Prose
A Welcoming Smile
WRITTEN BY MARIA CROOKS
She heard the car coming up the driveway, the headlights briefly illuminating the walls of the darkened bedroom in a wide arc as the driver made a U‑turn in the curved driveway and parked. He did this each time he visited so the car would be positioned for a quick unobtrusive departure at dawn.
She knew she should get up and greet him eagerly, to show how much she appreciated him, but she did not move. She heard the key in the lock, then soft rustling as he placed packages on the hallway table – he never came empty‑handed, new shoes, something pretty for her to wear, a time‑saving gadget for the kitchen. She only had to express an interest in something, and he would get it for her: the little table in the hallway, she had admired in a magazine and on his next visit, he had got it for her.
She scanned the room, she did not need to turn on the light to discern the many signs of his generosity, the top of her dresser for instance, was cluttered with jewelry that for the average Jamaican would have cost a fortune but for him were mere trifles. He gave her every material thing she ever wanted but could never buy for herself. When she met him, she had been a shop girl working in Mr. Heale's fabric store, a poky little shop frequented only by old ladies, as young women preferred to buy their clothes ready‑made in fashionable boutiques in New Kingston. She too would have liked to shop in those stores, but by the time she paid for the tiny room in the boarding house where she shared a bathroom, and kitchen with three other people, she barely had enough to pay for anything else.
As a young girl living in the country, she had come to the capital only once when her aunt was going away to foreign, and the family had gone to see her off. She had seen city girls, elegantly dressed who looked independent and self‑assured. The image had remained etched in her memory. How different their lives seemed from hers living as she did with her overbearing, ultra religious parents – church twice on Sundays, Bible study on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, visiting the sick on Saturday and back to church on Sunday morning to start the same tiresome, dull, boring, and dreary routine all over again. She was not allowed to wear shorts or pants, skirts had to be at least 3 inches below the knee, sleeves at least three‑quarter length and collars high. At school, girls laughed at what they derisively labelled her Christian Curls – her attempts to style her hair without straightening it, for straightening it would have been "an abomination unto the Lord" according to her mother. She most definitely could not have a boyfriend. Once she and a boy in school had begun seeing each other during breaktime and at lunch, her brother had told on her, and she had got a beating for the dual sins of disobedience and lustfulness.
How could anyone continue living in such severe, strict and unhappy circumstances? Many young people would have acted as she had: as soon as she turned 18, without announcing it to anyone she had walked out, had shaken the dust from her feet, to use one of her father's biblical references, and moved to the capital. However, a well‑paying job had been hard to come by, now her rebellion had culminated with her living in this house, surrounded by pricey stuff, waiting to entertain this man with his big belly, red‑face, foreign smell, and a wife and two children in the suburbs. She felt the gorge rise in her throat, swallowed it back down and got up to greet him with what she hoped looked like a welcoming smile.