When I was a child, we lived in sections of rented houses mainly in east Kingston - Rollington Town and Franklin Town. These were lower middle-class areas with stinking open drains, and yet the smells I remember are of mangoes rather than sewage and, inevitably, my mother's abiding Jeyes fluid and Dettol.

Every house had its fruit trees in the yard. I can still hear the sounds of the street vendors calling out their wares - hominy corn and booby egg - and of the local peanut vendor, who was also a ventriloquist, pushing his whistling cart.

The family was always moving, movements which depended on whether my father had been demoted, promoted or transferred, often with little notice, to rural Jamaica, and this would mean the rest of the family having to rent rooms in Kingston so that our school life should not be disrupted. Daddy would live in housing provided for him above the railway station, which meant that he would lose his small housing allowance, making life even more difficult for us and particularly challenging for my mother, who was the family's money manager.

Money to manage

But, first of all, she had to have money to manage. Depending on the greediness or neediness of the particular 'sweetheart' - the outside woman - my father had at the time, smaller and smaller amounts of money would find their way home. The money my mother would get to manage also depended on the frequency of my father's visits to the rum bar on the nights he received his pay.

When I was about 10 years old, the situation got so bad that on one occasion my mother went to the railway pay clerk without my father's knowledge, to demand his pay. The pay clerk told her that he could only hand pay over to people who worked for the railway. Mama retorted that she was my father's wife, that she had children to feed, and above everything else, if he did not give the money to her, she would behave very badly. In the end, the pay clerk relented and gave her the salary.

When Daddy came home that night, he was, of course, extremely upset. I don't think we had ever seen him so angry. But Mama stood her ground and gave him only pocket money.

The issue of his pay and how it was allocated among his family, his sweethearts and his alcohol was a recurrent theme in the household. He loved my mother. He was prepared to make some sacrifices for his family. But he had to have his nightly visits to the bar, he had to have his church, he had to have his political meetings, and he had his women. He never ever participated in household chores.

I was always amazed at how resilient and quietly defiant he was in the face of my formidable mother. I remember once in Rollington Town when he was ready to go to work, she told him to use the side gate and not the front gate as she had just tidied up that area. My usually obedient father got agitated and said in a loud and decisive voice, "Side gate, hell!' - and proceeded to use the front gate. My mother just stood and stared at him as he left. Their battles were often childish. Sometimes, to get back at him, instead of preparing and leaving out his dinner, she would cover empty plates and set them on the table as if they contained food. This would lead to another uproar.

We were forced to move so often - sometimes because we couldn't afford the rent, others because the landlord would decide he didn't want children living in the apartment - that on some Sunday mornings my mother and I got up early, before anyone else was awake, and searched through the 'Apartments for Rent' section of The Gleaner. At that time, 'apartment' meant a section of a house with a bathroom shared with other tenants. We would also walk from street to street in our neighbourhood looking for signs that read 'Apartments to let - apply within'.

Proud and grown-up

I am not sure why I was the one chosen to accompany my mother, but this was one of the things we did together that made me feel proud and grown-up. Yet, I always dreaded the work involved in moving, and the uncertainty of going to a new neighbourhood, particularly if it was far from our school. To this day, I feel compelled, when I wake, to read the classified ads when there is no longer any need to do so.

Looking back on my mother's life, the most extraordinary thing about her was her determination to be financially independent. She always told us that, in addition to marrying a man who could support us, we girls should eventually own a house in our own name. We were told to avoid 'boy boys' - those who were going nowhere, the kind who would get us pregnant. When I think of it now, she was always setting the example, saving money from the limited means of my father's pay cheque. Despite being dependent on my father economically, she was determined to use those savings to buy her own house and have a title unencumbered by a mortgage. Such a property, she told us, was to be kept hidden from a husband at all costs.

When I was about 10 years old, we were surprised to be told that we had another brother, Tony. Later, my father informed us that he had had this son before he met my mother but hadn't known how to tell her then about the boy.

When Tony's mother migrated to the United States, my father was forced to take him in, and he brought Tony to our home. At that time we lived in Linstead, above the railway station. At first, my mother was upset and I can remember the tension in the household and the quarrels between my parents.

Eventually, Tony settled in, but this did not last long. His mother, who by then was in the United States, sent for him, and suddenly he wasn't with us anymore. My mother, who had developed a relationship with Tony, was both relieved and saddened at his leaving.

Jealousy

For a while, Tony brought such joy into our lives. As girls, this was our first experience of having a young man in the house. He was allowed to play outside in the yard in a way that we weren't. And we had to close the bathroom door behind us, because he was 'different' from us. I watched and envied my mother's relationship with him; it seemed he could do no wrong. Tony played cricket constantly and one day the ball nearly knocked his eye out. I remember vividly the fear, the blood, the pain, and my mother playing the doctor role she loved so well. She managed to correct the damage and the doctor who later saw him was astonished that she had handled it so well.

Also living with us for a while was my Aunt Myrtle's first child, Roy. Aunt Myrtle was my mother's older sister - same father, different mother - and she had, as a teenager, had Roy out of wedlock while she lived in the family home at 5 Crooks Street, Jones Town. By the time Roy came to live with us, he was a handsome 12-year-old and my mother adored him - right colour of brown, 'good hair', and the kind of looks she approved of - that is to say, he was good-looking by Caucasian standards.

Exotic flavour

My mother came from a near-white middle-class family on her father's side. They were Jews out of Scotland, the Pearsons. My grandfather was a big drinker and had an awful temper. Nobody messed with him - or they did so at their own risk.

At the turn of the century, he made 'buggies', horse-drawn carriages for the wealthy. Most of his family lived in Panama, having gone there like other Jamaicans, to work on the Panama Canal. Many of my cousins arrived from Panama, and their use of Spanish brought a new and exotic flavour to the family.

My grandfather built two homes on the property. The larger home housed the main family: my grandfather, my grandmother and my mother. My mother's brother, Uncle Massa, a barber, and her sister Myrtle also lived in the smaller house. After my grandfather died in the 1940s, my grandmother struggled to do the best she could, but the property grew run-down. The family yard at 7 Crooks Street is still there, although much of the house, along with the two-room apartment where the aunts lived, has been neglected or destroyed. It was taken over by squatters after great-aunt Edith died.

Minimum wage

The family home in Jones Town, a middle-class area at the time, was well kept by my grandmother. She planted her own vegetables and reared ducks and chickens. She had beautiful antique mahogany furniture, family photographs, and china and silver. It was clear that this was no ordinary home. My grandfather never married my grandmother, thought I became aware of this only when she died in the 1960s and I was asked to place a death announcement on radio. I found out then that her name was Delcina Hall. This meant that my mother, like my siblings, was illegitimate. In those days, illegitimacy was a stigma, so I was not surprised that this had been kept a secret.

My Aunt Myrtle washed bottles at a soda-bottling plant, Desnoes and Geddes, all her working life. This was menial, repetitive work at minimum wage. We would sometimes visit her on the job and watch her as she hand-washed bottle after bottle. She never complained. She eventually met her husband, who was doing the same type of work, and they had a happy marriage.

Unfortunately, my mother had a strange relationship with her family. Until I was about 10 years old, every Sunday afternoon we would visit my grandmother and Aunt Edith - by then Myrtle had died. Then suddenly, we stopped going. My mother never told us why.

Tomorrow - Mama's heartaches and my black-sheep treatment.

"I had huge eyes and thought I was ugly. I was also the darkest in my family and my mother often compared me with my father, who by then had fulfilled all the prophecy of my grandparents and turned out to be good for nothing, as all blacks were - at least that was how my mother put it."