Edwin Clarke - Paul Williams photo

At age 90, Edwin Clarke cannot help making references to his mother, that 'blessed' woman who raised six boys without a father and who died when they were very young. The adoration kept punctuating our conversation in the little shop in Brown's Town, St Ann, where he buys and sells empty bottles.

With every utterance, nostalgia caressed his voice, and there were moments when he became silent and looked down on the ground, as if he were gazing into the past, at a time when life was rough, and their mother was by their side.

"But yuh know what make it not so rough, when yuh have a ambitious parent, who care for har children," he declared.

Ida Rebecca Howard was her name, and a hard worker she was. She didn't allow her boys to go without food.

"She have to travel seven miles to Brown's Town [from Lime Tree Garden] in the morning ... to sell wet sugar in the market to raise six boys of us ... there is no more love on this Earth as a mother's care, as long as I am blowing breath, I must remember a mother, and the tender care that she gave to me."

However, Ida Howard was also very strict. Edwin was no angel himself and, in a home of six where young men could cook and wash, there were times when boys would be boys. On one of those boys-would-be-boys days, the youngsters totally ignored their chores as they were absorbed in playing marbles with young oranges.

Ida Howard came home and wasn't pleased with the state of affairs, and resorted to setting things right with corporal punishment.

The fleet-footed Edwin escaped her wrath, but Ida Howard was patient, so she sang it off and waited not for when Edwin was sleeping, but for when he was settled in class.

"Would you believe me, I was in school the Friday, and mi sit down in class, and mi see she step up and say, "Good morning, teacher!" Teacher say, 'Good morning'. An she come right inna my class, an she hold me and carry mi outside and put a rope round mi waist," Edwin recalled. With the rope around his waist, and in full view of some other youths who derided him, Ida Rebecca Howard pulled Edwin Clarke straight home.

There she locked him in the house and went in search of the preferred whip, stalks from a 'macka' tree. Back inside, Ida Howard reminded Edwin of his responsi-bilities in perhaps the most effective way she could, by each stroke of the 'macka swish'. "And that was the last flogging I get in life from mi mother," he said.

Nonetheless, he was full of praises for his mother, for not sending them to work before the time, and for providing food always for them.

"I don't know of the others, but that blessed lady, Mother ... dem have a thing call 'goose neck' from the cow. That was one of her champion meat ... when she put that pon fire, and she mek all stew out of it, oh lawd!"

He would be by her side every step of the way, even from Lime Tree Garden in St Ann to Christiana, Manchester, to sell her home-made coconut oil.

Edwin: "And we travel all the way to Alston, go right up through Spaldings, all the way to Christiana with coconut oil, on wi head ... Oh, it was not a nice time, but praise God for such a woman."

And then again, there was just one incident that Edwin was not very happy about. "But is one thing she do me, one thing, mi cyaan figot ... one thing I was not please wid, and I didn't bex wid har, enuh." Of course he was vexed, because he brought the matter up at least three times. He was upset, not with the sweet Ida Howard, but with her act of goodwill.

There was a man called Mr Thomas, who extracted oil from orange rind. He had many orange trees, for the oil was in great demand. One harvesting season, Ida Howard sent Edwin and another person to pick oranges for Mr Thomas. In Edwin's head, the joy of earning some money for the first time simmered, for he thought he was going to be financially rewarded for the day's work,

After the job was done, Edwin anticipated his first payday. When Mr Thomas, on his way from the orchard, asked Ida Howard how much she wanted for the boys' service, she simply said she wasn't expecting any payment. It was all from the goodness of her heart. And in Edwin's heart there was nothing but grief.

No bitterness

"It hot mi, man, for mi believe say a deh first money mi a go get now. A never figet, from that day until now."

The memory is strong, but as for bitterness, there is none.

It was the days of the tin lamp, the 'kitchen brute', as Edwin put it, and when every December they would stuff dried banana leaves into a cloth encasement to make mattresses. For nights, after the stuffing, every turn they made on the mattresses would result in the rustling of the leaves. Eventually, the turning and the tossing turned the leaves soft and comfy.

That, and more, was life in Ida Howard's home until Edwin got married at a wedding where there were two cakes. He eventually became a father of six. Ida Howard, four of his brothers and his wife are long dead, but he is strong and alert, living a quiet, God-fearing life in Retreat, a community near Brown's Town.

But is this the end of the story of Edwin Clarke? Do you want to know what his grandfather left him, and why he went bald long before he got old? Keep reading His Story and you might just find out.

paul.williams@gleanerjm.com