The Purple Doily [Chapter 1] Once upon a time there was a leper colony in Jamaica. If you wanted to get there today, you would have to find a man named Ernie McIntyre but who you would simply call Mr Mac, by his own insistence and also the insistence of others, including his mother who knew him by no other name. Mr Mac was famous for his great big belly, so surprisingly big that the buttons on the one side of his shirt were permanently estranged from the holes they were supposed to be married to on the other; he also had a great big head, and a sprawling set of buttocks, all of which he could somehow manage to squeeze into the front seat of a Lada taxi, you in the passenger seat, and then make the wild jerky ascent up the red dirt road lined on each side with the broad green leaves of banana trees. When the car reaches the crest of the hill, Mr Mac would stop, a welcome break, because if no one had warned you before about Mr Mac's driving, how he would press on the gas from the bottom of the hill and never ease off, not for any corner, not for any dip, not for any rock in the middle of the road, just gas gas gas all the way, the whole time giving you his own tour guide speech in a strange language which even if you could understand you would not hear because of the diesel engine; and if no on had warned you about all of this and you had made the great mistake of having a full breakfast, then all that food would have churned up and you would be close to sick. On the crest of the hill you would tumble out of the jeep, holding your stomach, while Mr Mac excitedly points to something below. 'Look, mate.' He would say this word, mate, because maybe you are from England and he is trying to impress you. 'Dung deh suh it deh. Yu nuh see it? Dung deh suh! Look nuh! Den wha mek yu a hole on pon yu belly like seh birt pain a hit yu? Look. See de zinc roof dem pint up through de mist. Deh suh we a guh.' You would not understand Mr Mac completely but you would look to where he was pointing and some of the words would then come together and make a kind of sense, for indeed, down there in the valley there were zinc roofs pointing up through the mist. And that's where you were going. Just as the Original Pearline Portious had back in 1941 while her mother was frozen under a guava tree. Pearline had stood on this same crest of a hilltop, except she had arrived by her own two feet. She had also looked down on the tin roofs and made the decision to walk down. This, despite her seventeen years of living in these mountains and never before having stepped foot on the trail. If she had continued to listen to the wise counsel of her family and friends and all those who lived in the mountains, she would not have made this journey, for they had said over and over that down there in the valley was a place of terrible sickness. But it wasn't curiousity that led Pearline Portious down the trail, unwittingly changing her life. That day she needed to sell a purple doily. The colour purple was a strange choice for a doily. It was accepted on the island that anything designed to cover wooden surfaces--table cloths, crocheted mats or doilies--was supposed to be white. Pearline's determination to crochet and knit in colours--pink, blue, red, green, purple--meant that not a single one of her creations were ever sold. The absolute failure of what was supposed to be an entrepreneurial endeavour did not upset Pearline. She considered herself an artist, and of the kind whose chief aim was to please herself. Every unsold item would then truly belong to her and she took great pleasure in finding a place for them in her room. It was a room which everyone in the village had toured and reluctantly admitted, despite still being convinced that each individual item was ugly, that the combination of them was something wonderful. They said it was as if the child lived inside a rainbow. Pearline's mother, of course, tried hard to dissuade her daughter from her useless and colourful habits. That very morning she had observed her daughter knitting the purple doily under a guava tree. 'Pearline girl, look on what you is doing nuh! It is just ugly. Nobody is going to buy something like that. You cannot afford to always be making things for yu own self.' 'Mama. I will get this one sold. I promise.' 'Eh! You can't even look me in the eyes and say that. Girl, you is just wasting time. Who really is going to buy that from you? We even looking on the same thing? It is purple, girl. Purple. Who you ever see with a purple doily in them good, good house?' 'I say I will get it sold, Mama.' 'Saying you going to get it sold not going to get it sold, Pearline. You is only full of talk. Look at me, girl. Is high time you grow up. And don't puff up yu face at me neither. I saying these things for yu own good. Me and yu father giving you money dat we never just pick up outa road easy suh. And we giving it to you only for you to make these--these purple pieces of stupidness that not going a damn place except inside yu room.' Pearline's ten fingers began trembling. They became useless, unable to continue the knitting which had happily occupied them before her mother's arrival. She kept her eyes fixed to the ground, unable to look up. Her mother was also trembling in anger. She had not intended for this confrontation to become a thing so big, and yet she knew it had to become bigger still. Having embarked on this road, she knew she had to walk its full length. So she stepped out of her slippers and onto the earth so her daughter would understand that the next words out of her mouth were serious. 'Alright, girl. Alright. You say you is going to sell this one. Well fine. Go and sell it. And I swear to you I will stay here on this piece of ground until that happen. Come thunderstorm or sunhot I not moving. You hearing me, child? Jesus Son of Mary would have to come down off him cross to move me. Cause is like you take me for some kind of poppyshow.' Pearline finally looked up, astonished. She knew that this threat was true, for mothers were always doing things like that. Her mama would stay right there. She would not go inside to sit or to cook or to sleep. She would not go to the farm ground to work. She would make the neighbours pass and see her as rooted as the tree she was standing under, and she would explain to them that it was her daughter that had made her into a poppyshow. She would stay there even for days until Pearline either sold the doily or came back and apologized saying Mama, you are right. It is time I grow up. So the Original Pearline Portious went off to the market, desperate to do what she had never been able to do before. The market on a Saturday morning is always a brand new city that has risen, as if by magic, with the sun. Its newness however does not make it clean. It is hot, stinking place full of that special breed of flies that remain unimpressed and unmoved by the hands that constantly swat at them. The city's lanes overflow with chocho, pumpkin, gungo peas, green bunches of callaloo and pods of yellow ackee. Women shout from their various stalls, their foreheads glistening under their bandanas. Yam! Dasheen! Cocoa! Each one holding out a scale, weighing a pound of this or a half-pound of that, careful always to give a little extra so that customers would come back. The fish-women gather around concrete sinks and run metal files up and down the bodies of snappers and mackerel; bright silver scales jump into the air and land softly on the women's heads like confetti. They call out, Snapper! Sprat! Goatfish! And an Indian man standing by a cart of cane, a sharp cutlass in his hand, sings out Sweet Sugar Cane! though it isn't quite so musical as the tall gentleman, his head wrapped in a turban, who walks up and down the lanes singing his one long note, Brooomie, Brooomie, a faggot of brooms stretched across his shoulders like the cross. It was amidst such a cacophony that the Original Pearline Portious tried to advertise her own purple doily. Pretty doily for sale! Pretty doily for sale! She pleaded and she jostled and she pushed it into people's faces. Ma'am, just take a look nuh. Look how it would look nice in yu house. Pretty doily for sale. But no one paid her the slightest mind. The market on a Saturday afternoon was always a quieter place than it was in the morning. The crowds would have thinned. The lanes would no longer overflow with produce. The ice from the fish stalls would have melted and even the annoying flies, finished with their own shopping it would seem, would have taken off. The vendors were always more relaxed and threw their words easily at one another instead of at customers. By then the best of their goods would have gone, and even they had a kind of pity for stragglers who were only then coming to shop and had to search through the best of their blighted goods. But on the Saturday in question, there was one young woman of course still trying to make her first and only sale. Pretty doily for sale! Pretty doily for sale! Please Ma'am, Sir, just take a look nuh. Look how it would look nice in yu house. Pretty doily for sale. I selling it cheap, cheap. Still, no customer paid her mind and it was instead the somewhat infamous shoe vendor, Maizy, who took notice. Like many Jamaican market women, Maizy was a creature for whom derision was an art. So committed was she to this practice that there were days when she counted it a greater success to have landed the most insults than to have sold any pairs of shoes. To Pearline's great misfortune it was this Maizy who now took notice of her and the ugly doily that swung dejectedly from her fingers. Maizy nudged her neighbour, Flo. With a pout of her lips she pointed out the pathetic figure of Pearline. Flo grinned. 'Darling, is the same doily you have there selling from this morning, or is a wholeheap of them that you did bring? Please tell me is a wholeheap you did bring!' 'But Flo' declared Maizy on cue, 'you is a wicked, wicked woman to wish this child did make wholeheap more of that thing she have there selling. I can't even call it a doily. You have no idea the damage that thing can do?' 'What you saying to me, Maizy?' 'Mi dear! It is sake of a purple something look just like that, that cause my neighbour hog to drop down dead last week.' 'No!' 'Flo, God's truth! If I lie, I die! My poor neighbour, Miss Esmi… the same one with the twist-up mouth … well, she come home last week and find a purple doily just like that one, fling down on her table.' 'But how something like that get there?' Excerpted from The Last Warner Woman by Kei Miller All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
