A little English education can be a dangerous thing. Alsana's favourite example of this was theold tale of Lord Ellenborough, who, upon taking the Sind province from India, sent a telegram ofonly one word to Delhi: peccavi, a conjugated Latin verb, meaning I have sinned. "The English arethe only people," she would say with distaste, 'who want to teach you and steal from you at thesame time." Alsana's mistrust for the Chalfens was no more or less than that.
Clara agreed but for reasons that were closer to home: a family memory; an unforgotten trace ofbad blood in the Bowdens. Her own mother, when inside her mother (for if this story is to be told,we will have to put them all back inside each other like Russian dolls, Irie back in Clara, Clara backin Hortense, Hortense back in Ambrosia), was silent witness to what happens when all of a suddenan Englishman decides you need an education. For it had not been enough for Captain CharlieDurham recently posted to Jamaica to impregnate his landlady's adolescent daughter one drunkenevening in the Bowden larder, May 1906. He was not satisfied with simply taking her maidenhood.
He had to teach her something as well.
The? He wan' teach me?" Ambrosia Bowden had placed her hand over the tiny bump that wasHortense and tried to look as innocent as possible. "Why he wan' teach me?""Tree times a week," replied her mother. "An' don' arks me why. But Lord knows, you could dowid some improvin'. Be tankful for gen' russ-ity. Dere is not required whys and wherefores when ahan sum upright English gentleman like Mr. Durham wan' be gen' russEven Ambrosia Bowden, a capricious, long-legged, maga village-child who had not seen aschoolroom in all of her fourteen years, knew this advice was mistaken. When an Englishmanwants to be generous, the first thing you ask is why, because there is always a reason.
"You still here, pickney? "Im wan' see you. Don' let me spit pon de floor and make you get updere before it dry!"So Ambrosia Bowden, with Hortense inside her, had dashed up to the Captain's room andreturned there three times a week thereafter for instruction. Letters, numbers, the bible, Englishhistory, trigonometry and when that was finished, when Ambrosia's mother was safely out of thehouse, anatomy, which was a longer lesson, given on top of the student as she lay on her back,giggling. Captain Durham told her not to worry about the baby, he would do no damage to it.
Captain Durham told her that their secret child would be the cleverest Negro boy in Jamaica.
As the months flicked by, Ambrosia learnt a lot of wonderful things from the handsome captain.
He taught her how to read the trials of Job and study the warnings of Revelation, to swing a cricketbat, to recite "Jerusalem'. How to add up a column of numbers. How to decline a Latin noun. Howto kiss a man's ear until he wept like a child. But mostly he taught her that she was no longer amaidservant, that her education had elevated her, that in her heart she was a lady, though her dailychores remained unchanged. In here, in here, he liked to say pointing to somewhere beneath herbreastbone, the exact spot, in fact, where she routinely rested her broom. A maid no more,Ambrosia, a maid no more, he liked to say, enjoying the pun.
And then one afternoon, when Hortense was five months unborn, Ambrosia sprinted up thestairs in a very loose, disingenuous gingham dress, rapped on the door with one hand, and hid abunch of English marigolds behind her back with the other. She wanted to surprise her lover withflowers she knew wouldremind him of home. She banged and banged and called and called. But he was gone.
"Don' arks me why," said Ambrosia's mother, eyeing her daughter's stomach with suspicion.
"Im jus' get up and go, on de sudden. Butim leave a message dat he wan' you to be looked after still.
He wan' you to go over to de estate quick time and present yourself to Mr. Glenard, a goodChristian gentleman. Lord knows, you could do wid some improvin'. You still here, pickney? Don'
let me spit pon de floor andBut Ambrosia was out the door before the words hit the ground.
It seemed Durham had gone to control the situation in a printing company in Kingston, where ayoung man called Garvey was staging a printers' strike for higher wages. And then he intended tobe away for three further months to train His Majesty's Trinidadian Soldiers, show them what'swhat. The English are experts at relinquishing one responsibility and taking up another. But theyalso like to think of themselves as men of good conscience, so in the interim Durham entrusted thecontinued education of Ambrosia Bowden to his good friend Sir Edmund Flecker Glenard, whowas, like Durham, of the opinion that the natives required instruction, Christian faith and moralguidance. Glenard was charmed to have her who wouldn't be? - a pretty, obedient girl, willing andable round the house. But two weeks into her stay, and the pregnancy became obvious. Peoplebegan to talk. It simply wouldn't do.
"Don' arks me why," said Ambrosia's mother, grabbing Glen and's letter of regret from herweeping daughter, 'maybe you kyan be improved! Maybe 'im don' wan' sin around de house. Youback here now! Dere's nuttin' to be done now!" But in the letter, so it turned out, there was aconsolatory suggestion. "It say here 'im wan' you to go and see a Christian lady call Mrs. Brenton.
"Im say you kyan stay wid her."Now, Durham had left instructions that Ambrosia be introduced to the English Anglican Church,and Glenard had suggested the Jamaican Methodist Church, but Mrs. Brenton, a fiery Scottishspinster who specialized in lost souls, had her own ideas. "We are going to the Truth," she saiddecisively when Sunday came, because she did not care for the word 'church'. "You and I and thewee innocent," she said, tapping Ambrosia's belly just inches from Hortense's head, 'are going tohear the words of Jehovah."(For it was Mrs. Brenton who introduced the Bowdens to the Witnesses, the Russellites, theWatchtower, the Bible Tract Society in those days they went under many names. Mrs. Brenton hadmet Charles Taze Russell himself in Pittsburgh as the last century turned, and was struck by theknowledge of the man, his dedication, his mighty beard. It was his influence that made her aconvert from Protestantism, and, like any convert, Mrs. Brenton took great pleasure in theconversion of others. She found two easy, willing subjects in Ambrosia and the child in her belly,for they had nothing to convert from.)The Truth entered the Bowdens that winter of 1906 and flowed through the blood streamdirectly from Ambrosia to Hortense. It was Hortense's belief that at the moment her motherrecognized Jehovah, Hortense herself became conscious, though still inside the womb. In lateryears she would swear on any bible you put in front of her that even in her mother's stomach eachword of Mr. Russell's Millennial Dawn, as it was read to Ambrosia night after night, passed as if byosmosis into Hortense's soul. Only this would explain why it felt like a 'remembrance' to read thesix volumes years later in adult life; why she could cover pages with her hand and quote them frommemory, though she had never read them before. It is for this reason that any root canal of Hortensemust go right to the very beginning, because she was there; she remembers; the events of 14January 1907, the day of the terrible Jamaican earthquake, are not hidden from her, but bright andclear as a bell.
"Early will I seek thee.. . My soul thirstethfor thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirstyland, where no water is .. ."So sang Ambrosia as her pregnancy reached full term, and she bounced with her huge bulgedown King Street, praying for the return of Christ or the return of Charlie Durham the two menwho could save her so alike in her mind she had the habit of mixing them up. She was halfwaythrough the third verse, or so Hortense told it, when that rambunctious old rum pot Sir ............