VeronicaCarnegie

It was about 10:00 a.m. Saturday morning, and a number of children returning books walked north and south along East Street and east and west along Tower Street towards the Institute's Junior Centre. Trevor was walking up the steps with a group of about six boys when one of them said: 'Miss Muschette is staring at you.'

He didn't answer. He didn't know the boy or what he was talking about. He hurried into the library because he didn't want the better books to be taken and he didn't like to see near-empty shelves when he went in.

The library was silent, dull and dry, and the two attendants were old and ill-dressed. Trevor was just leaving with his two books when the same boy came up to him.

'She's waiting for you.'

'Who?'

'Miss Muschette. She related to you? She looks like you.'

'I'm not white. She looks white.'

'They call you White Boy. What's your name?'

'Trevor. Trevor Muschette.'

'But she is your relative.'

'I don't know her and I don't think so. What's your name?'

'Sam. Samuel Stair.'

They walked up East Street and turned into Manchester Square, where both boys lived. Some of the former wealthy residents of Manchester Square had died and others with their children had moved up and away from downtown to the newer residential areas of picturesque Vineyard Pen, with its Wareika Hills backdrop, or to Cross Roads with its lively clubs, cinemas and theatres. The new owners had partitioned the floors and turned the once grand houses into tenements and the lawns into broom-swept yards, composed now mainly of loose dirt and buck-toe stones.

Miss Muschette stopped and looked at the upstairs board house when Trevor entered the gate. He reminded her of someone and she was determined to follow the child till she found that person. Miss Muschette was a tall, thin, white-looking woman, with a cat's elongated eyes. She always wore white or cream-coloured clothes with much lace, fringe and trimming. She wore nurse's shoes with flapping laces and sheer white stockings, and she walked at a measured pace the length of East Street. A short-brimmed white straw hat shielded her grey-brown hair from the sun.

Each day Miss Muschette walked down to the sea, sometimes with white gloves on her hands. She stood on the wet sand and looked around at the vast blue emptiness, or gazed blankly at the same barefooted fishermen who seemed to fish every day for next to nothing. They'd bow to the lady, recognising her insanity as privileged pain, but she paid scant attention to the three black lives huddled under the Banyan tree.

The three were in the worst combination-shroud: tie-dyed in madness, poverty, lost identity and social rejection, while Miss Muschette, as insane as they were, wore her air of off-white acceptance. She saw them as fixtures of the landscape, not features, and handed them bread and something else she had brought to go with the fish they'd get. The poverty line was long drawn away from them and they'd settled in the poor man's circle on the beach.

Miss Muschette walked away from Mother Rat Bat, the black, old lady with the pretty speech and the pillow case stuffed with things, and from Bag-an'-Pan, who said not a word as the tins and pans and cans clanged when he moved. Bag-o'-Wire preferred to stand tall, military in soiled soldier's suit, with wires, electric- and clothes-lines draped over his shoulders, under his arms, around his neck and at his waist, holding up his trousers. Nobody questioned what was in the crocus bag on his back; in those days it was nobody's business.

But today was another day. Miss Muschette walked away from the board house, back up to her own abode near the top of the street.

She walked behind Trevor every Saturday for about four months. He and Sam knew that she was there without having to turn around to look for her; and they were glad the day she led them to safety. They'd heard a loud noise, a pandemonium of voices, as they walked up East Street towards East Queen Street. Then they came upon men and women lining the roadway, shouting, 'Busta, Busta, Bustamante! Busta, Busta, Bustamante!'

There were large men in leather boots, tall men in khaki, and broad men in navy-blue overalls. They walked with similar-looking women towards Coke Church, singing what sounded like 'I will follow my Redeemer' but went:

'We will follow Bustamante

We will follow Bustamante

We will follow Bustamante

We will follow Bustamante till we die.'

On the platform in the park towered a lanky, red-skinned, mop-headed man - Alexander Bustamante. A daring, bright-faced young lady, Gladys Longbridge, had positioned herself beside him.

Men, women and children sang. Trevor and Sam were afraid of the noise, the shouting crowd and the marchers, and terrified at the thought of crossing to the other side of East Queen Street. Trevor cried. Sam trembled.

Suddenly hands grabbed them. Miss Muschette put her tall self between them, firmly held one left hand and one right hand, pushed and pulled them through the marchers and shouting onlookers, and led them to safety in front of St. George's Anglican Church. There she released their hands, removed her handbag (whose strap was secure over her right shoulder), and wiped away their tears with a white handkerchief. She was gentle. She then removed a white prayer book from her purse, took out a small brown paper bag and gave each a paradise plum sweetie.

They ran and walked, ran and walked, and as they got to the end of the street, Trevor's father hurried towards them. He'd heard that there was another disturbance at Parade, with the Bustamante Port workers and hundreds of people heading downtown to meet Bustamante. As Mr. Muschette turned to go back home, Miss Muschette confronted him - literally. There was fire in her eyes, anger in her voice, and hate in her heart when she stuck her face into his face and, in a culture voice, called him a dirty swine. He stepped back to get away from her. She swung her handbag and gave him a staggering blow to the side of his head. Before he could recover fully, she pulled a ring from the third finger of her left hand and threw it in his face. Mr. Muschette tried to hide his embarrassment by raising his hand to hit her but the small crowd prevented him.

'Good for you, Miss Muschette! Good for you!'

And the women cheered and clapped.

'Not Muschette. My name is Dasilva. Kathleen Dasilva,' she said. 'In anticipation of my impending wedding I asked the maids in the newly furnished house to call me Mrs. Muschette. The linen, towels, silverware, were labelled 'Muschette'.' Her voice was parched.

'An' him jilt har. Is him jilt har,' a woman in the crowd shouted, and three huge women slowly approached Mr. Muschette as if to flatten him.

'Talk 'bout jilt de 'oman! Is long time I hear that Miss Muschette get jilt, that's why she mad. We going to fix you dat not another jilting tek place in dis country again,' said the largest of them, menacingly. Some men hurried Mr. Muschette to safety.

The two boys watched a very dignified lady in white lace walk away. Trevor ran to her and she bent, kissed him on the head and told him to be a good boy.

That night his mother explained the meaning of jilt and told him his father should have married that lady but he did not turn up for the wedding. 'Miss Muschette', as the people called her became ill, kept the bridal things, and wore her white lace dress and shoes and stockings as she had done for the wedding.

'Your father was a poor farm boy from St. Elizabeth and she was a Great House descendant. His people grew watermelons and went to the market in a truck. He didn't feel he could measure up to the social demands of the lady, whose family didn't accept him, anyway.'

'I hope she will get better. She loves me and Sam.'

'I don't know. You see how she found you. We moved here a year ago when your dad got the job at Remco and she must have seen you pass by her house. You resemble your father. I'm glad she didn't hurt you.'

Trevor determined he would find Miss Muschette the following day and tell her how sorry he was his father had jilted her; but she was not there. Miss Muschette had gone. He and Sam went to nearby Wolmer's Boys' School, became members of the senior library across the street, looked at the drab-looking, locked-up house, and never again saw Miss Muschette. They grew up in and left the area, with its varying, decaying shades of brown, with houses crying out for paint and replaced glass in their windows, and where the mean drought fought back the rain and, most times, won.

Years later, while he was at Howard University, Trevor got a card and an appreciable manager's cheque from Miss Kathleen Dasilva. There was no forwarding address. The note in the card encouraged him to be honest, practical and to stay focused. The money helped him to finish doing medicine.

Twenty-five years had passed when Trevor, a psychiatrist living in Washington, and Sam, a graduate of UWI's law faculty now living in New York, came home with their wives for an old boys' reunion. They walked down East Street, and noted the changes. The tailor shop that used to be at the corner of East Street and East Queen Street was not there. Instead, there were betting shops. Memorial Tabernacle's name was changed to First Missionary Church. An upscale glass building and law firm stood at the old corner called Park Place. The shoe repair shop remained. The Junior Library was still there, and so was the main Institute of Jamaica. But where was Miss Muschette? Has anybody seen Miss Muschette?

END

- Veronica Carnegie