By Johnny Coomansingh
A new year has dawned upon us, and I want us to make this resolution. I would like all of us to treat each other with kindness and compassion; it doesn’t cost anything. I sometimes ponder the question. Why do some people prefer to be wicked, insensitive, devious and nasty to one another? Of what value is a Machiavellian attitude? Such people are determined to strike fear and cause hurt in other people. It was our experience when my father lived with us. There is something that goes far beyond the parameters of indigence and want that gives rise to someone being hateful of others. Wives and children sometimes pass in the rush!. I’d be lying if I say anything good about my father; he eventually left and never came back!
In local parlance, mih wutliss (worthless) father left my penniless mother with seven of his children and two that she had before. Is this the way that some fathers behave in the Caribbean region? Just asking? My father and my mother were living in a common-law relationship. I was born out of that relationship. On my birth certificate is written ‘illegitimate boy.’ Before he shacked up with my mother, he had three children with his married wife. The man went to England and never looked back to see if we were dead or alive.
When my two little sisters and I visited his uncle in Sauteurs, Grenada, he told us that he gave to Rolland (our father) 300 British Pounds to sail to England. My father did not send even one black cent for his children to buy milk! In 1 Timothy 5:8 it says: “But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.” He remarried in England without getting a divorce from his first wife and had three more children; certainly a brave man. We didn’t bother with him. We survived.
With my father gone for good, my mom had to be both father and mother. My mother’s name was Dolly, and hardly anybody knew that her real name was Adolphine. Maybe she should have been called ‘Adolph.’ She wasn’t easy nah…and she had a right to be so. My use of the Trini dialect would lend a better flavour to my analysis about my mom. Her management of nine children created in her a kind of ‘child general’…definitely a kind of ‘Major Pain’…one look from her (the Ma look) and you’d know your place. Look at what I wrote in my book titled: Sweet and Sour Trinidad and Tobago (2010):
“Ah was ah big man ahready, wuking for mih own money and she gih one ah mih gyul fren one look. Mih gyul knew exactly dat it was time tuh leave. She could give ah good backslap and could cuff yuh dong if yuh gih she any back chat. Pong yuh head against di wall, wring yuh ears, and pull up yuh hair. The other day, one ah mih sister tell mih dat she even bite she. Mih mudder was so good ah believe dat she could ah be ah UFC fighter. Ah really doh know how she manage tuh bring up all ah we nah. God must be does gih some people more patience, strength, and courage when dey born.
Leh mih tell yuh dis. If my mudder know dat ah writing dis book in Trini dialect ah sure dat she go disown mih. When I was a tot, there was ah time when ah shout out “Ma, ah di see ah flea!” She did not attend high school but hear how she hit back in her correction: “No Johnny, I saw a flea.” I responded, “But ma, yuh mean ah big saw could saw ah little flea?” Sometimes mih mudder din have ah black cent tuh buy even basic foodstuff buh somehow we were fed. We survived. Buh whatever little mih mudder put together fuh we she used tuh always say to us, “Be contented. Eat little and live long.”
Our diet was simple, supplemented with what we found while dreevaying (also spelled drevait which generally means to knock about, wander, or be a wayward person). Some of these items included mango, ripe bananas, pineapple, coconut, cocorite, cocoshat berries, black sage berries, guava, West Indian cherries, sour cherries, soursop, pommerac, cashima, gru-gru, and a wild type of passion fruit we called pommedelion. With the amount of ‘roadside’ fruits we ate, there was certainly no lack of vitamin A and C. I guess some of these fruits are not well-known to the children of today. Cashima or sugar apple was my favorite. It is somewhat similar to a custard apple which you could find in abundance in Grenada.
Fishing in the Guaico River also gave us some protein but sometimes my mother used to chase us and say that “…allyuh smelling too fresh” So we had to take a standpipe bath after we cleaned the fish. We had no indoor plumbing. She really never like when we went to fish. We used to wash the fishes with lime or lemon juice, season it with black pepper, salt, and big leaf thyme also known as Cuban oregano, Spanish thyme or podina. Each fish would be floured and then fried dry.
We also made slingshots to shoot birds. Our favorite birds were ground doves, cornbirds, and greeve or big eyed thrush. Whenever we came home at whatever hour, whether from fishing or hunting birds in the gru-gru patch, we had to take a standpipe bath no matter how cold the night. Despite our poverty, my mother made sure that we practiced good hygiene. She didn’t make joke about that. We had to be clean and tidy.
The standpipe bath time was always too lengthy. We played too much at the standpipe. Spraying down one another from the powerful roadside standpipe was the best thing after we lathered with Lifebouy or Palmolive bath soap. When we had no bath soap we used blue soap or brown soap [soap for laundering clothes]. We did not have the luxury of shampoo but we had rough skin lemons. We squeezed the lemons in our hair and rubbed our skin with the rind and it was okay. My mother never allowed us to go tuh bed without bathing and brushing our teeth. When we could not afford toothpaste we applied pot salt or baking powder.
When our father left, we didn’t have anywhere to go. The police and a bailiff came and told us the next morning that we had to leave the apartment. My father did not pay the rent, and we had to leave by nightfall. We didn’t have good clothes, no bed, no food, no money and no roof over our heads, no nutten! But God is good and there are still some good people in the world. My uncle, Eric Amann, helped us out to get a little house to occupy; the house where my great-grandmother once lived.
Yes it was nice and at least peaceful after my father left us. He was a good-fuh-nutten, freak of ah man. When we lived in the little apartment on Picton Street almost every night that man would beat my mother. All the children would be up in the night crying. He had ah 16-bore shotgun and he was always threatening to shoot somebody. We lived in constant fear. But my mother was smart.
She dismantled the gun and sent pieces all over the place by her family. She hid all the cartridges inside our pillows. I’m telling it all! When some people are bad, they’re bad like hell! I was a little fellow so I didn’t know why there was so much trouble in our house. I could never forget how that apartment was also infested with fleas and bed bugs. We slept on the floor on some bedding, and along with the voracious mosquitoes, the bugs came out and bit us every night.
That was not all that I had to bear. One day the man got so vex that he took out his rage on my brother and I for eating a mango that somebody else had bitten. I was about three and my brother was five years old. In a rabid rage he grabbed both of us, and the licks began. You talk ‘bout blows on the ground in front the house? I will never, ever forget that! That man beat us like a snake and worse than a steelpan on Carnival Monday morning. I am telling you, if I make it to heaven and see my father talking to St Peter, I will make ah right-about-turn and come back oui.
He told my big brother to cut some whips to beat us. So he cut some little fragile whips because he was feeling sorry for us. When the man finish with the whip he flung it back at my brother telling him in a rage to cut something stronger and harder to beat us with. I remember the look in big brother’s eyes up to today. He probably felt like licking dong mih fadda in one fell swoop. My poor mother couldn’t intervene lest she be beaten too. That day was a sad and horrible day for me; for all of us. I cried bitterly.
After the ordeal, all my mother could have done was wash my wounds with warm water and try to comfort me as I sobbed relentlessly. She rubbed some Iodex liniment on the wheals but they were still very painful. My back, belly and hands turned blue-black after that brutal beating. I will never forget that horrible day and the evil eyes in that evil man. He is now deceased, gone with all his hate and wickedness. I still cannot believe that a father could be so terrible and violent! The last part of my poem titled: ‘The Devil is Dead’ published in My Trinidad Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow reads”
“A ruthless man; a horrid soul
With shiny shoes with holes in the sole
And for a week he would not bathe
But yet my mother stayed
Until one night he felt the thud
Of a heavy glass vase…blood!
Broken skin
Blood flowed from his chin
Retaliation he could not take
Struck for my mother’s sake
He took his toolbox and bailed
To England on a steamer he sailed
My mom he left with children nine
Life was hard but people were kind
And so we survived the horror, the dread
Today the devil is dead!”
There are many events in my life that I kept holding on to, but now I’m letting it go. Let other people read my story. Let them see everything what me and my siblings passed through. Writing this article is cathartic. After all these years, it is helping me to put things behind me; especially my father. Little do some parents know of the hurt and trauma some children experience with episodes such as this beating. It was reprehensible. My father was wrong! He was blastid wrong! Sick! No father should treat his children like how he treated my brother and I.
My father once told an old friend of mine that he thinks that the Holy Spirit left him. Of course he must have felt so because he was an backslidden Seventh Day Adventist; nothing more than a lecherous philanderer. I believe he was correct…yes, he had a spirit and it surely wasn’t the Holy Spirit. Thank God, that episode in my life is done!
Domestic violence is still a real problem in Trinidad and Tobago. In this day and age, some ignorant parents are still brutally beating their children. Too many times, both fathers and mothers get away with crimes against their children.
