Charlotte Brady, Contributor

A white Toyota Corolla is rushing down Jacks Hill. It cuts the corners of the winding road, using the brakes to control speed.

It is early and nature is slowly opening its eyes. The lizards are immobilised by the coolness of the night, resting like sculptures on rocks and branches. The trees are waiting for the wind, a wind still hiding somewhere over the ocean. There is nothing to suggest cruelty or pain. The morning is sweet as an unwritten poem.

The car engine roars, slashing the stillness into shreds (although soon afterwards the silence closes in again and there is absolutely nothing to indicate a car passed, that something has taken place).

The driver's window is rolled down and a brown arm is hanging along the door with a cigarette between thumb and index finger.

The birds are singing violently, despite the early hour.

The driver skilfully avoids potholes, often zigzagging. It is obvious he has driven this road many times and knows just where the potholes are.

It is the rainy season and new potholes appear and the old ones grow larger. In some parts the road has been eaten by the rain and is so narrow that two vehicles cannot pass each other. Beside the broken road, there is nothing, only emptiness falling down into the valley far below.

The car is coming from Mrs Tiller's house, the Villa Rosa, up in the hills. Yes, that's the place. If you're a Kingstonian you know exactly which one it is.

If not, it doesn't matter. The house had been empty for many years, until a foreigner bought it, renovated it and moved in.

The man in the car, who goes by the name of Riddle, often travels back and forth between downtown Kingston and Villa Rosa.

Nobody knows for sure what his business is. Some say he is some kind of handyman who's doing work around the house.

Mrs Tiller has few friends in the city but many know about her. She hasn't been on the island for more than a year and yet she walks as if she owns every inch. Nobody knows why she came to Jamaica. There are rumours.

Mrs Tiller has the most remarkable view of the city, of the mountains and the sea. But she knows nothing of it.

When you come to a place and think you know all about it, but in fact are clueless, it is dangerous. There are things that everybody else knows of, and, if you don't, you will sink right into your pit of ignorance, defenceless.

There are things you just don't do. There are things you just don't see. And don't try to change that. It is most unwelcome.

Mrs Tiller knows nothing; and, on top of that, she doesn't care.

People come to see her. Nobody knows how it started, but soon after she moved in she had a steady stream of fortune-seekers coming to her house. She offered tea and cookies and told people about life ahead of them. Some say she has extraordinary gifts. People leave her house crying, or ecstatically praising the Lord and her in the same breath. Some say her powers are all due to smoking herb.

After only a few months, Mrs Tiller started to get invitations to social events. People felt she was someone to be reckoned with. Big white envelopes with ornate letters forming her name came to her house. She was seen kissing the Prime Minister's cheek, shaking hands, touching ladies of prominent men. She had been accepted as something that had come to stay, the way you accept and appreciate a new highway, not realising there are downsides to everything, not realising the ground has to be prepared for new things to be successful.

Then came the rumours that she wasn't psychic after all. That it was all humbug. That it was all lies and lies and nothing else. But nobody knew for sure. Some still claimed she had changed their lives forever.

As rumour had it, a young wife or two had suffered greatly after their husbands had abandoned them for more lucrative prospects, more fertile grounds. Somehow Mrs Tiller always seemed to have something to do with it. And even if she didn't, people, both victims and offenders, liked to think she did. It was better that way. It relieved some of the pain of being deserted and took away some of the guilt of deserting.

It wasn't exactly clear what nationality Mrs Tiller was. Some said French, others said German, and a few guessed she might be Finnish. She did not seem American at all. Her nationality was as uncertain as her age. She must be over 45, people gossiped. At least 50, others said.

Mrs Tiller has been in bed for days now. It happens now and then. Less and less, of course. That Mrs Tiller has to stay in bed just because she can't get out of it. She knows it is a stage in her life she is leaving. She is thinking of Riddle. He lessens her burden, softens the hard edges of loneliness. She smiles and sighs.

She is slow out of bed. When she finds herself in this state, her movements are clumsy. She drops things, bumps into chairs, walks into walls, misjudges distances.

Mrs Tiller has suffered these ills since her early 20s. But if she really traces her bouts, as she calls them, she can get as far back as twelve. By her 20s, they had become a part of her life, something she had to plan around.

The bouts announced themselves about a week in advance. Severe headaches, nausea, extreme fatigue and bloating. She passed gas like a whole factory. When the headaches subsided, the sadness came. It was an immense sadness that she could not get out of. She was captured in a landscape of fear and pain. She cried. She was completely lost in her own universe, locked into her own prison.

She went to bed and didn't get out of it until the pain started to lift. It always did. After a couple of days, a week, or sometimes longer, she was fit again, her usual strong self.

It got worse after she gave birth to a baby girl, at the age of 29.

She celebrated - no, that's the wrong word - she endured her 30th birthday in bed, unable to hold her crying infant.

The baby was brought up by a nurse, Nurse Rose, who secretly gave her the name Lovina, since at six months Mrs Tiller didn't yet have a name for her. If she at all talked about her baby she referred to her as 'it', 'the baby', or simply 'she'.

Eunice, she called her later, but Eunice always felt her real name was Lovina. Her mother scolded her every time she told somebody her name was Lovina.

'It's Eunice, for God's sake, why can't you get that into your little head? Stop it!'

Of course, she would only say that when nobody else could hear. In earshot, she was a model parent with plenty of loving phrases on hand. 'That's wonderful, Eunice,' or 'Good girl!' 'You did it!'

The little girl was confused. She didn't understand the meaning of her mother's cheerful phrases. They came as sweet little dumplings in a soup of bitterness.

The mixture was awful. She didn't know how to savour the sweetness and rid herself of the bitterness, so she took it all, not knowing what was what.

But she knew for sure she wasn't Eunice. She was Lovina. Nurse Rose always called her Lovina when Mrs Tiller wasn't there, and she would crawl into her lap, playing with Nurse Rose's warm, big, brown hands.

Nurse Rose told her tales from her childhood Jamaica and Lovina loved to hear about the early mornings up in the hills where the sun was warm and friendly. She loved to hear how Nurse Rose had taken care of her three baby sisters when her mother had to work. She imagined herself being one of them. She always wanted the hear their names. She loved how their names sounded on Nurse Rose's lips. Paulette, Simone, Lovette.

As soon as Mrs Tiller got home and saw Lovina in Nurse Rose's lap, she yelled at her to get into her room and not come out until she behaved. Confused, Lovina went to her room and Nurse Rose wouldn't speak to her until it was time for dinner. Then she would smile quietly at her and somehow Lovina understood that everything was going to be alright. That Nurse Rose was always going to be with her.

Despite how her life started, Lovina, or Eunice, grew up into a happy little creature who would bounce around in their Upper East Side apartment, giving her mother headaches. They lived on the right side of Lexington Avenue in a spacious four-bedroom apartment.

Nurse Rose was a live-in and Lovina used to mourn every Friday evening when Nurse Rose went home to Brooklyn and not come back until Monday morning. Her father she hardly knew. He owned a hotel chain and travelled extensively until he finally left for good when Eunice was nine. He had met another woman.

Mrs Tiller locked herself into her room for five months and when she got out she was different. She had recieved a handsome sum from her husband and would never have to work or worry over money for the rest of her life.

Mrs Tiller felt happy; the best 10 years of her life were about to start. She was full of energy, even restless, and went into business with a friend of hers. They opened a store in interior design, selling goods that were made to beautify rich people's homes. The business flourished. The luxurious Upper East Side homes had to be redesigned often to keep up with fashion and neighbours, and sales soared.

For Lovina, however, a bad time started. One year after her father left, never to be heard from again, her mother fired Nurse Rose. She accused her of stealing, something which even Mrs Tiller's closest friends doubted. Lovina was inconsolable. A deep well was overflowing with hurt.

Like all the other Upper East Side mothers, Mrs Tiller employed a woman from Thailand, who hardly spoke any English. The richest families now all seemed to favour Thai women as their household workers.

'They are much easier to work with,' was a phrase sometimes reluctantly used to explain the sudden shift from Black to Thai. But that was the only thing you would hear, because nobody would want to admit that their choice of worker had anything to do with race or keeping up with the Joneses.

The Caribbean women became fewer and fewer as more and more families wanted to follow what the richest were doing, even if that meant paying more - because the Thai women always got the higher salaries. So, just as the Upper East Side families would buy a new and costly gadget to add to their wealthy lifestyle, they now also hired a Thai woman.

You could see them in Central Park swinging the Upper East Side babies, all destined to fabulous futures. Swinging and swinging, and then home for a nap, while the babies' mothers got their feet pedicured or lunched at Le Pain Quotidien on Madison Avenue.

Their babies were safe with women for whom it had been a better choice to leave their own babies on the other side of the earth to care for these little white creatures, all dressed in Le Petit Bateau clothes and, once in a while, a Gap garment. Many of them, when they started talking, to their parents' dismay spoke with a Thai accent.

Lovina felt lonlier than ever. She had nobody to talk to. The woman who was supposed to take care of her was all smiles when her mother was there but when she wasn't she yelled in a language Lovina couldn't understand. When she complained, she was brushed off as being unreasonable.

She became rebellious, of course: a wild teenager that nobody could control. She got expelled from no less than two prestigious private schools that her mother had done everything, and a little more, to get her into. The third one kept her on condition she gave up smoking and using drugs. Mrs Tiller was out of her wits. She hired tutors and all sorts of people who were supposed to help Lovina. Her father never called but constantly poured money into an account set aside for the education of Lovina.

Beautiful and wild, Lovina became somebody men wanted - not just young men, older ones, too. She wasn't sure what to do with the attention. She liked it, was intrigued by it, but at the same time it also made her dislike herself. It wasn't her they really liked. It was someone else, someone she couldn't be but pretended to be.

She started to hate everything she thought nobody loved about her. A young body and a delightful face. That was all she was. Everything else was hidden under layers and layers of attitude. Her eyes that seemed to say, 'Come get me, and Eff off,' at the same time. She seemed sure of herself, but her weakness was revealed to those who looked for it. She became vulnerable. And in seeing her own vulnerability, she began to unravel. She lost control.

She would cut herself with a pocket knife. She cut long lines on her underarms and on the insides of her thighs. She was often sitting in the bathtub: that way she could just let the blood come without worrying about cleaning up afterwards. She could enjoy the blood and pain, feel how it took her out of herself, giving her the only comfort she knew.

The pain was there, right in front of her. She was controlling it.

Her mother never asked about the scars, so it was easy to continue, until one day when she went deeper than she ever had before. She went so deep she lost her hearing. She never heard her mother yell outside the bathroom door.

Lovina smiled. She felt the warmth of the blood, the sleepiness of her body. She sighed, and that was it. She had taken herself out of her life completely this time. When her mother finally got into the bathroom, it was too late.

That's when Mrs Tiller started calling her daughter Lovina.

The funeral was held at All Souls Church on Lexington Avenue. The pastor talked of life's expressions, the value of life, however short, and Mrs Tiller cried. Lovina's father wasn't there. The silence had been oceanic when Mrs Tiller had told him. It was like she was holding a conch to her ear instead of the phone. She heard the ocean whisper, making noises of eternity. Then he said: 'Oh, I guess she's really dead, then.'

Mrs Tiller thought to herself: 'She has been dead to you for years. What difference does it make?' Or maybe she said it. Maybe, after all these years, she had said what was on her mind. Maybe, after all these years, she had managed to utter one truthful statement.

What difference does it make?

For Mrs Tiller, it made all the difference. She came to realise that the love she had for Lovina was buried deep deep inside her and now that Lovina was gone, it exploded. Now that her love had lost its only object, it had to come out.

It came out as rage - a blind, savage rage that she had never experienced before. It frightened her. The Thai nanny was the first one to feel its rawness. She left without reporting Mrs Tiller to the police. Of course: she was illegally in the country and feared losing everything she had worked so hard to build up.

Instead of a secure future, she left Mrs Tiller with a bruised face and a broken arm. Mrs Tiller stood silently watching her leave. She could not believe what she had done. She had the other woman's skin under her nails.

After this incident, Mrs Tiller tried to have as little contact with the outside world as possible. She didn't speak to anybody unless she had to. She hardly ate. She grew pale and thin, until finally her business partner took her to Jamaica on a trip. They were staying at a luxury hotel on the north coast and Mrs Tiller felt herself relax for the first time in a long, long time. She smiled, even laughed a few times.

She thought about Aunt Rose and the sadness rolled in over her again, relentless as waves, coming from nowhere, going nowhere.

She let the sun warm her to her core and the sadness dried a little bit, shrivelled up into tiny clouds in the vast blue sky.

The fruit she ate gave her nourishment. The sun filled her with strength. She was thinking about the sun and how it had cooked the fruit she was eating, making them into these delectable things. The fruit juice ran over her chin. She licked her lips and demured.

The rage she had felt in New York was giving way to softness, an uncertain emptiness that, for the first time in her life, she dared expose herself to. It was as if the sun made the emptiness more bearable.

She wasn't bad-looking, and she got some attention from the young men working at the hotel. At first she didn't understand, but then she did, and all of a sudden she remembered she was a woman, a human being. She fully experienced her body. It gave her sensations she had never had before. The warm and humid climate made her feel weightless, perfectly at ease with being inside her skin.

The image of Lovina still came to her all the time. She would look at her accusingly. It was too much to bear. 'I want to see the island,' she said. The hotel workers tried to discourage her, saying it was not safe. Nonsense, she thought. What is there to fear except oneself? 'I didn't come to live in a vacuum, I want to see what there is to see,' she said.

Finally, a driver was found for her. She left her friend at the hotel and took off. The driver tried to speak to her to begin with but she hardly answered back.

The landscape was riveting and Mrs Tiller astonished. The beauty was so intense it made her shiver. Green everywhere, different shades of green, different shapes of green. Flowering trees and clear blue skies. The sun was there, gazing down at its creations, pouring out love and kindness. The sun was everything, and everything was the sun.

Something happened to Mrs Tiller during that trip. She became undone. Everything she knew was lost. She couldn't remember her name, or who she was, and it didn't matter the least because she had become everything. She felt the vegetation grow in her, the sun emanating from her heart, her mind making up the sky.

At one point, she was looking at her hands in amazement. How wonderful, how glorious to have hands! It was all so wondrous; she held her hand out the window, trying to catch the air. She started laughing.

'What is it?' the driver asked.

'Nothing,' she replied. 'Absolutely nothing. Oh, I mean everything. Well it's the same anyway, isn't it?'

She was laughing and laughing. The more she laughed, the happier she became; the more she laughed, the less was left of her as she had known herself until now. And it didn't matter. It didn't matter at all. It was all good. Then she said: 'I'm dead! I'm finally dead!'

The driver drove towards Port Antonio, then took her across the island towards Kingston. Mrs Tiller was alternating between crying and laughing, until there was nothing separating the two.

The driver had long given up trying to understand what was going on. The woman was crazy, no doubt. He came out from a curve and there on a plateau was an old dilapidated house, overlooking Kingston from afar.

'Stop!' Mrs Tiller cried. 'Stop!'

She left the car. A caretaker was sitting outside the house next to a sign. FOR SALE, it stated.

'I'm buying', Mrs Tiller cried. 'I'm buying!'

And that's how Mrs Tiller ended up in Jamaica. It was a quick affair. She paid in cash and the house was hers. Her business partner tried to talk her out of it but it was no use. Two months later she was living in the house. Her partner bought her out of the business and, with the money her husband had left her, she would never have to worry about her future.

She gave away all that she didn't need in her New York apartment - which was about everything. Pasmina shawls, designer clothes, an uncounted amount of shoes, books, art, plates ... everything that had belonged to a life she now felt was utterly meaningless.

She was laughing all the time. It was all too funny. How could she have lived that way? It now seemed incomprehensible to her. Only when Lovina came to mind did she become silent and fearful.

She had not been in Lovina's room since her death. Her hands were shaking as she went in. She opened up doors and windows. Light exploded everywhere. She knelt on the floor, or fell, she wasn't sure which.

Everything had to go. The only thing she kept was a drawing Lovina had made of herself as a child. It was a happy, happy face and when Mrs Tiller looked into the mirror she saw herself in that drawing, and the drawing was her, and it had never been in any other way.

On the plane from New York to Kingston, she felt light, lighter than air. She had left her home forever and right now she didn't have any home at all. She was homeless, in between. It seemed like her body was floating through itself. She was happy, but there was no name for it. Maybe she could call it bliss, but it was also extremely unimportant what, if any, words she used to describe herself or anything she experienced.

She landed and left the plane with the same lightness she had felt inside it. The air was hot and she enjoyed feeling it. She enjoyed waiting in line for the immigration. She enjoyed waiting for her bag, and she enjoyed waiting in line to have her bags checked. She enjoyed the howling children. She enjoyed people trying to cut the line. She enjoyed the sweat.

She got a taxi and left the airport for Villa Rosa. The car went up winding roads, higher and higher up. She was the sky, then the mountains, then her hands, then her heartbeats, then everything. She was coming home. She would never go back to New York; nor would she go anywhere else. There was no need for it. She had everything she needed within arm's reach. She laughed.

At the house, the caretaker awaited her with curiosity.

'I love your country,'she said when he asked why she had come to Jamaica. It was as true as anything.

The house needed repair. The roof was leaking, there was a hole in a wall, and there were no appliances in the kitchen. The caretaker recommended a contractor for the job and she accepted right away.

In a few days, the workers started coming. She talked to all of them and offered them water and mangos from the garden. She sat down with them to eat, which would have been an unthinkable feat had she not been who she was. Even a few weeks earlier she wouldn't have done it. The workers didn't know what to think. It just wasn't done that way.

She had discovered her gift by accident. One day when she was talking to her helper, she saw as in a dream how the helper was falling into a pit. It was such a vivid scene she had to recount it.

A week later, the helper had gone out to pick some mangos from a tree growing very near the edge of a steep slope. Just was she was about to reach for a mango she lost her balance and fell down. She kept rolling and rolling, hitting her head, time after time. When she finally came to a stop she cried out in fear.

When Mrs Tiller reached her, the helper held her hands to her face and cried: 'Don't look at me! Don't look at me!' Then she got up and ran. Mrs Tiller heard her saying something that sounded like 'beah, beah' and she thought she was calling out for somebody. The helper never came back.

It didn't surprise Mrs Tiller that she now seemed to get flashes of the future. It wasn't important to her. She just accepted it as something that happened to her without her involvment. She wasn't particulary interested in her ability, but rumour spread and it wasn't long before she had people at her door. Most of them were sent away, but a few, whom she felt would be able to handle her prophecies, were accepted.

She found herself in people's lives. She acknowledged their pain.

Soon, she was an established factor in Kingston's social life. Most of the party invitations she got were declined, but she went to a few of them. She had something to eat and chatted with people. She reluctantly got new clients even though her price kept going up.

'It's one thousand more now,' she said in a monotonous voice.

People were prepared to pay, but some got furious at her ever-rising prices and spiteful rumours started about her. Mrs Tiller couldn't care less. The rumour said that she had a young lover, somebody from downtown who helped her out with chores around the house - and there were many, given the state of her house - but that it wasn't just the house that he was taking care of, that Mrs Tiller sure had a taste for bamboo, and not just any bamboo, the high-quality Jamaican one that grows so well. And wasn't that all they wanted, the white ladies? Paying up and getting the good stuff?

The rumours were all the same to Mrs Tiller - and also to Riddle. Riddle couldn't care less. In fact, he helped fuel the rumours. As long as he was getting his good stuff, nothing bothered him. He found that the rumours made him a man of interest.

The white Toyota Corolla rolls out on to Upper Carmel Road and continues towards Constant Spring. Now there is music and the driver is on the phone. As soon as he hangs up, it calls again. In his mind, he is going through possible clients. Who to call and who to avoid. It's a tricky business. Word spread quickly.

He has stopped thinking about Mrs Tiller now, about her blue eyes and light skin. She is old, but it is something else that he wants from her. He could get any young girl any time he wanted. But this is different. Love? Not exactly love. Desire? Respect? Since he doesn't know for sure, he brushes it off and leaves it.

It's just something he wants.

- Charlotte Brady