Caribbean Spaces: Escapes from Twilight Zone

7. Connecting Stories: My Grandmother's Violin

7 Connecting Stories My Grandmother’s Violin As a little girl, I always remembered my grandmother Edith Gordon Boyce playing a violin. She also taught everyone in the family to play the piano. A love of music always permeated a home in which it was not unusual for aunts and uncles to sit at a piano and play jazzy tunes. In his teen years, my brother was a member of a Barataria group that would entertain at events. In my mother’s words, he was a bit of a piano virtuoso at a young age, playing at five for Edric Connor, a musician who would subsequently migrate to England. When I was eight years old, my grandmother died, so I never got the full benefit of the transfer of this musical legacy. But I still remember my grandmother playing the violin as clearly as I remember her bathing me in the backyard and rubbing my skin hard with her fingers as she spoke to me in a French patois. My aunt played the organ and piano in the A.M.E. church in Barataria. And in her old age, all that was left in her memory was the ability to direct a choir, which she did to the amusement of those around her. My grandfather died before I was born, so I never met him, but I have a memory of a photograph of him, a tall, brown-skinned man in a military uniform, on the wall of our family home in Barataria. His birth certificate surfaced among my mother’s papers, as born in Arnos Vale Estate, St. Vincent. There is a Barbados connection somewhere, which I was told as a child, but of course did not listen seriously enough then to remember and perhaps told myself that Boyce was a plantation owner’s name in any case. Still, there were only two or three families with that last name in Trinidad in my childhood, with a family suggestion that they were all related in some distant way. 130 . chapter 7 There were also always family stories of a great-grandfather who was a wealthy Tobago entrepreneur, but they always seemed like just that, family fiction.MyuncleEddierelatedtomeseveralversionsofthesestories,including an ownership of horses by the Gordon brothers. None of this had any tangible meaning until a relative came through to visit me a few years ago as she made a brief tour through the United States. As though on a mission one evening, she shared with me some photographs of this family ancestor, Baker Gordon, and some material that she thought I should have that a historian had collected and passed on to her. Earnestine Cordner, my cousin who shared this detail, died the year after we had this conversation, which seems remarkable now. But in many ways, it reveals how tenuous family stories in the diaspora can be if connecting stories remain like broken threads in a tapestry. Still, there are so many loose pieces yet to be connected, abandoned memories that seem unconnected until a bit more detail is provided. I finally understood the family history, which explained why my grandmother played a violin. Notes on Sinai Josiah Baker (Gordon) (1855–1926), Musician and Businessman, from Tobago Newspapers The News, November 14, 1885, p. 2 S. J. Gordon, formerly of Plymouth, has now opened his tailoring establishment in Main Street, Scarborough, in the premises recently vacated by Daylight newspaper (12 Nov. 1885). Mirror, November 30, 1909, p. 4. S. J. Gordon started a new soda water factory opposite the Blue Store and Mr. J. E. Roberts’ store in Scarborough. He imported Herman Lachapelle’s improved machinery, and his “aerated drinks are of excellent quality.” He can supply all of Tobago at a very cheap rate. Mirror, May 1, 1913, p. 4 Scarborough Brotherhood [an organization that was started in the Methodist church in 1909 and continued well into the 1920s, open to people of all religions, held debates and discussions, and promoted lectures on agriculture, pest control, health, and so on] held a farewell for Rev G. Godson, who was leaving for Barbados. . . . Archie John, S. J. Gordon and George Wheeler played the violins. . . . my grandmother’s violin · 131 Mirror, November 27, 1916, p. 12 S. J. Gordon read a paper on Duty to the Scarborough Brotherhood on Tuesday evening last. Labour Leader, February 6, 1926, p. 13 Sinai Josiah Gordon died 23 Jan. 1926, aged...