Jamerican girl

New beginnings

Jamerican Girl, Deanna's Story
Sequel to Miss Ivy's Tea Room

A Novel
By Marlene Rose-Clarke

Also, by Marlene Rose-Clarke

Miss Ivy's Tea Room

Jamaican immigrants: perceptions of work, education and cultural adaptation
(Publication can be found in the Fairfield University library, Fairfield, CT)

This book is a work of fiction. Name, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright 2018

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

For information contact:

Marlene Rose-Clarke
12 Hamlet Lane. Monroe, CT 06468
(203) 445-0346
marleneroseclarke@gmail.com
Cover photo by Marlene Rose-Clarke

Manufactured in USA

For my daughter April, and my nieces Kamilah, Mikelah, Imani, true Jamericans

Chapter 1 New Beginnings

The evening before my wedding, I sat in awe of what was ahead for me as I made this big leap into my future. It was a big crazy step, leaving all the comforts of North America for life in a third world country. I reflected on my past, and when I first met Peter Chang, the man who will become my husband tomorrow.
I was a college student from Connecticut, an American, who was of half Jamaican and half African-American descent attending Howard University in Washington, D.C. I was a Yankee, as my friend and I often referred to ourselves. I wanted to join the Caribbean Student Association because I was intrigued by the clannish group of West Indians on campus, plus I was a Jamaican in my heart. All the Caribbean students hung out under this big tree in front of the university's Blackburn Library. I loved to hear them talk. I would sit on the steps of the library and pretend I was studying, but I was really listening to the different accents and sometimes they played reggae music, which I loved. I was intrigued by these students, I wanted to be a part of their atmosphere; they seemed relaxed, intelligent and full of fun. They gave me a good vibe; they made me feel transplanted to another world that was not America. Peter was part of this group.
They were part of a world that I could embrace because it helped me to identify my true self, or at least feel more comfortable in my surroundings. My mom always kept the Jamaican culture in our home. From her I inherited the concept that America was based on segmentation, classification, categories of who was from what descent, and where they belonged, what group, what neighborhood, what faith, where to check a box to identify yourself. It made me feel alienated, never truly inclusive of anything.
Where did I belong? Where could I fit in? I was a girl who roamed life feeling like an alien wherever I went. At least amongst this group I felt a calling to fit in amongst them, if they would accept me. One day the President of the association tried to talk to me.
"I see you checking the people undah de tree. You like dem?"
"I like to listen to their music, and watching the guys play soccer," I said shyly.
"You want me to introduce you to anyone in particular? I think you have a liking for one of those guys over there."
"Oh no, just listening and observing," I said shyly. "I'm from Connecticut, but my mother is Jamaican."
I didn't know much about being Jamaican really. I knew reggae music, Jamaican food and a few patois words that mother used when she was frustrated. Plus, she had a distinct Jamaican accent having come to America as a young adult. I always identified the accent growing up in CT.
The President leaned in towards me, "Oh now I see. Yu want to join our group? Come to one of our meetings, the Caribbean Association. You will meet a lot of people and we do a lot of events and tings. If you like it, you can join up."
"When is it? I might consider it."
"Every Tuesday four o'clock in Douglas Hall, room 112. See you there, I have a class now." He tipped his hat back which had dreads piled up underneath it. I nodded with a smile. He seemed cool. I really wanted to go and meet the people; my curiosity was intrigued.
I was born to a Jamaican mother who immigrated to the U.S. and my father was a black American who came from North Carolina. My mother never spoke much about Jamaica, but she cooked Jamaican food often, especially on Sundays. She shopped at the local food shops that carried Jamaican food stuff. I only visited Jamaica a couple of times when I was young, too young to remember. My mother told me that I went to visit my grandmother when I was two years old, it was the first time I met my grandmother. Then I went when I was four years old, when my mother had to arrange Granny's funeral. I have a picture of her that I always took with me where ever I moved to. I also had a picture of my dad, my mother and I at the time of her funeral.
My mother didn't talk about her relatives; she said she didn't have any because they either moved to Canada or England. Being in Jamaica made me want to know more about my background. She said after they got settled, everyone gradually lost touch. "Outta sight, outta mind," she would say in her patois. She was an only child. My dad had a sister, but she died when I was a toddler; she wasn't married and did not have any children. I never met her. Both of my father's parents were deceased and I never met them; he said he had some cousins in North Carolina, but everyone grew apart and did not keep in touch since he moved north. He was in the army for a short time, but he injured his knee in training and was discharged. Secretly I always admired people who had big families with grandparents, cousins, brothers and sisters. I wished I had that too. My dad and my mom were very close, they were meant to be together and they died together. They had each other and me. Outside of their work, we lived a reclusive life, they kept few friends and they were people they worked with. Sometimes they went to church if someone invited them for a special service. That was really the only time I went to church although mom used to read the bible. When I was small she read me stories at bedtime then, say the Lord's prayer. To this day I say that prayer every night and when things stress me. I say the same prayer to calm myself.
When I attended my first meeting of the Caribbean Students Association, I felt weird, nervous. I introduced myself to the group, and it was clear that I had an American accent, so I had to talk more and tell them that I lived in Connecticut and that my mother was Jamaican. I was justifying my presence. Someone asked me why I wanted to join the association, it was Peter Chang. In a million years I could not have imagined myself marrying him in the future. I thought he was a nerd, putting me on the spot to explain myself for being there. I felt everyone could probably tell that I was uneasy. I felt all eyes on me, especially since I spoke with an American accent. I was, a Yankee, trying to infiltrate their exclusive organization. I felt like an alien. Anyway, I put on my best confident performance and explained.
"I want to get to know more Caribbean students on campus because Howard represented the Black Diaspora and I am a Jamaican even though I was raised in America, in Connecticut."
"Welcome Deanna Washington, I hope you join our association, you are a West Indian," said the President and he gave me a wink, like a big brother. Many of the other students, mostly the guys welcomed me with a wave of their hand or a nod of their head. Some of the girls just looked at me and I swear some of them rolled their eyes, except an older female student, named Hope Fairchild. She smiled and nodded her head at me. Hope was a graduate student and she looked a bit older than many of the other students.
After the meeting, Hope came up to me and introduced herself. Coincidentally it turned out that she lived in the same dorm as me, the Quad, but on a different floor. She was a resident assistant (RA). She told me that she was a teacher in Jamaica and she was attending Howard to get her master's in speech pathology. I liked her right away; she was like a big sister. I told her that my mother was from St. Elizabeth and she said, "That's why yu complexion look suh, most of the people from St. Elizabeth have a copper brown, or reddish complexion." I asked her why and she started to tell me about a German ship that shipwrecked in St. Elizabeth and the sailors married many of the women or got together with the black Jamaican women in the area and had children.
She said, "there were a lot of mulatto people and over time some people intermarried many of their own relatives which resulted in most of the people in the area having that brown or copper red complexion. Study your Jamaican history. It will help yu to understand more 'bout the Caribbean and Jamaica."
I did do some research about the area, I even asked my mother. There were not only Germans who settled in the area. There were people from England and Scotland who settled in the region from the 1700's and yes the men did marry the black women and East Indians. Jamaica had other races, Indians and Chinese that came to Jamaica as indentured servants or migration. My mother said her great grandfather was Scottish and he and his brother married two sisters. They had a lot of land and they were farmers. The soil in the area was very fertile. When I asked her, what happened to 'all the land' she said over time people died, migrated and left the land to be captured by the farm workers and their family. She lived on an acre with her mother. They had a pepper farm, but she sold it cheap when her mother died. I was hoping there was some vast amount of land that I was to inherit one day, but she didn't really seem to know much about her ancestors beyond her grandparents.
Whenever I tried to probe more she said, "Concentrate on the present and the future. Don't get too mix up with people. Focus on school. How are your classes and the dorm?" I would tell her everything is good. I would talk to her about the people I met. Some were fascinating black people that I would never have met in CT or probably at a predominantly white college. I told her about my roommate who was from California. She was hardly in the room. She had a boyfriend who lived off campus and she was always staying at his place or she was with her sorority sisters. Mother always dismissed me when I asked too much about Jamaica. I didn't take it to heart. I was very much planning my future to attend law school and to work for a large corporate entity so that she and Dad could be proud of me. I knew she was proud of me for getting to college since she didn't go and neither did Dad.
I was enrolled in the School of Business. It didn't have many Caribbean students, most of the West Indian students seem to be in the School of Engineering or Architecture or Liberal Arts. I recalled Peter was an Architecture student; I used to glimpse him occasionally when I had an English class in the School of Architecture building. I went to all the Caribbean student meetings and several of their house parties that they held on the weekends off campus. There was always a party and Hope used to arrange rides and encourage me to come along. Some of the guys in the association wanted to date me, but Hope would warn me about certain ones and their reputation. Peter was at many of the parties, but I remembered that he was always just looking on. Some of the girls who were obviously there not just get an education, but to also find a husband tried to talk to him. His family was known to be wealthy in Jamaica. He didn't seem too interested in them, because I never saw him with anyone specific. I do recall he was always staring at me, but I just thought he was curious as to why this Yankee girl wanted to hang out with the Jamaicans. I didn't pay him any attention. Little did I know, he had a crush on me.
I did like this other Jamaican guy who was a soccer player, but he had a lot of girlfriends and a reputation as a heart breaker. Occasionally he would ask me to dance at house parties, but Hope warned me about him, so I never took him seriously and just enjoyed the parties, plus my mother's words were always ringing in my head, "Don't get mix up with certain people, they will sway you from goal in life and bring you down". I didn't get involved with any of them, I was stronger than she thought, and I was not easily persuaded by anyone. Even though I felt weird initially hanging out with the Caribbean students, I still felt more at home amongst them than the African Americans.
The African Americans always thought there was something 'different' about me. I had very few friends in high school, my closest friend was Victoria. She and I always talked about having some of the same experiences as 'Ja-mericans.' Victoria's mother and grandparents came from Jamaica and her father was a black American. From the beginning we had a similar family make up which made us bond. In high school we added Michelin and Chantal to our circle; they were two biracial girls who had never lived in America, so they fit the 'different' bucket. Their mother was a black American and their father was Australian. We all have stayed close over the years. Whenever we were all in CT we would hang out. Michelin and Chantal went away to college in Rhode Island and Victoria went to Columbia University in Manhattan.
Hope used to sit me down in her room and try to teach me how to talk patois, and then she would laugh at me, "Yu sound like a Yankee trying to mimic a Jamaican accent." I would practice talking patois until I could say certain things and sound genuine. I was certain others also felt I was mimicking the accent, but I didn't care, I wanted to fit in. Howard really did expose me to the black diaspora because occasionally African students attended Caribbean events. There were a lot of Nigerians, some Ethiopians, even Iranians.
When I went home to Connecticut on school break, Victoria and I used to try and talk with a Jamaican accent. She did it better because she grew up around her grandparents and she visited Jamaica many times. She said, "Once you go to Jamaica, you can pick up the accent easily."
By my sophomore year I stopped going to the Caribbean Association meetings because there was a scandal on campus. They said that the Treasurer of the organization stole money and dropped out of school and they couldn't recover the money. I didn't keep up with the story but Hope and I stayed friends and she would often invite me out with her to West Indian events. I never saw Peter much after I stopped going to the meetings, but over the four years, our paths crossed at functions and he would just say hello and stare at me. I made some other West Indian friends, who were from Trinidad. After graduation, I kept in touch with them, and Hope for a few years, but over time everyone lost touch. However, Hope always stayed in touch although we communicated less. So, it was quite ironic that years later, Victoria was buying a villa in Jamaica and Peter Chang's architectural company would be renovating it.
Victoria's mother, Julia Horne had gone on vacation with her best friend, Marie. Marie's uncle was retiring to Florida and he was selling his villa. Julia thought it was a great deal and she got Victoria interested in buying it. So, I accompanied Victoria on her first visit to Jamaican to see the villa. Peter was now an architect and he and his father owned a big architecture and construction company in Montego Bay. Marie's uncle was a friend of theirs and he recommended the firm to do Victoria's renovations.
When we visited the island to look over the villa, I met Peter again. He recognized me right away.
"Deanna Washington, from Howard University, do you remember me? Peter Chang."
"Of course, how are you?"
"I'm fine. You look great, you haven't changed much, your hair is shorter, very nice, it suits you well." He was checking me up and down slowly and smiling from ear to ear. I knew I was blushing. I couldn't help noticing that his physique was fit, toned, and muscular. He used to look so skinny at Howard. His hair was pulled back into shoulder length dreadlocks. He had a slight goatee and a thin mustache. You could see his abs through his tight fitting white polo shirt and his thighs looked a bit bulky even though his chino pants where loose fitting, a body that was at the gym or pumping iron or something. His eyes were seductive and flirtatious. I was so magnetized by him; I swore he winked at me. It was not long before we would fall in love; it was fast. Now here we were getting married.
On that initial visit to see the villa Peter took us out a few times. He orchestrated each outing and invited a friend of his, Patrick Pavan to try and set up Victoria, but it really was to have me all to himself. Patrick may have liked Victoria, but she was oblivious to his flirtations. When we returned to New York, Peter called me several times; he wanted me to come back to Jamaica. He wanted to pay for me to visit him, but I told him that was not appropriate. I thought it was a bold proposition and although I was very attracted to him, I certainly didn't want to give the impression that I was some easy American chick that he could impress with his money by offering to pay for me to visit him.
When I was at Howard, a lot of the West Indian guys had the perception that American girls were easy. But, I personally did not consider myself an American girl. I was a Ja-merican, as Hope used to say. While at Howard, I really was in search of just who I was and where I fit in. I chose to go to an historic Black college because I felt I needed to explore the black experience from an intellectual perspective. I didn't have a lot of exposure to the black diaspora in Connecticut. My guidance counselor who was black, but didn't look black, I thought she was Italian when we first met. She encouraged me to look at Howard because her husband studied dentistry there. She went to Spelman, a black female college, so she encouraged black students to attend black colleges. I became intrigued with Howard when I read about it during my library study hall.
I wanted to meet blacks from Africa, the West Indies as well as the intellectual black Americans who were the descendants of the first doctors, scientists, lawyers and professionals in America who studied at Howard. There were many rich, intelligent black folks in CT, but I was not in their circle, my parents were not part of their community. Funny how people stick together when they have money, they call it networking; I call it exclusion of the "have nots". To me many of them acted like the same white people who discriminated against them, and now they were discriminating against their own people who had not "made it." They all weren't like that, but many of them were. Unfortunately, a lot of the black students that went to high school with me were not pursing a higher level of education. Some students couldn't afford college if they didn't get a scholarship and if you weren't in sports, like me, well you had to plan on paying for college with loans and your parents hard earned savings. Many of the black students just wanted a job or a trade. Some went to community college and some joined the army. My parents made sure that my mind was on the path to college and beyond. They didn't want me working in a blue-collar job, at least not at the level they worked.
Peter knew Victoria would return to Jamaica within the month, and I planned to accompany her, so we planned to see each other again. We continued to talk on the phone and he was very nice, and he seemed sincere. He damn near told me everything about himself since he left Howard. He traveled after graduation to Africa and worked there until he went back to graduate school at Georgetown University. After graduate school he went to work for his father's company. He was poised to take over the company whenever his father retired, but he was really running it equally with his father.
Before meeting Peter again, it had been few years since I graduated law school and took a job for a major pharmaceutical company as their Compliance Manager. After a few years of ungodly hours, I was promoted to a Director and they asked me to relocate to their Manhattan office. I was reluctant to do it because I had made some friends and had built a community for myself. With my parents deceased, I was afraid to re-establish myself all over again. The only saving grace was I still had close ties with Victoria and her mother, Julia. When my parents died, Victoria and Julia were as close to a family as I had. They helped me with the funeral and kept me sane. I really didn't have any other relatives to call on. Victoria and Julia were my family.
My father suffered an aneurysm while driving and my mother was in the car. The car went over the guard rail and they were both killed. It was the most devastating thing I ever had to face. I could barely function to make the arrangements for their burial. Victoria packed up a lot of the things in their apartment when I had to handle all their affairs. I was so distraught and stressed out from having just passed the bar, starting a new job, plus living in a new community. My head was disoriented during the whole episode. I wasn't functioning well with their passing. There were too many major things happening in my life at the time. It's a wonder that I didn't have a nervous breakdown.
After the funeral, Victoria's mother, Julia, sent me to grief counseling. Her friend Dr. Marie Carrington, whose uncle owned the villa that Victoria bought in Jamaica recommended someone in my new community upstate New York. The counseling really helped me, but I never went through my parent's personal belongings. I couldn't bring myself to do it. I just told Victoria to stuff them all in a suitcase. It was enough to have to get rid of their apartment of twenty plus years and discard most of their belongings. It would no longer be my childhood home to return to. The decision of what to keep and what to discard was gut wrenching.
You go through so many emotions when you touch all the physical things that link to memories in your life, music, books, pictures, school awards. My little room was as I left it when I went away to college; I never changed it and they just kept it clean. After going through my tragedy, it was ironic that years later I would have to console Victoria when her father died in a car crash.
After the wedding I promised myself that I would finally go through the stuff in the suitcase. I was still settling into my new townhouse in Connecticut and needed to just eliminate a lot of excess things that I had in storage from my house. I bought the townhouse after living in Victoria's Manhattan apartment for a few months. I had finally sold the house I had upstate and although at the time I knew Peter and I would be getting married, I still wanted to have my own place in the states.
Even though I was starting a new life with him, my feminist instincts and my parent's hard work would not make me consciously just give up everything we worked for in America. Plus, there was a small place in my heart that said, "you're more a Yankee than you think". I did appreciate the good fortune I had in America, my education, my job. My mother always preached how fortunate I was compared to the life she had in Jamaica. It was also important not to give up my identity to a husband. I had established a career, I had a few close friends; I didn't want to just dismiss all that to be Peter's wife.
Mama came to America to find a better life for herself, and she did. I wanted to keep some roots in America, for her and for my father's memory. Although I wanted to be a Jamaican at heart, I really was an American girl. I didn't know what it would be like to live in Jamaica, but I knew that I loved Peter and I loved vacations in Jamaica and I wanted to be with him. They say go where your heart is and all will be blessed. I believed it. So, I took the leap.
I planned to move into Peter's house, at the beach in Jamaica. After the wedding I will have to sort out what to take there versus what to leave in Connecticut. I planned to resign my position after our honeymoon in Antigua.
My boss had already approached me about my plans, which I thought from an HR perspective was inappropriate, but I just shrugged it off and told him, "Nothing will change, Peter and I had commuting relationship and it will continue." I'm not sure he believed me. I thought that was the politically right thing to say at the time, at least until we decide to have children. I told everyone we would not have children right away, but Peter and I were ready to have our own family. He had already decided to design additions to the beach house. I wasn't a hundred percent sure that I wanted to live on the beach. It's a great place, but I thought it seemed a bit isolated without neighbors. And since I will not be working, I'll be alone while Peter is at work or traveling to his construction sites. After the wedding I plan to talk to him about buying a home in a neighborhood with people close by and perhaps just keep the beach house for visits on the weekends.
I contacted Hope to let her know that I was getting married and that I planned to live in Jamaica. She began telling me about crime in Jamaica. I could always count on Hope to put fear in me, but she said she was 'jus keeping it real'. Her words made me apprehensive about living out on the beach with no neighbors, I wasn't afraid of crime because the place was very secure with cameras and security alarms, I just didn't want to be lonely. I guess I also had some fears about re-establishing my life and future in a country that I thought of as my own, but I was really an American in the eyes of any Jamaican that was born and bred there. I started to question if I could adjust to the change, but I was determined because Peter would be my family now.
Peter suggested I ship my BMW to Jamaica and when we visit Connecticut, we could just rent a car for the time that we're there. I wasn't keen on that idea; I thought it would be better to get a Jamaican car with the steering wheel on the right side. I did want him to get a U.S. passport so that he can travel to Connecticut without having to worry about renewing his visa, but he's such a proud Jamaican, I don't know if he will do it. I wondered if it would cause any conflict with his business holdings in Jamaica or what the impact would be in the U.S. in terms of his income and paying taxes. I would have to consult with an accountant or someone versed in dual citizenship.
I have so many things to sort out, including trying to find out more about my roots in Jamaica and my mother. I just always got the feeling from her that she was not disclosing everything about her life. Moving to Jamaica would certainly give me access to trace my roots a bit more.