Sex and the Citizen: Interrogating the Caribbean

Colonial Girl: And What Would It Be Like

Colonial Girl And What Would It Be Like Michelle Cliff I And what would it be like The terrain of my girlhood [with you] There is no map Ok. Mangoes then the sweet liquidity of star apple custard apple sweetsop cut with sharp tamarind washed down with coconut water ginep slippery papaya where restless baby-ghosts vent their furies all devoured against trade winds Will I eternally return to the Trade? Then— there’s more by which I mean hibiscus, jasmine, night-blooming and otherwise by which I mean the more ancient pre-Columbian pre-Contact growth 252 Michelle Cliff Edenic underbrush unyielding thick as a woman’s thatch like the [girls’ school legend] un-drawered tennis mistress who or whom we slid beneath to glimpse the bright, thick ginger womanly— God, we wanted to be women, never knowing what that meant. —patch thatch so thick you’d never guess she was British [our prejudice] And banana leaves wide as a girl’s waist—sometimes and as long as a girl’s feathered legs which exude the juice of the fruit without a taste of the fruit dependable as any aunt down a falls once owned by an aunt we flowed on the impossible green into the equally impossible blue lit by the height of an impossible light taking our half-naked selves down the sweet into the salt water and women women and water my grandmother’s river my distant aunt’s falls no one else was allowed in other children [that didn’t feel right] revolutionaries are made, not born. II Bougainvillea grows [according to the botanist] 253 Colonial Girl in showy profusion— but scentless— disappoints III Under the high-leggéd mahogany bed caciques at each corner like apostles or caryatids the tail of a scorpion is set to strike transparent dangerous I know its poison. IV All feels wild from this distance. V One time at Cable Hut I fell into a sinkhole down and down and down but came back up suddenly One time I had my period and swam way out past the coral reef and wondered if a shark would be drawn to me as the warm salt drew the blood out and the sea roared One time I speared a lobster clean underwater at Lime Key One time I brushed beside the flimsy nightdress of a jellyfish and have a mark on my thigh to prove it One time I dodged an alligator in a swamp by the Carib’s edge my mouth gorged on a hundred oysters their grit becoming pearl against my teeth One time I played with a cousin’s cock underwater— he taught me to shoot coconuts between the eyes so they rained around us on the sand it was the least I could do Those were the dangerous days There was nothing to stop us it seemed VI There is no map only the most raggéd path back to my love so much so she ended up in the bush 254 Michelle Cliff at a school where such things were taken very seriously severely and I was left missing her never ceasing and she was watched for signs and I was left alone missing her never ceasing and she was not allowed to write at least she never did and I walked the length and breadth of the playing fields I have never felt so lost not like that and I wanted to be dead that’s all finally the headmistress and head girl found me in the stacks weeping violently against spines of biology running into history I can see myself in the lapsed documentary of memory curled up against books, shelves salting the sea island cotton of my blouse wanted to lose my self water tearing down my face, school badge with cross & crown & Latin motto my parents were summoned the word was not spoken I was told to forget everything I would never see her again I would never see her again except with my mind’s eye and to this day golden they rifled my hiding place ransacked my words read me aloud on the verandah under the impossible sun my father uttering “When you’re twenty we’ll laugh about this.” that I remember 255 Colonial Girl they took me, on the advice of the doctor who delivered me...