What would make a mother contemplate suicide and homicide as she drives over Sans Souci (in Trinidad)?
As some of you may have predicted, one of the possible reasons for a woman (anywhere in the world) to consider killing herself and her child is a lousy, rotten marriage. And while that (the lousy, rotten marriage) certainly is the case in "Here," there is much more amiss that may be contributing to this woman's troubled state of mind.
The title of the first story in Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw's Four Taxis Facing North is "Here." And that single word takes on several small and large meanings in the story. It is a story that gets larger as it progresses--larger in a spatial sense (geographically) and in meaning (possibilities for interpretation) as well. But, all the while it presents snapshots/stills of a gloomy scene.
The structure of this gloomy scene in "Here" is a series of small, jolting stories told in an observational manner alongside, and occasionally intersecting with a bigger story of a mother who is reluctant to send her child to stay with her father in the U.S. (they are getting a divorce) for an extended period of time. The stories (small and large) intersect and seem distant, and overall present a disturbing view of neglect, despair, and desperation. (Fun stuff, huh?)
Three men walking along the highway:
The first small observational story is of three men walking along a highway whom the narrator notices casually as she drives by on her way to the airport to send her 4-year-old daughter to spend court-ordered time with her father in Miami. She says, "I look to the left for no reason in particular, and I see three boys walking along the side of the highway..." But the observation takes on more significance as she notes, "They skin and grin, all the while staying in their single file, Indian file, one behind the other . . . They look so light and free, covered with layers of smells from the cars, the trucks, the factory, the fish, the oranges, the pond, and they laugh and chat, as though they have pockets full of 'blues', one-hundred-dollar-bill-blues, silver shoes, and a view of the ocean from their mansion on the hill."
But then she adds, "...these boys. I've never seen them before."
Later on in the story though, they appear familiar to her. She declares, "I know their story now, they are definitely family, the eldest one is the presumed, appointed leader, the middle one barely a presence, but the third one, because he is the smallest, the apparent follower, will be the most powerful." Her assessment of them at this point in the story gives us a satisfying little narrative of odd-looking city people, which appears to dig beneath the surface of their appearance, but the greater significance of her assessment comes much later in the story.
This is not a beautiful "Island story":
Another small, but spatially larger observational story is of Port of Spain. She observes:
"There are no cruise ships today; these floating cities come to this town from Monday to Friday, to this port that tries to hide its ugliness with bougainvillea and alamanda. The cautious tourists walk through the streets of Port of Spain and compare this port, this capital, to others they have seen in the Caribbean, in more beautiful islands with whiter beaches and friendlier locals. The tourists never venture too far away from the lighthouse, they never go lower down the street where there aren't even flowers to hide the thick, black, oily sea filled with ships lying on their side, like dead dogs on the highway. There they would find shanties, standpipes for showers, holes full of crabs, half-naked children, men and women, living no better than those wrecks in that oily sea . . . I drive away from that town, Port of Spain, a name I aways loved as a child, linking my little dot to a bigger someplace, but now the name irritates me, embarrasses me, especially when the cruise ships arrive. No, we don't speak Spanish here, and I'm sure there is nothing here to remind you of your last trip to Spain. I've never been to Spain and this is not Spain's port, Port of Spain, Port of Pain, Sort of Sane."
The narrator's observations of Port of Spain here seem to correspond with her own feeling of disenchantment, and once again show her desire to reveal that which lies beneath the surface of things.
A father bringing up a little girl is not right:
Then there is the story of Miami as it relates to the narrator and her condition To her, Miami is a potential race problem for her daughter, as well as a generally hazardous place for a child. She says, " although she looks light-skinned here [in Trinidad], in America she will be black and will have to suffer in ways she would never have to here . . . the endless horrific possibilities: Tina dead in a car crash, Tina kidnapped, Tina kidnapped and sold to child pornographers, or Tina lost, simply lost in one of those gigantic Miami malls." For her, Miami is also the place where her soon-to-be-ex-husband fits in because, "although coloured and Trinidadian he looks like a white, Cuban, anti-Castro supporter with a slight tan."
In her state of isolation and despair, she probably imagines that among other potential dangers for her daughter in Miami, a white (looking) father raising a black child may be the worst. And here too, her concerns dig deeper beneath the surface of some of Miami's seductiveness.
Marriage(s), desertion, and contemplations of suicide and homicide:
The big story in "Here" is about marriage and desertion. She tells smaller stories of her mother's four marriages, and of "stepfathers [who] were kinder to [her] than [her] own father who just left a space, a hole, a book full of blank pages to fill with imagined days spent together."
Then there is the big story of her broken marriage, and the battle with her husband over visitation with their daughter. She blames him for the break-up saying, "I was his excuse for leaving but he always wanted to go, to Miami, anywhere to get away from us, me, everyone but our Tina. He never liked it here. He didn't want the family, the family business, he didn't want anything to do with home."
Her contemplations of suicide and homicide as she drives over Sans Souci Hill, may be a result of her feelings of desertion, and her failed attempt to keep her daughter away her husband in Miami, but her observations on the hill itself (as her observations of Port of Spain) tell of a bigger gloom. She muses about the irony of its English translation: "(how does that translate? Without a Worry Hill? Carefree Hill?), foolish name for a place where all the residents can barely make ends meet, where most of the young men have no jobs and spend most of the day playing basketball and smoking zeh..."
It's important to note though that she does not drive off the hill. Instead, she decides not to send her daughter to Miami.
A scene of depravity, and an aaahhaaa moment about the first three men:
In a final small story, the narrator flashes back to when she was pregnant and she and her husband were on vacation. They came upon two men and a young boy in a hut, "a lone hut, a case en bois, with huge holes for windows and a space for a doorway. the case had a clear view of the ocean . . . There were three of then inside the room; two men in their underwear sitting on the ground, and a young boy, barebacked, lying on his stomach in torn shorts on an old mattress, rum bottles scattered everywhere. " She makes a casual yet realistic (not contrived) connecting observation of the moment: "The three of them, two men and a boy. The three of us. The men never looked up. The boy turned his face to the wall. So we kept driving to the Atlantic Ocean, the ocean, not the Caribbean Sea, without saying a word about the men and the boy, without saying a word about the three of us."
This disturbing final image / snapshot / close-up look at the three in the hut, juxtaposed with the image of the expectant couple whom we know will split up brings the viewer closer to "Here's" major messages. It is a final close-up of misery, depravity, false hope, isolation, and tenuous containment that is present (there/here) in the people in the shot, and probably also reflective of the general condition of the place, the setting, which is evident in the stories.
It is also a return to the first story of the three men she observes walking along the highway. And it's possible to surmise that her assessment of their story, particularly her choice to empower the youngest of the three men, is her way of working out a desirable solution to that haunting scene of the two men and the young boy in the hut.
Conclusions: Is there any optimism in "Here"?
In my second reading of "Here," I caught a glimpse of something hopeful in it all. That hope has to do with time, but not the way most might see time (futuristically perhaps) as an eventual "healer of pain." The message about time is about the possibility of arresting it and reverting its course, as in a crisis situation.
As I mentioned before, the narrator's observations / stories are told as she is in transit to the airport to send her daughter on a court-ordered trip to Miami. But, at some point along the way, she veers off track and decides not to send her daughter. Instead of heading to the airport or driving off Sans Souci hill, she heads towards a mall where she and her daughter will spend time together, while a crisis amounts in search of them.
She says, "In a crisis, time is not the same, there are gaps, pauses, rushing ahead (like these damn traffic lights), always a checking of the watch." In that space where she manipulates time by causing a crisis, we can see the attempt to interrupt what she considers the course of a potential disaster--sending her daughter to Miami. In that sense (for her), her desperate act of causing a crisis is an empowering moment. The (optimistic?) message may also apply to the larger gloomy scene she describes in Trinidad. That message may be that here in this place, in this condition, there needs to be a crisis, a wake-up call that will interrupt the course of things. And, one can be empowered by causing that interruption, by actively changing the course. But, as optimistic as that may be on one level, one can't turn away from the underlying nihilism in the sentiment that a smaller crisis will bring attention to the larger crisis or crises. Question I'm left with: Is Trinidad in need of a nihilistic, wake-up crisis? [Follow links to a review, and more on Elizabeth Walcott-Hackshaw's Four Taxis Facing North here at Caribbean Review of Books.]
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