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Montego Baby

Written by Tami Gordon | Edited by Kiara Bennett | Designed by Felix Huang

From the perspective of Tami’s mother, “Montego Baby’’ is a monologue pondering the idea of love while reflecting on her rough upbringing in the countryside of Jamaica. For Tami, this piece is a documentation of her own inner child work, her relationship with her mother, and a call to action about generational trauma within the Afro-Caribbean community. This piece beckons us to treat others and ourselves with agape love and to look at our parents not just as parents but as dynamic, imperfect human beings.

The sky is bruised purple and blue today. The Sun sagged below the horizon line. For miles, the tires chewed up loose sticks and cobblestones that littered the road, breaking them apart and spitting them out. If I closed my eyes, I could hear my sisters’ barrettes, jumping as I did. We popped up while our hair click, click, clacked like teeth breaking through the shell of a sunflower seed. When the Sun began to retire, I would usher six brown bodies through our front door. A couple of Bents, a few Kings, but Riley was an unrepeated mistake–a plate of breakfast, grits intentionally left missing. I used two hands to stir the pots. Ninety-nine cent canned mackerel. Parboiled rice. Babies with pigeon pea eyes.

The pain was a given, a necessary sacrifice. To survive, I spent my youth bleeding, gratefully, for them. I spent my years as a teacher, a doctor, a cook, a maid, a mother; rarely a friend, a sibling, a child. I felt my pulse thumping harder behind my ears. The bruising of the sky began to take on a deep black with the intensifying rain.

My grandma would always say, “Don’t let the Devil steal your joy,” but how could you avoid such a thing if you shared the same four walls? If his gaze molested you every morning, glowering at the reflection in your eyes? If his hands taught you touch was a vice, and love was a full-blown addiction, only to be soothed by sipping on a man like a cup of Earl Grey named Bent, King, or Riley? (A father, yes, but never yours.) And even after you managed to leave, you could still feel the tangible unrest festering in the bottom of your stomach.

A deep contraction bellowed through my body. My core began to swell, pulsing underneath the tension of skin. My jaw unhinged and I began to wail. Maybe a mile or two had passed before my heart became aroused, deluding my mind, and my eyes seemed to deceive me. I pulled over. We exchanged shallow breaths, figuring each other out through the black holes of our eyes in a way that felt unpleasantly familiar. Someone’s rounded, flattened nose and wirey coils of black hair. Someone’s baby girl with curried skin. Someone’s baby. Do you remember me this way, Mama? Do you remember me as your baby?

Somewhere, in my throat, I began to feel trapped. Instinctively, I reached to hold her. To, finally, be eye-to-eye with what I was, what I did not have, what I had to fight for. Then, to feel her heart rapping against mine like a soft dedication to living, a query on how to love and be loved again.

When I look into her eyes now, I find my stillness. Someone’s baby. No longer me, but mine. I wanted to be like her forever. She was everything in me, and yet, amorphous- yet to be defined. Her eyes were a mirror: pure and honest. Not yet tainted by suffering or grief. Her arms reached towards me, trusting me to give her what she needed–what we both needed. Her familiar face was like an old friend, while still holding the novelty of meeting the most beautiful stranger, washed clean with a love like ivory soap.