Veronica CarnegieCome my dear, I want you to read Chicken Licken to me before you go. I remember how you fell to the ground when the acorn landed on the chicken's head and she thought the sky had caved in. You told me many times to burn the box and the old books but I can't. It's my box and I want to move with it. Why yu don't want me to keep it. All your important carouches in the box. Look at them. Your first bib and bonnet. Your first uniform blouse and brassiere. Look at yu Nelson's West Indian Reader, Book I, dog ears and all. Yu know yu could read before yu went to big school? I taught you. I kept all your reports and certificates in this box but ah framed the diplomas and see, ah hang them where everybody can see them.
I know about high school but I never went into a university until the night yu graduated as a doctor. Yu are the first doctor come out of Robin Valley and the first to come back to set up practice. Yu prove yu could be anything yu want to be. I'm proud of yu. A doctor. Yu said yu leaving to specialise. I don't understand what this specialising thing is. From I little I hear that all of us suffer from gas, nerves, andpressure. Nothing else. Ask anybody and they will tell you the same thing. This is the first time yu going away and I'm going to miss yu. See'f yu can do something about the eyes then. Mine getting darker and darker.
I glad yu come to help me to move before yu leave. I never thought I would live in Luce Thank yu, my dear. I just had to talk to you because I can't believe what I'm hearing. I have to say what I have to say in person. Telephone is too open. Yu can't tell when the lines cross and somebody is hearing our business. Yu know that Dave come home every weekend. Dave told me things are not right at the hospital where you work. What happen,Tanya? Why yu carry such a grudge? From what Dave tell me yu set out to get even with the people who insulted and teased yu when yu were younger. I ask him about some of the rumours but he clam up on me. They say you set out to hurt anybody who'd insult yu and teased you when you were younger. I know those wicked-tongue people and how much damage they can do. I don't want to believe what I hear but I look back and remember how mean yu were when yu were small. You'd find out which boy pinched yu neckback and which girl set up the others to shout 'Pickey Pickey Head Piazza Pickney.' I taught yu to say, 'Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me'. But that didn't stop yu. Yu chased them down, fight them and scratch them. I thought yu grew out that mean streak. Yu said they teased yu. Nobody not troubling yu now. You think I want to believe the stories I'm hearing about you? I am worried,Tanya.
Yu are a doctor now. Yu are to help to heal people. Instead yu worry about the past and complain that yu mother left yu in a box on the shop piazza.
But I picked yu up. Took yu to my house. I hear yu say that I, the poorest person in the parish kept yu. Yu can't be so ungrateful. I don't like how yu talk sometimes, Tanya. Yu should thank God for yu talent and the help yu always got. The Church never failed to support yu. Members took care of yu needs. Lookat yu teeth. Not one rotten one. My God, yu full of spite and revenge from what I hear. I been keeping plenty things from yu but let me tell yu that is the minister paid me to stay home and look after yu. I have never been happy as I have been with you. Yu need help but how can I help yu now? You say that you feel like public property. But most of the people love you and want to know how yu doing. They follow yu up like what they do with the great athletes. Tanya, look at you. Yu know how many women envy you for y and yu big bones? Look at your clean mahogany skin and perfectly shaped limbs. Look with your clear, honest, bright, black eyes and give thanks.
People will talk. Yu can do nothing about that. Feel sorry for anybody who still call yu 'Box Baby'. Yu are a doctor now. Look at what yu achieve. I don't know if I can help yu anymore. Dave tell me how yu try to kill his mother. In the night yu pulled the drip - needle from his mother's wrist? The patient in the next bed saw yu and raised the alarm. His mother was terrified and begged Dave to move her to another hospital. If I don't get help for yu now, this vengeance is going to overpower yu. I have to do something. You tell me who to go to for help. What yu want to kill the minister's wife for? She gave your mother money and sent her away. She couldn't keep a teenager and a baby when she had her three small children to look after. For all I know she's yu grand aunt and from yu mother left, let me tell you, Mrs. Jobson never stopped supporting yu. And yu tried to kill her? Why Tanya?
Yu will never be happy until yu accept yourself. Yu can't do a thing about the past. I want yu to learn that everybody have problems. I can't cry anymore, yu know. It's as if my tears dried up many years ago. I can't cry tears, Tanya. I never told you my story. This is as good a time for you to hear it, as any. Both my parents were elderly teachers, my lay-preacher father, principal of Robin Valley Elementary School and my mother a vice-principal in the high school. My fatherbullied us, controlled us, directed us, instructed us, managed us. What he said was law. We lived day by day to set example. I obeyed them and did well in school. They called me principal's prized possession. I passed Senior Cambridge, fell in love with a boy in my class, got pregnant, got kicked out of house and town, and was homeless at 18. My mother tried to help me but Papa stopped her. And when she couldn't find me I believe that's when she got sick. I found Aunt May, my father's sister, in Kingston. She never made me forget the shame and disgrace I brought on the family. She and her friend took me to the hospital and I had my baby in the DG section reserved for dirty girls. They removed the baby, the afterbirth and whatever baby-making organs and material I had in me. They made a shell of me. I went home with the baby, Tanya, but it died. The baby died of rickets because Aunt May wouldn't let me take him out of the dark, locked-up room for a little sunlight. I'm glad you can cry for me, Tanya. In those days the disgrace followed you wherever you went. I've had my share of abuse. I boxed about and returned here a beaten and broken, old-looking woman. My parents died. See the big monuments in the Tabernacle churchyard. They left the house for me and I will it to you. As poor as I was, I took yu. I didn't know the church people would support yu. I want to know what yu bitter about. See if yu can tell me before yu mother get here. I found her the other day and wanted to surprise you. Show that yu are a college woman with a whole heap of privilege.
Stop crying,Tanya. Come back and sit down beside me. Yu say yu going to talk to Dave to see if he will go to America with yu. Tanya, Dave Jobson is your brother. I know the news will change things for yu but it's better to hear everything from me. Just look at the double-headed-hammer nose he has, just like yours. That's a Jobson nose.
I'm telling yu the truth today. Yu ever look at the minister's nose, Tanya?
Rev. David Jobson's nose. Clear yu head and take agood look.
Don't kick the box, Tanya. You came to me in it. I want to keep it for as long as I want. 28 years now I've kept the box.
Where yu going with it? What yu doing with it? Burn it, Tanya?
I feel bad about all this. I'll go ahead and help you burn the box if it will help you forget the past that you don't want to remember.
END
