Cynthia
James Speaks About her Childhood
at YWCA Luncheon Jamestown,
New York on 10/22/96
My life is much more than a
personal story, because no one can do it alone. And today I want to tell you
about my start, not the countables themselves, but the very fabric of the live I
have lived. There was a time I would
have been afraid to speak thus boldly about my life; for, to speak of one's
achievements in my culture is taboo. But I want to say that success is an
attitude, and that, thank God, with the start I was given, for as long as I have
lived, I have always had the courage to write my very own book.
For me, it has been a father
with vision, a mother who was invisible but as solid as a rock. It has been the
humility of worship. It has been people along the way who have stretched out a
hand when they could have kept that hand closed. But above all my success is due
to a father who strongly believed that each generation should be better than the
last. That sounds like a tough mandate to set for children, but if you have come
from where I have come from, you know that it is only a sophisticated way of
saying you are tired of singing the blues.
I
was born in a village called Sangre Grande in the northeast of Trinidad, the first girl and second child in a family of nine children. Nine
children is a lot, but I am going to disappoint you. I was never poor. I had no
shoes, but I was not poor. I slept in my mother’s old dress, but that was
because it smelt of her, and it was warm and long. Buying clothes was wasteful
when clothes were plentiful around. It was just that they were not being used by
a particular person anymore. There are many things about small societies that
are cultural, which the world looks at as being poor. But I leave that discussion for another
occasion. All I want you to understand is that I did not have many things I
could call my own, but I was not poor, nor have I ever felt poor.
I was born into a family in
which material things were scarce, but my father was the principal of a school
and my mother did in time become one too. In other words, I had the advantage of
a good educational foundation, and to me once you have a good educational
foundation and you could brave the world, you don't need much more.
We lived in the country, as
I think I have told you. And when I was ten, my father prepared me for a college
exhibition, which was the chance to get a high school education, an unthinkable
thing for ordinary girls in Trinidad at that time. Two hundred and fifty free
places were being offered in the country. It was one hundred and fifty up from
the one hundred in my brother's time. And I won one. The nearest secondary
school was thirty miles away, and school began at eight o' clock.
Out of my village ran one
bus. It left the village at six o'clock in the morning , crammed with the ten or
so young minds who were mainly boys, and the civil servants, and the mothers who
had to attend court for that day. In other words, only those
who had made it and those who had trouble used to be on that bus going to town.
That very bus stayed in town till four o'clock, refueled and voyaged from town
to bring back the civil servants and the pride and the hope of the village who
had won college exhibitions, among whom I was one.
What I am telling you, then,
is that I never saw my village in the daylight for the seven years I spent in
school, except on weekends. My mother woke my brother and me up at four o’clock
in the morning, what we call foreday morning in the Caribbean. And we knelt down
at the bed side, and she being a faithful Roman Catholic, we prayed the Act of
Faith and the Act of Hope and the Acts of Charity and of Love. And she put a
palm on each of our heads and said The Lord is my Shepherd. And her voice
rose when she came to “Yea do I walk through the valley of death and I shall
fear no evil,” and also at the verse that said, “He has anointed my head with
oil, my cup runneth over.” Then she would say either the Glorious mysteries, or
the Sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary. But we prayed for one solid hour. Every
morning my mother prayed for one long foreday hour over her first two children
she was sending into the unknown.
My mother never slept, I
used to think. For when I went to the bathroom, she had a bucket of warm water
waiting for me. Hot water pipes is Trinidad is a city thing, and even so, I am
talking of the time before Independence, when we were still a colony of Mother
England. But after the prayers there was no order. You dressed while you were
eating, and meanwhile she packed the paper bags of lunch.
By
five thirty in the morning my brother and
I were out, waiting to catch the bus when it was going up the road to
turn. That was the only way to get a seat, because the bus, which was a forty-seater
was full and could pass you straight on its way down.
Some days we woke up late,
or the bus broke down. Then my father would suddenly appear out the road. For it
was one bus. Everybody knew when this old rack-a-tang bus was
leaving the village. If it did not leave that fact was known by the whole
village. Then my father would appear and he would stand with us by the roadside
until the bread van, or the newspapers van was going back to Arima, which was
the next town twelve miles on the road to town.
My father would flag down
the van, and the man would invariably say, What's going on, Teach." And after
the greeting, Teach would say, "I want you to drop these children off in Arima,
and make sure they get a car or bus going to town." That was when the money that
did not buy me nighties and gold and silver ribbons came out. The one thing I
never saw in our house was money. Money was kept in my father's pocket. We had
bus tickets, our lunch, and a one-dollar bill at a time for emergencies. If
you used it up you had to tell on what you had used it, and depending on
what you had used it for, you would get another one. I have always looked at my
father's hand emerging from his pocket with interest. It was not that he was a
stingy man, but it was only in these emergencies that I saw him put his hand in
his pocket, and I was always surprised at the color of the bills that came
out.
And
the bread van man, or the newspapers van man would take the bills and we would
sandwich ourselves in front between him and his helper, or get in at the back
with the bread or the newspapers and the van would go the
twelve miles of wasteland between us and the next town. I didn't understand then
what was happening to me. But I understand it now in retrospect.
On regular mornings, before I
came off the bus, I would look across the seats at my brother, and he would be
looking at me. We never sat near to each other unless there was no other seat in
the bus. And when I came out of the bus I looked for my brother from the
pavements again, and we would not wave to each other, because the other
scholarship winners and the civil servants and the people in the bus with their
sons in the Royal Jail were looking at us. And I would then walk down Fifth
Avenue into a totally foreign world to spend the day. I was bright, so I did
well, but I have spent a lot of my life just looking on.
School was over at two
thirty. I had to make sure I did not get a detention. What did I do when I got
detentions? I was so scared about how I would get home, that in my first two
years of college I can only remember one. And that was one with the whole class
when the whole class was making noise. And then I used my red dollar. And I
still missed the bus, but I got to Arima and I did something my mother told me
never to do. I took a PH taxi and came home.
What I do know is that every
holiday my father came down on one Saturday to see the Principal, and before he
came he hired a van and brought down a load of oranges and plantains and pigeon
peas and corn and mangoes and breadfruit, and all the things that we ate in
the country.
Not things I saw much of when I went to town. At home we call them ground
provisions. But in case you think that was a form of bribery, that is not why I
got few detentions.
Not
long after I began
secondary school, Trinidad and Tobago became independent and secondary schools
went up one by one. One went up in my village, called North Eastern College. But
I can tell you I was among the first girls from the ordinary class of women in
my country to get a secondary education. I was aware of that and I intended to
make that count. Today in my country everybody goes to secondary school.
How could I not make a
success of it? How could I dare? But I could not have done it alone. The
ingredients: a steady family, a vision and prayer, and people who care--that is
the message. Not to give less than what has been given you--to bring
gratification to yourself, your country, your parents and the world with the
talents you have been given. That is the measure of my achievement.
Eventually my father bought
a car as more of his children went to secondary school and then we all crammed
in it, while my mother poured out the car-breakfast. But to finish the story of
the day I got the detention. I got off the PH car at my corner and crossed the
road. And there in the shadows of the sidewalk was my mother standing in her
house dress. With all her worry and anxiety, she had not bothered to change her
clothes. And that was standard during my secondary education: Whenever I
was late my mother was standing on the sidewalk in the corner of the rose bushes
waiting for me to appear in the dusk.
The Gift of Tongues- Cynthia James
I had just started to teach and was now
becoming accustomed to my duties, one of which was to organize the efforts of
the students of my third-form class whenever there were school shows. The Parade
of Bands for that year's Carnival, the Carnival of l 970, was my first
experience. I had no intention of doing anything to help the students in this
event. Carnival was not my thing. I had grown up associating it with vulgarity
and what we call low-class behavior. And in fact I secretly felt that all this
wildness being introduced into the extra-curriculum was what was contributing to
the lowering of standards in the schools.
So my class decided on which girl would be the
queen all by itself, and they decided whom she would portray. They did the
research and raised the money themselves through cake sales and cricket matches.
I was not getting myself involved in that, and I was glad that the girl's
parents were "mas people." They would see to making the costume. But I had to
know the barest essentials in case the principal asked. The girl was playing
some African queen or other, and I remember thinking that at least the choice
was right. For the girl, I mean. She was wide-eyed, with skin as black and as
smooth as midnight, so that when she looked at you, you saw mainly the flash of
stars, her eyes.
The Carnival afternoon came, and I stationed
myself upon the balcony intending to be what I had always been, a spectator
above the prancing crowd below. Recorded calypso music rang out of the PA
system, and I on top just watched the whole procedure, the individual
masqueraders, kings and queens coming down the green one by one, then slowly
taking the center spot of the courtyard that all the prancing had reduced to
dust.
For all my nonchalance, when my queen was
announced, my heart began to throb. I saw her take up her position on the edge
of the arena, and Good Lord! I was excited. But it was because I knew her, and she
was representing "my efforts," which, of course, I have told you about. From the
balcony where I was, I could see the brocaded purple of her gown, her tall,
tightly wrapped head tie, and I could see the edge of her train. And she was
dancing on the spot, waiting, I did not know for what. But I was waiting, too,
to see her because I had not seen any of what they had been doing before, but
from what I was seeing now, I was very proud
She kept dancing on the spot and the music was a
frenzy and everybody was
looking expectant. But she was not moving off the green grass into the beaten
pranced down dusty spot. Then I found myself rushed by some teacher holding a
microphone who said to me something like, "Where is your commentary?" And I
stupidly said, "What commentary?" And the teacher holding the mike said, "Your
queen is waiting. Here, go on, go on!"
All of this had nothing to do with me, but
nobody would forgive me if I let the program
down. I looked at my queen who was getting nervous on the spot and who
was looking up to where everybody was now looking. AT ME! I had no choice. I
just opened my mouth and introduced her to the crowd. I said, "And from Three B
we have Merlin François, portraying the African queen in all her splendor." And
I saw Merlin move off.
What energy! It was as if she were saying, "You
know how long I was waiting to do just
this, to let go and play my mas!" I can't
tell you all of what I said. All I know is that I
was just as dependent on her as she was on me, a true African queen
showing the audience who she was, her royal-ness and her life-giving-ness in that swirling dust.
Sometimes I could not see her, just the
purple brocade, giving light to the edges
of each flower in the pattern of overlapping whorls --cashew pink and yellow poui, and a lot
of burnt colors like marigold and
sapodilla and tambran daisan brown. And the dust, man, the dust was just flying
around.
And the calypsonian's voice was a background on which mine was
superimposed. Because I remember screaming above the feedback to be heard. You
know how you can feel you are being shut out when you are trying desperately not
to be shut out above all the energy and commotion in a dense enclosure. And
Merlin had gone past half the stage and was nearing the last quarter, going off.
And my eyes were like the eyes of the crowd, just following her. And the whole
field around the edge was chanting and prancing and she was coming off.
When I passed back the mike, the whole balcony
was in a scandal. Teachers were hugging me and laughing and punching me as if I
had had my baptism. They were doing as if I had passed some test.
Carnival is the theater that most energizes me
as a Trinidadian. I have revisited that experience in my mind countless times
and have always been electrified. After that, when something special happened, I
wrote it down. In a very dramatic way, I feel that was the moment I was given
"the gift of tongues.”
