…As a Tale That Is Told

By Annette Osborne

BOOK SUMMARY
As a Tale that is Told is the story of the dying and death of a Trinidadian woman (Louisa). In dying, the mind revisits the past in experiences that some call travelin. Louisa relives experiences with her husband and thirteen children prior to immigration to the USA in a series of flashbacks. Her travelin is the major content of the book and each section ends with the reaction of each child to her death.
Deeply rooted in Caribbean tradition, this story will resonate with every courageous woman who determines to alter the lives of her children for good.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 22, 2010
• ISBN: 9781462835263

Annette Osborne

Author Bio Annette Osborne (nee Phillips) was born in Arouca, Trinidad, West Indies. She graduated from The University of the West Indies (UWI) with BA (1973), MEd (1990) and MPhil (1997) degrees. She taught English at the secondary and tertiary levels in Trinidad and the USA. Annette is now a retired teacher living in Palm Bay, Florida USA. The author plans to use her retirement to write novels.

Book preview

As A Tale That Is Told

Annette Osborne

Copyright © 2010 by Annette Osborne.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

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Contents

LOUISA I

ALL OF MY CHILDREN

THE VISION

THE EARTHQUAKE

TRAVELIN’

NANCY I

HOPE

JOY

PEACE

GOODNESS

GENTLENESS

KINDNESS

LOVE

LONGSUFFERING

TOUT BAGAI FINIS

ELVINGTON I

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL

GREEK TRAGEDY

THE HERO

THE MERCHANT

EL SHADDAI

THE DENOUEMENT

THE TECHNICIAN

THE FISHERMAN

TOUT BAGAI FINIS

ANA I

THE NEW BABY

BEAUTY

JEHOVAH TSEDKENU

SCHOOL DAYS ARE HAPPY DAYS

JEHOVAH JIREH

YOUR REWARD IS IN HEAVEN

BROWN SKIN GIRL

ARE YOU SAVED?

TOUT BAGAI FINIS

JASCMIN I

DOH SI DOH, A BIG, BIG, SCHMO

JEHOVAH RAPHA

SANTA CLAUS

ROSES FOR GRANDMA

HYMN 349 . . . 349 HYMN

IN THE ROLE OF ANDREW

MADAME LAGNIAPPE

YOUR CHEATING HEART

TOUT BAGAI FINIS

JEWEL I

FRY BAKE AND COCOA

BLACK AND BEAUTIFUL

SO MANY VOICES

THE COMPROMISE

THE SONG

TOUT BAGAI FINIS

ELLIOT I

BOYS ARE DIFFERENT

ANGELS

THE BIBLE SAYS DON’T KILL

TOOTSIE BOOTSIE

THE NEW DRIVER

NARROW ESCAPE

GOD’S CALL

TOUT BAGAI FINIS

PATIENCE AND ROWENA 1

THE WEDDING

THE BIRTH

BATONNIER (STICK-FIGHTER)

HA’ SLIP AND BACK AUSIDE

THE BIRTHDAY PARTY

THE PIANO

TOUT BAGAI FINIS

VANYA I

IVANOVITCH

THE WITNESS

THE COMFORTER

CRAPEAUD SMOKE YUH PIPE

CARNIVAL

TOUT BAGAI FINIS

THELMA I

TANTIE

FATTY BUBALOUPS

THE BATTLE

THE AGRICULTURALIST-CUM-BUILDER

A WILD, RED HORSE

TOUT BAGAI FINIS

MALA AND TONI

BARGAINING

INK PINK PEPPER STINK

JORDAN

SOUCOUYANT

THIRD STANDARD X

TOUT BAGAI FINIS

GINA I

BAM BYE . . . . YOU GO KNOW!

MISS ALMOND EYES

TOUT BAGAI FINIS

LOUISA V

TOUT BAGAI FINIS

Dedication

This novel is dedicated to all women (and particularly black women) who have experienced the struggle of raising children against overwhelming odds. This novel is also dedicated to the three women in my life who are prototypes of the same:

Pearl, Lynette and Roanne

FOREWORD

As a Tale That Is Told

As a Tale That Is Told by Annette Osborne portrays the memorable life journey of a mother of thirteen children, whose primary focus is to bring up her children to fear God and to enter gainful professions, which match their individual talents and propensities. This narrative joins the scores other female-authored tributes to the larger-than-life mothering women of the Caribbean, who are propelled by extravagant love to triumph against poverty and arduous circumstances to make viable futures for their children. As a Tale That Is Told is a gripping family saga that is unique in its rich and sustained evocation of the outworking of a simple practical-lived Christian faith and worldview, within a complex, multireligious, multicultural Trinidadian environment.

The structure of the narrative is tight and effective. The tale is framed by the mother Louisa’s death, which gives opportunity for the third person omniscient narrator to rehearse the lives of her thirteen children as they have been formed by her creative mothering. At the beginning of the narrative, Louisa is travelling, that is meandering, the transitional space between life and death. The body of the novel is constructed of a series of vignettes, some as short as two pages, which focus on key incidents in the lives of each of the thirteen children. These pivotal anecdotes of formative life moments together create an unforgettable portrait of a slice of Trinidadian life, which is swiftly evaporating—the work, diligence, discipline, values of the working class Afro-Trinidadians who are sustained by stringent Christian values, indomitable self-worth, boldness, and fierce ambition for upward mobility, hard work, respect for elders, and love for family and community.

Each segment of the narrative is named after a child and ends with a vignette entitled Tout Bagai Finis in which the child turned adult is standing over the mother’s body, grieving her loss and rehearsing what his or her life has evolved into in relation to the maternal upbringing and core values. This makes for a cohesive structure which is effective in terms of both reading and writing strategies adopted by authors and by readers who are themselves mothers and full-time career women. In every case, the mother looms large while the father takes up a shadowy place in the background armed with his Bible and his preaching both in church and at home.

The tale told from the third person narrative perspective is clearly written for an extraregional audience as evidenced by the painstaking detail in which Osborne explains common Trinidadian words, rituals, and customs. This serves both to make the fascinating microreality accessible to an external audience and also to painstakingly record a lifestyle and worldview, which are swiftly losing ground in a contemporary fast-paced world in which no nook or cranny is locked away from the ubiquitous mass media that off-loads globalized values and ontologies that infiltrate culturally specific modes of thinking and being. These forces serve to undermine the centrality of faith, family, and community as determining socializing forces. This is arguably the unnamed fear, which emerges at the end of the novel. Louisa migrated to the United States in response to a recurrent dream/vision in which she sees each child in professional garb against the New York skyline. At the close of the narrative, as Louisa negotiates her own Tout Bagai Finis transition from earth to heaven, confident that her children have fulfilled their envisioned potential, she catches a glimpse of the peril of the pursuit. In her parting vision, the New York seen is looming dark and threatening; and her children, all dressed according to their respective professions are gray, stooped, and in pain. The risk is that the cares of life and the deceitfulness of riches could destroy all that she had taught them about God (230). And it is to ward off such a possibility that she telegraphs a desperate final earthly cry: Bless thou my children when I am no more.

So what then is the nature of world, which is valorized though not romanticized in the narrative? This is the world bounded by Bible-based Christian values as practiced by small Caribbean communities as they interface with ancestral African and Indian ontologies and the challenges of building new-world nations out of the shambles of colonialism. It is the world of the proverbial small church in which every person is entitled and empowered to minister—even young children conduct neighborhood Bible studies, win converts, and carry their Bibles to school to share the gospel and resolve moral issues of their peers. It is the world in which children are expected to dress modestly, obey their parents, work hard, produce and sacrifice on behalf of their families. It is world at war with the social class prescriptions, which would function to exclude the financially impoverished from access to avenues of upward mobility; it is a small tight-knit world in which although petty squabbles surface, all are persuaded that it takes a community to bring up a child and all are licensed to deliver unsolicited advice and judgment.

Osborne’s characters, though sketched in outline with economical brush strokes, are not flat. They live and they change. From Nancy, the surrogate mother and disciplinarian; Ana, the indomitable, methodical teacher; Patience, the mini bride decked off the white jooker dress; to Thelma, the tiny fighter and biter of the ears of her husky childhood opponents who eventually learns her mother’s way of winning some battles with love—the characters come alive on the page. The novel, though for the most part light and humorous, subtly traces the differential impact of the traumatic Caribbean histories on gendered subject construction. Invariably, the girls surface positively. Invariably, the boys struggle to find their way.

Vin, the rebel, is weak, angry, and prone to run away. Ivanovitch—Vanya—is named after a young Russian martyr. His yearning for prayer and ministry is compromised by lifelong struggles with addiction, which emerges during his attempt to rescue his ganja-smoking friends from their destructive lifestyle. In this vignette, Osborne hints at the darker side of family life—the inability of Caribbean fathers to overtly offer love and support to their sons in crisis. When the son haltingly reveals his practice, the father responds swiftly and violently by choking and beating instead of listening, comforting, and seeking help. This, the mother explains, is as a result of abuses Eggie suffers at the hands of the colonial system, which brutalized and emasculated men, stripping them of a capacity to empathize and leaving instead resident anger and rage, which stand to be activated by minute triggers. This is the same Eggie who leaves Louisa and their thirteen children to face the ordeal of the American Embassy alone as she seeks to embrace the age-old coping strategy of leaving the island in all of its brilliant beauty and its grinding poverty in the quest for professional advancement for her brood.

The men struggle to find their way. The women, and particularly their mother and role model, succeed gloriously. Osborne’s portrayal of Louisa, which is a fictionalized evocation of her mother’s life story, ranks high among the quintessential mother characters of the Caribbean. Louisa, large in personality, aspiration, faith, and authority, rules over her baker’s dozen with vision and passion. Her sacrifice and creativity are manifested in producing vegetables to feed the family, churning out dresses to rival the store-bought versions on which they are modeled. Paradoxically, although she is not a single mother, this dutiful and loving wife and mother remains the director of the family, the visionary and the rudder for all of her children, and their rescuer and safe harbor in times of tumult.

As a Tale That Is Told is in the final analysis a major accomplishment. It clearly valorizes evangelical Christianity but rises above its potential for narrowness and parochialism. It touches on all aspects of Trinidadian life, its major cultural groups, its carnival festivities, its elaborate Hindu rites of passage, which Christian converts have to negotiate with respect. The text documents the workings of evangelical Christianity in effective negotiation within the cultural complexities of the multiethnic, multireligious society. Respect for the whole of this inheritance is reflected in interweaving of ancestral language and other cultural traditions from Africa and India. The text deals with the perils and potentialities of migration from these islands. It documents a way of life focused on centrality of faith, home, and community, which is swiftly fading. Most of all, it sketches the fullest portrayal to date of the outworking of matrifocality hitherto associated with single mothering as it interfaces within the patriarchal strictures of a home environment, which is governed by a dedicated though emotionally detached father and provider. Commendation is in order for Annette Osborne who does all this and does it well in an eminently readable and humorous tale that is told.

Paula Morgan (PhD)

Senior Lecturer and Head, Department of Liberal Arts

The University of the West Indies

St Augustine. Trinidad

December 22, 2009

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, my thanks go to God my Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, who gave me the story line and structure for this novel. I also wish to thank my family for the support, especially my husband Robin, who did critical review throughout all the stages of my writing, and my daughter Roanne, who made many valuable contributions to the story. To Lynette, my sister, who unknowingly gave me the title of this novel, I express my gratitude.

To Gordon, who prayed me through my writing, and Ian, who patiently designed the book cover, I wish to express my profound gratitude. To Paula, who wrote the foreword to the novel, and also to Michael, her husband, who gave me valuable advice regarding its launching, many, many thanks. To Marcia, for her encouragement in the early stages of writing, thanks to a dear friend. To the copyright lawyer (I do not remember her name) whom I met on a flight to Jamaica and who gave me some important advice, please accept my thanks.

To the staff of Xlibris, who patiently answered all my questions and helped me to navigate the minefield called publishing, I also express my sincere gratitude.

Annette Osborne

LOUISA

LOUISA I

ALL OF MY CHILDREN

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear?

Psalm 27:1

Louisa heard the loud thumping of her heart as the white reversing lights on his car lit up the surrounding darkness. Maybe . . . just maybe he had changed his mind and was coming back to stay with her and the children through this harrowing experience. But as quickly as the reversing lights came on, they went off again. Her heart sank, and she knew that it was no use hoping. She was on her own. It had been so all through her life . . . in every major crisis she had been alone. There was no one to confide in and no one to get advice from and she dared not lend voice to her hopes and fears. There was no book written that clearly explained to a woman with so many children and so little education what to do when she carried the world on her shoulders.

So she did then as she always did. She turned inward. She was possessed of a confidence that God would always work it out. But at this particular time, she was not so sure. Nagging doubts and fears were trying to dominate and she had to set them aside so that she could carry on. She was making a decision that could affect thirteen young lives and her marriage. She had taken all she had and placed it on one toss and she could not afford to lose. She could not display fear to the thirteen pairs of eyes that were now riveted on her. She began her inward strengthening . . . .

God said, "I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee . . . be strong and of a good courage . . . only be thou strong and very courageous . . . have I not commanded thee? Be strong and of good courage . . ."

"The Lord is my light and my salvation . . . whom shall I fear . . . the Lord is the strength of my life . . . of whom shall I be afraid?"

Somehow she heard the words and her heart believed them but her head was beginning to fill up with panic and fear. God, help me! Louisa muttered.

Nancy was already at her side taking Gina from her arms and trying to shepherd all the children onto the narrow sidewalk. No words were exchanged between Nancy and Louisa. In fact words were seldom exchanged between them at painful moments. Nancy was her daughter and her soul mate. She was like a child of sorrow and acquainted with grief. She understood everything and seemed to absorb all of Louisa’s pain. Their eyes met and Louisa saw her own sorrow reflected in Nancy’s eyes. Was this seeming reflection of sorrow surreal, or was it just the slight downward slope of Nancy’s eyes that made her seem so sorrowful? Whatever it was, Nancy seemed to be able to read the deep parts of Louisa’s soul and it was pointless trying to hide anything from her.

It occurred to Louisa that she should check her documents and be sure she had everything. She reached into the document bag she was carrying. But in the despairing darkness of the morning, focusing and checking her documents was an impossible task. Besides that, she ran the risk of misplacing or losing something. She looked at the car again. The brake lights were on glowering and red against the darkness. Her heart almost stopped. Perhaps . . . maybe . . . he paused to think . . . to reason that he should be at her side. Then the brake lights went off and the left indicator light went on as the car slowly turned left and disappeared as it merged into the traffic going around the savannah. He was gone and with him a great part of her confidence and hope.

Louisa looked at the tall spire of the cathedral across the street and in the half-light, it looked like the torso of a black woman with arms together and extended up clutching a cross in urgent and unspoken supplication to God. As she identified with the spire and extended her spiritual arms upward, Louisa felt a sudden peace surge over her. Somewhere behind that dark sky, God was there and He had heard her prayer. She was no longer alone.

On the sidewalk outside the cathedral, the vendors setting up their stalls by the light of their flambeaux threw ghoulish shadows on to the street. Soon they would have their sweetmeats for sale. The ghostly shadows moving silently around, the gloomy silhouette of the cathedral against the lightening sky, and the tall dark hedge closely surrounding the cathedral made the scene seem as though it was taken out of some Transylvanian movie. Only the bats and Count Dracula were missing. Louisa looked at the vendors and tried to guess what they were doing. She felt for her purse, because after this ordeal was over she would buy each child a favorite snack. She knew what each child liked. And this would be her way of rewarding them for their good behavior.

Nancy was talking to the children and trying to make them settle down. She was the eldest and like a second mother to the children. They all listened to her and did exactly as she asked. Louisa knew that Nancy was trying to keep the children from worrying her. At four in the morning they were fifth in line and there was little that could be done to amuse thirteen children torn from their beds at one o’clock, dressed, fed and herded into a car. They had all slept for much of the journey into Port of Spain and were not happy to leave the warmth of the car to stand on the cold sidewalk. Hemmed in between the concrete wall whose razor-wired top reached far into the sky, and the street, they all crowded onto the narrow sidewalk. The sidewalk was about four feet wide, so they could not all stand in one group.

The uniformed guard standing in the street ensured that no one stood in the street. He was a mean-looking guy with sneer lines deeply etched between his nose and mouth from continually scowling. But Jazz had already caught his eye. She was tall and stately with fresh-complexioned face complemented by her thick jet-black hair. Louisa had allowed her to press her hair for the first time and she had set it in a page. Not a strand of hair was out of order. Her honey gold flawless complexion glowed in the little available light and subtle makeup produced an innocence that exuded from every pore. She had done a complete number on the guard. He was taken in before she said a word to him. Louisa looked closely at Jazz. She was convinced that Jazz was using makeup. The sparkle in her eyes, the color on her high cheekbones, and the outline of her lips could only be the results of the subtle use of makeup. Small boned with tiny waist, Jazz was a source of constant irritation to Eggie.

Eggie quietly boiled with rage when he saw her walking to the shop. He exploded with anger when he saw every male eye look questioningly at her. He did not know who to be angry with: Jazz or the wandering male eye that suddenly became focused when Jazz appeared. Even in church, he did not have any respite as some of the older men addressed her as my fair lady. What irritated him most was the fact that Jazz was always smiling and nobody knew why. It was a very feminine smile that was innocent yet warm and inviting. She smiled even when she prayed, as though she and God shared some secret that no one knew about. Time and time again Louisa had to defend her. In placating and conciliatory tone she would say to Eggie "That’s how she is. Some people are like that. They smile all the time, but they mean no harm.

Eggie, she is not pulling in her belt and jocking her waist. It’s just that her waist is very small. If the belt is not tight, then her skirt would fall off!!

Although she spoke with great confidence to Eggie, Louisa was not so certain about Jazz. She felt that Jazz was an accident waiting to happen.

Against the rules, the guard was allowing the smaller children to sit on the edge of the sidewalk. He was even using his newspapers to make little cushions for them against the cold sidewalk. Jazz was chatting comfortably with the guard and it occurred to Louisa that she should at least try to listen in or show in some way that she was responsible for Jazz. But a sense of overwhelm engulfed her. She stood there powerless, like someone observing a play. More trouble followed. Joining the conversation was Jewel, committed follower of Jazz. Jewel was the opposite of Jazz. Dark complexioned, tall and statuesque, her Nubian form seemed to hold great and undiscovered secrets. Jewel did not smile much but her serious face seemed to bring out her great beauty. When she was born her beauty was what struck Louisa. From that day on Louisa would playfully refer to her as pretty baby. Jewel was royalty, and she and everyone else knew it. Louisa began to move in their direction. But Nancy had beaten her to it. With Gina in her arms, Nancy had moved to the center of the conversation, dispelling any hope the guard might have had. The brief romance was over and the little ones were comfortably seated.

Louisa began a head count. She wanted to locate every one. Nancy was holding Gina the youngest and talking to Elvington (Vin). He was the second child and the first boy. He was the only one who talked back to Nancy. Louisa wondered what she was telling him. Maybe she was trying to get him to stop leaning on the wall. A potential quarrel, thought Louisa. But she was happy to see a smile on Vin’s face as Nancy moved on. The smile only lasted a brief second and the scowl returned as Vin, dark and glowering, remained leaning against the wall. Not even the well-made suit, his handsome face and neat haircut could disguise the rage and anger that possessed his soul.

Why is he always angry? wondered Louisa aloud.

She had tried to talk with him and win his friendship; she had tried to reason with him; discipline him, but to no avail. When her aunt, Tantie, was alive, she would take him to the country for long periods. There Tantie would allow him to do all the things that were anathema at home. She allowed him to go to the movies and dances, spend long hours playing with his friends and miss church if he wanted to. Tantie had encouraged him to join the Scouts, hoping that this would give him some direction for his life. She had even started sending him to a typing school, because she felt that he would not do well at high school and that some practical area was the better choice. But he would still run away. From Tantie to home then back to Tantie again, and so it continued, ad infinitum.

Elliot (Elly) the sixth child, buzzed around Vin, asking him questions only to be answered by a low growl. Elly was charming and worked hard at winning other people’s confidence. He always had a story. He enjoyed making people happy. He was so persuasive that he could sell sugar to a sugarcane factory. Louisa looked at him. Elly was so much like his father. Ingenuous and disarming, Elly made you feel as though you were the only person in the world. But his charm did not work on Vin. What was Elly telling Vin? Louisa wondered. She saw the occasional smile flash across Vin’s face like a moment of sunshine on a rainy day, dissipating almost as soon as it appeared.

Please God, don’t let them start a quarrel, Louisa prayed.

Mala and Toni were just like twins. They were one year apart. Their little world consisted of them both and a game of jacks. They walked with this game wherever they went. They sat at the edge of the sidewalk, playing jacks. Invariably, the game would end in a quarrel. Toni, quiet but strong would hold her opinion and not give in. Mala loud and emotional would begin a series of appeals to her other siblings. The game took its predictable path when Toni appealed to Thelma (Telly). Telly’s belligerence was greatly respected among her siblings. The power of her quick judgment on matters was only superseded by its vicious and forcible execution, for in every case she was judge, jury and executor (or is it executioner? Whatever!) rolled into one. Not one of her younger siblings dared to question her judgment. From Mala’s angry outburst, everyone surmised that judgment had gone to Toni. Telly was now moving in for the settlement (or shall we say . . . the kill?) However, before she could carry out the execution, Nancy had moved to the trouble spot. Whatever she said had brought the quarrel to an end and Mala and Toni settled down to another game.

Patience, the oldest of the four younger girls but very timid, was following the game from a safe distance. Not old enough to be included among the older girls and partly afraid of the conflict that always seemed to envelop the younger ones, Patience seemed like a lost soul. Patience divided up her time between helping the older girls and taking care of the second to last child Rowena. Similarly shy and quiet, both girls seemed to bond in spite of their age difference. Patience was holding Rowena’s hand, partly to keep her out of the game that might lead to a show of force by the combatants. Louisa looked at Patience and Rowena. They were her two angels.

Oblivious of all that was taking place, Ana stood under a street lamp reading a book. Ana, the third child, was teacher to all her siblings. She had already graduated from high school and was now in sixth form. Sixth form was regarded as a university prep class. Of course, there would be no money to send her to university in Trinidad. Louisa looked on her with pride. She was bright and would do well in the USA. Ana’s great desire was to serve God and she made good her desire by teaching in Sunday school and in the Bible class at home. In fact the Bible class was her vision for the neighborhood. Close to Ana stood Vanya. Named after a young Russian boy who had suffered death rather than deny Christ, Vanya had lived up to his name. Louisa had to admit, in spite of his many weaknesses, her admiration of his unquestioning faith in God. He spent much of his time in prayer. Louisa looked at him, head downcast, and she was sure that he was praying. Vanya was Ana’s right-hand man. With his strong, musical voice, Vanya led the song service to start the Bible class. Then at the end he gave out the snacks that he had helped to prepare. The students who came to the Bible class loved him. Vanya was also making quite a name for himself in the kitchen at home. At home, he would help Louisa prepare the meals, and then he would help to serve them. Lining up the fifteen plates and cups, he carefully doled out the food. It was the accepted thing that he would sometimes take a little more food than he gave his older siblings, but who cared as he did the dishes and tidied the kitchen after.

The line moved a little as the first family went inside the US Embassy. It was now light and Louisa looked at the line snaking down Marli Street. It was a good thing they had left home early. They were fifth in line and Louisa began to gather her thoughts.

LOUISA II

THE VISION

And, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him . . .

Genesis 15:12

It all began when Louisa started having a dream . . . no . . . it was not a dream . . . it was so life-like that it had to be a vision. She started having this vision two years or so before and it had repeated itself at least once per week. She did not know whom to tell. Good conservative Christians did not believe in visions so there was no one she could trust. In the vision she saw all of her children. She did not know where they were at first because in the background there were large unrecognizable buildings, several stories high. It was only when she saw the New York skyline on a postcard that she recognized that the place she saw was New York. The children were all adults and were dressed by profession. Nancy was in a nurse’s uniform and seemed to be lecturing younger nurses. Vin was dressed in overalls and he was standing near a truck that had his name painted on it. Ana and Toni were in classrooms. Sometimes the students would be children and at other times they would be adults. Jazz was neatly and elegantly dressed. She seemed to be a newspaper reporter or a radio broadcaster. Jewel was also elegantly dressed, but in black and white as though she was part of some esteemed profession. Elly and Vanya wore collars. They looked like clergymen. Patience and Mala wore black robes. They seemed to be lawyers or magistrates. Thelma, in boots and hardhat seemed to be on a jobsite, but she was giving the orders. Rowena was in a white coat with a stethoscope around her neck and she seemed to be a doctor. Gina was dressed in a business suit, but Louisa could not tell what type of business she was involved in.

At first Louisa tried to ignore the vision, but it haunted her night and day. She wondered if this was a vision from God and if it was, what was she to do about it? The vision replayed itself, sometimes in part and sometimes as a whole. She asked God to take it away, just in case Satan was trying a trick on her. But the vision never left. Instead a combination of strange occurrences led her to believe that this was no trick of the devil, but that God was speaking to her.

Her uncle Lieutenant Colonel Simon Grant, who had lived in the USA for many years began to correspond with her. His main message was how was she going to educate those thirteen children. Tantie, her aunt, had left money to pay for Nancy to attend St. Helena’s, one of the most exclusive schools in the island. Tantie had also left money for Vin to go to the technical school to learn a trade. Ana had won a scholarship to St. Helena’s and through the scholarship, many of her siblings were getting a continuous supply of disposables such as copy books, pens and pencils. Louisa was not sure what would happen to the others if they