OUT OF THE DARKNESS CHAPTER 3
Chapter 3
The force
Good morning, Dear heart! Well! Here I am again, still alive, asking myself what force drives me to write in this old, musty attic in this oppressive heat, willing to endure so much suffering as I struggle to breathe this stale, humid air? The pungent odour of old mothballs mixed with Indian Ink brings back memories of when I came here to write as a young woman.
It all seems so strange to me, Dear Heart. Never could I have imagined, not even in my worst nightmare, that I would end up like this, blind and alone, sitting in an attic, writing as if my life depended on it. How, I ask myself, can this be happening to the long-awaited daughter of Captain George James the 3rd?
If one were predisposed to believe in such things as omens, they would not be surprised or shocked by my current circumstances because of the events that occurred on the day I was born when: Hail the size of golf balls beat down on our family home and no other, tearing shingles from the roof, breaking windows, and splitting the front door from top to bottom. When hot lava, ash, and smouldering ambers spewed from the mouth of Mount Pelée and rained down on the deck of my Father's schooner, setting her sails on fire. The day my father, his crew, and my thirteen and fourteen-year-old brothers, in nearly zero visibility, fought to save the schooner, while Mount Pelée and thirty thousand people and all other forms of life who lived on the Island were incinerated. The day my brothers breathed their last breath beneath a fallen mast. The day I, the long-awaited daughter of Captain George James, who was supposed to bring him great joy, brought him everlasting grief instead.
Although now deceased, my mother is always with me in spirit. She died from typhoid fever when I was eight years old. Papa was away at sea when the outbreak occurred, killing many townfolk, yet never touching me. I believe I remained in a state of shock for a long time after my mother’s death. How else can I explain my existence today? You may ask what I mean by that, but I truly believe that if I had not been in shock, the grief of her passing would have killed me.
My mother, the only person who ever truly knew me and my heart, who loved me unconditionally, gave no credence to the circumstances of my birth. Seeing me for who I was, an innocent child judged and condemned like Jesus, unjustly by people with small minds. How could I live without her? But I did, and here I am today writing to you.
Poor Papa, who had already endured such grief on the day I was born, after the death of his two sons, upon my mother’s death, fell into a state of grief of such unfathomable depths. I thought he, too, would die. This once strapping specimen of a man now stood before me, a tortured man of such sadness with teary eyes that could barely look at me anymore. Looking back now, I think the only thing that gave him the strength to carry on was his undying love for the sea and the faraway places he travelled to, which allowed him to escape his torment temporarily.
After my mother was buried, Papa remained at home with me, awaiting the arrival of Aunt Marion, my mother’s spinster sister from Ireland, whom I had never met, as she had only come to Canada for my mother and father’s wedding.
It was a lot to ask of Aunt Marion to give up her teaching position and leave her friends and familiar way of life to move to a place unfamiliar to her, starting all over again in midlife. I think at the time, the only reason she even considered it was out of duty to family. It is, however, my understanding that it was a legal contract, agreed upon and duly signed by her and my father, that finally sealed the deal.
It was nearly a year after my mother’s passing that she arrived. So, there I was for all those months, for all intents and purposes, an orphan, as Papa was emotionally unavailable to me. There were days, I too wished to die as I lay crying myself to sleep night after night, only to awake in the morning and continue to live another day.
Somehow, I managed to walk to school each day to endure the cruelty that only children can inflict on other children. A cruelty learned from their elders. A cruelty I had suffered until the day I lost the will to care anymore. I had always reacted to their cruelty, fueling their power over me. But now I didn’t care what they thought of me. I just ignored the accusations they hurled at me, proclaiming I was a bad seed spawned by the devil himself, and responsible for the death of my brothers, my mother, and the fever that had killed so many of the townfolk.
I didn’t cry that day. I simply looked at them with unblinking eyes and a smile and walked away, leaving them standing there, looking like little fools, with shame written all over their twisted faces. They never taunted me again. None of them ever became friends, but they tolerated my presence at a distance, with what I chose to believe was subdued respect.
In those months, before Aunt Marion’s arrival, even thou I was only eight years old, I did my best to keep the house as my mother had, but I was just a little girl, and my best efforts could not fill the emptiness and sadness that had seeped into the very bones of a house that could no longer be called a home. It too had become an empty shell like my father.
On those days that I had ventured into town for one reason or another, I managed to hold my tongue and silently again endure the cruelty inflicted on me by the elders of this town, those holier-than-thou townfolk who had taught their children to hate me by filling their heads with their preconceived notions given birth in light of the events that took place on the day I was born. That, coupled with the plague of typhoid fever, which wiped out one-third of the town's population but never touched me, affirmed their belief that it was I, the bad seed, who was the author of all the tragic events that had happened in our town.
"What A strange little bird," the townfolk would say in hushed whispers whenever they saw me.
Those self-serving holier-than-thou people who called themselves good Christians would gather in clusters, talking about me like I wasn't even there.
"Look at those strange eyes, they would say, it's like they see what we can't. Well, you know the un-goldy things that happened, the day she was born, only a creature spawned by the devil would cause such dastardly deeds. Yes, she is, without a doubt, a bad seed."
They would continue to converse in those hushed whispers, dehumanizing me until I would, with my strange, penetrating eyes, stare at them, watching their eyes fill with fear until they would finally break loose from their paralysis and scurry away.
Sunday morning church services were the worst. I can still hear the booming voice of the Reverend Howard, who always spoke of the wrath of God and the fires and damnation of hell that awaited the sinners.
As a child, I wondered what terrible sin the man at the front of the church nailed on the cross had committed. I wondered if he, too, was a bad seed? Later, I found out that the man on the cross was the Jesus Reverend Howard so often spoke of in his sermons, and that He had died on the cross to save us sinners.
I used to have a recurring dream. I dreamed I had taken a toolbox and a ladder from the barn and loaded them in the wagon, then rode into town hell-bent on freeing Jesus from that cross. There in the house of God, I climbed the ladder and pulled the nails from the feet of Jesus. Before I could get to His hands, the doors to the church swung open, spilling daylight into the darkness as the thundering voice of the Reverend Howard bellowed— sinner, sinner.
Dropping the hammer to the floor and coming down the ladder as fast as I could, I ran for the open door only to have it slam shut before me. Then, the Reverend dragged me, kicking and screaming, back to the cross, where he pinned me against the wall. Then, using the nail and hammer I had dropped, and with the words, I will destroy this bad seed, thundering in my ears, the hammer would come down, and I would awake.
I would awake, trembling in a pool of sweat, hearing those terrifying screams and those words, sinner, sinner, coming from my mouth. I would lie awake the rest of the night, too afraid to close my eyes and go back to sleep for fear I would end up like poor Jesus, nailed to the cross.
That recurring dream ceased shortly after the arrival of Aunt Marion, whom I fell in love with the instant I set eyes on her. Perhaps it was her resemblance to my mother that first drew me to her, but I can't tell you how happy I felt at that moment. For the first time in a long while, I knew what joy was. She was so much like my mother, a breath of spring that melts the cold heart of winter and brings everything back to life.
I remember the day she arrived like it was yesterday. After two weeks aboard ‘the Mary Ann, it safely docked at the Saint John harbour. From there, she took the Intercontinental Railway to our town, where Papa and I paced back and forth on the station platform at the foot of Hill Station Road for nearly two hours, anxiously awaiting her arrival. I remember that day like it was yesterday— Papa nattering on and on, thinking the worst—that she had changed her mind and was in Saint John making arrangements to return to Ireland.
As it turned out, the train wasn’t late; it arrived on time. It was Papa, whose writing was so atrocious that he couldn’t read it, or perhaps he had written down the wrong time, neither of which he was willing to admit. He was a very stubborn man!
"You came just in time, Marion," Papa said as he hastily loaded her steamer trunk onto the wagon hitched to the back of the Model T, then put the carpet bags and hat boxes on the back seat.
"I'll be leaving for the Indies in the morning."
“Annabelle, is that really you? Such a beauty like your dear mother,” she said as Papa opened the car door for her.
For the first time in my life, I felt shy. I felt heat just beneath my cheeks and bowed my head to avoid her gaze as she gently, with the tip of a gloved finger, tucked the strands of hair that had fallen loose from my blue hair ribbon behind my ear, then kissed me on the cheek.
Finally, I found the courage to look directly into her eyes, praying I wouldn't see any fear there. My prayers were answered, for what I saw in those beautiful brown eyes was compassion, understanding, and love, and as I looked into them, the ache that had been in my heart for so long began to evaporate. That was the beginning of my new life.
The next morning, Aunt Marion and I stood on the banks of the Great Atlantic, watching Papa’s schooner with its billowed sails grow smaller and smaller until it disappeared out of sight, breaking through the line that separates the ocean and sky.
It was a beautiful, warm day filled with the scent of wild Sea Salt Roses that grew in the cracks and crevices of the rocky mantle where wind-blown earth had come to rest beneath misty veils of ocean brine.
This was the land of my forefathers, where six generations of my relatives had once walked along these same banks and stood in that very spot, looking out at the Great Atlantic, watching the Tall Ships disappear into the same line I had looked at that day, who now slept eternally beneath toppling, weathered tombstones where the harsh elements of nature had erased their names forever from history.
Before we left, Marion and I gathered and placed a bouquet of those sea salt roses that my mother loved so much on her grave and felt her presence in a soft breeze that touched our faces on an otherwise placid day. We both wiped tears from our eyes as we made our way along the well-worn path that took us back home. Yes! Home. The house had come back to life under Aunt Marion's tender loving care.
The old lace curtains, which had turned yellow in my mother’s absence, were again the colour of newly fallen snow, fluttering in the kitchen windows just like they did when Mother was alive. Pot roasts, baked chickens and turkeys, freshly baked bread, cookies, cakes and pies were prepared and served on Mother’s special occasion, Bone China dinnerware, as Aunt Marion dubbed every day a special occasion.
Even Papa, when in her presence, could be seen from time to time, with that old glint of happiness flashing in his eyes, and, with the passing of the seasons, his trips home became more frequent. Home was again a happy place to be. We had both grown to love this woman, who, little by little, with her gentle, caring ways, had brought us back from the depths of despair and made life worth living.
So, you see, Dear Heart—
Oh! I hear the sound of keys banging on the rod-iron railing! Erin is here! I must hurry back downstairs! Bye for now, Dear Heart.
CONTINUED IN CHAPTER 4
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