The Writing Room

Image: Adder's Tongue (Wikipedia) I used to tell everybody that I didn’t have enemies. I really didn’t think I had any. I knew no one who was out to get me. My relationships were not perfect but I didn’t think anybody hated me. I was forced to think about my enemies , though, in one interview I attended. “ Suppose the current employees refuse to work with you, what would you do?” one of the interviewers asked. “ I would find a way for us to work together,” I said. “I tend to get on with people.” I had been confident in that conviction. That was before I had met my supervisor and that bus driver, but after I had met Mas Joe. “ Are you saying that you have no enemies?” That lady was persistent. “ None that I know of,” I had responded. “ Everybody has enemies,” she had told me, every one of her words imbued with a certainty that she had dared me to question. Since then, I had tried to figure out the meaning of that word — enemy. One dictionary told me that an enemy “is ...

Miss Mattie settles herself in the white plastic chair on her verandah, her bottom a perfect fit for it. Too perfect, because every time she tries to find a comfortable position, the chair clings to her, preventing her from moving as she would like.  “Eeda de chair too small or me too big,” she mutters and abandons her attempts to adjust her position in the chair. She taps her plump fingers on the frail arms of her chair to the rhythm of the festival song that is blaring from the radio in her living room. Soon, she is rocking to the music.  “Granny, wha’ kine a fool-fool music you a play? Nobody nuh listen to dem kinda music again. Now a modern times. You mus’ move wid de times,” Fenton says, as he bounces on to the verandah. He jiggles his body and smiles down at Miss Mattie.  “So me a nobody.” Miss Mattie looks up at Fenton and continues to bop to the music.  “No, you a nuh nobody. You a somebody. Dat is not what a mean. A mean dat…”  “Me ole?”  Without a...

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I am not a fan of talk shows, so I don’t purposely watch them or listen to them. But occasionally I catch snippets of the conversations. Recently, I overheard a conversation between a mother and the host of a talk show. The mother said that when her child was in primary school, he was obsessed with drawing. He once drew a picture of a celebrity whom he had never met, and the resemblance was uncanny. However, when it was time for him to do the primary school exit test, she badgered him to study and forget about drawing. She told him that there was no future in drawing (or something like that) and that he should focus on his lessons at school, which apparently could take him places where drawing couldn’t. He studied, went on to high school and probably beyond, (I missed that bit) and has never touched a pencil again. This child clearly had talent which could have been nurtured. His mother gave him one choice. He had to walk the academic path. She now regrets her actions. At the tim...

My own big Woman is a novel about two aged sisters living together, one wanting peace and quiet, the other wanting her own way, and both battle for supremacy in the home until.... Chapter 1 Chapter 2: Chapter 3 . Chapter 4 Chapter 5