Trouble in Paradise: How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House

 

How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones

Tinder Press

Pp. 308

The title refers to a cautionary tale parents tell their daughters not to be willful, as the child in the narrative loses an arm due to curiosity when she enters a tunnel despite dire warnings. The message misfires when Lala (she who is told the tale by her grandmother, Wilma) wonders whether the girl could cope without the limb, swapped for following passion. She is cautioned, ‘but how will she sweep the house with only one arm’? She questions whether a woman’s worth is judged by her housekeeping, and maybe she would rather lead an adventurous life.

Unfortunately, her adventures do not lead to happiness. The novel is set in Barbados on a beach straight from the brochures of paradise. White folk live in tall, gated houses, while violence, prostitution, drug smuggling, murder and other criminal activities exist beyond their gardens, and everyone carries a gun. The police turn a blind eye to the abuse (particularly of women) until it enters those houses of those who go to embassies and ruin the tourist trade.

The community is steeped in intergenerational violence and abuse. Mothers beat their children because they do not want them to go bad and need to whip the devil out of them; they fear that sparing the rod is the cause of the child’s failings. Lala marries Adan, who regularly beats and rapes her, even while she is recovering from a traumatic birth. He commits robberies to pay for his lifestyle, which escalate to drug smuggling and murder in a sort of subplot to the novel. His cruelty leads to a tug of war with their newborn (known only as Baby because they have not yet decided on a name), which results in the death of the child as she is dropped on the floor.

Girls are routinely raped by their male relatives: Lala is the child of her mother, Esme, and her grandfather, Carter. The young women are sent away to remove the temptation, while the man is not considered to be at fault. Lala is made to sleep in the outhouse to avoid her grandfather’s attentions, or how else can he resist? Women are pursued by men. The policeman who investigates the Baby’s death pursues Sheba and refuses to accept that she doesn’t want his protection; Adan fixates on his ‘outside woman’ despite being married to Lala.

"A grown man cannot help himself, she explains, in the presence of a young Wilkinson girl. This is the way it has been for generations. It is not the man’s fault, says Wilma, there is nothing he can do about it. It was this way with her mother before her, her daughter and granddaughter after her. It was this way with her."

In some ways, the novel, full of descriptive scenes and local patois, is reminiscent of those by Alice Walker, Toni Morrison or Alan Duff. Characters struggle to connect with community and lash out at those who seek to reinforce their culture without understanding the roots of reggae or Rasta, merely turning gangsta. When Wilma holds a funeral for Baby, Adan does not attend because he is wary of her connection to culture, although he tells his friends that she is a bitch and “he not going anywhere around her or her house.” He is alone and left behind in the world where he has lost his local bonds.

Even Lala is infused in her beliefs, although they may not support her – her grief, trauma and post-partum depression are explained in superstition. “She is convinced also that supernatural beings are conspiring on her daughter’s behalf to make her understand that she will pay for her part in her death.” She fears a “wicked duppy” is playing tricks on her, putting cans of formula in the cupboard, although she knows she has thrown them all out, sprinkling the scent of baby powder in the house, and “It is this duppy, or another, equally malevolent, who infuses the peculiar sound the paper bag of flour makes when she is making dumplings and it hits the floor with the same sound she heard when Baby was dropped.”

Reviewers have called the book unflinching, claustrophobic, pitiless, and relentless. Focussing on murder, abuse, a violent marriage and the death of a baby, it is certainly no light-hearted tale, but there is a slight glimmer of hope towards the end, and it is ultimately compelling. It is exquisitely constructed, with flashbacks to flesh out the characters and the pathways that have led them to this Barbadian beach, and it is a great achievement for a debut novel.

A tour de force of story-telling

Washington Black by Esi Edugyan
(Serpent's Tail)

Pp. 417

This is a picaresque novel full of adventures and multiple locations: from the slave plantation in Barbados to the frozen wastelands of the Canadian Arctic; from the structured canals of Amsterdam to the wild coasts of Nova Scotia; from the scientific calm of the London Aquarium to the wind-swept deserts of Morocco. It is peopled by explorers, adventurers, scientists and exploiters. Everyone is seeking something: discovery; freedom; equality or survival, and it can all be realised as Washington Black says to his mentor who warns him something is impossible, “Nothing is possible, sir, until it is made so.”

Washington Black is rescued from his brother’s slave plantation by adventurer and inventor Christopher ‘Titch’ Wilde, who says he wants a young boy to help him carry his instruments and take scientific measurements. Titch is trying to sail in a cloud cutter – a craft propelled by both a hot air balloon and more prosaic oars. He encourages Washington’s prodigious gift of drawing and removes him from the daily cruelty of life he has previously experienced. Is he really benevolent, however, or simply using him for his own means?

After an incredibly unfortunate incident, Titch knows that he and Washington must flee and so they affect a wonderfully improbable escape to the Canadian Arctic. Here Washington is introduced to a new world, culture and relationships. When Titch disappears from Washington’s life, he is presumed dead, and Washington must attempt to forge his own way in the world that has hitherto denied him freedom.

Edugyan never flinches from the violence and barbarism of slavery and its consequences, but nor does she dwell upon it. Washington knows his mother was abused and raped, and he writes baldly of the horrors of the slave ships: “The stench of the holds, all of them rolling naked and ill in the dark stomach of the barquentine. The urine and excrement and vomit, men clawing their own throats open with ragged fingernails, bloodied women leaping the deck rails into waters sharp with the fins of sharks. I saw the dozens who had died on the way to Barbados, and I saw those who died once ashore.”

In striving for his freedom, Washington severs his ties with his previous existence and the people he once knew and cared for – it seems that he can only care for himself in order to survive. The novel questions the meaning of belonging. We understand that we do not belong to a person, but can we belong to a place, and how important are family connections? When Washington suspects that Titch may be alive, he begins to search for him, but why? Was he abandoned?

As well as being a sweeping saga of derring-do and outrageous plots, this novel also examines the conundrum of colonialism, survivor’s guilt, and the impossibility of altruism in a pointed and poignant manner. The language is clear and precise as Washington attempts to describe unimagined circumstances, and the fantasy and realism elements blend well in a tour-de-force of storytelling.