A Very Old Young Woman

She's only about 5 or 6, but has the face of an old soul. Shy and quiet, she moves like a little old woman about the yard. She's carrying some kind of weight I can't quite put my finger on. She always wears the same expression: hopeful, curious, worried....

We took her to the sea one day. I don't know if she'd ever been there before. She was the first in the car, but the last one in the water. The enormity of the beach and the ocean gave her pause.

My daughters helped her up on an inflatable raft, certainly her first time with such a magnificent toy. Within seconds she'd tumbled over the side and without any fuss or flailing arms, she slowly sank to the bottom, her eyes wide, looking up at the sky through the water.

"That's just how she looked, mommy," said my daughter. "She just sank like a rock, on her back, looking up at us." A little hopeful, a little curious, and undoubtledly a little worried.

A Very Old Young Woman
Ink and watercolor on paper.

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Meeting Miss Una

I checked myself out of the Black River clinic against the advice of the sole doctor in attendance. They had no x-ray equipment and no plans for treating me that day so I wanted out and I wanted to get to an actual hospital.

Or so I thought.

No ambulance service was available so Peter hailed down a local driver who insisted on the incredibly acceptable amount of $5 U.S. to transport me to the hospital in Savanna La Mar, some 40 minutes away. I had a makeshift splint on my leg, a shot of demerol, and delictately-split designer jeans, so we were off. Before we were allowed to depart, the nurse insisted on a $3 U.S. payment for services rendered. Done.

The hospital in Sav was not what I expected. I was wheeled in on a gurney, along a sidewalk lined with what seemed like hundreds of people, all ages and sizes, and all curiously interested in the white woman being wheeled past to the ER entrance. I guess it is human nature to stare down into the face of someone on a gurney as they pass, but it is downright bizarre to be on the receiving end, with stranger after stranger just staring you in the face.

After a long wait, various questions and inspections, I was admitted to the women's surgical ward and ascended to the 2nd floor in a rickety freight elevator. I was to spend the night; there were no x-ray technicians on duty on a Sunday so I would have to wait until morning to get a diagnosis for my shattered right leg.

The ward was large and full, with nearly 50 women occupying the narrow beds. An aisle ran down the center of the building, and there were several clusters of 4 beds on either side, broken up by low dividers. The walls were a bright, gaudy turquoise blue. The windows were not windows at all, but slatted wooden shutters, open to the outside, without screens. Remind me to tell you of the bird which flew in one side and out the other, the next morning.

I saw the bed reserved for me, but it had no sheets. It seems we had to provide our own. As I lay on the gurney by the nurses' station, a cockroach crawled along the guardrail. Hmmm. I wasn't certain that I had improved my situation.

Peter had disappeared briefly after I was admitted and suddenly re-appeared, bearing in one hand a small plastic bag filled with peeled oranges and cut-up pineapple and in the other, a small neat suitcase. Behind him stood a tiny, older woman with a cluster of short braids peeking out from under a turned-backward baseball cap. She wore a delicately flowered short-sleeved shirt, and a dark cotton skirt which hung below her knees. I couldn't see her feet.

"This is my mother."

Oh my. I offered my hand and introduced myself. And she shook it with a shy smile. I was surprised to see that although she had most of her teeth, several were black and rotting. A few had long gone. But Miss Una had packed me some sheets and proceeded to help make my bed. After the orderlies gently moved me from the gurney, I made room for Miss Una to sit near my feet. She gently smoothed the sheets but didn't speak much, except for a single word or two, and only when Debbie or I spoke to her.

Under the circumstances, small talk was virtually impossible. She was inscrutable. I offered her one of the oranges Peter had brought me. We both chomped away on them, it was a good alternative to conversation.

Meeting Miss Una
Ink and watercolor on paper
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Before we lost track of Poochie -

We took her to the sea.

Poochie was cast out by her mudda an' fadda and sent to live with Miss Una out inna country. Montego Bay was no place for a 5-year-old whose mother had no time fi she. The ghettos of Mobay were ruff enuff and one more unwanted likkle girl was bound to find a better life out in the rural yards of the parish of Westmoreland than the streets of the city.

Seen?

Poochie was soon under the stern watch of Miss Una out in the wide open hinterlands of Savanna La Mar, some 20 miles west of Negril, along the south coast of Jamaica. Miss Una was the aunty of a cousin of Poochie's mudda or half-sista of a cousin of an aunty or a half-sista of her cousin or, well, it doesn't really matter.

Miss Una took Poochie in without a second thought. Even tho' Miss Una was finally finished raising her own pickney.

Miss Una and her youngest daughter, Felecia, shared a bed in her two-room house. One more likkle girl squeezed in under the covers didn't put anybody out. So Poochie stayed. And stayed. And stayed.

Miss Una is my mother-in-law. And my two little daughters, her grandaughters, loved Poochie. Poochie was as foreign and as mysterious as a jackfruit, a soursop, a plate of ackee. And she was a girl who knew how to climb a ginnep tree in a flash and deliver a bunch of ripe juicy fruit, fearlessly shoo away the loose grazing goats and knew which little shop on the lane had the coldest boxed drinks. Poochie could run up an' dung pon da gravel barefoot, while my girls didn't dare take off their sandals for fear of piercing their soft city-girl feet.

And when we visited Jamaica, we'd always take Poochie and a handful of other pickney to the sea. We'd buy her one fresh bath suit and take her to the ocean for a swim, followed by platefuls of jerk chicken and endless bottles of Pepsi or Kola Champagne. The exotic seaside was a place she saw once a year, when friends or family fram farrin would load up a car with all the little yard pickney an' tek dem a beach.

But one year Poochie was no longer in the yard with Miss Una. Something bad had happened to Poochie.

As if enuff bad tings had not happened to Poochie already.

A lonely, old coot of a man on the lane had taken to asking for Poochie's help to collect limes way out inna bush, several mornings a week. Poochie was permitted to go as her share of limes would contribute to the family funds.

Unitl it became clear that very few limes, if any, were being collected.

Long hot hours of walks way out inna bush often resulted in just an empty bucket. And a Poochie who grew despondent, angry and withdrawn.

Poochie was barely 12 when she was sent back to Montego Bay. After all, no one could send the Old Coot off the lane. So the little girl, who had already been cast out once for her own good, was returned-to-sender for the same reason.

We don't know what has become of Poochie....

Before We Lost Track of Poochie
Ink and watercolor on paper

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Wasn't gonna post on the weekends --

But I want to move on from these. So here's the original painting of the woman with beads (top) and two variations. The third (bottom) is actually a different woman, but I thought she made a good addition to the series. I find when I paint a series, painting the same thing over and over again but in a decidedly different manner, it forces me to try new things. I experiment, whereas previously I might have just depended on old techniques. This is particularly fruitful when I'm pleased with the first result. Then everything that follows is gravy -- no pressure.

"Beads No. 2" (top)  Ink and watercolor on paper. Purchase a print here.

"Beads No. 3" (center) Ink and watercolor on paper. Purchase a print  here.

"Beads No. 1" (bottom)  Ink and watercolor on paper. Purchase a print here.

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Annette No. 3

This is a 4"x6" watercolor -- I scanned the painting in stages, beginning with the ink line drawing  since I wasn't sure what direction I was going to go in terms of color. I tried something a little different from the saturated jewel tones I usually use. But after the first set of washes (middle pic) I decided to make the colors a bit richer, and brought up the contrast. I could have tinkered with this forever, but then risked it becoming muddy and overworked so -- c'est fini.

"Annette No. 3"  
Ink and watercolor on paper.
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