July 06th
The unrelenting rains ceased, dark clouds lifted, and we slowly began to count the dead — thirteen. From the muddy hills of Soufriere, to inundated valleys at Dennery, communities across the island slowly retreated into mourning. Hurricane Cathy had swept across Saint Lucia leaving death and destruction among our population of a mere 179,000 souls.
News of the deaths travelled slowly. Telephone service was down and would be for several days; many homes remained without electricity well into the next week. For a while, many were left mercifully ignorant of the extent of the tragedy. The death toll would rise as neighbours discovered neighbours under the remains of homes they had saved all their lives to build.
When night fell, though all were weary, only few slumbered. Those who slept were haunted by images of muddy remains, faces tinged with the unmistakable pallor of death. Many jumped from sleep, cold and trembling in the dark, struggling against nightmares of the wind ripping nails loose from the galvanised roof.
Twenty-four hours earlier, none of us could have imagined the magnitude of what awaited us in the hurricane’s wake.
*
July 05th
The only thing more suffocating than the tell-tale heat of an approaching hurricane is the mounting anxiety, so thick it hangs in the air like the smell of rotting fish on a hot day. On the radio, Prime Minister Lewis pleaded with the country to “take the necessary precautions to safeguard lives, livelihoods and property.” “Make every effort to be prepared and secure hurricane essentials – bottled water, batteries, candles,” he urged. We were advised to stock up on at least a week’s worth of non-perishable food.
I wondered whether anyone bothered to tell him that there’s only so much you can do to prepare when cupboards and wallets are bare. I cannot remember a time when our kitchen held a week’s worth of food. Just the thought of Mama buying bottled water curled my lips into a wry smile. We had not bought milk or coffee in months. Ever since my father was laid off from his construction job, basic items like teabags had been replaced with leaves from the backyard.
Around midday, I hear loud hammering and find my father nailing old pieces of plywood over windows. Similar sounds echoed all along our street, men anxiously doing their best to protect their families from the unknown. Most of the houses stand incomplete, some with rooms awaiting windows and doors that will likely never be afforded.
My mother hands me a brand new $10 bill and a list. I slip on my worn sandals and make my way to the small shop down the road, a faint ray of sun playing along the money’s colourful edges. Since my father’s sudden unemployment, trips to the supermarket in town were rare. Instead, every few days my mother scrapes her purse, producing barely enough for a few pounds of flour, rice and lentils. Some days there were no coins, just a tightly folded note to the shopkeeper that I was warned not to read. At twelve I was old enough to know the discomfort of shame, so I was never tempted to read Mama’s note.
The little wooden shop is packed with sweaty, fleshy bodies. I squeeze my thin frame between the women elbowing their way through, stretching for cans of corned beef and mackerel quickly disappearing from unvarnished shelves.
“You buying the whole shop?”
The thundering voice startles me; three cans fall from my grasp. Ma Doodoo erupts in laughter as she leans forward, one hand on her massive knee for support while the other snatches the tins she frightened from my grip. When she rises to her full height I stare up, counting the thick dark strands of hair along the folds of her meaty chin. I collect whatever items I can get my hands on and make my way to the front of the shop, assaulted by a sour stench of stale alcohol heavy in the air.
As I leave, a man sitting outside flashes me a toothless grin, one of his red, bulbous eyes squeezing into a wink.
“Tell your mother Tony say hello.”
Tony’s attention immediately returns to the table in front of him, as another man slams a domino onto its surface, rattling empty beer bottles and plastic cups with shots of white rum waiting to be swallowed straight.
“Fellas, hurry up lose lemme buy my two tin of milk to reach home before that hurricane,” a domino partner jokes.
“Boy, sit your ass down, no hurricane not coming!” Tony kisses his teeth in annoyance.
I retrace my steps home, deciding not to share Tony’s greeting. I can already hear my mother getting upset.
‘Your father has his ways but thank God he not like these useless men around here. What kinda man drinking rum by the road while everybody preparing for a hurricane?’
*
The rain announces itself around 7:30, pounding the galvanise and forcing me to huddle in the living room between my parents and grandmother. It only grows louder as the night gets darker. A small scream escapes Granny’s lips as thunder claps outside. The lights suddenly go out and I cover my ears, squeezing my eyes shut against the flashes of lightning leaking through the window. Granny rocks back and forth, nervously caressing her rosary and mumbling a prayer. Papa paces around, checking doors and windows as Mama sits silently, watching the candle burn down slowly. We are all nervous. I am terrified simply because I am sure the sky is splitting open above us; they are fearful because they have lived long enough to recall similar nights. Granny counts herself lucky, unlike her siblings who died in the 1938 landslide at Ravine Poisson, a story I must learn more about to tell. Of course, I did not know then, but by the next day, I, too, would have my own stories of loss.
*
Doors and windows rattle throughout the night, and each frightening howl of the wind jolts Papa from his chair to resume his inspection. Mama brings us each a warm cup of bwadenn leaves she collected from the neighbour’s yard earlier and boiled by candlelight. The heat from the cup seeps through my fingers and as I take a slow sip of the sugarless tea, I am instantly hit by a deep longing for a mug of warm Milo. I close my eyes and can almost savour the chocolatey taste! Something wet hits my forehead, trickling down my nose; tiny droplets of rain have forced their way through an invisible hole in the roof.
The candle illuminates the droplets on my face as Mama quickly bundles me into the warmth of her lap. Papa places a bucket under the leak, the rhythmic pitter-patter unusually loud against the enamel surface. Somewhere in the distance galvanise flaps violently, fighting to hold steady against the wind. I wonder whether there are enough nails to keep the roof over our heads until morning. Mama’s breath is warm on my forehead as she prays, tightening her grip on me. Papa puts on his tall rubber boots to go outside and check on the loose galvanise but Granny’s anxious protests keep him inside. He sighs in defeat, resting his face in his calloused hands and slumping into the chair next to Mama. The rain drowns out all other sounds, but I don’t need to hear; I see him restless, tapping his fingers against the arm of the chair he built himself.
The incessant rain makes me think about water. How I’ve watched it sprinkled on the heads of infants baptised at church; how Seventh Day Adventists queue up to be dipped in seawater, publicly signalling their newfound salvation to the world. I think of the overflowing buckets I have carried from the standpipe near the main road; the times I played in the river near my grandfather’s farm, splashing water over my cousins. I remember the first time I learned to fear water. I was seven. It was the day my mother told me that my classmate had drowned at Bois Chadon Beach, trying to rescue her younger brother from the raging sea that eventually claimed both their lives.
*
I fall asleep on the old, faded living room rug, covered with a thin blanket. A crashing sound jolts me awake in time to hear my grandmother bawl: “Bondyé en syèl!” raising her voice to the heavens in a desperate plea. A hoarse cough rattles her chest as she starts a chorus of prayers. Another loud crash and Papa sprints to the kitchen window, returning moments later to announce that the mango tree fell, narrowly missing our roof. My mother’s lips move; I suspect in prayer. Though the rain and wind are persistent, I somehow manage to fall asleep again, occasionally awakened by a crack of thunder that sends me rushing into Mama’s arms.
*
July 06th
It’s morning. The wind and rain are gone and I awake to eerie stillness. Granny is sound asleep on the wooden settee, her face haggard from a full night of prayer. Sleep had barely left my eyes when my mother hands me two jerry cans to fetch water from the sous— a nearby spring the whole village turns to when there is no running water.
Papa returns from assessing the damage, looking relieved. There was no major destruction to the home he has been building for us well before I was conceived. All that’s needed is a patch here and there. He would attend to those minor repairs when he had a job again, earning enough to secure a small loan from the credit union in town. He affirms that he will surely find work before the next hurricane season, reassuring all of us, but I suspect himself, most of all.
I feel uncomfortable as I trudge to the water source, aware of an unusual stillness that seems at odds with the signs of desolation all about. Fallen trees line the streets, branches tangled in electric wires dragged free from uprooted poles. Several houses had been battered, broken louvres and window panes littering front lawns. Our neighbour Mr. Sonny sweeps muddy water from his living room, each stroke of the old broom ending in a deluge on his front step. Waterlogged bedding and threadbare clothing are haphazardly laid out in the front yard, his most private possessions on public display.
Across the street Miss Linda sits in her small verandah looking defeated. Behind her, her tiny wooden house is missing boards, and her entire roof is gone. Several men rummage through the galvanise around her house, seeking out what can be salvaged. I see my father on a ladder carefully balanced against the side of Miss Linda’s house, his hand outstretched awaiting a piece of galvanise. He does not see me as he concentrates on hammering rusty nails into equally rusted iron sheets.
*
News of the first death reaches me at the crowded sous. Miss Lydia, our seamstress from down the road, whispers to Miss Mary from church that Tony’s youngest daughter had drowned. Coldness creeps up my neck as Miss Lydia recounts how the engorged La Ressource river had surged against a series of diversions, insistent on reclaiming its original course through the community. The roiling waters swept through the family’s house taking everything in its path, including the small child. They say Miss Sylvie has refused to leave the child’s side ever since her body was retrieved.
“And you know all now so Tony by the rum shop drunk like a fish?”
“Poor djab Sylvie, she will have to go alone when Rambally come for the body.”
The wait for water is agonising. With empty paint buckets and jerry cans in hand, women from near and far impatiently tap slippered feet against the dirt road, fists balled against bouncing hips. Just hours earlier, they had feverishly prayed for an end to the same rains that supplied the sous with an endless stream of water they impatiently waited to draw from now.
It doesn’t take them long to find distraction in their neighbours’ misfortunes.
“You hear Sonny make the lady house flood?”
“That house self, twenty years it cannot finish build. Every month Albertha sending money from England.”
“But Sonny taking the lady money to feed other women!”
The part of me that is becoming all too familiar with shame is thankful that my father is not one of those men. Men like Tony and Sonny who cause the village gossips to whisper about their wives with contrived sympathy.
*
When I return with the water my aunt is perched on the settee, a chipped mug trembling in her hands. She tells Mama they have rushed Miss Tattie to hospital. Toothless and hunched-back, Miss Tattie is as much a part of our close-knit Baptist church as its concrete pillars. Aunty says the rain and wind were merciless, stripping Miss Tattie’s ancient, crooked house of every piece of rotting wood. Not even the frame was left standing.
Determined to weather the hurricane in her own home, Miss Tattie had stubbornly refused her neighbour’s invitation to shelter in his house. When the first light of morning stretched across the sky, Mr. Bush, her neighbour, made his way to Miss Tattie’s house, only to find the small wooden structure was no longer there. The old woman was discovered crouched near the ruins of her home, trembling and delirious from a night of brutal exposure to the elements. Mr. Bush instantly regretted not forcing her to evacuate the house at the first sign of rain. His regret will only grow thicker and darker when Miss Tattie eventually loses a long, painful battle with pneumonia.
*
Throughout the day a stream of villagers visits, many seeking Papa’s help. They bring with them small sacks of ground provisions, fruits and vegetables which my mother accepts, promising that Papa will render assistance as soon as he can. Along with these offerings, they bring stories of Hurricane Cathy’s deadly passage across the island. Each story has been repeated numerous times, so by the time it makes its way from one village to the next, it is a garbled mess of half-truths.
But beneath each tale is an obituary, a life lost in a flash of rain and lightning; in Vieux Fort, a policeman died, crushed by a concrete wall when he tried to rescue a family from their crumbling home. Old, grey Mister Sixtus heard the news on his little battery-powered radio. At least that’s what Miss Paula was told by her nephew, who heard it from the woman who sells coal pots by the market in Vieux Fort.
Several communities away in Bexon, a farmer drowned along with his cows as he tried to relocate them to higher ground. Old Man Zo shakes his head as he tells the story, remarking that the cows would have fetched a pretty penny come Christmas. Like many in our village, he has come to ask for Papa’s help. His own cows must be rounded up miles away in Grace, after several of them broke free of their ropes and escaped his tiny pasture.
News also arrives of another farmer’s family in mourning in Millet. The truth must have gotten lost in translation, details subtracted and added according to convenience and imagination. By the time it reached halfway across the island to our cramped living room, all we understood was that a sheet of galvanise had sliced a man’s head off, sending it rolling into a ravine. They claim his head remained jammed among the empty plastic bottles and cans, quarrelling loudly all night, a penchant he was known to possess all his life. In fact, we were told that when the wind hurled the galvanise across his yard, he had been busy trying to secure an old avocado tree, all the while arguing over the money he would lose from the fallen fruit.
*
By midday Mama is tired of listening to stories and keeping count of the ever-expanding list of requests to relay to Papa, who refuses to pause from the repair job on Miss Linda’s roof to eat. Mama is annoyed, grumbling to herself as she covers his lunch of boiled green bananas and salt fish stewed in onions and ketchup. As I make my way through the living room, most of the morning’s visitors have disappeared, replaced by new faces. They come with fresh news, grateful for an audience.
An old woman from church brings news of a landslide in Soufriere that swept away an entire house with a family of five trapped inside. Saturated from hours of rainfall, the earth had become unable to bear its own weight, stumbling down the hillside in one consuming mass of rocks and soil. She is in tears as she tells of how people in Soufriere are still digging through the rubble, hoping to find someone alive. Mama mumbles a quick prayer, absentmindedly grabbing my hand and pulling me close.
My grandmother retires to her room, shuffling away from the news as fast as her ailing body allows. She keeps a well-worn bible on her dresser and somewhere between the dog-eared pages is a faded newspaper clipping from another landslide, 69 years ago. She was only 10 in 1938 when the landslide claimed the lives of her younger sisters, 5 and 7.
Because Granny has left the living room, she does not hear Miss Rose who comes bearing news of a second landslide, this time in Bexon, a community near where my grandmother lost her sisters and her innocence. As Miss Rose tells it, two bodies have been found and people fear more may be buried beneath the mud.
“I surprise is only two people that die. Bexon does flood before you spit on the ground,” Miss Rose jests.
My mother gives her a sharp cut eye and her cheeks redden. Long before I was born, Mama and Papa lived in a small wooden house in Bexon, a community known for being ravaged by successive floods. Miss Rose’s face grows hot with embarrassment as Mama recounts how in those days the mere prediction of rain would awaken a deep panic in her that only increased with each droplet that eventually fell. I listen with interest as she recalls the relief she felt when Papa finally found a piece of land to squat on, far from Bexon’s floodplains.
Mama’s recollections are interrupted by someone calling ‘good afternoon’ from our front step. Heads immediately turn towards the tall young woman whose shapely frame fills the doorway.
“Marie, what you doing by my house?” Mama hisses.
“Where Owen?” Marie asks, looking around at the room inexplicably silenced by her presence.
“He not here!” Mama dismisses her, attempting to close the screen door in her face.
A hand stretches past my mother to keep the door open. It is my grandmother’s.
“Julie, let’s hear what the girl need,” Granny is calm, her voice steady.
Seizing the opportunity, Marie says, quickly, “A tree fall on my house. I come for Owen to move it.”
“Where all your men?” Mama asks, an uncharacteristic edge in her voice.
Miss Rose huffs before taking a seat, annoyed that she has lost the spotlight. The landslide is all but forgotten as my mother confronts Marie with a haughty stare. I am surprised. I never knew my mother to be capable of meanness. She must be tired. After all, she barely slept. Marie utters something under her breath, but all I can hear is my father’s name. The exaggerated gasp from Miss Rose, coupled with Mama’s stony silence, tells me it is something particularly unpleasant.
News of the last death comes later that afternoon, well after Marie leaves and Granny leads us all in a long prayer, thanking God for sparing our home and most of all, our lives.
*
July 08th
At my father’s wake, an endless stream of people mingle about the yard, stopping to pat Mama on the shoulder.
“Owen was a good man.”
“A kind, helpful man.”
The mourners drink cups of strong, black coffee and guzzle white rum in short glasses my mother retrieved from the cabinet in the dining room. I never knew we had so many good glasses. People ask how I’m doing, sharing warm memories of Papa. An endless parade of nameless faces repeats the same kind words which make less and less sense to me. Like Mama, I’m still waiting for Papa to take a break from Miss Linda’s roof and come home for lunch.
I briefly wonder what expression was trapped in his grey eyes when he tumbled from the ladder, trying to catch the hammer that slipped from his hand. I refuse to imagine his face contorted in anguish, his body plummeting headfirst. Or to picture his broken neck, angled unnaturally away from his body, inches away from the ladder. I hope he did not suffer, and if he did, that it was at least brief.
Two days and Mama has hardly left the kitchen table where she received the news. On the first day, it took several hours before Granny gently coaxed her away from the plate she had lovingly placed at the head of the table where Papa always sat. There was a trace of tears in Granny’s eyes as she uncovered the plate, filling the house with the sour smell of stale food. The odour rose as she flung the food out into the backyard, the pungent smell forcing me to vomit my lunch into the kitchen sink. That night the thin plywood walls did nothing to muffle the heaving sobs coming from Mama’s room.
All I have been able to think about in those two days since Papa’s death are his soft grey eyes, the way the corners crinkled when he smiled. I think of the last time I saw him, balanced on the ladder. I wish he had looked away from the repairs so I could see his smiling grey eyes one last time. I picture them shining from a glint of sunlight as Papa pauses to wipe the sweat from his face, deeply tanned from years of working in the scorching sun. Construction. Carpentry. Carrying bananas. Any job that earned enough to keep us all fed.
I attempt to escape a string of sympathisers, making my way past a group of men playing cards. Tony is slumped over the table clutching an empty bottle of Bounty rum.
“Where the rest of the rum?” he demands. “I mourning my child, you know!”
For years to come this will be Tony’s refrain as he spends his days withering away outside whichever rumshop takes enough pity to offer him a piece of cardboard to lay his head. On occasion, the story of his daughter’s death will elicit enough sympathy to earn him a drink, even though patrons have heard it more times than they care to remember. He will not know, or care, that while he loses himself to the bottle, his wife loses herself to grief. She, too, will depend on the kindness of strangers, until grief suffocates her in her sleep.
With Tony’s refrain ringing in my ears, I sneak into the backyard, towards the fallen mango tree, from where I notice a woman approaching. Strange, I think to myself, why didn’t she use the front gate like everybody else? A small boy is in tow, clutching her skirt. As they emerge out of the night’s shadows, I recognise Marie. The boy, no older than four or five, seems uncomfortable, as if he is unsure why he is here. I feel a strange yet comforting kinship in the imagined bond of our mutual confusion and find myself oddly at ease when he nervously smiles at me. I return his smile, our eyes lock, and I take in the soft grey of his, shining with a familiar twinkle; a twinkle I have known all my life.
Amanie Mathurin
is a Saint Lucian writer and documentary producer/director who tells stories about Caribbean people, their history, culture, and the realities that shape their experiences. Powered by a passion for creative advocacy and cultural preservation, much of her work explores issues that affect small island developing states such as structural inequalities, cultural erasure, climate change, extractive tourism, and unsustainable development.
Amanie’s work has been published in Callaloo and The Shallow Tales Review. She is a Saint Lucia Island Scholar, a former television journalist, and a recipient of the National Youth in Media Award. Social media handles: @LiterallyAmanie (Instagram and Twitter).
