One Short Story

Georgetown, Guyana 1937

That year my mother, Uni, a strapping young woman, brown skinned and high-cheeked, big boned and bow-legged, a real 'thoroughbred' (she said 'tarabred') in stature, had a 22" waistline, was nineteen and beautiful. My mother, Cleopatra Urania Callender, loved to dance and she often told us that when she went to a party there would be at least five young men surrounding her, asking her to dance and because she loved to dance, she would dance with each of them. William Troughmorton Prowell was a fine looking man with dark skin and wavy hair, six years her elder, and quite a lady's man. They both cut striking figures on and off the dance floor. She told me so many stories. Willy would often stand to the side and beckon a 'let's go' to her. She would dance some more. One night after he took her home, he didn't let her go. As usual, she walked him to the door and they would start kissing and Willy, as usual would start 'finggling' her bubbies. As they lay on the floor his hands quickly moved through the crinoline, she breathed out softly, "Willy, Mother is in the back." "Oh girl!" was all she heard him whisper.

Willy, my father, was her first and last man. The next year, 1938, she became Mrs. Prowell and Mommy. She said that the first time she wore a bra was on the day she got married and she made it herself. She made her wedding dress and as a seamstress, outfitted a lot of brides in Georgetown as well. She made most of our clothes and on Sundays we would get dressed up for walks to the Seawall. I remember that. With the help of my grandmother, Angela Callender, who was a nurse and midwife, my mother had six girls first – Claudette, the one that died, Pamela, Bernadette, Paulette and me, Dulcie. We never forget the one that died. Then she had the twins, a daughter, Roxanne and son, Rawn. The three boys, Keith, Patrick and Paul were born in America. When we came to the U.S. she didn't sew too much for us because she liked to make 'pretty' clothes and we didn't like 'pretty' clothes. We became Americanized with the urban wear.

In spite of all the mismanagement, exploitation and underdevelopment that characterizes Guyana, it's a magical place to me. The Temehri Indians believe God was there and made inscriptions on the mountains which they thought no man could make. I have so many fond memories of the rain. When it rained a lot, my father did not go to work and everybody stayed home. When it rained a lot, we didn't go to school and it was so hot, we used to play outside in the rain.

I remember the day my uncles Eustace and Francis got into a fight because I fell over Uncle Francis's foot. Uncle Eustace yelled at him. "You too careless man. You shouldn't have ya foot deh and mek she fall." I remember the classical music on the radio, the contrasting calypso and tramping in the street, their bodies thundering against the wall with plates and tables falling on the fl oor and their bodies crashing against the furniture in the house. I heard they poisoned the three dogs that bit me and at times I smell the hospital and taste the ice cream I was given after I was bandaged. I still have the dogs' teeth marks on my arms.

Guyana is my home; I was born there. Guyana is to me, memories, mauby, pepperpot, coconut cake, sorrel, metagee, coo-coo and fish, peas and rice with coconut milk, my mother, and all the sacrifices she made for us, my aunts Bybe and Yvette, her big bottom, her husband Nigel, his brother, Wordsworth McAndrew, the poet, Brickdam Cathedral, the man who used to go to the red woman up Camp Street to get spanked, riding through the burial ground to the housing scheme where we moved to and the window in the bathroom (yes we had a bathroom) that I used to look out at the landscape, the Kaieteur Falls which I have never seen, the gold and diamonds, Nen-Nen and Dada, Daddy Isaacs, Uncle Alfred, the tailor whose wife, Ruth, shot him just because he looked too hard at another woman, Aunt Sheila, who used to put extra meat under my Uncle Eric's rice before they got married, Aunt Evril whose son died in California of a drug overdose, my family, all of them in New York, Texas, Canada and Israel. All of them have a little Guyana in them and this is a story about all of us.

We are going to America.

Brooklyn, New York 1957

The lights coming into New York made the biggest impression on me from the plane. I didn't know then that those light bills had to be paid to Con Edison monthly, that those American kids would try to beat the 'kungx' out of us because they said we talked funny, that those three white boys would spit at me for no reason and that nun would slap me for what I don't know and when I started to cry, she would try to keep me quiet and we couldn't play outside in the rain. I went to St. Martin of Tours parochial school; it was near Knickerbocker and Halsey, in the Bushwick area of Brooklyn. Not all the nuns were bad. I used to go to the rectory on Saturdays and they would give me a lot of good cakes and bread and pastries to bring home. I liked school, did well in my subjects and managed to graduate from the eight grade even though in the last week, three of us in the graduating class played hookey, for a whole week. It was our last chance to go to the automat downtown, ride the trains, go the Highland Park and do nothing. We even played hookey in Sugar's house; we told her mother we had off that afternoon from school.

That Friday when I turned the corner and saw my mother standing outside the house, I knew she knew. What made us think that no one would find out? Stupid and young, that's what. I started crying from the top of the block on Bushwick Avenue to the middle of Jefferson Avenue where we lived. I cried so much I didn't even get a beating that day. Debbie feigned an asthma attack and she got off. I don't know what happened to Sugar because she didn't speak to me after that. It wasn't only my fault. Anyway, before the hookey incident, Sugar and I were inseparable. On Saturdays, after my sisters and I cleaned the house, Sugar would come over and then we would start doing our hair. We went to the same high school but she avoided me and I still feel bad about not being able to share our high school years together but she was white so I was made out to be the bad one. We all agreed to play hookey one day and then each succeeding day we couldn't figure out a way to go back together - we were in the same class. After that, I never played hookey again.

I have had a good life. I have been working since I was twelve. I used to help two Jamaican boys, Michael and Owen Morris, next door with their homework every day after school and I used to get paid $3. a week and I always had money. I thought I was rich. I always saved and I always remember dressing well. My first big job was with the Neighborhood Youth Corps, working with youngsters in summer programs. I earned about $37. a week and had enough money for school clothes in the fall. I never went to summer school. I made sure I passed my subjects and I worked every summer. My father got up every morning, took a bath, and went to work for the City of New York in Highway Design. My mother was a homemaker and always worked. We always had something to eat; my mother could make something out of nothing. I remember she babysat for Mimi, a little Haitian girl and Mimi's mother paid her $15. a week. In the summers, when we were home from school, my older sisters took care of us and my mother worked in the factory sewing. When I got older, my mother looked at my kids while I worked. From the time my daughter Saba was six months old, my mother kept her and she would only take $35. a week from me and my daughter was there all week. My husband Carl and I would pick her up on the weekends. When she started to get too fat, I took her from my mother and put her in a baby-school. She was so smart.

I went to Bushwick High School after the hookey incident. I didn't want to go to Catholic High School anyway. I told my mother she wasted money sending my sister, to Bishop Loughlin; she became Jewish and lives in Israel with her husband and thirteen children. One of her sons was killed in the park; he was shot in the back of the head and died. I love my sister but the only problem I have with her is that she did not tell me my God's name. The Jewish people know God's name and I read they whisper it in their synagogues. Why whisper? I know a lot of people if they knew or believed in God's name they would want to tell everybody. I can't figure that out and I still don't know why they do that or maybe I know why but I am not going to say it here. Later on I found out. My son, Ossawa, told me My God's name is Yah. He searched out God himself. I always thought about God. I never liked going to church. There was a park right across the street from St. Martin of Tours and there was where I used to spend my church time, outside with nature. Maybe that's why I believe God is the Universe and everything in it. No man created the world. It just is the way It is.

I had great teachers at Bushwick. Ms. Frenette was my English teacher and she always told the class, "Think about what you want to say and say it." She is an inspiration in my life. I remember my history teacher Mr. Plotkin who gave us a weekly exam. I thought that was the best preparation for the final. I think I made a 90% grade in history. He covered the topics in class and reinforced it with the test that was not really hard to study for because it was done in small parts. I liked him. My teacher, Ms. Krausman taught Music. I sang solo at my High School graduation with my brother. You are probably saying how I could do that when my brother was there. My brother is a powerful singer but that night, he couldn't sing; he was stagestruck. I sang by myself. Later in life he became a Muslim and I though maybe that was why he couldn't sing the Sanctus at graduation - protest - whatever. Religion does color the way you do things.

Bushwick was the best High School for me. I didn't have to take Gym if I participated in the Dance Program and that was what I did. My sister, Paulette and I were the "dance stars" in Bushwick. We choreographed and danced to Nina Simone's, Four Women for assembly in Bushwick. If you haven't heard Nina Simone sing that song, I can tell you what it's about. It is about being Black, being enslaved and being alive in America. You can just imagine how we communicated this love and anger to students in the assembly hall. I can't forget my dance instructors, Ms. Montague, Ms. Cummings and Helen Weinstein. When Ms. Weinstein jumped into the gym at Bushwick and led us across the floor in some of the most intricate dance patterns, I knew that this was what I wanted to do. This time was in the Sixties and in the Sixties, it was all about Love and love beads and Peace and Black is Beautiful and the Panthers and the Battle of Algiers and going to see the film, Battle of Algiers, and the East and music, Martha and the Vandelles, Smokey Robinson, R&B and all that Jazz, especially Cristo Redemptor by Donald Byrd, Lee Morgan, The Sidewinder, Sarah Vaughn and everybody good. I had a part-time job working at Western Electric and when I graduated from Bushwick, I had a full-time job there. Life was beautiful and I was young and beautiful. Then Martin Luther King died and the reality of America set in.

I left Western Electric. At 20, I was promoted to head the typing pool of about six white girls who had no respect for me or my position. I didn't like correcting their work, covering for their errors and wasting my time with inept supervisors who did not support my position. I started working at New York University.

New York, NY 1970 - Beyond

I started working at New York University in 1970 and while I was there studied dance and dance education. It took me almost 20 years to get a Bachelor of Science in Dance Education. I worked fulltime at NYU which allowed me the advantage of tuition remission. I didn't have to pay for my courses, only the registration fees and books. I attended college part-time, after work, on weekends, on my lunch break and worked full time. By the time I graduated, I was in my forties and my life had taken on a new direction. I was married with three children, Saba, Ossawa and Addis. My husband, Carlton B. Ingleton was an artist and we founded what I think was the first Black owned and operated not-for-profit cultural organization in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. I served as the Executive Director of the organization and administered cultural arts and exhibitions programs for a while before I decided to leave NYU in 1983 and work with him full-time.

The organization, 843 Studio-Gallery, was successful in bringing the works of world-renowned artists, such as Romare Bearden, established artists, Otto Neals, Miriam Francis and emerging artists, photographers and writers to the Crown Heights community. While working full-time at the Gallery, I continued my studies and took a loan to finish up my last year of study at NYU. I pride myself in knowing that I managed to complete my studies at NYU without compromising my integrity and my ideals. I could have easily lost myself among the predominantly white students there. I was not supposed to attend college. Bushwick High School prepared me to work in the business sector. I had my first math and biology courses at NYU and it was very hard for me. Sometimes I would have to read the assignments three and four times before I could understand what I had to do but I never gave up. If Martin Luther King didn't die, I probably would not have been given the opportunity to study. After his death, there was a move toward appeasing Blacks (we were mad about him and angry that he was taken away) through affirmative action and I took advantage of the educational benefits. In the early seventies I was often the only person of color in my class and a lot of students did not even want to talk to me but that didn't bother me because I didn't want to speak with them either. I got along.

As I grew, I became more interested in art and culture and after administering cultural program in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, came back to NYU in 1994 to work and study, and obtained a Masters in Visual Arts Administration. I still work at NYU at the Law School as a Legal Assistant in the Clinical Law Center and I enjoy my work. My interest in art and culture has developed and my aspirations are to keep myself and my community culturally informed. This is why culture is so important to me. Culture is all about us and the best of what we do as human beings. Too often we are judged by our worst. One of the last projects I worked on was an informative and enlightening art exhibition of works by several talented and skillful Caribbean artists, Kennis Baptiste, Carlton Murrell, Stanwyck Cromwell, Lincoln Perry, David Wilson, Emile Morrison, Anthony Bonair, Winston Huggins and Robert Reid. This art exhibition entitled, EX POSITION - Out of the Caribbean, Out of this World, staged in Florida in June, 2008 was one of the most impressive expositions of the African cultural continuum and visually stated in printed, painted, photographic and sculptural images how artists, by recording our life experiences, make meaning of our existence.

So here it is, a brief life story of who I am and what I do. I believe we all have a responsibility to ourselves and each other to do the best we can as individuals to make this world a better place and I think I have done my share of community work, volunteering, promoting and advancing our interests the best way I know how by communicating certain truths about myself, ourselves and aspects of our culture.

Searching for Self

The Reality

Where does one look to find out about oneself if there is no record that identifies one's place of origin? I know I am a Black woman. I know I was born in Guyana, South America in 1950 and I have been living in the United States of America since I was seven years old. From where did I originate? Did I come originally from East Africa or West Africa? Am I a descendant of Kings, Queens, or Hebrew slaves?

This is called the year of 2009 and over two thousand years ago people of Africa were exiled, deported and eventually scattered across the earth to satisfy the rich and powerful thirsts for their land and labor. This system called slavery, and its accommodating systems of oppression, forced people into situations to which they had to adapt and in the process, lost touch with their own identities, customs, and cultural upbringing.