How to Love a Jamaican by Alexia Arthurs

Author:Alexia Arthurs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2018-07-23T16:00:00+00:00

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I close my eyes on the plane. I see three old women under a tree laughing a dancing laugh. My mind doesn’t recognize who they are and still I want to tell one of them, “I never seen you laugh like that but once the whole time I knew you.” I open my eyes and I can’t say whether I was dreaming or remembering, maybe both.

My cricket days ended when the school year came to a close because my mother finally sent for me. She had married a man for love. It also solved the problem of getting her papers. Now I am back, finally, for my grandmother’s funeral. In the city, the heat feels as if it wants to knock us down; that’s what my mother says, she says the heat wants to knock us down. I have been craving the sunshine the whole time I’ve been away. On our way from the airport, my mother convinces the taxi man to stop in the city. All because my stepfather wants oxtail from a restaurant he ate from when he visited the island with another woman long before he knew my mother. My stepfather says he has been thinking of the oxtail for the past seven years. I see my mother look at him because she cooks oxtail in New York whenever he wants it. I see the look she gives him and I understand because I am her child. The look passes, and then my mother is telling my stepfather to buy enough oxtail for all of us.

This is how my mother and I are alone in Kingston, Jamaica, such a small place on the globe in my World History class that if you aren’t careful you can easily miss it. At the market, there are so many people, most of them trying to sell us something. There is a man selling string crafts, he has them stacked up top of his head and he is shouting that the crafts are patterned into the hummingbird, the national bird. There is a woman selling bammy from a basket on her head. There are fruit stands and men roasting meat, corn, and yams. My mother’s head is turning to look at everything and everyone because she so badly wants to use the spending money she budgeted.

Long after my mother and I have eaten, my stepfather is still sucking the oxtail bones.

The taxi is driving my mother, my stepfather, and me to my grandmother’s house, where we will meet relatives before the funeral tomorrow. Even though I’m waiting to see Mermaid River, I almost miss it. Because on the other side of the street, there is a tree and behind the tree is a blue house that used to be painted yellow. There is no longer a sign that reads, WE SELL HOT GOOD FOOD. There are no old women laughing a dancing laugh.

I can’t remember this, but my grandmother used to say I would sleep on her breast after my mother left.

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