Читать книгу Over the Spiked Picket Fence - Angela Aloisio Sander & Denvil Buchanan - Страница 9

near deserted street, a woman with a glimmer of curiosity in her haunting eyes.

Like I said, my name is Dan. I was born Danma Matthew Green around to a man named Selwyn, and to a woman who people called Jane in a place called Sherwood, another one-horse town a few miles away just beyond New-Forest, Jamaica. It was a sleepy one-street hill-top village far in-land on the north side of the Island at the foot of a lush green mountainside. My arrival into the world early one Saturday morning had been painful, and there had been no cause for celebration, based on what I had been told, and Jane, having failed to abort the baby early, gave birth to a baby boy. She had then given up the baby as soon as she could and had run away on a one-way ticket abroad a big banana boat bound for the United Kingdom, leaving behind her child, and covering her tracks as best as she could.

The past must be left behind, a new one to begin. After all, as I had been told, everybody who could, was taking the boat bound for “England”, to shake off the Island dust, to begin anew overseas in the seat of the Empire, with never a thought of ever looking back at this cussed place, with all of its hot sun and its shanty-town suffering, its zinc fences and its one solitary Nearer-My-God-To-Thee church on the hill. No more calling the faithful to Sunday morning worship. No more tolling of the bell.

England was the land of hope and glory, a place of great tradition and storied battles, a land that would give her a new look and a better life, my mother had said, according to the stories. After all, wasn’t she a loyal subject of the Kingdom? Wasn’t she a faithful subject of Missus Queen, the same queen on the shiny penny and the ha-penny, sitting on the big chair and beaming beneath the haloed crown of glory? “Who can blame the po chile? A bastard baby is a burden for a young girl,” and on and on the story went.

So it was no surprise that I would follow in the tradition, that I too would later go a foreign to escape the Island, “fe go to America” to seek my fortune, twenty-two years after my

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