THE COLOUR OF CONSCIENCE

By Ralph Thompson

“Only those can understand us
who ate from the same bowl”
-Solzhenitsyn

We were poor, enjoyed no social status
and Mother, motivated by what passes
as enlightenment, never failed to teach us
scorn for the barefoot, uneducated masses.
There was a category of the population,
they, she claimed to know: they were slackers,
trying always to rise above their station;
on ganja, dangerous machete attackers.
A bank note proffered on a black man’s palm,
must be infected, surely stolen. Scurrying
to the kitchen tap, she sanitizes her alarm,
the modern prototype of money laundering.

But no beggar for a drink was turned away,
water offered by a maid in a special glass
reserved for black lips. Forbidden to play
with black neighbours I was constrained to pass
long hours curled up in my imagination
which blazed from black to white to technicolour
lifting to a poem, descending to depression,
lust waffling between hubris and terror.

My mother ran a canvas awning shop,
Aston, her chief sewer, deaf and dumb
from birth. She hired him from pity and to stop
moonlighting which sabotaged the trade, their medium
of communication grunts and signs.
He sits at his Singer machine among the desks
that crowd the factory floor, sewing hem designs
curving from the shuttle in graceful arabesques.
Aston, the black savant, could and did
calculate an awning’s hypotenuse
as accurately and with the same panache as Euclid.

Rushing to judgment, Mother thought to accuse
him once of a mistake and when it transpired
he was right I witnessed the confrontation
in the sweltering shop between the hired
man and his mistress. How judge the allocation

of blame, the loss of face? They slowly advance
toward each other, the silent machines
holding their breaths and me as well, a dance
in which her arms are raised and he leans
forward, head bent. Then they embrace,
his cheek nestled against her breast, her fingers
caressing his Brillo hair–a moment of grace
that flickered only for a minute but still lingers.
Why slow applause from me? Such special care
deserved a special poem but I lacked the art
to craft it then. I attempt it here.
Mother. on this white page I cleanse my heart.

Black school mates were not allowed inside
our house so Joe and I would rendezvous behind
the garage, smoke cigarettes, allied
in our love for literature and art. In lieu
of comics we devoured Joyce and Miller.
Joe crafted stories bubbling with wit and laughter,
my forte metaphor, a faint poetic glimmer.
He dragged his exile to London where after
the usual struggle his first novel won
the Booker. “Let not they soul be vexed”
he wrote, “In life until you reach the colophon
there’s hope. Your turn may yet be next”.
Black school mates not welcomed but when Mother’s
black doctor was summoned for an urgent visit,
a toilet usually acceptable for others
was attacked with scrub brush and Lysol, made fit
for the great man’s ass. He enters like an African prince
come to bless a country cousin. She bares
her breasts for the kisses of the stethoscope, a wince
when his fingers massage her spine, hears
his consoling voice as he prepares the morphine
shot. When the heaving stops he stands
aside, slowly turns towards the pristine
bathroom to wipe her whiteness from his hands.
O brave, misguided one, necessity
is the mother of your contrition. Better
late than never! God will grab you willy-nilly
leaving me behind, your rueful debtor.

Black skin! It comforts me every day,
warm to sight, a subtle colour to devote
a life of study. White skin seemed blah as if half way
through creation God forgot a second coat

of varnish to heighten tone. A Sunday painter, I broke
from landscapes to nudes, every jot and nipple
of the dermis under the microscope of brush.
I found a black model whose beauty stunned me
so I asked if she would pose nude and her lush lips replied, “Only if you pay my fee”.
It was outrageous but so was her body. “A mere tip”
I bluffed. “My name is Hope and I hate white men.
Come the revolution be careful I don’t slit
your slave master throat. That said, when
do we start?” Hope was the epitome
of black beauty, warming my canvasses
with a glow that burned from memory
the cartel of whiteness; a glow that surpasses
in profundity the pale cheek
and bosom of the European nude
with skin as white as goat’s milk, weak
as the light empty bone china cups exude.
Ever eager to upstage me she warned one day
it was that time of month and I could see
the white string of her tampon on display
between her thighs. “I know”, she volunteers,
“white men cannot bear too much reality.
If you are squeamish I will leave but there’s
still the little matter of my fee”
In an ex-colonial society servants
manner. Carmen entered our service fresh
from her village, a not so young applicant,
fearful of the city but once in the mesh
of the family catered to our domestic needs,
willing to cook, clean, wash and make
the beds. Her daily toil assuaged the ache
of our drudgery, made writing poems possible,
also dinner parties, playing chess.
Carmen’s servanthood, more biblical
than secular obliged me to assess
her status. In the circle of our apprenticeship
she mastered middle-class manners by example,
speech by imitation, truth in the grip
of an expanded conscience, a chance to sample
our taste in art and music. In due course pregnant,
the father decamped for London and when her water
broke it was my wife who led the chant
“push, push”–me a reluctant eccocheur
proud of the child Carmen christened Eunice.

The child treated as one of our daughters, did
well at school. It was easy to dismiss
her sullenness as a teen-age mask that hid
her inner turmoil. But at fifteen she confirmed
her pregnancy, father unknown. Carmen’s heart
cracked with a remembered grief. I squirmed
in retrospect at my unsubtle part
in playing God, presumptuously uprooting
Eunice from her Mother’s nurturing soil, the ghetto
life she craved, her reflex revolt the looting
of the treasury of good-will we had so
proudly gifted to her from the beginning.
Was it my misreading of the ethnic gene pool
that blighted the potential of the child’s upbringing?
Eunice sleeps till noon refusing to return to school,
determined not to work, a troubled victim
of her blackness. We offer to relieve her pain
but stubbornly she sucks her teeth, that grim
island gesture of surrender and disdain.

I had married “Brown”, one daughter “Black”, so thought
that was that. Quod erat demonstrandum!
But the unhappy Carmen case was fraught
with contradictions, my conscience numb.
We lodged her in our home with no regrets,
her uniforms hung in a bedroom next to ours,
on the bedside table a colour TV set
and bible; cut daily from the garden a vase of flowers.
Like Marzipan scrolled on the cakes she baked,
her daily routine hardened into habit,
the tranquility of order. Time flaked
away her grief and I was able to acquit
myself of what remained of blame. But certain
bondage ropes refuse to slacken, no
eating with us at table, her meals taken
in the kitchen, callalloo and sweet potato
dished from pot to mouth. Now would she address us
by first name. It was “Da” for “Dad”
(invented by Eunice); my wife “Miss P” or “Missus”;
yet she hugged us and for the children a chiliad
of kisses. After fifteen years Carmen accepts us
as mere mortals, part of a vaster
congregation of eccentrics. We had ordained
her to the rank of sisterhood, encouraged
to tweak the humdrum. At meals no one abstained
from comment. The dialectic space enlarged
with the “F” word and other such that cracked

across the silver like St. Elmo’s fire.
Carmen, abashed at first, learned the knack
of feigned deafness, ignoring our vulgar choir.

A fart–that fast but simple leveler
of social hubris. With one high note
can interrupt a pompous speech, declare
finis to a formal dinner, an anecdote
that drags on too long. The accumulation
of gases in a gut is no respecter of class
or creed, subject only to the formulations
of Mr. Boyle and a hearty meal, alas!
Gathered in the kitchen we see Carmen bend
low to the gas stove, a dangerous position
for control of stomach acids. We offend
her by laughing by before any inquisition
starts she stands and launches her defense.
After so many years in service she knows
the joke, blames any hint of flatulence
on the “dog”, ending the imbroglio.
Thus, by a fart was sealed a vow to extol
our peccadilloes and our virtues, of sharing
secrets unique to us, a protocol
that banished the embarrassment and blushes, swearing
to be human. On one occasion, Carmen’s TV blaring
and her fast asleep for it was late,
I slipped quietly inside her room hearing
her steady breathing. From the TV screen delicate
pixel colours washed across her face.
Pinks, lavenders, and blues, a fluid blending
that stippled her black skin. The urge to place
a kiss on her forehead was overwhelming.

That night my room is redolent with the scent
of jasmine mated with mint. Rising from her couch
my muse, neither black nor white, a portent
of things to come, willing on oath to vouch
for my devotion to the craft, agrees
to sing again with me: harmonies
out of time, but in the proper key,
A searching troop of tropes ensnares me;
poems, under the moving shadow of my pen,
compose themselves claiming their pedigree
in foreign journals. But what I mostly crave
is the accord of my peers, black or white.
True poets abide their hearts and this dispense

with ideology and cant. So when I had the sense
to ring the door bell, with seigniorial
grace they waved me in, welcoming me
into the magic circle of their communal
love, their respect affirmed and envy free–
Figs, Derek, Eddie, Mervyn, Wayne,
Louis, Ian, Earl, Gwyneth, Delores,
some bequeathing to the rest of us the pain
of their departures, the capriciousness
of death plucking now at my octogenarian
beard. These were happy halcyon days
earnest with art and the poetic struggle.
Guilt that gallops with a whip and sharp spurs
has lost the race. I now dismount, able
at last to hand my hang-ups in the stable.

Ralph Thompson has five collections to his credit including the second edition of View from Mount Diablo annotated by John Lennard, which won the Jamaica National Literary Competition in 2002. He earned a Doctor Juris degree from Fordham University in New York.  After two years in the US Air Force during the Korean conflict, Thompson returned to Jamaica, where he was awarded C.D (Commander of Distinction) in the Jamaican National Honours of 1988 for Public Service. His poetry has appeared in a number of international Journals including London Magazine.  In 2012 his latest collection of poems Taking Words for a Walk was published by Peepal Tree Press, UK. Thompson lives with his wife and four children in Kingston, Jamaica.