Authors: Annie John
We passed the office of the doctor who told my mother three times that I did not need glasses, that if my eyes were feeling weak a glass of carrot juice a day would make them strong again. This happened when I was eight. And so every day at recess I would run to my school gate and meet my mother, who was waiting for me with a glass of juice from carrots she had just grated and then squeezed, and I would drink it and then run back to meet my chums. I knew there was nothing at all wrong with my eyes, but I had recently read a story in
The Schoolgirl’s Own Annual
in which the heroine, a girl a few years older than I was then, cut such a figure to my mind with the way she was always adjusting her small, round, horn-rimmed glasses that I felt I must have a pair exactly like them. When it became clear that I didn’t need glasses, I began to complain about the glare of the sun being too much for my eyes, and I walked around with my hands shielding them—especially in my mother’s presence. My mother then bought for me a pair of sunglasses with the exact horn-rimmed frames I wanted, and how I enjoyed the gestures of blowing on the lenses, wiping them with the hem of my uniform, adjusting the glasses when they slipped down my nose, and just removing them from their case and putting them on. In three weeks, I grew tired of them and they found a nice resting place in a drawer, along with some other things that at one time or another I couldn’t live without.
We passed the store that sold only grooming aids, all imported from England. This store had in it a large porcelain dog—white, with black spots all over and a red ribbon of satin tied around its neck. The dog sat in front of a white porcelain bowl that was always filled with fresh water, and it sat in such a way that it looked as if it had just taken a long drink. When I was a small child, I would ask my mother, if ever we were near this store, to please take me to see the dog, and I would stand in front of it, bent over slightly, my hands resting on my knees, and stare at it and stare at it. I thought this dog more beautiful and more real than any actual dog I had ever seen or any actual dog I would ever see. I must have outgrown my interest in the dog, for when it disappeared I never asked what became of it. We passed the library, and if there was anything on this walk that I might have wept over leaving, this most surely would have been the thing. My mother had been a member of the library long before I was born. And since she took me everywhere with her when I was quite little, when she went to the library she took me along there, too. I would sit in her lap very quietly as she read books that she did not want to take home with her. I could not read the words yet, but just the way they looked on the page was interesting to me. Once, a book she was reading had a large picture of a man in it, and when I asked her who he was she told me that he was Louis Pasteur and that the book was about his life. It stuck in my mind, because she said it was because of him that she boiled my milk to purify it before I was allowed to drink it, that it was his idea, and that that was why the process was called pasteurization. One of the things I had put away in my mother’s old trunk in which she kept all my childhood things was my library card. At that moment, I owed sevenpence in overdue fees.
As I passed by all these places, it was as if I were in a dream, for I didn’t notice the people coming and going in and out of them, I didn’t feel my feet touch ground, I didn’t even feel my own body—I just saw these places as if they were hanging in the air, not having top or bottom, and as if I had gone in and out of them all in the same moment. The sun was bright; the sky was blue and just above my head. We then arrived at the jetty.
* * *
My heart now beat fast, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep my mouth from falling open and my nostrils from spreading to the ends of my face. My old fear of slipping between the boards of the jetty and falling into the dark-green water where the dark-green eels lived came over me. When my father’s stomach started to go bad, the doctor had recommended a walk every evening right after he ate his dinner. Sometimes he would take me with him. When he took me with him, we usually went to the jetty, and there he would sit and talk to the night watchman about cricket or some other thing that didn’t interest me, because it was not personal; they didn’t talk about their wives, or their children, or their parents, or about any of their likes and dislikes. They talked about things in such a strange way, and I didn’t see what they found funny, but sometimes they made each other laugh so much that their guffaws would bound out to sea and send back an echo. I was always sorry when we got to the jetty and saw that the night watchman on duty was the one he enjoyed speaking to; it was like being locked up in a book filled with numbers and diagrams and what-ifs. For the thing about not being able to understand and enjoy what they were saying was I had nothing to take my mind off my fear of slipping in between the boards of the jetty.
Now, too, I had nothing to take my mind off what was happening to me. My mother and my father—I was leaving them forever. My home on an island—I was leaving it forever. What to make of everything? I felt a familiar hollow space inside. I felt I was being held down against my will. I felt I was burning up from head to toe. I felt that someone was tearing me up into little pieces and soon I would be able to see all the little pieces as they floated out into nothing in the deep blue sea. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I could see that it would be better not to think too clearly about any one thing. The launch was being made ready to take me, along with some other passengers, out to the ship that was anchored in the sea. My father paid our fares, and we joined a line of people waiting to board. My mother checked my bag to make sure that I had my passport, the money she had given me, and a sheet of paper placed between some pages in my Bible on which were written the names of the relatives—people I had not known existed—with whom I would live in England. Across from the jetty was a wharf, and some stevedores were loading and unloading barges. I don’t know why seeing that struck me so, but suddenly a wave of strong feeling came over me, and my heart swelled with a great gladness as the words “I shall never see this again” spilled out inside me. But then, just as quickly, my heart shriveled up and the words “I shall never see this again” stabbed at me. I don’t know what stopped me from falling in a heap at my parents’ feet.
When we were all on board, the launch headed out to sea. Away from the jetty, the water became the customary blue, and the launch left a wide path in it that looked like a road. I passed by sounds and smells that were so familiar that I had long ago stopped paying any attention to them. But now here they were, and the ever-present “I shall never see this again” bobbed up and down inside me. There was the sound of the seagull diving down into the water and coming up with something silverish in its mouth. There was the smell of the sea and the sight of small pieces of rubbish floating around in it. There were boats filled with fishermen coming in early. There was the sound of their voices as they shouted greetings to each other. There was the hot sun, there was the blue sea, there was the blue sky. Not very far away, there was the white sand of the shore, with the run-down houses all crowded in next to each other, for in some places only poor people lived near the shore. I was seated in the launch between my parents, and when I realized that I was gripping their hands tightly I glanced quickly to see if they were looking at me with scorn, for I felt sure that they must have known of my never-see-this-again feelings. But instead my father kissed me on the forehead and my mother kissed me on the mouth, and they both gave over their hands to me, so that I could grip them as much as I wanted. I was on the verge of feeling that it had all been a mistake, but I remembered that I wasn’t a child anymore, and that now when I made up my mind about something I had to see it through. At that moment, we came to the ship, and that was that.
* * *
The goodbyes had to be quick, the captain said. My mother introduced herself to him and then introduced me. She told him to keep an eye on me, for I had never gone this far away from home on my own. She gave him a letter to pass on to the captain of the next ship that I would board in Barbados. They walked me to my cabin, a small space that I would share with someone else—a woman I did not know. I had never before slept in a room with someone I did not know. My father kissed me goodbye and told me to be good and to write home often. After he said this, he looked at me, then looked at the floor and swung his left foot, then looked at me again. I could see that he wanted to say something else, something that he had never said to me before, but then he just turned and walked away. My mother said, “Well,” and then she threw her arms around me. Big tears streamed down her face, and it must have been that—for I could not bear to see my mother cry—which started me crying, too. She then tightened her arms around me and held me to her close, so that I felt that I couldn’t breathe. With that, my tears dried up and I was suddenly on my guard. “What does she want now?” I said to myself. Still holding me close to her, she said, in a voice that raked across my skin, “It doesn’t matter what you do or where you go, I’ll always be your mother and this will always be your home.”
I dragged myself away from her and backed off a little, and then I shook myself, as if to wake myself out of a stupor. We looked at each other for a long time with smiles on our faces, but I know the opposite of that was in my heart. As if responding to some invisible cue, we both said, at the very same moment, “Well.” Then my mother turned around and walked out the cabin door. I stood there for I don’t know how long, and then I remembered that it was customary to stand on deck and wave to your relatives who were returning to shore. From the deck, I could not see my father, but I could see my mother facing the ship, her eyes searching to pick me out. I removed from my bag a red cotton handkerchief that she had earlier given me for this purpose, and I waved it wildly in the air. Recognizing me immediately, she waved back just as wildly, and we continued to do this until she became just a dot in the matchbox-size launch swallowed up in the big blue sea.
I went back to my cabin and lay down on my berth. Everything trembled as if it had a spring at its very center. I could hear the small waves lap-lapping around the ship. They made an unexpected sound, as if a vessel filled with liquid had been placed on its side and now was slowly emptying out.
By Jamaica Kincaid
At the Bottom of the River
Annie John
A Small Place
Lucy
The Autobiography of My Mother
PRAISE FOR
Annie John
To take up this elegant little volume is to prepare yourself for a treat … Let the author of these beautiful sketches take you by the hand and lead you while she meditates about growing up on her Caribbean island.
—Letitia Grierson,
The Wall Street Journal
There is a calypso lilt to [Kincaid’s style], but also a quality of gentler courtesy, a reluctance to shorten words or cut corners; the result is a naturally elegant rhythm … Adolescence is not a new theme, but Kincaid treats it with such loving precision and uses such a brilliant mix of emotions and sensations to describe it, placing it all in such a strange, vivid setting, and running through it a thread of familial love so strong, so steady and so colorful that we welcome this new version of it.
—Roxana Robinson,
Los Angeles Herald Examiner
Annie John herself is one of the most charming and willful characters in recent fiction … Kincaid is brilliant at capturing the spirit and dash that children bring to their mischief … It’s impossible not to fall in love with the richness of Kincaid’s prose, or with her extraordinary eye for detail.
—Betsy Amster,
The Plain Dealer
(Cleveland)
Jamaica Kincaid uses the English language as if she had just invented it. Everything she writes about her childhood in Antigua has a new-minted ring to it, and there’s not a dull line or dusty cliché in the whole book.
—Pamela Marsh,
The Christian Science Monitor
With sly humor and lilting prose, Jamaica Kincaid has woven a moving tapestry of childhood hurts and dreams.
—Diane Cole,
Ms.
magazine
I can’t remember reading a book that illustrates [the results of growing up] more poignantly than
Annie John …
[Annie John’s] story is so touching and familiar it could be happening in Anchorage, so inevitable it could be happening to any of us, anywhere, any time, any place. And that’s exactly the book’s strength, its wisdom, and its truth.
—Susan Kenney,
The New York Times Book Review
Kincaid’s imagery is so neon-bright that the traditional story of a young girl’s passage into adolescence takes on a shimmering strangeness, the familial outlines continually forming surprising patterns … Thousands of first novelists have described those same emotions, but reading
Annie John,
you can almost believe Kincaid invented ambivalence.
—Elaine Kendall,
Los Angeles Times Book Review
Seldom has the desperate, angry,
hurting
state of being a teenager been so well depicted, and Kincaid offers unique insights into other areas of human experience as well … Annie herself is a great character: passionate, sly, cruel, intelligent, dominating, fearful and confused, she leaps out of the pages of this slim volume with ferocious energy.
—Wendy Smith,
Newsday
A beautifully told story that cannot fail to touch any reader.
—Amy Stromberg,
The Washington Times Magazine
Writing with poetic economy, Jamaica Kincaid escorts the reader of her lyrical novel through the life of a girl reluctantly growing into a woman … While Annie’s is a small, uneventful life, as are those of most people, Kincaid’s artistry makes it a fascinating one.