Black people -- Jamaica; Jamaica; Slavery -- Jamaica
“He get married,” she chortled, “an' his wife give him no chilluns!”
Frances let me in for sanctioning immorality with a vengeance. She had a
room in which she and Edgar slept, and she kept herself while I paid her
the magnificent sum of 7s. a week. Too little, I admit. But what was
I to do? It was higher than the wages around, and she certainly wasn't
worth what she got. Still she apparently felt no lack, for when I saw a
strange girl about the place, I was informed it was Frances' cousin come
to stay with her in the country for a change! And when the cousin was
gone, seeing I said nothing, she came to me and told me that the man she
was going to marry wanted to come and see her.
“An' he say, missus, he want to come like a man an' not hidin'. Say, ask
missus, let him come.”
I was struck with the nice feeling on the man's part, and cordially gave
my permission, though I must say I was surprised at its being asked.
He came one night after I had gone to bed and next morning he was
engaged in chopping wood for the cook. And then I found to my dismay
that he and Frances and Edgar shared her room!
What was I to say? My leave had been asked. So I shut my eyes and said
nothing, and the gentleman stayed a fortnight, and then sent in to know
what present I was going to give him before he went away!
I suppose to the average stay-at-home middle-class English woman this
state of things sounds shockingly immoral, but after all is it not that
things are here done openly that in other places are done under the
rose.
Up and down Jamaica have I been, and I can honestly say that the average
Jamaican peasant woman looks happy. Nay, she looks more than happy,
for happiness may be a passing condition, the majority of the Jamaican
peasant women look entirely content. There is no unspoken longing in a
peasant woman's face, she is quite satisfied.
“Missus,” said Leonie persuasively, “me kindly begging you leff me sleep
home.” Now Leonie had sworn by all her gods that she would stay at her
post all night, so enquiries were made and it was found “me cousin”
was going to have a baby in six weeks, and as it was her first, very
naturally she did not like being alone at night. But what about her
husband? Oh, she hadn't a husband. Whatever made missus think that? The
father? “Oh, he nice young man, he helping her a lot, but he too young,
not worth marrying.”
“Missus, kindly begging--” insinuatingly.
Well, of course, Leonie spent her nights with the expectant young
mother, and everybody was satisfied.
The real trouble is that these poor little children thus brought into
the world are often not properly looked after. How can a young woman
keep herself and her child on 7s. a week, and that is more than the
majority of them get? And so often it ends in a pitiful little white
coffin with a forlorn little wreath of fern upon it, carried on a
man's shoulder to the graveyard. I have seen them often. There are no
followers, though the Jamaican loves a funeral.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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