The Polished Hoe by Austin Clarke Read Free Book Online Page A

Island.
    “It took Ma until she was on her deathbed before she could empty her heart and tell me. And seek her redemption before God called her to her judgment.
    “Psalm 51, Constable, in the Book of Psalms .
    “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness.
    “Ma was reading this Psalm in the Bible, for days and days, just before she died. As a warning to me, she eventually confess. But he, Mr. Bellfeels, was already inside my system.
    “She was sixteen the night it happened. When he took her.
    “She went to her grave, at the ripe age of seventy-eight.
    “Sixty-one, sixty-two years. Three-score-and-two, she carried that burden like I carried my wishbone, in secrecy, like a skeleton; speechless, and with no utterance. A stain on a white dress, in the wrong place, and that won’t come out, regardless of the bleaching you put it through. A obsession, just like I walked with my wishbone. Not one iota passed her lips. Three-score-and-two years. A whole lifetime. Vouchsafe in the books of the Old Testament.
    “Women of her generation knew how to carry burdens. And how to bury them. Inside their hearts. Concealed in their blood. They were strong women, then. Tough women. Women who gave birth in the fields today, and returned to raise their hoe and lift their load two afternoons later; within forty-eight hours. In the same fields. Yes.”
    She takes the fat-bellied crystal glass from the mahogany side table, and raises it to her lips. She makes no sound as she takes a sip. She places the snifter back onto the white doily in the middle of the rich, brown, shining table made by the Village joiner and cabinetmaker, from mahogany wood, in the shape of a heart. Three others, scattered through the large front-house, are in the shape of a spade, a diamond and a club. Each has the same white crocheted doily on it. One has her Bible.
    “Ma lost the baby conceived in rape, the night His Majesty, her King, George-the-Fiff, danced in Bimshire. ‘My God, the blood.’ That is all Ma said. That is all she remember. It was my great-gran, Ma’s gran-mother, with her knowledge of bushes and vines and leaves used for medicines; and cures; plus a lil touch of obeah and witchcraft, that saved Ma. Ma say that Gran brought this knowledge with her from Almina, in Africa. My great-gran. Yes.
    “She had a name that sounded African. But I could never pronounce it, the right way. It sounded something like Agne Beraku ; but in time, it went completely outta my mind, altogether. I do not know my great-gran’s African name. Yes.
    “I would see her, my great-gran-mother, just before she passaway, bent almost in half; her face scenting the bushes; picking and picking; putting a leaf or a twig or a stem inside her mouth and chew on it, to test it; and then spitting it out; with her braided-up grey hair slipping out from underneat her white head-tie, and hanging low to the ground, searching-through worthless rocks and stones as if they were precious pearls and corals, picking a twig from this bush, a twig from the next; and putting all of them in her apron. Gran wore a apron, even when she was long-pastworking in people kitchens. She spent most of her life in the kitchen at the Aquatic Club. It’s a wonder to me, knowing what she must-have-went-through in them days, that she didn’t put a lil twig from the wrong bush, or a stem of Poison Ivy, a lil-lil piece of the root, in the tureens of turtle soup those bastards liked her to cook for them! Yes.
    “My great-gran. Her apron was like a badge of honour. In her apron, always white and starch-and-ironed, and pleated in straight lines from her waist down to below her two ankles, she would put those bushes—sersey bush, Christmas bush, miraculous bush, lignum-vitae bush, soursop leaves and leaves from the puh-paw trees, tamarind tree leaves and sugar-apple leaves . . . I don’t remember the other bushes! But I know that the sersey bush is what did the trick. Sersey bush that Gran boiled