|
(01/30/23)
|
Junglepixiebelize - Recollections of a Gringa Pioneer
Nancy R Koerner - Copyright@2023 - All Rights Reserved
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
"Nutmeg in a Box"
|
Old Poinciano Perez was a fat man – the kind whose shirt buttons fought a constant battle to stay looped to their respective button-holes across a bulging belly. He was light-Spanish, with deep-set brown eyes, and a face like a wrinkled roadmap. His teeth, yellow and brown-stained, had likely never seen the inside of a dentist’s office – or the outside of one either. Under the sweat-stained straw hat, the old man had a full head of white hair. And, on the rare occasions when he lifted it to mop his brow, there was a permanent hatband indentation sunken into the circumference of his head.Unlike our high-and-dry Alta Vista property, with no actual view of the river, and our tin-roofed house baking “inna-di-sun-haat,”* Old Don Ponce’s thatched house – perched only a hundred feet above the Macal – was surrounded by high-canopy forest, giving him an idyllic view of the river through a shady glen. Next to the house was a lovely ravine with a freshwater spring. Through eons of times, the spring had carved a gentle contour down to the river, and beside it was a well-worn footpath, born of generations of bare feet.
|
There were two older boys in their late teens, and a twelve-year-old girl, who lived with Don Ponce, along with his common-law wife, Meg – as well as the watermelon-thieving potlika** dog we’d finally had to scare off with a shotgun. It was hard to say exactly the generational-genetic relationship between family. Adopted waifs and “outside-pikni”*** were often included in the family dynamic. Some virile patriarchs in Belize boasted sons and daughters that spread over twenty-five years of enthusiastic procreation, resulting in nieces and nephews that were older than their corresponding aunts and uncles, and brothers and sisters from different mothers, who didn’t know they were siblings.
Dona Meg was a great physical contrast to Poinciano. She was of Creole descent, with black textured hair, now flecked with white. Small-boned like a bird, she couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds. Meg took particular pleasure in my young son, whose corn-silk platinum hair had always delighted rural Belizeans. Bustling about the kitchen, she would fuss over me. Within minutes of my arrival, she would bring me a plastic glass of lime juice refrescante, then insist on feeding me. To Meg, I was always di lee maaga wait gyal+ she needed to fatten up – even though I weighed 15 pounds more than she did.
And Meg loved to laugh; the whole family did. And, by the time I had lived in Cayo for a year or so, I was pretty-much kitchen tri-lingual like everybody else. Once I was able to make jokes and puns in conglomerate English/Kriol/Spanish, I knew I had reached a benchmark of enculturation.
On one such visit, I happened to look up into the cross beams of the thatching above our heads, and was surprised to see a… COFFIN. What? Yes, it was a COFFIN. Well, what can I say? I have never sat in somebody’s house, and looked up and seen a coffin before. When I asked Don Ponce why they had it, or who it was for, he explained he’d had taken it in trade for produce. He just figured – that way – there would be one available when needed. OK, it actually made sense (in a macabre sort of way.) But having it up there, right above you? All the time? There wasn’t anywhere else to put it, he explained, where it could stay level and dry. Tru dat. Thatched houses didn’t have closets, cupboards, or attics. So there I was, eating Meg’s rice and beans, with wild bird-pepper pica-de-gallo, and some fried plantain, laughing with the Perez family --- with a freaking COFFIN over my head.
Then, there was a month or so, when I didn’t see go over to Don Ponce’s. And, sure enough, when I did, the coffin was gone, and so was Dona Meg. Now, the twelve-year-old girl bustled about in the kitchen, and brought lime juice refrescante – one for me, and one for Poinciano. I shed a tear, and made a toast. We clinked our plastic glasses, and took a sip.
"Ah oanli mis how di gyal di laff,” said Don Ponce. “Yu gringos uda kaal ahn wahn ‘nut! Sohntaim, Ah di kaal ahn, ‘Nut-Meg’.”++ He gave a small grin with his brown-stained teeth, and took another sip. “Laif mi haad, bot sweet,”+++ he said, wisely. We sat in contemplative silence for a while, looking down at the river through the shady ravine. Then he got up, took something from a shelf,
and showed it to me. It was a photograph of Meg.
Photographs were hard to come by in Belize. Nobody owned a camera. In the high humidity, a camera would start growing mold inside its lens within two weeks. So, this was a special gift. Somebody with a camera had taken it, gotten it developed in Belize City, and given it to him.
It was a photograph of Meg as she lay dead in her coffin. She didn’t “look good,” as Americans would say, lamely – when they stood beside a white silk-lined mahogany casket in the States. She didn’t “look bad” either. She simply looked dead. Poinciano explained that, in their entire lives together, he never got around to taking a photograph of Meg.
So, now, this was the only one he had. The only one he would ever have.
Dona Meg was a great physical contrast to Poinciano. She was of Creole descent, with black textured hair, now flecked with white. Small-boned like a bird, she couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds. Meg took particular pleasure in my young son, whose corn-silk platinum hair had always delighted rural Belizeans. Bustling about the kitchen, she would fuss over me. Within minutes of my arrival, she would bring me a plastic glass of lime juice refrescante, then insist on feeding me. To Meg, I was always di lee maaga wait gyal+ she needed to fatten up – even though I weighed 15 pounds more than she did.
And Meg loved to laugh; the whole family did. And, by the time I had lived in Cayo for a year or so, I was pretty-much kitchen tri-lingual like everybody else. Once I was able to make jokes and puns in conglomerate English/Kriol/Spanish, I knew I had reached a benchmark of enculturation.
On one such visit, I happened to look up into the cross beams of the thatching above our heads, and was surprised to see a… COFFIN. What? Yes, it was a COFFIN. Well, what can I say? I have never sat in somebody’s house, and looked up and seen a coffin before. When I asked Don Ponce why they had it, or who it was for, he explained he’d had taken it in trade for produce. He just figured – that way – there would be one available when needed. OK, it actually made sense (in a macabre sort of way.) But having it up there, right above you? All the time? There wasn’t anywhere else to put it, he explained, where it could stay level and dry. Tru dat. Thatched houses didn’t have closets, cupboards, or attics. So there I was, eating Meg’s rice and beans, with wild bird-pepper pica-de-gallo, and some fried plantain, laughing with the Perez family --- with a freaking COFFIN over my head.
Then, there was a month or so, when I didn’t see go over to Don Ponce’s. And, sure enough, when I did, the coffin was gone, and so was Dona Meg. Now, the twelve-year-old girl bustled about in the kitchen, and brought lime juice refrescante – one for me, and one for Poinciano. I shed a tear, and made a toast. We clinked our plastic glasses, and took a sip.
"Ah oanli mis how di gyal di laff,” said Don Ponce. “Yu gringos uda kaal ahn wahn ‘nut! Sohntaim, Ah di kaal ahn, ‘Nut-Meg’.”++ He gave a small grin with his brown-stained teeth, and took another sip. “Laif mi haad, bot sweet,”+++ he said, wisely. We sat in contemplative silence for a while, looking down at the river through the shady ravine. Then he got up, took something from a shelf,
and showed it to me. It was a photograph of Meg.
Photographs were hard to come by in Belize. Nobody owned a camera. In the high humidity, a camera would start growing mold inside its lens within two weeks. So, this was a special gift. Somebody with a camera had taken it, gotten it developed in Belize City, and given it to him.
It was a photograph of Meg as she lay dead in her coffin. She didn’t “look good,” as Americans would say, lamely – when they stood beside a white silk-lined mahogany casket in the States. She didn’t “look bad” either. She simply looked dead. Poinciano explained that, in their entire lives together, he never got around to taking a photograph of Meg.
So, now, this was the only one he had. The only one he would ever have.
|
Kriol translations:
|
|
* baking in the hot sun
** pot-licker mongrel *** outside (illegitimate) children |
+ skinny little white girl
++ Most of all, I miss how the girl laughed +++ Life is hard, but sweet. |