I had
been on St. Eustatius only a short while
when I met Mrs. Belle. Her name was
given to me as someone who might be willing to do some light housekeeping for
me and could perhaps do my laundry. This
last was terribly important since we had no electricity and no access to water
except by pulling it out of the cistern by the bucket. To shower, we poured buckets of water over
each other; to drink or cook, we
strained water through a handkerchief, but laundry was daunting.
Mrs.
Belle came to my house to meet me late one afternoon after she finished her
other jobs. A handsome, dignified black
woman, she sat on the veranda with me and we chatted. I liked her from the first instant. She had a vast knowledge of West Indian life
and lore.
My husband had been unable to get away from
work and I had come alone to the island to see how the building of our house was
progressing (it wasn’t). Mrs. Belle looked around at my no-work-in-progress
house. It had a roof and four walls, but
little else. We had sent down some
rudimentary furniture, and I had a two-burner propane stove, but to say I was
living rustically would be to understate the reality.
Was Mrs.
Belle daunted by the way I was living? Indeed not. I soon realized that what was a lark for me
had been for many years simply a way of life for this intrepid woman. No electricity? She had electricity now, but
for years she had lived without it. Indoor plumbing? A luxury only recently
acquired. Her greatest worry for me was
not the hardship of living “in the bush”.
She
said “You here all alone at night?”
I allowed as to how I was.
“You
not afraid of the jumbies?”
“What
are jumbies?”
“The
walking dead. You way out here in the
country. There be jumbies. ”
 |
| Mrs. Belle & Mrs. Choksy |
At that
time I thought it was superstitious nonsense. Now, after many years of living here, I’m not
so sure. More than once I’ve heard
footsteps in the night and a door opening and closing, only to find no one
there. Today, I’m simply grateful that
the jumbies, the ghosts of the early plantation owners and slaves, are willing
to let me coexist with them. When I
wrote Delighting In
Your Company, it was Mrs. Belle’s voice that reverberated in my mind.
In the
years following that first encounter, Mrs. Belle and I sat many times on her
porch or on mine and talked. The
matriarch of a large and close-knit family, she usually had a grandchild on her
knee. We became friends. Her name at birth was Margaret Catherine Evangeline
Tweed, although I learned this only after her death. We always addressed each other simply as Mrs. Belle
and Mrs. Choksy (my married name). This
formality is common on the island. When
she spoke of her husband it was always as “Mr. Belle”. To this day, forty some years later, I am usually
addressed on this island by my last, not my first name. This courtesy is common among Caribbean
Islanders, and I very much like it.
Mrs.
Belle told me bits and fragments of her life over the years, but never enough for
me to put together in any cohesive way. I’m sure her view of my life was just as
fragmented as hers was to me. It didn’t
matter. We were friends.
When I
started writing about the people important to my life here on this tiny rock in
the Caribbean, I knew Mrs. Belle had to be among them. Fortunately, two of her daughters, Venetta
McDonald and Joyce Simmons, were happy to help fill in the blanks. What I learned from them gave me and even
deeper respect for this remarkable woman than I had had before.
 |
| Mr. & Mrs. Belle |
Mrs.
Belle was born on the neighboring Island of St. Kitts on October 19th, 1917 and lived
there until the early 1970’s. From her
earliest years she worked … first in the cane fields, then cleaning houses. She did whatever she had to, to survive. Still
in her teens, she met and married a Mr. McDonald, but the marriage was short
lived. She met Mr. Belle, John, sometime
after this failed marriage. He wanted from
the first to marry her, but his family objected to her as “not good enough.” To
get him away from her, they sent him off to St. Eustatius (Statia).
Margaret
was a beautiful young woman, much admired. She told him if he left her there might well
be other men, there might be children. He
said he didn’t care. He loved her. One day he’d come back to St. Kitts and marry her. He’d accept any children she might have as his
own.
Mr.
Belle was a tailor. His speciality was
making brimmed caps of the kind worn then by many of the island men. As a parting present, Margaret gave him a pair
of beautiful, well-crafted scissors to use in his trade. He treasured those scissors to the day he died.
Mrs.
Belle’s first daughter, Venetta, was born not long after. Since Mr. McDonald had refused Margaret a
divorce, Venetta carries McDonald’s name, but from the first she knew he was
not her father.
By the
time Mr. Belle returned from Statia, there were three children. He still wanted Margaret and they took up life
together. He again asked McDonald to
grant her a divorce so he could marry her, but McDonald refused. They continued their life together, but only
when McDonald died were John and Margaret finally able to marry, on November 26th
1965. Mrs. Belle was then 48. Their life-long love affair had begun when she
was a girl in her teens.
By then
she had five girls and he had three boys.
When Mr.
Belle was offered a full-time job on Statia, they discussed it and made the
move. Venetta was old enough to look after the
younger children, so they were left behind in her charge until the Belle’s
could sort out their new situation and find suitable housing. Every week Mrs. Belle sent a package of food
to the girls including home-made bread and succulent coconut drops. Joyce
remembers those coconut drops fondly to this day.
Mr.
Belle was to work for Island Estates, a development started by retired American
Army Officer, George Bauer. He took his
army pension in a lump sum and started buying up old plantation lands all over
the uninhabited part of the island with the vision of creating an upscale
retirement community. The prospectus optimistically showed roads and
even a golf course where none existed. The land, in use only as a free range for the
many goats, cows and sheep owned by the islanders living in town, seemed
valueless to the local people, who were happy to sell it for cash in hand. Few ever even ventured to the other side of
the island where at one time Dutch and English planters had run some of the
largest and most successful sugar plantations in the Caribbean. However, by the middle of the nineteenth
century, all the plantation houses were in ruins. The local people saw little value in the land.
Bauer
bought it up, hundreds of acres, then divided it into one acre lots, and put it
through the Dutch courts to ensure owners clear title. (This last step was what failed to happen on
many non-Dutch islands. The stories of
people building Caribbean houses on British and French islands, only to
discover they didn’t own the land, are legion. )
By the
time the Belles came to Statia, the Bauer’s had separated and Mrs. Bauer held the land. She needed help in clearing and fencing lots,
and doing the myriad odd jobs required by the business of selling land. She also needed household help and offered to
provide housing. The job seemed ideal
to the Belles.
But to
an outsider like me, the conditions of such employment seem almost medieval. To hire an “off-islander” even today, the
employer has to “sign” for them. That
is, the employer has to assume full responsibility for them, food, clothing,
shelter, medical needs.
This
may seem reasonable and straightforward. But the other side of the coin is that the
sponsor, the employer, has an enormous hold over the employee. He or she can revoke that agreement with a
moment’s notice. It has always seemed to
me little short of indentured servitude. But to the Belles, at that time and place, it
was a step up.
They
came to Statia and for the next several years worked for Island Estates. It was during this period that I first met
them. Mrs. Belle started “doing” for me and we began
a close friendship that lasted till her death.
They
lived at first in a little stone house, former slave quarters, on the side of Little
Round Hill, in the shadow of the volcano. It was one large room with no electricity or
running water. Then they moved to a house
on Rosemary Lane, just at the time the Dutch began extended electricity
throughout the town and across the island. It had previously been available only from six
pm to midnight each day and only in the heart of town. This was a great improvement. The Belles brought their girls over from St. Kitts to live with them and Mr. Belle bought a
small piece of land on a hillside and began construction on the house he and Mrs.
Belle would live in for the rest of their lives.
But
things were not going well between Mr. Belle and his employer. Mr. Belle was a deeply religious man. He told me he had been instructed to testify
under oath in court to witnessing a signature in a dispute over ownership of a
large piece of land belonging to an old island family. He said he had not witnessed the signature on
the sale agreement and could not bring himself to lie about it, even under
threat of losing everything. As a result, the Bauer’s lost the court case
and Mr. Belle lost his job.
A
friend stepped forward and signed the necessary residence papers for him and, soon
after, the Belles applied for and received permanent resident status. Their years of indentured servitude were over.
But life wasn’t easy on Statia, even
then.
 |
| Mrs. Belle with one of her grandchildren |
They
took over the maintenance of my house and grounds, and Mr. Belle did whatever
jobs he could find elsewhere to make ends meet, while Mrs. Belle cleaned
houses, did laundry, and looked after a growing brood of grandchildren. They made charcoal and sold it, they raised
sorrel, a plant much coveted on the island, and they had fresh eggs from their
chickens.
They
supported their churches generously. Mr.
Belle was Anglican and served as the substitute minister three Sundays of the
month. The Anglican priest came over
from a neighboring island on the fourth. If I chanced to visit them on a Saturday, I
always found Mr. Belle sitting on his porch studying his well-worn bible, preparing
for Sunday.
Mrs.
Belle rarely set foot in the Anglican Church. She said “Dat his church!” She was staunchly Methodist.
The Methodist Church service was later
than the Anglican one on Sunday morning, so Mr. Belle would finish his service
and then accompany Mrs. Belle to hers. Occasionally I was invited by one or the other
of them to a special service. I always
accepted. I enjoyed being a part of
their large, loving family, even peripherally.
When my
husband died, and I was alone in my isolated house on the lower slopes of the
volcano, Mrs. Belle called me every single morning. The phone would ring. “Good morning” she would say in her beautiful
island lilt. “You has a good night?”
“Yes. I’m fine. I’ll stop by later. ”
Somehow,
knowing she’d call made me feel less alone.
Then Mrs.
Belle was diagnosed with diabetes. Many
people in the Caribbean struggle with diabetes, but I believe Mrs. Belle was
what we know today as a brittle diabetic. Even though the public health nurse came daily
to administer her necessary insulin, it was never quite right. Her feet and legs swelled. It became increasingly difficult for her to walk.
Still
she never missed a Sunday morning service. Her daughter, Joyce, came by car each Sunday
to take her to church, but if Mrs. Belle thought she wouldn’t be there on time,
she’d start walking. She’d say, when
Joyce found her struggling along the road “I jes tooku.” ( I was just taking it one step at a time.”)
I will
regret all my life that I did not see her that last day. I had been off-island. It was at the end of a fourteen hour day of
planes and airports, and when I arrived home, Mr. Belle was waiting for me. He told me she was in serious condition but
that I was too late to see her that night. Visiting hours were over. I should go the next morning.
She slipped
into a coma that night. I learned only
later that she had been up and dressed and waiting for me all that afternoon. I hope that in whatever heaven she inhabits
she understands and forgives me.
When I
walked into the church for her funeral and looked around at the overflowing
congregation I wasn’t sure I would find a seat. Then from the very front of the church, her
daughters, Joyce and Venetta and Lenore, motioned to me. I was to sit with the family. They had saved a place for me. The minister in her homily spoke of her large,
loving family and, nodding toward me, “her friend”.
She was
indeed my friend, and I miss her to this day.
There
were eighteen grandsons at her funeral. Six carried her coffin from the hearse into
the church, six from the church to the hearse and six from the hearse to the
cemetery and into the grave yard overlooking the sea.
Mr.
Belle never recovered from the death of his wife. He took to wandering off, not knowing where he
was, where he was going. His daughter,
Lenore, tried to keep him safe, but she had children to keep track of and eventually
there was no recourse but to put him in the old people’s home, where he could
have constant supervision.
He
lived another few years after Mrs. Belle’s death, but in truth, he died when
she did. He was never able to find
himself again after she died.
.............................................................................................................
To purchase one of my books, just click on the book cover below and select the vendor of your choice.
.....................................................
.....................................................
• Romantic Road ~ Takes you on a chase across Europe with our heroine who finds herself in a series of precarious situations. She encounters a handsome stranger, but is he helping her, or is he dangerous? This story has hair raising suspense, romance and a sprinkling of humour
.................................................................
"The Memory of Roses by Blair McDowell
is simply an incredibly lovely story. It’s also a love story, and a story about
finding yourself, and about closure. The theme running through the book is
“all’s well that ends well.”
-- Marlene, Reading Reality
-- Marlene, Reading Reality
.................................................................
"Delighting In Your Company is a unique paranormal romance that brings together island folklore, history, and mystery with an unlikely romance between the past and present that had me going through a torrent of emotions and made it impossible to put down."
-- The Romance Reviews
..............................................................
“I found Sonata to be a charming novel that left me laughing out loud
in parts and gnawing nails in others. It was a delight to read.”
– Night Owl Reviews
– Night Owl Reviews
....................................................................
"Abigail’s Christmas is a sweet and special story that honors both love and the holidays."
-- Sizzling Hot Books
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for taking the time to send a comment. I will get back to you as quickly as I can.
Regards
Blair McDowell