Hoe Tales

The Start

You want to know what I have, that you don't. Honey, the truth is, there is nothing that separates us. I started with nothing and so can you. All you need is careful thinking and a complete and total disregard of what anybody thinks or says about you. Take it from me, a real pro.

Now here's a disclaimer, the hoe life isn't for everyone. It takes a special kind of woman. If you're looking for love, this is not for you. I can't tell you how to find love, I can't tell you how to trust, or how to find a man worthy of your love. I can only tell you my story and how I was successfully able to get the man, get the money, and get my happy ending.

You should know that every story has a start. No little girl is born with the intention of hoeing. We are pure at birth, then we become poisoned by our reality.

I was born in Portland, Jamaica and I had a normal country life: chimey under the bed, outside toilet, board floor and zinc roof. I guess you could say things were okay. My father farmed and my mother sold at Coronation Market. We were poor but never hungry, if it was even one breadfruit, Daddy would find  it and Mummy would find a way to make it stretch. I remember thinking they were  the perfect team when I was a young child.

When you are a child a lot of things seem ok. When I saw Daddy beat Mummy I thought, 'well Mummy mus do supm bad'. It was easy to accept that mummy was giving trouble. It didn't mean Daddy didn't love or respect her, Mummy did just too rude. In the community I lived in, a lot of the mother's were rude, just like a lot of the families were poor. I didn't see domestic violence or poverty as anything out of the ordinary.

I was around 7 years old when I started to see the world differently. Over the course of one summer my entire life changed. It was the first time that I realized something was wrong with my father and that something was wrong with me.

The breakdown of my reality started on a Saturday in June, when the market truck taking Mummy home stopped in front of our yard. The roads were bad in the community and the truck was loud so we could hear it from a good distance away. The loud honk and the sound of the truck titling on creaky wheels was our cue to gather outside our house. I was waiting for my donut, you know the ones in the pink and white box with the jelly inside? My older siblings were waiting to help Mummy with any bags she might have had.

There was nothing to warn my mother, myself or my siblings that that Saturday would have been any different. Maybe if there was, what happened could have been prevented.
Before Mummy could walk across the road to us Daddy had her by the throat. The truck was just starting to drive away, but when daddy drew his las from his waist people started screaming and it stopped again.

"Mi aguh kill yuh tonight! God believe mi!" Daddy was shouting over the sound of the truck engine, and his machete was aimed for Mummy's face.

Daddy looked possessed, it took my three brothers and several women and men from the truck to pull him off of Mummy. I had never seen any human bleed as much as Mummy did. After the attack, me, Mummy and my siblings moved out of the house that we lived in with Daddy and we ended up living with Mummy's parents in West Retreat. Daddy didn't go to jail or anything, we needed him; if he didn't go to the farm, Mummy wouldn't have anything to carry and sell at the market. Without him we wouldn't have food to eat or uniform to wear to school. He was never punished for almost killing Mummy, who up unto this day has scars across her face, neck and arm.

That was only the beginning, I was trying to make sense of how my father could do that, and why he did it. Word spread around and it didn't take long for me to hear that 'Daddy did think him a get bun.' I can't tell you if it was true or not, back in those days big people things were big people things and if you as a child tried to find out their business, you were more likely to find a slap across your face. On top of that, living with my grandparents was not ideal. Their house wasn't big enough for 6 extra persons and our food wasn't enough to be shared with 4 extra persons. It seemed like anything Mummy got for us had to be split evenly amongst my four siblings, her, her younger sister, her older brother, her parents and me. We were eating less and less but we didn't dare complain. My Grandfather didn't want us there, if it were up to him we would have all live on the streets. He had warned my mother about 'the wutlis man' and now that she had spread her bed, he wanted her to sleep in it.

The house had three bedrooms. One belonged to my grandparents, one was for my uncle and the other for my aunty. When we moved in my uncle started sleeping in the living room and me, my mother and my siblings took his room. In a house of 10 persons it was always too crowded, too hot and too loud. Our old house wasn't big but we weren't piled up on top of each other. My three older brothers used to share a room and my older sister and I shared another. At my grandparents home someone was always arguing and I always prayed for time alone. Once the cursing started my heart would start racing and I would feel physically sick, for some reason I started expecting every angry person to draw a machete like Daddy did.

I ended up getting my wish for alone time, a time when I could relax and not worry about someone losing their temper. It wasn't often, but on Saturday mornings I would be alone at home  for a while. My mother, grandmother and aunt would be at the market in Kingston and my grandfather, brothers and uncle would go to bush from about 4:00 in the morning. My older sister Marcia and I were always left at home together but Marcia had a boyfriend and she would leave to see him in the mornings and then come back in time to wash and clean before Granpa came home and started to curse.

I don't know if my uncle saw or heard from someone that Marcia left me in the days but somehow he found out I was home alone. He started coming home early on the Saturdays, he would find me wherever I was and joke around with me. He bought me sweeties and told me not to tell anyone or they would know I was his favorite. He would stay with me for about 30 minutes and then go back to bush. I enjoyed his company and the sweeties. He reminded me of my father when my father was in a good mood. We became very close and I had no problems sitting on his lap or letting him tickle me, and when he touched my chest for the first time I didn't know I was supposed to be afraid or that I was supposed to tell someone.

"Mi wah yuh grow nice and pretty!" He spoke in his normal playful way.

"This aguh mek yuh grow"

Every now and then I look back at how naive I was and sometimes I want to cry. Sometimes I feel guilty because I knew something was different, not wrong, because no one had ever explained to me that no one was supposed to touch certain places on your body. But I knew it was different. When he touched my chest it felt good, not like when he touched my hand or my head it was a strange feeling that I didn't understand. Whatever he was doing was working or at least that's what my immature mind thought. Before moving to West Retreat I already had 'mosquito bites' as Marcia called them but it seemed like they were getting bigger everyday.

I never paid much attention to my body, I had no reason to, but my growth and development sparked interest in everyone else.

"Yuh nuh see seh she a buss breas?" My grandmother kissed her teeth "as soon as dem gyal pickney yah grow likkle supm dem think a time fi tek man."

"She a not even 10 yet!" Mummy sighed.

They didn't know I was overhearing conversations they were having and I didn't know what to think. Uncle Dino wanted me to grow but Mummy and Mama were talking like it was a bad thing. I started feeling self-conscious and I began to look at my friends, I realized two things: none of them had breast buds like I did and none of them had men looking at them the way they looked at me. Something was wrong with me. Throughout this time, Uncle Dino was still doing his best to make me grow 'nice and pretty,' but I didn't want to grow anymore, I wanted to be like everyone else. I couldn't disappoint Uncle Dino however, he had taken the place of Daddy who I hardly saw and was still afraid of. By the ending of the summer his touching had moved further south and he was openly touching himself too.

I didn't have to understand or know about sex to know something was wrong at this point, but I had allowed it to get that far and I was in just as much in trouble as Uncle Dino so I had to keep our secret.

Some secrets stay hidden forever. A week before the start of school, Uncle Dino raped me. My mother begged me to tell her who did it but I never informed on him. Even so I lost two things, my virginity and my ally. After he did it, he avoided me, there were no more jokes, no more sweeties and no more interest in whether I grew or not. If I sat next to him he got up, if I spoke to him he gave me an attitude. I didn't know what I had done wrong, I just knew it was my fault.

While my secret was hidden, Marcia's came to the light, she was pregnant and the mystery of what she did and where she went on Saturdays was revealed. Marcia had been having sex with a man that lived up the road from us. She was 14 and I was eight, both too young for sex. Nevertheless, we learned about the birds and bees, about man and woman and about what they expected from each other. Miraculously, even with all that happened, I hadn't decided to close off my heart just yet. My decision came years later.