Obeah Gal (A Jamaican Story)

Part 2

TWO WEEKS CAME AND WENT and Lucky, as the pup came to be called, slowly recovered despite the odds Doctor Ben had laid against him. Maree had found a fairly large cardboard box in which she kept Lucky, to prevent him from moving around too much. That way his legs could heal quicker – as well as preventing him from running into her mother. And Lucky was getting more active by the day.

One afternoon as Maree was preparing the coalfire she heard an angry shout. Apprehensive, she went around the corner to look, and found her mother bending to pick up a stone. "Git outta 'ere, yuh ugly daag! Mi nuh keep no daag round 'ere fi mess up mi yaad!" 

And she saw her puppy frantically half-dragging, half-skipping to get out of the line of fire.

"Noo, nuh do it, Mam!" Maree rushed to block her mother's aim then quickly went to pick up the dog. "Is mine!"

"A weh yuh get 'im fram? Is who give 'im to yuh? Oooh, so dat is weh it gaan to! Well, mi naah go gi yuh any new one, soh naah expeck nuttn fram mi," her mother added when she noticed the now dirty washed-out blue-and-red material wound around its legs. "Yuh fi keep dat ugly ting outa mi sight, y'hear! An hurry up wid di food!"

How dared she call Lucky ugly thing, Maree thought as she watched her mother leave abruptly, disappearing through the ramshackle opening of a doorway. 

But Lucky was definitely not 'pleasing' to the eye. With his shabby off-white fur, a patch of black on one side of his head which made him look slightly cross-eyed, one ear up, one ear down, a half of a tail and a dirty, coloured bandage on both hind legs, Lucky was definitely not 'good looking'. However, his intelligent 'personality' that was starting to distinguish itself little by little, was shining mischievously in his beady yellowish eyes – being a purebred mongrel he would survive almost anything. He was a hardy little chap, a born fighter.

After that incident, the young girl found herself helping other animals, wherever and whenever she came upon them: limping ones, others with sores, rashes, mumps, worms, and other ailments – from a chicken or kitten to a donkey or 'bull-cow'. And even a mouse or lizard. 

Sometimes if a friend – usually one of the smaller kinds – needed a longer rest, she'd take it up with her to a place in the bush on the hill. She knew that it was next to impossible to keep them at home (one was already beyond the limit) so she had made a shelter near one of her favorite spots where the vegetation grew to create a green, not-so-dense cave. She added sticks, banana and coconut branches to improve on the structure; and just a stone's throw away was a glade which overlooked most of the village, and also the Caribbean Sea.

When Maree reached her early teens, she started to take an interest in plants too, and an elderly widow who had been observing the girl and her subtle talent for a long time, asked her to tend to her garden and potted plants once every week. That was Maree's first job, and she earned ten whole dollars each time which, of course, her mother laid hands on as soon as she returned home. Not that Maree really minded, she expected it anyway. At least she had something else to occupy herself with, which her mother couldn't complain about now that she was no longer attending school. Anything beyond primary education was beyond their means, apart from her mother's opinion that Maree did not need to go any further. The widow, known by everyone as Ma Nelsie, became after several weeks the only other friend Maree ever had for a long time.

Maree was fourteen when a fairly well-to-do middle-aged man started to visit them quite regularly. Nobody in the village could understand what he saw in Miss Black – Maree's mother – she'd seen her better days – but apparently he did, children or no children. Obviously, Miss Black saw a whole lot in him: he lived in town, in the 'big' city, and each time he came, which was usually on a Sunday, he'd bring something for all of them. For the first time in her life, Maree found herself with clothes that hadn't been discarded by somebody else, they were so pretty to her that she hardly dared to wear them. If her mother had her way, Maree wouldn't get to keep the clothes at all – she would use them to earn money. But as it was, such a risk couldn't be taken. Miss Black couldn't let her husband-to-be discover that.

Mr. Kingsley tried very hard to make friends with Maree – he had no problem with her brothers – but all she would do was nod or shake her head accordingly, or say thank you if she had to. She didn't really like him, but she didn't mind him either, and so she accepted his gifts without further ado. However, it wasn't until Mr. Kingsley gave her a collar for Lucky that he knew that he had finally found a way to her heart. He couldn't have mistaken the shining in her eyes when she took the brand-new black piece of leather with its silvery studs into her hands.

One Sunday he took them with him in his bright red VW to show them where he lived. Maree and her brothers, now nine and ten respectively, sat wide-eyed and all dressed up in their new Sunday-best in the back seat – and remained wide-eyed throughout the tour of his three-bedroom house with all kinds of modern facilities, including hot water and satellite dish – in a neighborhood of houses very much the same as his, with a shopping centre within walking distance. 

Maree didn't like it. There were no open spaces for fresh air anywhere nearby. Nothing else could interest her. She saw the living room with a TV and stereo set, the indoor bath and shower rooms, the kitchen with gas stove, and the bedrooms. Oh yes: the bathroom was tempting, but not essential: as far as Maree was concerned, she could manage with what she was used to.

"And this will be your room, Maree, when you move in," Mr Kingsley said when they came to the smallest one, which was by far much larger than the little space of a corner Maree had for herself at home.

"Fi mi?" Then she slowly shook her head. "Mi nuh go move nowhere," she said as a matter of fact; and that was the first complete sentence he'd ever heard her say.

"Why not?"

But she only shrugged slightly, gazing at the open window, with delicate curtains fluttering against the white-painted grill.

"Don't botha bout she; she no know wha' she want," her mother said irritably in her newly improved 'English'. But Mr. Kingsley was sure that Maree knew very well what she wanted. The problem was, how was he to know what it was unless she told him?

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