The Non-Silence of the Lamb

by Luke Brown

  When Mrs. Essie Brown was not at home in New York with Gena and Myrtle, she enjoyed visiting other nearby states such as New Jersey and Connecticut where other family members, such as her cousins Jenifer and Junior, who were brother and sister, lived.

  It was undeniable that Mrs. Essie Brown was having the time of her life as an honorable, genuine resident of New York City, the ultimate big city. However, she never forgot her striving family, which was now dispersed all over the globe.

  Chapter 29

  At seventy-six years old and counting, Mrs. Essie Brown, the naive little girl from the countryside of Cascade, relished her life in the ultimate big city of New York. To say that she was enjoying herself would be an understatement.

  She was as happy as a frolicking, zealous New Yorker at the Labor Day Parade in Brooklyn, or at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in Manhattan. She was getting a kick out of living high on life, and she made no more dull, balky, unenthusiastic comments about life. She never let anything get her down, but with a prayer or two, shook off any problems that came her way. She luxuriated in the enjoyment of her grandkids and great-grandkids. She wanted to live forever.

  However, Mrs. Essie Brown knew better. She knew that we all have to relinquish life at some point. We can hope for a long, happy, productive life, but sooner or later, we all must pass on.

  By this time, she had been diagnosed with diabetes, Parkinson’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, generalized hypertension, heart disease, glaucoma, peripheral neuralgia—specifically, peripheral neuropathy—and two mild, silent heart attacks.

  She fought her ailments aggressively. She complied with all health-care directives and took all her medications. But although Mrs. Essie Brown wanted to live forever, she began having a strange feeling that the end was near, because her health continued to rapidly and acutely decline. She decided that if she should die anytime soon, she would like for it to happen while she was in her own home in Glenworth, Jamaica. She therefore called her daughter Gena and said, “My dear child, I want to go home to expire in my rocking chair on my veranda in Glenworth.”

  “But Mom, don’t you remember that you lost your passport and all of your major traveling documents on your last trip to Jamaica? Don’t you remember that you had a difficult time coming back? We’ll have to take care of those things at the immigration office downtown so you can travel again.”

  “Okay then, try and get them for me. Please hurry, because I’m not feeling too good in my body, and I want to go home to Jamaica.”

  “Why do you have to go to Jamaica? What’s wrong with being right here in New York? There’s no one there to help you as much as here, and remember, Mom, health care is not that great there.”

  “Well, Gena, I don’t care. I want to die in my home that I worked so hard for.”

  Gena got busy trying to regain her mother’s travel documents, but a year later, the processing was still unfinished. Mrs. Essie Brown pleaded with Gena to try harder with the US embassy to see if they could speed up the process.

  Mrs. Essie Brown now got anxious and irritated because she wanted to go home at any cost. She was as anxious as a kid on Christmas Eve who couldn’t wait until the next day to ravish his nicely packaged gift lying ever so neatly under the Christmas tree. She was tired of waiting. The one year that she had waited on her travel documents could have been spent in her home in Glenworth.

  Unfortunately, Mrs. Essie Brown—the orphan child, the city girl, the single mother, the religious fanatic wife—did not make it home to Glenworth. In November 1999, she regrettably had a stroke at the age of seventy-seven. This stroke left her partially paralyzed in a large New York hospital.

  After three weeks of unsuccessful medical intervention, she had a second, disastrous stroke that left her totally paralyzed and unable to speak. Mrs. Essie Brown, although she was in a fragile condition, resisted the hands of death—or, as some would say, giving up the ghost—for almost one and a half years.

  Maybe she was still holding on for the time when her travel documents would be successfully processed by the US embassy. Maybe she still wanted to go back to Jamaica to depart in a peaceful manner in her home in Glenworth, the home that she had worked so hard to obtain and maintain.

  Mrs. Essie Brown’s home in Glenworth—whether it was her breaking point or her breakthrough point—truly defined her life.

  Mrs. Essie Brown spent one and a half years in a nursing home in New York City, paralyzed and unable to speak. She had one and a half peaceful years to reflect back on her whole life. She had time to reflect on all of her successes and all of her failures. She had succeeded in taking care of her kids the best way that she could. She had succeeded in finding a good man to be her husband. She had succeeded in making it in a tough, rough city like Montego Bay. But she had failed in giving all her kids the best life that they could get. She had failed in giving all her kids a father or stepfather early in their lives, when they needed him most. She had failed to make it big time in the big city of Montego Bay.

  The grim reality, according to the pessimist, was that she had failed in all of the same areas where she had succeeded. However, according to the optimist, she had succeeded in all of the areas where she had failed.

  Mrs. Essie Brown had one and a half calm, tranquil years lying immobilized to think about her mother. She thought about what her life would have been like, or could have been like, growing up with Doris Lynn, the mother she had never met. She often wondered why God took her so early and so young. Her mother never had the chance even to see her face. If her mother had been alive, would she have been proud of the way Essie had lived her life?

  Essie had a long time to think about the father that she had never met. She thought about the man who had raped her mother and produced an orphan child. Yes, the perverse fact was that her father had raped her mother. That was the big secret that her mother, Doris Lynn, had died with. That was the reason why her mother refused to discuss any information about the mysterious father of her expected child. Doris Lynn was ashamed and embarrassed because she had been violated by her first cousin.

  Doris Lynn was unyieldingly and unkindly violated at the back of a church by one of her visiting cousins from Kingston, by the name of Lester Brown. Mrs. Essie Brown, by mere chance, found out about it from Miriam, her cousin in Mount Salem. Miriam told her the story long after Lester Brown had died in a car accident in Kingston.

  Miriam confessed to Mrs. Essie Brown that it was due to the pure sorrow, guilt, and pity that she felt within her that she was compelled to help her with her baby Lela. Lela was born around the same time Miriam first found out about the rape. Miriam asked Mrs. Essie Brown to keep it a secret to protect the integrity of the family.

  Mrs. Essie Brown also had nothing but undisturbed time to reflect on her kids, who had broken through thick, seemingly impenetrable barriers to get to where they were going. Gena, for instance, had made a simple promise from her heart to go and prepare a place for the family in the United States, and she did so like a soldier bushwhacking her way against all odds.

  Essie also had undisturbed time to reflect on how Leonard, at age ten, had envisioned himself being a doctor. She wondered how he was able to fight his way to the top in such an astounding way to become a doctor. She couldn’t have been any happier, although he was not a physician as promised. She was still very proud of him because he had achieved the status of a doctor, and that was more than what she—a plain, simple, naive country girl—could have asked for from one of the seeds that she had planted on this earth.

  She thought of how very proud she was when she attended his graduation at Nova Southeastern University in Florida. That was categorically one of her proudest moments by far. She remembered that her son Dr. Leonard had also promised to write a book about her life before she died.

  She remembered sitting down and spilling her guts to him on one of her vacations at his home in Florida. He had videotaped her for hours as she spoke about the ups and down
s in her life. She thought that it would have been good to see that accomplishment so she could happily check it off her bucket list, but she was still very proud of him without it.

  Mrs. Essie Brown had serene time to reflect on the lawsuit that she had won against the Catholic church across the street from her building in New York City. One day while crossing the church’s driveway, she fell in front of the church gate and sprained her feet. She was unable to walk for months. Eventually, she was encouraged to file a lawsuit against the church. She did file a case against them and won ten thousand dollars.

  After winning that grand sum, she remembered that she had made a promise to put a second level on her home in Glenworth at the first chance she got. So that was what she did with the award from the court. She sent it to her son Bunny in Jamaica to do the construction on her home.

  As a Christian, Mrs. Essie Brown wondered with much guilt if she had done the right thing by suing the church. Was that why the house in Glenworth stood, even today, as an incomplete monument of her desire?

  Mrs. Essie Brown had nothing but quiet time to reflect on the means by which she had obtained her home in Glenworth. She knew that if there was a crossroad in her life, it certainly would be the point where she’d had to choose, for or against, obtaining a permanent roof over her kids’ heads.

  Chapter 30

  Maybe the title of this story should have been Essie’s House in Glenworth.

  Junior was one of the first direct beneficiaries of that house. The whole family benefited instantaneously when they moved into their new home, but Junior was the first to benefit solely from the land. When he had his first baby girl with Pauline, the runaway teen, they moved out of the house and built a cozy two-bedroom house in the backyard of Essie’s property.

  This meant that he did not have to buy land to build his house. He did not have to get any special permission to build his house. He did not have to pay any related fees, such as taxes. The only permission he needed was Essie’s, and she was more than happy to see the young couple blossom into a loving, independent family with a lovely home of their own.

  Junior and Pauline had two more kids after Denise emigrated to the United States: a girl named Paula and a boy named Caple. The name Caple derived from the name of a well-known reggae singer called Capleton, also known as the Fireman or the Prophet. He was famous for coining the phrase “Fire a go bun them.” One of his biggest hit songs was a song called “Tour.”

  Pauline occasionally hustled as a vendor for tourists, as well as for local citizens, and Junior increased his clientele as he marketed his skill as an electrician. No one interfered with them, and they would have enjoyed a peaceful life in Essie’s backyard if they hadn’t been their own worst enemies. There were times when they broke out into a serious argument that eventually led into a fistfight.

  Junior usually started the arguments, mostly because of jealousy, but it was Pauline who was the first and only one doing the hitting. Poor Junior simply ducked or dodged her blows. He never once retaliated. Instead, he tried to contain her by holding her two hands as long as he could to stop her vicious punches.

  It was always the same story. Junior, who in principle didn’t believe in laying a hand on a female because Essie had taught him well, was the jealous guy who started the argument and ended up being physically abused by his domestic lover. When the scuffle was all over, Pauline was the person crying the loudest and the most desperately; Junior was the one with the proud victory walk and the swollen face or black eye.

  Despite his wounds, he was the person everyone wrongfully blamed and screamed at. Everyone automatically ran to Pauline’s rescue because she was crying so hard. No one understood that she was crying so hard because she couldn’t get as many punches in as she would have liked. Pauline had a sharp temper like Mike Tyson and a right hand like Mohammed Ali. She was opinionated and did not take kindly to anyone telling her what to do. By nature, she enjoyed a good fight.

  Because of Pauline’s hostile attitude, Junior was glad when his mother filed for him and his children to emigrate to the United States. Pauline, not knowing that Junior was on the verge of receiving his immigration approval, had moved out of Junior’s house two months before he traveled to the United States. One day, she just packed her bags and left Junior and all her kids behind. She went to live with a man who was doing very well in Jamaica, certainly much better than Junior. He had a big, fancy house and lots of money to go around. Pauline had finally found the man that she had been looking for the day she ran away from her parents in May Pen. That she was now much older and had three kids didn’t stand in her way.

  Mrs. Essie Brown’s filing process was right on time. Junior emigrated with Caple to Florida, where he lived with Dr. Leonard and his family for a month. He left Paula behind to stay at his house in Jamaica to watch over it while she took care of some health issues. When Florida proved a little too slow for him in terms of job opportunities, he moved on to New York City.

  Unfortunately, Caple died from a grand mal epileptic seizure shortly after arriving in New York. He died at the tender, gone-too-soon age of twelve.

  Even after her health issues were cleared up, Paula refused to travel. Instead, she decided to stay and enjoy the peace of mind she got by living on her own in the family home located in the backyard of Essie’s house in Glenworth.

  Betty’s story was very different from Junior’s. She was independent and easygoing. As long as her beauty parlor was open for business and clients were available, she was a happy camper. She invested all of her time and effort into her beauty parlor business but, unfortunately, with little financial return.

  Although she was very good at the art and craft of hairdressing, she was awful as a businesswoman. It was often said that she was too kindhearted—and some would even say too silly—to recoup a profit from her business. She gave away more free services to her clients than the Salvation Army gave away in a lifetime. She made many vain attempts to move out of Essie’s house in Glenworth, but when business or her relationship got bad, she moved right back in with her mother. She had her first kids, twins, in Essie’s house.

  She also had her other children in the Glenworth home. She had six kids altogether, and they all stayed mostly with their grandmother while Betty worked day and night in her salon. The most significant point in Betty’s life came about when Mrs. Essie Brown emigrated to the United States and then filed for her and her kids to follow. They all went to live in Mrs. Essie Brown’s apartment in New York City.

  Betty was not happy in New York, so she decided to leave her kids with their grandmother and return to Jamaica to attend to her beauty salon business. When she went back to live in the house in Glenworth, her youngest brother, Bunny, was also living there with his wife and kids. The rest of the family had emigrated to the United States.

  Bunny wasn’t too happy to share the house with Betty; he and Betty were cut from two different cloths. Betty was not all that domesticated around the house when it came to house duties or chores, while Bunny and his family were neat, tidy, and well organized. They just could not get along, and eventually—after Essie’s intervention—Bunny moved his family out and left the house in Glenworth to Betty. Betty lived happily in the house for the rest of her life, which, unfortunately, was not very long.

  Betty fell madly in love with a new boyfriend named Kenneth, who was initially good to her. He bought a new refrigerator, a stove, and some furniture for the Glenworth house. He and Betty lived a good life there together until one day, seemingly for no reason at all, Kenneth coldheartedly decided to leave Betty and find a place of his own. He moved out all of the fancy kitchen accoutrements and new furniture he had bought and boldly went to live with a new girlfriend across the street, about a block away.

  Betty couldn’t deal with the sudden and shocking breakup. Distressed, she experienced significant weight loss because of excess worry and depression. Within six months of Kenneth breaking up with her, she had two brain aneurisms that e
ventually ruptured in her head. Doctors tried to save her at the hospital, but she died after three days there. She was only forty-nine.

  After Betty’s untimely death, the house was left to Lance, Betty’s youngest son, and Dean, Myrtle’s only son. Lance eventually moved out and put his room up for rent. Dean was now the only family member of Essie’s who remained in the house. It was ironic that it was the sole son of Myrtle who was now rightfully inheriting Essie’s house in Glenworth.

  Essie’s house in Glenworth didn’t have any effect on Lela, since Lela had grown up with Miriam Bertha Streete, her cousin. The only time Lela came in contact with the house was when she occasionally popped into Glenworth to see how her biological family was doing.

  Karl, on the other hand, benefited greatly from living at Essie’s house in Glenworth. He had moved from the country when he was fourteen years old, but before that, he had visited his family in the city at least once or twice every year.

  The family always looked forward to his visits. Karl had a knack for catching on to the latest fashions or behaviors, and it was fun to see the new styles or actions that were arising in the country town of Clear Mount or Jericho. One time, he came to visit the family with a new style of walking that the family called “the country walk.” When he walked, he would use one foot to hit the heel of the other foot, therefore creating a dance-like walking or hopping motion.

  On the following visit, he introduced the latest style, which was to suck on his inner bicep with his arm thrown across his shoulder while he was walking. This action made it look as if he were hiding his face with one of his hands across his mouth and resting on his shoulder.

  On another visit, Karl combined the two styles, the foot hitting and the bicep sucking, as he walked. The younger kids especially enjoyed Karl’s displays.

  On his last visit at age fourteen, Karl brought all of his few belongings from the country. He had decided that he wanted to live with his family in the Glenworth house, and he demanded that he be allowed to stay.