Is Just a Movie

by Earl Lovelace

  I found myself alone, walking. I meet Aunt Magenta and Clephus going home from the festivities that the funeral had turned into. “Donny, what happen? What happen?” And from the alarm in her voice, I know how she frightened. “Look at you!”

  I look at myself. I was shaking. My skin was hot with fever. I had a cross on a chain round my neck. I had beads round my neck and a bracelet on my wrist. My shirt was buttoned with a safety pin.

  “Come, we have to see about you.”

  My lips felt dry and my mouth tied up like the time in Washington, DC, when I was trying to whistle outdoors in winter. I must have mumbled something that sounded like Grenada.

  “Grenada?” Aunt Magenta said. “That disaster happen so long ago. Well, anyhow, they say these things does affect you later. I tired tell you, you must settle down, get someone to care for you instead of having these women flitting in and out your life. You not getting younger, you know.”

  In the distance I could hear the church bells tolling, the steelband and the people in the street celebrating Dorlene’s return from the dead. It was like a new spirit had found its way into the island, the feeling of miracle.

  Clephus, she called. Come and help Donny here.

  But I waved him away. I could still walk.

  We reached the house. I sat down and she brought me a drink that I thought was medicinal. It was rum. Drink it, she said. And wanting to be of further service, she added, let me turn on the TV. Something big like this bound to be on the news.

  When she turn on the TV, it was to find the dimple-cheeked television newscaster, Lauren Beausoleil, in a black jacket, white blouse and with red hibiscus flowers in her hair reporting on the resurrection of Dorlene. She had been taken to the Mount Hope Medical Complex for treatment for dehydration and exhaustion and for observation. While there, they discovered that three patients who had come into contact with her – Iris Mendez, a midwife from Valencia, Molly Logan, a waitress from Maloney and George Khan, a Pentecostal minister from Mausica – found themselves healed of their illnesses. The whole hospital was in an uproar because instead of waiting on the doctors and nurses to treat them, all the patients who could walk were making straight for the ward in which Dorlene was. The police had to be called out to keep order and experts invited to assess the claims of healing. Dr. Alan Tim Pow sought to dismiss the whole thing as a hoax that indicated the deeply held wish by the population for miracles. But Professor Hamid Mohammed from the University of the West Indies, Dr. Neil Cureton, psychiatrist at the St. Ann’s Mental Hospital, and Albert Faraah, president of the Society for Transcendental Meditation, the three experts contacted to discuss the resurrection of Dorlene, had no reason to doubt the claims made by the three persons. They affirmed that there was scientific evidence to show that people who had a near-death experience generally received powers to heal for periods from as short as twenty-four hours to as long as five years, though taken on the average this ability persisted for a period of between nine months to a year, after which it could become erratic, wane or suddenly disappear. It was their opinion that this was a situation requiring government intervention because once the news gets out, Dorlene Cruickshank would be in demand throughout the world. And the three experts agreed that unless this country moved quickly the country would lose Dorlene to the USA where she would earn millions of dollars as a healer.

  But, even so, callers to the program were skeptical and urged Dorlene to take up the offers made to her and go.

  “Go, girl, and make your millions,” encouraged Aunt Magenta. “Not just for the money, for the respect. They don’t respect you once you stay here.”

  “A prophet does not have any honor in your own country . . .” began Clephus. Before he could conclude his statement Aunt Magenta jumped up again:

  “Oh, Jesus! Look!”

  And when we looked it was to see . . .

  Yes, the Prime Minister, his face drawn, his lips dry, his face the washed-out house color of a man whose skin had not received the benefits of sunshine for months, moistening his lips with licks of his tongue, in his eyes the sparkle of excitement, around his mouth a slight tremor that made us know he had some great pronouncement to make, in his eyes the hurt that made my aunt Magenta say, “Yes. Is like she leave him in truth.” The she referred to was Marlene Spicer who, rumor had it, three months ago had ended her ten-year relationship with the PM. And that it was for that reason he had withdrawn to his residence and had instructed his cabinet ministers that not one of them was to in any way contact him unless Tobago – which at that time was threatening secession – hoisted its own flag.

  When they got his instructions, senior cabinet members who had known him for years and had watched him develop an attitude of careful calculation that with all its perambulation served an inflexibility of will knew not to argue with him. They took him at his word, as he expected them to. And although the rising from the dead of Dorlene was an event that had the country abuzz, none of the cabinet ministers wanted to be the one to break his injunction, especially as the majority of those who had been present at Dorlene’s funeral had either fainted or run at sight of the risen Dorlene and had no desire to emphasize an event that would show them in such unflattering light.

  Evrol

  Evrol Chance, however, had returned from the funeral of Dorlene Cruickshank with the chant Get something and wave going on in his head and the satisfaction that he had left the cemetery in Cascadu with a sense of being if not a celebrated son, certainly a forgiven one. That event, he felt, was something the PM needed to know about, not only for the part he Evrol had played, but because it occurred to him that what he now called The Rising of Dorlene was the miracle if handled well would help the PM untangle himself from his difficulties, get back into the good graces of the people and rekindle in the consciousness of the nation the sense of miracle that marked his earliest years in politics. When he raised these points with one of the ministers who was said to be close to the PM (after he had revived after fainting at the sight of the risen Dorlene), he was told, “Boy, if I was you I wouldn’t say anything to the boss.” Another simply muttered, “Hmm,” and went on dusting dirt from the knees of his trousers that had attached itself there when at the sight of the risen Dorlene he had fallen to his knees to pray. Later, on his way home to St. Joseph, Evrol found himself stuck in a traffic jam created by hundreds of vehicles on their way to the Mount Hope Medical Complex to get to Dorlene before her healing powers started to wane. He reasoned that the matter was already in the public domain, and, order or no order, he decided to risk letting the PM know of the fortunate events that had taken place.

  The PM

  “No no no,” said the PM with the upbeat energy and rhythm of a calypsonian:

  “We say no to the countries with their big money tempting her to go. This is our miracle.”

  Dorlene was to be declared a national treasure and he was inviting those who wanted to benefit from her healing powers to make the trip to this island.

  “And, my friends,” he declaimed, because by this time he had nothing more to fear, the miracle had made land, money was no longer the problem, his faith had been rewarded, “my friends,” his voice cracking with hurt and pride of self-congratulation, his lips twisted with the determined willfulness of a child who believes that not being given his due has freed him to pursue a course of his own choosing: “I had to do it alone. Where are all the movements for change that sprang up around ’70? Where are the Black Power people? Where is Moko and Tapia and National Joint Action Committee and URO and Young Power and New Beginning? Where is the United Labor Force? Where them? Where they gone? What has become of them? Into their harbors of tribalism: Movement for People of Indian Origin? Society for the Welfare of Africans? Chinese want a public holiday too. The whole country descended into an ethnic limbo? That is what we come to? I alone am left with thee. I alone carry the national promise. So what can they tell me? Eh?”

  And if they wanted to look for their future in the past, h
e would seek his future up ahead. Now was the time to leave behind all the confusion and resentment brought on by history and press on with development. He wasn’t going to pamper the ethnic nationalists and he wasn’t going to tolerate those who wanted to reduce everything to bacchanal. No. He was going to set them on the road to the development of a modern civilization, a road that has no ethnic association.

  And that was why he was using this opportunity to urge the nation and particularly the striking workers in oil and sugar and others who were threatening disruptive industrial action to open their eyes and see that the miracle of Dorlene was a signal sent to deliver the island from the clutches of individualism and unreason, to halt tribalism and to bring us all together in a new and beneficial relationship, labor and capital, government and people, rich and poor, black and brown, yellow and white, Trinidad and Tobago. Let this be a healing moment in our history.

  He had spoken to the Archbishop of Port of Spain, yes, who had greeted with enthusiasm his request that Dorlene’s name be put forward to the Pope, to have her declared the first saint from the English-speaking Caribbean. Yes.

  Already, he said, the news of the resurrection of Dorlene had spread far and wide across the globe. That meant that, henceforth, our small island would be under the microscope of the world’s scrutiny and be host to the world’s peoples. As I speak, he said, news media people from all over the world are heading for this island, pilgrims have diverted their trips from the holy sites in India, the Himalayas, Israel, Cancun, Palestine, Las Vegas, St. Lucia, St. Vincent, Barbados and Grenada, others have already booked to come for Carnival. The eyes of the world will be upon us, he warned. The news media of the world will be at our doorsteps. Scientists, sightseers and trouble-makers are going to come into our midst, tricksters, students and people afflicted with illnesses will land at our front door. Financiers are ready to lend us money, investors are coming to invest in the development of the country. All this means there will be opportunities never imagined before, not only for business but to show our culture to the world. And since the only occasion on which we celebrate together as a nation is Carnival, Cabinet has decided to make this a special Carnival at which we celebrate ourselves and Dorlene Cruickshank. In this cause, he had ordered moko jumbies, dragons, jab molassie bands, chutney dancers and tassa drummers, steelbands, stickfighters and jab-jabs in unprecedented numbers. For this reason he was extending a special invitation to every community, religious, ethnic, social, to join together and make this Carnival one grand truly national celebration in which every community will involve itself as we celebrate Dorlene Cruickshank’s good fortune and ours.

  “And we have agreed that we cannot pass up this opportunity to invite people from the world to come and see the progress we have made as a society. And so that we may kill two birds with one stone, we shall take the opportunity to hold the constitutionally required general elections on the Monday after Ash Wednesday . . . to show the world the strength and transparency of our democracy.”

  My Aunt Magenta

  At the home of my aunt Magenta that night, the telephone did not allow any of us in the house to sleep. Relatives were ringing us up from other parts of the island and the world, people calling to say they had seen the story of the miracle on the BBC and on CNN. People had heard it on the Voice of America. My aunt called from Caracas, Venezuela; my cousin Pete in Canada; my cousin Louis in the United Kingdom; Lystra from Australia, Eileen from Amsterdam and Gordon from Nigeria. And we realized that the PM was correct and the story of the miracle of Dorlene had reached the outer sections of the world. These calls confirmed the expectation of a flood of visitors and Aunt Magenta cleared the dining table and she and Clephus sit down with a copybook to note how much oil, flour, baking powder and shark they would need to make bake-and-shark to sell to the tourists who would be visiting. The prospect of profit so fired the imagination of Clephus that he set to working out how much money they would save if they rented a boat and he went out with his nephew who was a fisherman and catch the shark himself. He was only brought back to reality by my aunt Magenta, with a wink of her eye, and a chuckle in her voice saying, “Clephus, don’t worry to fish; let us just buy the shark.”

  I fall asleep in front the television while my aunt and Clephus continued their mathematics. I jumped awake at her voice shouting:

  “I know it. I know he had to spoil it. Look at the TV. Look! Everybody else happy to come together, but he decide to object.”

  And there on TV was Mr. Bissoon, leader of the Opposition, with a red shirt and his head bound with a red kerchief like a Fyzabad stickfighter.

  Mr. Bissoon:

  Here is a Prime Minister who is prepared to make capital of the rescue of a poor sick woman who due to the incompetence of their health system would have been buried alive but for the alertness of people in the congregation and the diligence of the police constable who in his more than twenty years in Cascadu – Are you hearing me? twenty years – has not made a single arrest (you see how the police service works). Having nearly murdered the woman through official negligence, the Prime Minister is ready . . . ready to use her to further his political ends. Suddenly, the woman is a saint. Suddenly she is a healer. And to lend credence to this fiction he has employed well-known supporters of his party to declare themselves healed. They are well known to us: Molly George, a defeated County Council candidate, George Khan, ex-preacher and party activist from Mayaro, Iris Mendez, boss of a road mending project and party boss in Sangre Grande. And the university backs him up and the press falls for it. And all this is happening when the statues of Hindu gods are drinking milk and oozing blood in the villages of Lengua, Caripichima and the towns of Rio Claro and Chaguanas! Why they don’t go to Debe where people lined up by the hundreds, lame sick people are being healed by the blessings of the goddess Lakshmi?

  My aunt watching in disbelief, shouting: “Clephus, you know about any statues drinking milk?”

  And Clephus, equally attentive and bewildered, shaking his head, no. She was about to turn to interrogate me when she must have remembered that I couldn’t speak, so she shouted at the man on the TV, “When did your statues start drinking milk?”

  But Mr. Bissoon was continuing:

  And this thing about Carnival: are we going to be excluded from the national celebration because we don’t have moko-jumbie and douens and jab molassie and jab-jabs? Because we don’t have babydolls and jamette women and king sailors and dragons? Is the community I represent to be penalized because we have not succumbed to the bacchanal culture but have retained our rich cultural heritage? And isn’t it laughable the arrogance from a nation not yet fifty years to a people with the Mahabharata and the Ramayana and 5,000 years of civilization?

  My aunt Magenta turned to me as she made her way to the TV to, I suppose, turn it off: “You want to see this program?”

  I didn’t dare nod my head.

  But before she could touch the knob, Joshua Little, a member of the African Empowerment League, appeared on the TV saying:

  Once again, yet once again you have ignored the African’s claim to proper representation. Every other group in these islands has been granted a space of respect; we alone have been denied one. You have broken everything we brought, spit on everything we tried to construct. We have been forced to twist our gods into shapes to fit into the spaces we have been allowed to enter only because they represent your festivals, whether Christmas, Carnival or Easter; and now we want to untangle them from the history of degradation, you want to tie us down to moko jumbies and jab molassies, you want us to accept as our inheritance the bacchanal.

  “You too?” Aunt Magenta asked the television screen. “You-all doing your best to get the PM vex. They doing their very best. You invite him to come in and that’s a problem; you don’t invite him that is even more problem. Well, let’s see what he will do now.”

  She had finished calculating her requirements for the bake-and-shark and was planning now to clear out what used to be
Franklyn’s room and furnishing it so she could let it out to one of the visitors.

  And as I looked at her, “You not listening to what he saying?”

  Before I could make a motion, a clap of thunder rumbled across the sky. The lights went out, and we heard the sound of the wind like a thousand galloping horses running ahead of the rain.

  “Oh, Lord,” Aunt Magenta cried, “let us get candles, make sure the gas lamp have gas in them, that the matches can light. Tie up the animals; pen the dogs and we better board up the windows. We should really cut down that rubber tree. We have to look out for the house.”

  For that whole day it rained. The river flooded over; you couldn’t pass, cars had to stop as water swallowed the road, and the whole place was a mess and we heard the clatter and clanking of galvanized-iron roofs as they struggled to resist being blown off buildings. A deeper darkness covered the land and lightning pitched across the sky. And all over Cascadu was the rattling castanet of teeth as people trembled at the thought of the disaster that would follow the vexation of the Prime Minister.

  “You see what they cause?” my aunt Magenta said.

  “This look like earthquake weather,” Clephus said. “You think it will happen now.”

  “What?” Because Aunt Magenta couldn’t hear well in the storm.

  “The earthquake that they predict will split the island in two.”

  The PM appeared next day on TV; in the calm, the rain cleared.

  “Do not feel you have to manufacture a miracle in order to be included. The miracle of Dorlene is a Trinidad and Tobago miracle. It is a miracle for all of us. All will have access to her, all will benefit from her healing powers whether or not your statues drink honey or milk.