McKenzie

In my childhood indifference I did some things I now regret. Not even the strap my mother and father had taken turns to use had been enough to quell the need in me to join in the fiendish teasing my friends and I unleashed upon a woman we didn't know. All the ordinary childish things were transitory - we caught lizards, tied their tails with grass and chased each other with our catch, then we killed and buried them under stones, testing the theory that they would come back to life, a theory that was later dispelled when we were told that ants had taken them away and that no miraculous resurrection had occurred. We also played hide-and-seek, ring games, 'dolly' house, 1, 2, 3 Red Light, ,and 'Stucky'. But it was through Lucilda that we experienced the most thrills, and it was to her that we were most committed. We saw her on the road, her expletives heralding her approach or presence; we saw her padded with clothing she had acquired over the years, a huge drawstring bag slung over her; shoulder. We debated its contents; animal parts, rotten food items, stones and broken bottles were some of the things we were certain were inside. But we never knew the person she used to be; and neither did we care to know.

To us, she was just one of those figures that held a fascination born out of fear and compounded by impish curiosity; a figure with whom we had no relationship, so that guilt and its appeal to the conscience was something we never felt. We gained such satisfaction from running upon behind her, poking a stick into her back and running like crazy when she turned around to spill her bad words upon us. And when we were sure we were a safe distance away, we would start to sing the song - no, it was more like a chorus - which we had put together from the fragmented stories we'd heard about Lucilda.

Lucilda, Lucilda yuh man lef' yuh,

Lucilda weh yuh a go do?

Lucilda, Lucilda yuh business fix.

Lucilda, Lucilda yuh too wukliss.

Over and over again we would chant it, and it made Lucilda mad. I remember vividly that she would get so mad her curse words seemed like she was placing a hex upon us. But we were immune, for our fun was our talisman. I was part of a collective outlook on Lucilda and I loved the pranks we played.

Then the teenage years swept in and transformed us all. We started to scorn the things we used to do, and to scorn Lucilda even more. We were more concerned with the afflictions and pleasures of adolescence. We complained about how we looked, about the 'bumps' on our faces and the clothes that were never enough. We giggled as we shared stories about boys we liked and who we were sure liked us. There were times, led by a spirit of rebelliousness, when we would steal away to the river and skinny dip.

There, I would even yield to the dares my friends made and kiss one or other of the boys that came with us. I never worried about my parents then; we all had made a pact. Where could Lucilda fit in? She was nothing more that a smelly, mentally challenged figure and the years had done all they could to make her an ever-lesser version of herself. She was still padded, but her bag had been replaced by a garbage bag, her hair had started to gray in a most matted state, her face was a picture of lines and dirt, and the expletives that used to swarm from her mouth at the slightest provocation were no more. Now, she simply mumbled to herself as she roamed. We walked on the other side of the road when she came in sight, and turned up our noses. Lucilda held only a cursory existence to us.

Then one day a truck came into the district and took Lucilda away. Once again, by default, she had entered our focus. Moreover, how could her departure be ignored? It was one of the most exciting that had happened in Tree Lane in a long time. Everybody had something to say. Everybody forgot how they had treated Lucilda; now she had been rescued. Thank Jesus. They said Lucilda had gone 'calm calm' to the men who came for her; the men had told them she would she would be better off. But somehow the people of Tree Lane would miss her; she had suddenly become a part of the community's idea of itself. My parents, too, seemed to have nothing else to talk about.

'A wonda if is har family sen' the truck? Dem finally memba 'bout har. Poor Lucilda; such potential, and she go mek man mad har. Dem couldn't even did sen har to Bellevue, jus lef har on the street so, but thank God dem come fi har. Maybe dem will give har di right medication and counselling.' This my mother said the Sunday evening after the Saturday Lucilda was taken away. We were sitting on the verandah enjoying the chocolate chip ice cream my mother had decided to try out. It was a welcome change from the safe vanilla or strawberry ice cream we were used to.

'Yes, Gloria, that would be good. It's a pity that as a community wi couldn't do more.'

My parents were some of the few people who had given Lucilda food and clothes. They would have bathed her too, but that was a risk they had not taken when they considered how unpredictable Lucilda could be. They settled for what they could do and expressed their disapproval of the bad things that were done to or said about her: a disapproval they turned on me when I was guided by my childish

whims to tease her. It seemed they knew her history.

During such moments of conjecture, I found myself wondering about Lucilda's story. Not the pieces of stories I had heard, which had served only as fuel for the torment she had once received from me and my friends, but the whole story. My mother had mentioned that she had had 'potential', and that suggested a future that had been interrupted. A war was within me; I wanted not to think about Lucilda in this way but I was overpowered by curiosity. I figured this was what you called adding meaning to life, a distancing from the reactive mood I had spent most of my time nurturing.

In the night, while I helped my mother as she sorted and pressed the week's worth of clothes, I asked the one question I felt would give me all the answers.

'Mommy, what made Lucilda the way she was?'

I had a clothes rack in my hand and my mother was in the process of handing me a pair of my father's pants. She looked at me suspiciously. I felt it necessary to quash any doubts. 'I really want to know.' I knew she found this shift in me strange; after all, she was always telling me how superficial I was. But I saw as she dismissed her reservation, saw it in the way she expelled a measured breath and then nodded.

'Okay, I'll tell you.'

The day I heard that Lucilda was dead I remembered the gist of the story my mother had told me. She had gotten it from a good source, she claimed. Young girl had done what she could to help the young boy she loved realize his ambitions; said young boy grew into an indifferent man who womanized and demeaned her. The final nail was driven in when he ran off to live in another parish with a prominent business woman. Something broke in Lucilda, and she had wandered the streets asking for him, until slowly she could no longer remember what to ask for.

It seemed surreal: that as soon as she had started to become real to me, she was gone. I remembered looking at the truck, thinking about nothing at all. I remembered the way my mother told the story and how the words had reached out like hands to me. It was my mother who told me about Lucilda's demise. The truck that had come for Lucilda had also taken up other mad people in other areas and thrown them to their deaths. I cried that day for Lucilda and for what she could have become. And I cried that day for the girl I used to be.

Today, I see Lucilda in the face of the woman on the cardboard bed. Or in the face of the woman, guarded by austere walls, who stares at nothing at all.

- Melissa McKenzie