Porridge & Cucu: My Childhood Chapter I 1984.--Ghosts are not what I remember of my childhood; but somehow they infuse memories of myself as a child, the little girl in a storybook, with ghosts hovering around her. The reason is, I intermingle my childhood with the ghost stories my grandfather recounted to me countless times, stories which he uttered seriously but with the practiced adeptness of a storyteller who regards each tale as purposeful, serious, not to be held lightly. Years ago, after I had urged him to tell me a ghost story, he said, in a somber tone, looking away from me, "It is not good to talk too much about ghosts," then he resumed eating a slice of water pear. Disappointed, I decided to ask a practical question, for we were sitting in the kitchen, in which place he liked to talk and in which place he was The Storyteller: one had only to say, "Abuelo, tell us about construction days"--a favorite topic with him--and one was guaranteed two hours, at least, of stories, some of which he ended by saying, "This is true, you know. True, true." I said, "What's the best way to beat an evil spirit?" "Suppose you see an evil spirit," he said, "singing a song, or you hear him beating a drum, or you hear him walking, you can scare him away." I asked him what he meant and he explained that one had to throw a fireball--a sort of firecracker--in the spirit's path. The spirit would vanish. "Not prayers at all times drives the evil spirit. You have to know the enterity of a spirit --especially when it's guarding a fortune." "Enterity?" I had never heard the word, but he seemed unwilling to explain further except to nod and say, "Yes." "When they're guarding a fortune, it's more difficult. Some spirits drink a lot of liquor. Some don't drink at all. The spirits that drink you can move away. . . ." He then paused, coughed, displaying a serene countenance of satisfaction, then added, "You can make him talk to you--get him to tell you who sent him." I then asked him whether he had met any ghosts in Panama, face to face. He answered, quite casually, that he had met with several, one of which held him in a vise until a woman in a pale gown intervened by restraining the First Ghost. "Who was the woman-ghost?" I said. He said, "Her name was Encarnacion Escobar.--A woman I knew before I met your grandmother.--That woman loved me, and she died. And one night I was at a certain place and a voice said, 'Luke More, come and kiss me,' and I said, 'All right,' and I crossed over and kissed her." He sighed deeply. "And that was Encarnacion--the same woman that saved me. That was a good woman." *** But I have not been as fortunate. Always, he is being saved, from childhood onward, by some ghost--stray or not, who takes care to 'send him a dream' or 'give him a number' or speak to him gently, in counsel. These stories I do not remember him telling me when I was a child, though I must have heard them, for they are the core of his story repertoire. He once ended a long discourse on ghosts by saying it would take an extraordinary ghost to harm him because, "I am an ancient mystic mason of an ancient order." One has to see Grandfather to appreciate his use of the adjective, "ancient"--which describes him admirably: to state, truthfully, that he is ninety-eight years of age, nearly a century; to state, truthfully, that his back is bent in a permanent suppliant bow; to state these things is not to behold them. He is ancient, and extraordinary. *** Compared to Grandfather's my childhood is mundane, banal, uninhabited by any ghosts, except for his or the rest of the family's ghosts. I am the one who has never met a ghost, face to face. Two of my first memories have nothing whatsoever to do with ghosts: they are, of myself, three years old, reading a newspaper and then, at about four, responding to a woman who had asked me in Grandfather's presence how I liked my new home. My reply was, "I live good. When I was in Asuncion, each morning I had to sit still and look out the window, but now that I am in Belem I have place to run around." But these are not memories; rather, they are a mingling of memory and family myths--stories the family has told and re-told, and so, I "remember" them. In my first true memory, I toss an emerald ring through a car window. We were traveling at about fifty miles an hour and I quite consciously remember that I wanted attention, and did not receive it. Probably, we were on our way to Sangre de Cristo beach. We first made this excursion when I was about six years old. Preparations for the trip began days before we left. My mother cooked rice and peas, arroz con pollo, stored in big iron pots, next to hot French bread, mangoes, green and ripened, pivas, coconut cakes, and thermoses of Ovaltine and coconut water. We then drove the long way in a pink and mauve sedan, to the shore. The beach itself was spectacular. Sapphire blue water. The shore was strewn with wet coconut tree palms, coconuts clinging heavily. Occasionally a man--chest and feet, brown and bare, his trousers rolled up to his knees--would climb a coconut tree. Between his teeth, a small knife as he climbed upward. Once at the top of the tree he would cut deftly the stems of as many fruit as were wanted. He would let them drop, then slither down, sandward; then dig an opening, and sip the sweet waters. A common occurrence, really. At Sangre de Cristo especially, for its beaches were glutted with coconut palm trees. I never climbed a palm tree, myself. I rode a pony instead. I sported flowery knickers, a shirt, sandals, and a hat. My hair in braids and plastic bows. A photograph taken on that day shows me straddling a taupe pony. Nervous, thrilled and undaunted, I was an adventuress smiling at her fate. Grandfather held the pony's reins as he led us across the beach, then brought us back to our bungalow. That is the memory. *** � My next memory transforms into a myth. When I was 8 years old, I went with my grandmother to the market in Panama City. Live iguanas, claws tethered, lay on the hot concrete pavement outside the market. An albino stood nearby, a glittering orange in his inexplicably white hand. This was the first albino I have ever seen. And he dazzled. The albino was a short slender man in grey cotton trousers and a white short-sleeved shirt. His ultra-pink skin stretched over full lips. His eyes were grey, almost translucent. Except for his pink skin, this man had the features of Panama's indigenous people. The incongruity astonished me. When I asked Grandmother, she explained by saying, "Tiene 'ojos de luna'." He had moon-eyes. I stared now at the white-yellow lashes which fringed his lids, and the white-yellow hair on his head that resembled the feathers of chickens on the market tables. The albino's wife was a dark-skinned woman in a chartreuse cotton dress, her black hair in a pair of thick long braids wound like a crown on her head. She was probably of Spanish, Indian and African ancestry--her presence stark next to her spouse. "Es un hombre indigeno con 'ojos de luna'," Grandmother said once more. Then she told me the indigenous myth of how the albino was born in Panama: "Once, in a time, the first man emerged from the mountains. He wed a dark-skinned woman. The couple loved each other. The woman gave birth to white men and dark women who interwed and gave birth to the Albino." *** � When Grandmother and I arrived home, I told Grandfather about the albino and his wife. "Abuelo," I whispered, "se quedan juntos si se mueren?" Would the couple remain together in the afterlife? "Por supuesto," Grandfather said. Of course. Then he related his theory on the afterlife--the Dwelling of Good Spirits--which he put forth as fact. Not myth or memory or opinion. "There are planets," he said, "inhabited by spirits--but good spirits. When they die, the angels take them there and teach them, train them over. I had a friend, and he died. In a dream, he gave me four numbers for the lottery. Four numbers. For the fourth number, he said, 'Look up.' I didn't know 'Look up' meant 'nine.' I saw him in another dream, in a double-decked car flying in the air. I knew he was journeying to one of those planets." He paused. "That albino and his wife, if you dream them, will be dancing and holding hands and skylarking in the air. Just like my friend." ������ ������ ������ ������
Copyright © 1993 Yolanda Reid |