From Harvey River: A Memoir of my Mother and her Island by Goodison Lorna

Author:Goodison, Lorna [Goodison, Lorna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atlantic Books
Published: 2010-01-02T17:00:00+00:00

Shortly after they were married, my mother had gone with my father to visit the capital city of Kingston, where he often went to the Kingston Industrial Garage on Darling Street, to buy parts for his garage business. He had taken her with him, because he said he wanted to show her something. He had driven past KIG down to a squatter settlement near the garage. “I know how you like an unusual sight, Doris, so look there.”

My father pointed at a sprawling village built entirely from wooden packing crates. Everywhere as far as the eyes could see was the word FORD FORD FORD FORD FORD FORD FORD stencilled on the sides of the little wooden shacks.

“Ford ship the Model T in parts in one big wooden packing crate, and when the dealers assemble it, they use one side of the crate to form the floorboard of the car, and the rest of it the Henriqueses give away to whoever asks for it.” My mother’s eyes filled with tears when she thought of their nice comfortable house in Malvern and her family home in Harvey River. “Oh Marcus, God bless them,” she said. “You have to give our people credit for being enterprising.”

It was on that occasion that he had taken her to the Ward Theatre, where my mother for the first time in her life saw a moving picture. As she sat in a plush, velvet-covered seat in the balcony of the cool, dark theatre, sipping a cream soda that tasted like water from some sweet invisible fountain, she was as happy as she had ever been in her twenty-six years on earth. There in the dark, she kept glancing over at the profile of her handsome husband. Even in the dark, she was aware of his distinctive profile, his high forehead, his “Roman” nose, his smile, oh his wonderful smile. She still experienced that little shiver of excitement when she saw him smile. His smile and the smell of his 4711 cologne. She was immensely proud of the way he sat there perfectly groomed, wearing a white shirt that she herself had ironed. She admired the way his fingernails and toenails were always clean and well-trimmed. “A clean man,” she always said to her children, “your father is such a clean man.” There in the Ward Theatre, looking by turns at the screen where the grainy black-and-white film rolled, then back at her husband, her future, without a doubt, was bright. A woman with a high upsweep hairdo that trembled when she struck the keys sat in the orchestra pit and pounded out accompaniment to the movie on an upright piano. My mother leaned over close to my father and whispered that the woman was good at her job, for she knew how to play fast when one of the actors was running for a train, and to play slow and soft when the lovers on the screen were kissing. When she said that, my father kissed her.

My Lord, if only everybody in Harvey River could see her now.

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