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Stabroek News

Uncle Louis
published: Sunday | November 11, 2007


Phoebe Jones

The first time I met Great-uncle Louis I was five; my mother introduced me to him as 'one of your many nephews'.

Uncle Louis put me on his knee and bounced his leg up and down and made clicking noises with his tongue. I giggled so much, I almost fell on to the grass. He caught me and put me to sit on a chair beside him.

There is a picture of us sitting in the garden after lunch, Uncle Louis with his trumpet on his knee. That was when Bingo jumped up and yanked the chicken bone out of my hand. I ran after him shouting.

'What are you doing?' Uncle Louis called.

'I want my chicken bone!' I wailed.

'No, you don't. Learn to pick your battles. You've chewed all the goodness out of that bone. Leave it to the dog. If you're still hungry, ask your mother for another piece of chicken, and if you want to hunt animals, spend a holiday with me.'

Uncle Louis had migrated to Belize as a young man, when it was still called British Honduras. He said that for 10 years he had been visiting Jamaica every other year but couldn't manage to see all of the family on every visit. He told us fantastic stories about adventures with snakes and hunting in the jungle for jaguars. When he got tired of talking, Uncle Louis took off his glasses, its frames as black as his hair, and played his trumpet.

One day my mother agreed to take Uncle Louis to visit one of his friends whose relatives had sent a package. I ended up going with him because Mummy had to go to a meeting and the aunt who was supposed to keep me suddenly developed a bad headache.

When we arrived, Mrs. Carr was sitting on the verandah in a yellow dress. She raised herself from the rocker with the help of a stick, hugged Uncle Louis, and shook hands with me while saying to him, 'Back again, Louis?'

When Mummy drove off, a pretty lady came out of the house in a white, sleeveless blouse and blue shorts.

'Angel,' Uncle Louis said hoarsely.

They hugged, and she shook hands with me.

Angel went inside and came back with a giant piece of watermelon. 'Do you like watermelon?' she asked me.

'My favourite!' I said.

While I ate I heard Uncle Louis playing his trumpet inside. Then he played with a record in the background; and then it was just the record. Mrs. Carr rocked and watched me eat. Then she dozed off.

Mummy asked how I'd enjoyed myself.

'Fine! Angel.'

'Mrs. Carr gave him a piece of watermelon,' Uncle Louis

interrupted.

When Mummy wasn't looking, he said: 'Angel is our secret. We don't talk about Angels.'

'Why?'

'They will go away.'

'I thought she was a real person.'

Uncle Louis chuckled to himself.

After that, Uncle Louis visited us whenever he came to Jamaica, which was at least every other year. He came the year after his wife, Auntie Janet, died. She didn't like to travel, Uncle Louis said, and so I had never met her. I was 15. And it was only on that visit that I noticed that Uncle Louis' glasses were too big for his face. Masking tape held the pieces of one broken arm together, and the glasses were held in place by a thick elastic band which lay flat on the fringe of gray hair at the back of his head and was attached to the part of the arms which curled behind his ears.

'Uncle Louis, you know you need some modern glasses.'

He took me to the optician's to help him choose, and when we stopped at the supermarket on the way home he bought me a watermelon for my troubles. While we sat in the garden eating I remembered the first time I'd met him, and I asked him how Mrs. Carr was. He said Mrs. Carr had died two years ago.

'Oh. I'm sorry to hear.'

'You must definitely come to visit me next summer,' Uncle Louis said.

Uncle Louis met me at the airport. As the car entered his driveway I saw children swinging upside down from the limbs of an almond tree on the lawn, and there was another group playing cricket. There were several grown-ups on the verandah, and one of them, watching as the car approached, looked vaguely familiar. 'That looks like Angel,' I whispered.

'You have a good memory.'

'I could never forget Angel.'

Uncle Louis chuckled and said that she had been living in Belize for three years. She'd come to live at his house when Auntie Janet died.

'OK,' I said.

Uncle Louis had open house every day: children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, assorted relatives and friends would start streaming in at about 8:00 in the morning. Uncle Louis' eldest children ran the household, leaving him free to do whatever he wished. By 8:00 at night everything started to get quiet, unless there was a party.

I could play the trumpet reasonably well, so I became a member of the resident orchestra. Angel seemed to be the one in charge of making me feel at home.

I had such a good time that I decided to visit Uncle Louis the summer before I entered university. As we drove up to the house I searched for the familiar figure in the yard or on the verandah.

'Where's Angel?'

Uncle Louis said that she was gone.

'Gone! Gone where? Why didn't you go and get her?'

Uncle Louis said he had had neither the inclination nor the energy to try to stand in her way. He said that Angel wanted to establish her own business before she was too old, and there was no reason why she shouldn't be very successful.

I looked at Uncle Louis and saw the thick, sagging folds under his neck and the curly white hairs on his arms. The women and small children were laughing on the front steps, the girls and boys were playing football in the yard, and for the first time I recognised the deep sweetness in the man smiling up at me.

END

- Phoebe Jones



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