The following is an excerpt from Carol A.N. Dunn's novel The Mountain of Inheritance, a gold medal-winning book in the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission's Writing Competition. The series continues tomorrow.
Laurie sat on the bed in her aunt's room and watched as the woman, looking at her reflection in the spotty mirror, fixed her hair into a bun by sticking in half a dozen hairpins in strategic places.
"Is who tell you to send people to me to talk 'bout music lesson? You see me have no money to send you to none?" Aunt Myra barked at her.
"But Aunt Myra, I never sent anybody to speak to you. Mrs Brooks just said to me that I had talent and asked me if there was any way I could take lessons and I told her I didn't think so. I didn't know she would come and talk to you."
"Well, I make sure put her in her place. I don't see why that woman love take up things 'pon top of her head so. Is not Sunday school she suppose to be teaching you? Better she talk to you 'bout you sewing or you cooking or something useful like that, for you soon lef' school and you know that you have to go earn you keep after that.
"Suppose I was to get a job in the evenings after school and pay for the lessons myself?" Laurie offered.
"And who going help me look after them children?" Aunt Myra asked, her arms akimbo. "Is full time you learn that is not everything you want you can get.
"What if Daddy says I can do it?" Laurie asked defiantly.
"You father don't have no say in this." Aunt Myra's pitch had increased by several decibels. "The day that broke pocket brother o' mine can look after you proper is the day him can have chat. All him good for is to full up you head with foolishness like how him full up him rum glass, like you is some high and mighty queen. Well, that not going get you nowhere. The whole o' we born poor and we going dead same way. So you can go on put on all the airs you like. Puss dress up in gown is still puss."
Laurie left the room fighting back tears.
This evening, Laurie read to her father as she usually did, but as always, there were several interruptions before she finished the story. First, she had to bathe the baby, then she had to comb Tammy's hair and then she was called in to help find Karl's school bag.
"Daddy, why Aunt Myra has to pick on me like that?" Laurie asked him when she was done.
"She not really picking on you, my child; is just that she don't have vision like me. Everything will always be the same for her and she can't understand what I have in mind for you. You see what happen to her? Five pickney for two man and none o' them can't help her. I don't want you end up like her. Not my girl. I owe it to you mother to make sure."
She felt warm inside when her father spoke this way. He always encouraged her to be ladylike and dignified, and always to speak properly, balking at any hint of Patois until it was scrubbed from Laurie's tongue.
"It don't matter that you Daddy don't have much education nor don't make nothing much of himself in life. That don't say you must hang down you head. You family might poor, but you mind rich. If you think common and you behave common, you will be just like everybody else in Holly Meadows. But you not like them. So, hold you head high and go on like you own a hundred acres o' land."
The week before Christmas, Laurie returned home from visiting a friend to find her aunt swearing at the top of her voice.
"You father in lock-up," she screamed at Laurie.
"What! Why?"
"Them say him go mash up equipment down Busha farmhouse."
"That can't be true!"
"Don't cry, baby, please," her father said when he came home the next morning. Little hairs stuck out from his face and he smelt of stale rum and staler urine. She could tell he hadn't slept. Nor had she. All night she had lain on the coir mattress and her eyes refused to close. Her father was subdued and she knew he was thinking about the damage he had done and the amount of money that was involved. She had no idea how much it was, but she suspected it was a lot and that it could never be repaid.
Tomorrow: 'Besotted with Betty'
