The Foreigner's Caress

“When I was a little boy, maybe four or five, I remember sitting on my grandmother’s rocker on the veranda of her house. Grandma’s house was old like most of the houses in the countryside of Jamaica where we lived. You know, outhouses and open-air cooking.”

“Hmm,” Madison said.

“Grandma was standing over the cooking fire making cornmeal porridge in a big metal pot that was situated on a metal grate and held up on a pile of big rocks. She had on a floral house dress and these tattered brown sandals. I had been helping Grandpa tie the livestock out in the hills like we did every morning and was sitting down to catch my breath. I started telling her how Uncle Nevel had promised to take me fishing at Alligator Pond early the next morning. I bragged and bragged about how I was going to catch the biggest fish of all, bigger even than the one Uncle Nevel had caught the week before, and I was going to bring it back to her to cook it up for dinner.”

Steve paused, and stared out into space for a moment. Madison waited, stroking the back of his hand gently.

“When Grandma turned around, her face was wet. She was smiling at me, but tears were streaming down her face. I went over to her. I was only four but my head already reached Grandma’s chin. I remember asking her if she wanted to go fishing with us…if that’s why she was crying. That question made her laugh out loud. She had a soft tinkling laugh. She laughed and hugged me, rocking me against her body. I was so confused. But then she told me that no matter what happened, no matter how far away I went or how big I got, I would always be her best lickle pickney…her favorite little child.”

Madison looked up at Steve, saw the tear that had formed in the corner of his left eye. His face was pained and she wanted to ask why, but she also wanted to give him the space and time to tell his story the way he needed to.

“She sat down in the rocker and held me on her lap, telling me all the while that I was getting too big to sit all over her like that.”

Steve fingered one of the twists of hair that covered Madison’s head. “Grandma had worn dreadlocks, too, but hers were long and thick from years of growing. I started playing with her hair like I always did and she just held me, bouncing me up and down on her knee and staring down at me like she was trying to capture me in her mind.

“Two days later, my dad came back from a trip to England and a few days after that my parents and I left Jamaica. I didn’t know it at the time, but that would be the last time I saw my grandmother. We left our warm, sunny island where I spent long days chasing butterflies and swimming in the creek and we moved to England. Everybody I’d spent my childhood with—my grandmother, my grandfather, uncles, aunts and a dozen cousins—were left behind. I spoke to Grandma by phone a couple of times…on her birthday and Christmas, you know? I always asked her when she was coming to visit and she kept saying that she didn’t like to fly.”

“Why didn’t you guys ever go back to Jamaica?” Madison asked.

“I don’t know,” Steve said, chewing on the question as if its answer was the secret to the universe. “My parents always made up excuses when I asked. They were too busy with the business. It wasn’t the right time. And no one could come to visit us because we didn’t have space for them at first. Eventually, I guess when they thought I was old enough, they told me that our relatives were better off in Jamaica. They said that they could never fit in with our new, prosperous lives in England. I didn’t understand this philosophy of theirs until much later on in life. It seemed the wealthier we became, the less we associated with anyone who was Jamaican. My parents made sure I lost my accent quickly, and essentially, we cut all ties with that part of our heritage. We became English citizens and that was that.”

“That’s terrible,” Madison said, thinking of her own parents and their separatist ways.

“For a long time, I’ve wondered why I allowed them to do that to me. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those people who you see on those daytime talk shows talking about their horrible upbringings and neglectful parents. I mean, I had a great childhood. I had privileges that most kids only dream about. I went to good schools and traveled to exotic places. But part of me always felt guilty when I thought about the family we’d left back in Jamaica. Life can be hard in the islands.”

“Steve, you were a child. How could you possibly have done anything to change the situation?”

“Not then, but as I got older…in my teen years. I should have done something. When Grandma died, we didn’t even go to the funeral.”

The broken expression on Steve’s face caused Madison to want to capture him completely in her arms and kiss his wounds away.

“How long ago did she pass away?” she asked softly.

“I was sixteen. I remember my parents were planning a holiday, and I suggested that we go to Jamaica. They scoffed at that idea. I’d started asking questions about Jamaica and the family back there and that’s when my father told me that there wasn’t much family left. He said it almost matter-of-factly. Maybe five or six months later, we received a phone call…I think it was from one of my father’s brothers. Grandma had passed in her sleep at the age of seventy-two. I thought we would go to the funeral, but we didn’t. My mother explained that my father was too busy to leave work at that time, which of course didn’t make much sense to me, but by then, I pretty much understood that they had no intentions of ever setting foot there again. So when my grandfather followed her a year later, I wasn’t surprised that we didn’t go to his funeral, either.”

“Are you still afraid of what your parents will say if you make contact with your family now?”

Steve looked down at Madison.

“You think I’m a coward, don’t you?” he asked, a nervous chuckle pushing through his lips.

“No, I don’t think that at all,” Madison said, stroking the side of his face thoughtfully. “I think you are a loyal and considerate man, who worries too much about doing the right thing and doing what his parents want him to do. I know this is not the same thing, but one truth I have learned recently is that while everything we do will have consequences, we’re the only ones we have to seek approval from.”

“Perhaps you’re right,” Steve said.

He buried his chin in the top of Madison’s head and closed his eyes.

“Sometimes it’s hard to follow your own voice,” he said, his voice now thick with drowsiness.

In the past few days his dreams and conscious thoughts had been filled with a mixture of Madison and images of Jamaica and his grandmother. It was as if his meeting Madison had caused remembrances that he had buried long ago to resurface. Strange as it seemed, he pondered if Madison had come in to his life at this time for the sole purpose of helping him to remember.

“She would have liked you,” he said.

“Maybe one day I can get to see where you lived with her,” Madison said.

“Maybe,” Steve echoed, his eyes closed and his arms wrapped tightly around Madison, as if he never intended to let her go.

It was just that rapidly and with ease that his soul connected with hers and the comfort that he felt as he lay tangled in her embrace was strangely familiar to him. They’d come from different soil and circumstances, but shared upbringings that were symmetrical in ways that made them understand one another. Minutes seemed like days, days like months, until the length of time that had passed since the moment of their meeting could not be comprehended as being short or limited. All either one of them knew was that they would be forever changed by their meeting.

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