch for daddy to eat even though is just yesterday we went in the grocery. Just yesterday that we bring home bags and bags after I nag mummy to not feel sad and let we go shop for the week at Kelly’s.

She didn’t need to cajole. This mother. I am her not-first daughter, it is enough to be told. But my little Carnival suit conjures hours at mummy’s side while over it she laboured and sewed and delivered it with pride. Hours of me sitting at the edge of the bed in the louvre-filtered sunlight, listening to always-have-yuh-own-money life lessons while the presser foot sped to get the bias cut just right.

It conjures, this little brown Carnival shirt and short pants I am ironing, the hours I couldn’t didn’t stay back after school to dance and be fitted and costumed for Diamond Vale Kiddies Carnival band because six o’clock loomed and my mother needed her yuh-such-a-wise-old-soul daughter next to her at the Singer machine in the afternoon. Needed her not-first daughter to stay in the room to soothe the impending doom of her husband’s return from work whose boot crunch over the yard’s gravel would jerk her fingers and knot up the thread. 

It represents, this little coconut-tree print pants and shirt in which I am getting dressed, my mother’s present to Ericka and me. A gift of outfits resembling the ‘Hawaiian’ clothes of red-faced, touristing yankees. An outfit resembling the tropical ensembles foreign visitors disembarking down Cruise Ship Complex in town does buy to say they fitting in among the locals on their visits to our Caribbean isles. An outfit made of fabric purchased on a trip for Ericka and me in town down Queens Street, in and out of Aboud Syrian family fabric stores where my mother implored, allyuh choose what allyuh like.

It reminds, this short Carnival pants into which I’m stepping that when I walk does ride up my thick inner thighs, of me picking in Aboud fabric store a vibrant pink and red bolt of cloth that I liked. And my mother saying it so cosquel, dat en go look too right. And her choosing another and then finding its replica. The same print but in different colours. A bright lime green for Ericka and for me a dull brown of the same polyester with coconut trees and the sun going down.

And I am nine and old enough to know what I like and remind mummy my favourite colours are bright yellow and baby pink. And mummy skin up her nose and aloud thinks ent yuh doh really like dis, yuh doh find dem colours too childish and purchases what she please as my special present of a non-costume Carnival outfit for my sister and me. 

Yuh nearly ready, mummy asks me from the kitchen. She eager for me to go down the road in the parlour for the peas and I can feel her make-haste patience shortening as I am buttoning up the shirt of this silky-sliding, mud colour, coconut tree, sunsetting, yankee tourist and they camera ever outta-timing suit sewn especially for me for Carnival earlier this year. And in the wake of her trill, I hear daddy grunt in his throat in the living room. My back frissons in fear.

I hear the couch creak under his restless shifting position that is warning communication to mummy he go want to eat soon.

Hear the clink of wares coming from the upstairs dining room of Tanty Acklyn and Uncle Ken house above us as they done sit down to Sunday lunch this afternoon. Hear my younger sisters in the yard moving on from mud pies and now making their toy leaves into cars that zoom over the gnarly, exposed roots of the cashew tree that I cut for laglee to stick my school projects in my copy books when neither mummy nor daddy remember to buy Elmer’s glue in the middle of the term and I refuse to have incomplete homework when my teachers walk around to look.

I squirm after I turn my head to the closed door. Then shout Ah coming. And my reply slithers through the inch of space between the wood and carpeted floor.

It is my chore. Getting food. Helping mummy keep daddy and his belly in a non-beating mood.

But you don’t like these autumn colours, the wardrobe’s full-length mirror pronounces. He announces this to my statue-still form, unable to put on my slippers and walk out the second bedroom door. I don’t want to go. But this isn’t what Mirror wants me to know. Landing like a pigeon on a bronze sculpture, Mirror’s deliverances are my resentful mind’s added visitor. Here to crown my reluctance, my anger.

I was reading good good in the bed. I hate walking down Covigne Road where these people choose to make our home. I hate all the nasty men and them sooting yuh and calling me little-Ulric and watching my chest. And grabbing their groins and puckering their burnt lips into the sign for a kiss and squinting their watery eyes, blazing red. And I tell mummy what they does say. And she does only answer they harmless, jus ignore dem, try and be brave. And then rub my back to show she understand.

But if mummy understand I wouldn’t be going down the road and having to pass man after man lining the pavement. If mummy understand she would know that the scent of weed does get me scared and she would care my neck does get itchy in fear that one of them would grab me or hurt me and they always high. But mummy say I is de oldest child, I living here all my life, I safe, and is just some fellas who like to lime. And I tell her about cocaine and what the advertisements and encyclopaedias say it does do to your brain and how these men have no impulse control.

And that Sunday mummy still tell me to get up, put on my little Carnival outfit and go out the road.

When my mind say no.

The rough carpet tickles my soles. My eyes watch my long fingers in the glass making fists. You know the real reason you don’t feel good in this outfit, Mirror unrelentingly interjects. Do I really need him to pile on causes for me to be upset? He who knows I need to feel I looking my best at all times and that my clothes need to match my vibes, or I does just shut down and don’t feel right? You want to know why? Mirror persists.

Persists. Though my eyes see nothing of him, and my scrambling mind fills the fading Grenada suitcase under mummy bed, wondering how much of my clothes it could hold and if the buckles would keep and where the money in my piggy bank could reach. Not far enough. Trinidad too small. Everybody know badjohn Covigne.

No, I don’t. Lemme just go.

I never want to know what Mirror waits until I am alone to show, to whisper, to unveil, to tell. Looming Mirror who does just watch me steadily and tickle the back of my head until unease spread when I come back up the hill from my grandmother’s house from a lime spending time with all my cousins, aunts, uncles and them, and saying to my bed-readying self in the glass how that was nice. On these days, Mirror waits then displays a dirt path in his frame. A grass-lined lane I walk down, recalling, analysing, unignoring the tumult in my belly, and un-normalising my family’s every claim. Admitting what they say feels wrong. In my body, deep down.

So, what’s another insight? It’s either now or he’ll reveal it tonight. Yes, Mirror, tell me the underneath reason this cute little Carnival suit don’t feel right.  

Those are your mother’s colours, Mirror deeply intones. Crisp, melodic, echoing, and sage. Confident, unfailingly, in what he knows. Wise voice of a long past age, Mirror responds to my inquest. Remember when you asked her why she always gets sienna oranges and maroons and copper brown cloth for each and every dress and she smiled and pulled you to stand in front her dressing table and look into her reflection and said, while stroking your hair, that for us with dark complexions these colours look best. You remember? You thought it was jest. You didn’t see dullness as what properly suited you at all. But she hugged you and her arms felt warm. And she told you these dangly earrings of hers would soon be yours. So, you left it alone. Now look, you’re dressed like Fall.

Satisfied he’s summoned sight to the surface, Mirror ceases to talk.

This Mirror, always so loud. Quietly. Just to me. Piping up when my sisters aren’t in the room. Just a glass in front mummy or daddy. My sisters never able to see. This Mirror telling me look into my eyes when I saying iz not so bad, exhaling irritation, inhaling reasons to be happy. Like when mummy choose me to stay up after 11pm and watch Cagney & Lacey with her. Or my cousin Marlon want to go for a walk to catch guppy, and I don’t like the dirty river. Or Ericka make daddy rent Annie on VCR for the twentieth loan again, and they all say just let her have this nuh, Uricka, daz yuh lil sister. The one whose Carnival outfit is bright green, and not the dull brown assigned to me, because her light complexion and hazel eyes make a better fit for shades that glow in sunshine.

And now it was time. Turning away from Mirror who does never put water in his mouth when he want to bring about the confronting rise to my eyes something my belly knew, I bend to search for a pair of out the road slippers among our shoes.

No clanking beads and foil-tipped canerows fall in my face as I bend down now on this occasion of my wearing the cute lil Carnival outfit. Not like the first time I wore it when Ericka and I got dressed in our matching suits and mummy took us to watch the pretty mas bands and lime in The North Stand. Not like that Carnival Saturday with mummy and Tanty Carol heaving picnic baskets of pelau, cole slaw, and green salad, cheese paste sandwiches, peanuts, and Orchard orange juice in hand.  Not like that time of us and cousins and aunts and family. And other children and making new friends and clambering over and running between wooden plank seats. And the savannah dust tightly embracing our feet and legs and galloping in little whirlwinds besides us as we sing along to Free Up, running up and down pavilion steps.

And us laughing and smiling and shouting over the loud sun and soca bass. And us pulling handkerchiefs out to wipe crystal streams giving chase over our foreheads and necks and backs and top lips. And the sharp scent of fresh cooking curry when vendors under pitched tents chunkay they onion, garlic, and saffron for roti.  And the hissing tendrils of corn soup on the breeze calling out to me to spend allowance and find room for its full warmth in my belly. And us oohing and ahhing when feathers and crowns and flags and wings make us stand still to rate which one we is and which one is the best and which one we wearing next year when we gonna be dressed for the stage and deciding road march and making we name.

No, not this time.

This Sunday, wearing the cute lil outfit of that Carnival Day does not conjure the friends and family and music and screams and play, and my ignoring the collared shirt of my suit that isn’t adorned with the sequins and beads and ribbons on stage, and my laughter upon gripping the North Stand bars in sweaty hands to dance in conga lines and Bump & Wine in the Queens Park Savannah sunshine.

This second time wearing my mother’s cute little Carnival outfit, I am alone. Plastic bag in hand. I walk out the front door to go to the parlour to buy a tin of peas my mother suddenly remember she need when I pulled out Oliver Twist to read.

Camille U. Adams is a writer from Trinidad and Tobago. She is a CUNY grad and a current PhD candidate in creative nonfiction at FSU where she has been awarded a McKnight Doctoral Fellowship. Camille has also received scholarships for attendance at writing conferences from Community of Writers, Kweli Literary Festival, Grubstreet, etc. Her writing has been selected as a finalist for The 2021 Orison Anthology Award in nonfiction and is featured/forthcoming in Kweli Literary Journal, Wasafiri, The Caribbean Writer, and elsewhere. Camille is currently at work on an upcoming memoir.