Chapter 6 - The W oman Called My Mother

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=138 BGCOLOR="#006699" TEXT="#080000" background="0c3085a3.jpg"> <div> <B>Jamaica~Noamie's Negril.Com</B></div> <div> <B><IMG SRC="2fe58010.gif" border=0 width="600" height="1" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <div> <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#EEEEEE" FACE="Eurostile" ><B>                           Noamie's - Jamaican Tea Room...An Innovative Walk into Traveling & Reality </B></FONT><I><B>      </B></I><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#CCCCE4" FACE="Eurostile" ><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Jamaica Noamies Negril.Com "><U><B>Home </B></U></A></FONT><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#CCCCE4" FACE="Eurostile" ><B> </B></FONT><I><B>  </B></I></div> <div> <B>                                   West Cliffe   </B><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#CCFF00" FACE="Dauphin" ><B>Chapter Six </B></FONT></div> <div> </div> </td> </tr><tr> <td valign="top" width=210 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000" background="0c4d2e83.jpg"> <div> Memories</div> <div> <IMG SRC="36a65860.jpg" border=0 width="101" height="134" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> <A HREF="id57.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Memories"><U>Memories</U></A></div> <bR> <div> <A HREF="id29.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Negrils Chronicle"><U>Negril's Chronicle</U></A></div> <bR> <div> Who is <A HREF="id2.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Who is Noamie?"><U>Noamie?</U></A></div> <bR> <div> West Cliffe:</div> <div>  The Road That Got Us <A HREF="id20.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Chapter 2 1990: It Was April It Was East"><U>Here</U></A></div> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" height=342 BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <I>Chapter 6 - The W oman Called My Mother</I></div> <div> <B>West Cliffe</B></div> <div> <B>   The Woman Called My Mother : 44</B></div> <div> <B>                       </B></div> <div> <B>          </B></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>  Chapter Six  </B></div> <div> <B>       <IMG SRC="3c0c8850.jpg" border=0 width="200" height="133" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <div> <B>                                                     </B></div> <bR> <div> <B><U>The Woman Called  My Mother</U></B></div> <bR> <div> It was the year that Percy Sledge song, "When a man loves a Woman" will have new meaning to my ear. The very year I remembered Ken Boothe song " Tomorrow_Come Tomorrow. " </div> <bR> <div> <B>This year was 1969. </B>My father had returned to England. My father had gone (back) to England leaving his pretty, young looking wife, my mother. </div> <div> Young men came walking by, trying to court her. Telling her how pretty, how young-looking she was, was a normal day for her.</div> <bR> <div> Then a special young man came to be a regular at the house. Jamaicans are known to be friendly and handyman. Unbeknown to me (us) he became my mother's lover. Well, isn't that suppose to be my father's bed? And she the married woman!  I had only met my parent the year before, and this is what I am seeing of her?  Having given her the benefit of a doubt that she was just been flirtatious, was what I had summed things up in my young innocent mind.  It was only early one morning when, I was awake to see this man making his way from my mother's bedroom to the bathroom, in just his drawers. Well, again, I told myself that it must-couldn't be. </div> <bR> <div> Then later that morning about 5:00 AM, I watched him walked out again, and out the back door, from the long passage way, and stepping over the fence to reach the public roadway, that I was convinced that he was my mother's lover. </div> <bR> <div> From my own curiosity, I was bothered by the situation. Me, been 8 years old, went to my sister, Babbeth to tell her my troubles. I was hurt. However, my hurt turned into pain for me as the man, Sydney was coming around a corner of the house and overheard me. He told my mother. The Bitch beats me nearly half to death, and told me to shut my mouth. </div> <bR> <div> Was that the answer for a mother to give to a child, who saw a man leaving from her mother's bed, and knowing that her father was, away working. Little whore! </div> <div> Well, this was my first worst beating from her. The second was the one that rainy dark Easter night.<FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#6666CC" FACE="Arial" > </FONT>So my first lesson in life came from my mother: Never ever marry a man you don't love. Otherwise, you are likely to cheat on him, give him illegitimate , adulterous children and much more, to include sending the man to an early grave, one way or another.  </div> <bR> <div> I learn to hate when people tells me how much I look like my beautiful mother. If only they know, that their words sounds like 'curse words' to my ear. Because, I could see her from the inside, not the outside, and because I knew her ugliest, I came to see myself as ugly. </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> It wasn't until 1990 when the question was raised as to why Ricky would want to see "grass growing on my grave" before another man would be allowed to have me, that I question the intellectual ones. </div> <div> It was at the age of 29, that I would have been confronted with the reality of who I am and knowing and understanding that I was 'a good-looking woman'. Before that, whenever I see myself, I would see my mother's ugliness.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B><U>1990-1993:</U></B><FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#6666CC" FACE="Baskerville Old Face" ><B> </B></FONT></div> <div> Up until 1992, I wanted no children. Because, I didn't have the desire to want to have any, my body would not let me. Pain wouldn't allow me. Fate would comfort me, as it seeks to protect a part of me. I took no birth control, and yet pregnancy was not in my physical well-being, and so much so that upon my return to Jamaica with my beautiful son, the shocking remarks that some women made was enough to fill my ear. </div> <bR> <div> Some assumed that I had adopted one of my brother's offspring. I laughed at the idea. Jimmy angrily told me that 'he thought that I wanted no children.' I asked, " where in hell did he get that idea from?" </div> <bR> <div> It was my mother who had rumored that I wasn't able to bear children, as I had no womb. My mother who had slandered me in the worst way, that she was a living witness that in 1983, while in the US Army my womb was remove by orders of the military. The truth was, everyone believed her, for she was my mother and mothers knows. Only, it was one of the biggest lies ever told on me. Later, instead of becoming ashamed, I went about to published my diary, this writing, just to set the record straight. </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <div> <B><U>From the Outside Looking In</U></B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#6666CC" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <bR> <div> I was pregnant [again] at 33 and afraid. I knew why I was afraid. Now I must face that fear. I went to see a therapist. To tell others this, is for them to assume that I have to be off my rockers to want to do that. Furthermore, I have to be crazy to announce that I was going to see a psychiatrist and or to be wanting to see one. Yet, I have to do this for my coming child. I have to now go back to 1968-1969 and touch those feelings.<FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#6666CC" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> For all along, I still have not taken my mother from off the pedestal of which she was placed~ my mother!~ </div> <bR> <div> <B>West Cliffe</B></div> <div> <B>Chapter Six  </B></div> <div> <B> Re-Evaluation : ~46 </B></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B><U>Re-evaluation:</U></B> </div> <div> Now, for me to become the mother that I would be, and a good mother, I must now reexamine not only my deepest feelings about the status of motherhood, but also, who is 'the role model' of which our society had forced upon the fragile mind of human to take on as what we are destine to become? Me!<FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#6666CC" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> With my feeling's validated, I walked away as I should, feeling whole and with a vision of knowing that that was not my shame, but my mothers'.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B><U>Shame and Secrets</U></B><B>:</B> </div> <div> Somehow, and throughout growing up, and up to this present moments of my life, whenever I would attached myself to strangers and make friends outside of the circle of cousins and aunts, without a doubt, my sister Doreen would approached them and tell them to not believe anything that I have to say about my family. For so many years, I pondered the meaning of her, Doreen, my sister words. Until one day, someone approached me and say: "What is your family hiding"; for of a surety I was shock when my 'someone' told me that my sister had accused me of 'saying something's' about the family. Well, my hunch was the correct one. Secrets, secrets. That which destroys. </div> <bR> <div> To talk, to tell is to become the 'black sheep of the family.' To talk is to be told that 'she is crazy' do not believe anything she say. To talk about the things my mother did is to be told that 'I have become disgraceful to the family.' Yet who will validate my pain? <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#6666CC" FACE="Arial" > </FONT>Who will say to my mother, that what you did was wrong. That to flogged this child, this beautiful child, half to death because she saw a man leaving your bedroom in the early hours of the morning, knowing you are a married woman and to the same child's father is wrong, who has the common decency to do so? None!! </div> <div> Instead, the child is blame that her eyes should have been close, and her hearing should have been silence. </div> <div> Where is truth? <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#6666CC" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> Where is honesty? </div> <div> Where is dignity and respect?<FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#6666CC" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <bR> <div> I went searching for them; not to judge my mother on her morality, but to find answers to something that would heal my wounds, and would allow me to become whole.<FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#6666CC" FACE="Arial" > </FONT>Was it from my mother that I learn to say no to marriage? Was it from my mother that when someone without even knowing me would propose marriage,  that I would say no, and disappear into another country?<FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#6666CC" FACE="Arial" > </FONT>Was I running away from something, if not myself? </div> <bR> <div> Well, the truth is, that in order for peace to have reign in my family, I stayed silent. I stayed silent until I felt this past summer that I should claimed my inheritance, the work of my father's hand. What I myself had worked so hard for, me as a child carrying a torchlight with Honey through Nompriel Mountain in the wee-hours of the morning, leaving Retirement at 5:00AM in the morning to feed some hogs Mother Dearest had purchase, half way across, almost in the Sheffield area. Honey, himself having to carry the huge kerosene pan filled with hog feeding on top of his head.</div> <bR> <div> <B>West Cliffe</B></div> <div> <B>My Father Named Me Noamie   :~ 47 </B></div> <div> <B>  </B></div> <bR> <div> <B><U>My father Named Me Noamie:</U></B></div> <div> My father named me Noamie. My mother registered me Norma. She didn't like anything about me. My father wasn't aware that my mother had disobeyed his order and has given me the name Norma. I was fourteen years old when my father knew that my real name on my birth certificate wasn't Noamie. </div> <bR> <div> God had given me the name Noamie. An angel had appeared to my father and told him in a dream that my name will be Noamie, spelled with a silent 'a' and pronounce 'No-mie.' Later as the man in the black cloak appears under the cedar tree by the house where I was born in Retirement, my mother would have screamed out and have the whole neighbourhood to come out looking for the man. Only she didn't tell the people of Retirement the truth, in that she had disobeyed God. When the Angel of God came to warn her, she screamed out. Instead of becoming obedient, she would later hand me over to my Grandmother Emma, and wanted nothing to do with me. However, it was my father's responsibility and for the love of a woman, he too like King Solomon set his fate. </div> <bR> <div> My father went to an early death after he had disobey God; and no doubt he would have wonder the earth for over twenty-five years and had to wait until a 're-birth' to have cross over.  His soul would have taken a new him, in the name of Craig.  Together, Uncle Nemiah and Craig would have assisted his soul to the plane of light. It was funny as to how Craig came back to me, and at times I have to chuckle about it. This is a young man I didn't know, as I left Jamaica for over many years, and even while going back to visit, faces were never to become familiar. The very spot that Craig lost his life, bears its own, as indeed an English General named Berrisford Augustus would have loose his life in a battle in the same manner. History and karma would repeat itself. A beautiful flower, a tree was cut down, and in the name of a higher calling. </div> <bR> <div> The name Noamie meant that I would come to bear the cross of many. The name Noamie meant that I was forever in the service of God.  I recalled once as I was signing for a registered letter with Mrs. Iris Pringle at the Post Office at Mt. Airy that I attempted to spell my name with the 'a' before the 'o' and low and behold Miss Iris corrected me. I was rather shocked when she pointed out to me that the name given to me was to be spelled with the 'o' before the 'a' and not the other way around as some had believed and wanted to from Ruth and Naomi in the bible. I was only six or seven years of age. When Miss Iris looked me in the face and told me, to never allow my name to be spelled any other way, i knew that it was the voice of God coming through, as she could not have known otherwise. </div> <bR> <div> From earlier in my life I was different. I knew in my soul, in my spirit, and later as the spirit had manifest itself in my life, I knew the road ahead of me would be long and hard at times. Nevertheless, I was in the service of the Lord. It was at West Cliffe one early morning after Grandmother and Grandfather Norman took me with them to water their tobacco, that I had my first vision. The Prophet Elijah, Isaiah Abraham and The Lamb appear to me. <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#6666CC" FACE="Tahoma" ><B>      </B></FONT></div> <div> <B>                                                   </B></div> <div> <I><B>Picture of Flowers taken, by me,  up at West Cliffe: </B></I></div> <div> <I><B>The Flower I would come to use as a reminder  </B></I></div> <div> <I><B>of  West Cliffe.  This flower that grew wild on West Cliffe</B></I></div> <div> <I><B> Estate</B></I></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>West Cliffe</B></div> <div> <B>Who Poison my father- Who decided his faith?: ~48                                                                    </B></div> <div>  </div> <div>  <FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#6666CC" FACE="Baskerville Old Face" >These men began talking to me as I sat next to be huge boulder off from Grandmother and Grandfather. Later, as I told Grandmother that the three men came and was talking with me, she understood and told me that indeed I was a special child to God. I was no more than three years old. The beautiful reddish cloud came, and out of the cloud appear the three men and the lamb.    Thus, I would come to know and understand myself and who I am. I could never and would never fit into groups, clicks and or any other entity, which wasn't of God. Indeed, I would walk alone.  Only God and the Angels walk with me.</FONT></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B><U>Who Poison My father: </U></B></div> <div> <B><U>Who Decided His faith</U></B><B>?</B></div> <div> <I><B>"What is it that a man should profit by gaining the world, but loose his soul." </B></I></div> <bR> <div> Jamaicans can be the friendliest culture of people. Jamaicans can also be the worst deadliest set of cultured people. Jamaicans, the people who came from all walks of life, has their own history and with a combinations of cultures, tells their own story, thus re-writing their own history.</div> <bR> <div> My father had a hard murmur; a micro valve prolapsed heart condition. It wasn't a secret. Everyone knew. Everyone in the community knew. We are all cousins, huge extensions of cousins. The outside world calls it Royalty. To us the community we are an extension of our cultural heritage of Jewish and Native Jamaican Indian people, and so, in spite of where we had lived and came to know ourselves, our deep ethnicity had paved the way. There's no shame in us marrying a distance cousin. We are all one, knowing about each other's ways, norms, health, whether sickness or pain. </div> <div> Who wanted my father dead? Why? </div> <div> For his butcher license? </div> <div> For his short success?</div> <bR> <div> I get disgusted when I read from visitors who visit the island for short periods, who stayed on, or just outside the tourist resorts, and then 'come preaching' about their familiarity with the culture. Do they really, truly know anything about the Jamaican culture? Do they truly know anything beyond what they have read in bogus history or sightseeing books? Do they truly know or understand anything beyond the half-truth; half lies in perhaps Steven Segal's Hollywood movies about Jamaica?  I was borne and raised in Jamaica, and even as I knew many things, there are things and people that I don't know, and perhaps will never know or understand. Things that for a long time, I didn't want to know. I would later tell it, in another place and another time, under a different situation.</div> <bR> <div> Yet, the man who poisoned my father was someone he knew, someone who he had seek to help. Like a wolf in a lamb's innocent clothing he came. Like a wolf in sheep's clothing he left. Nallis Lindsay came, having taken my father's life. Later, he fought me with the same vengeance, yet in a different way, as he did my father. I have long learned to sing the song "For the lion of Judah, that shall break every chain, and give me that victory, again and again. "Indeed! </div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B>West Cliffe  -  </B></div> <div> <B> Chapter Six</B></div> <div> <B> Who Poison my father: Who decided his faith? :~ 49                                                                      </B></div> <div>  </div> <bR> <div> Nallis fought me with a viscous passion of evil, and for the same that my mother told him that she couldn't sell him our land our property after Daddy had passed away. The boldness of him to have come to offer my mother money, the very money he stole from my father, days before he would have set out to take Daddy's life.  Thus, with the help of my mother, if only they could get rid of me, Dun would have sold everything off to the enemy and left us, Daddy's children with 'nothing.' With the help of God and His Angels; with Uncle Maxie and Aunt Dell comforting love, I would have prevailed.  My God, there was a reason for me to have been in Germany from 1982 and into 1987. </div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B><U>I, My Brother's Keeper. I, The Family Strength</U></B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#6666CC" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> I thank the Higher Powers for my innateness, for my strength to have dealt with all of the trials that came with having to carry the burden of my family, and of the reality that life and things does exist in retrospect of what may have been. Since my mother couldn't care less, knowing what was obvious, daddy's death went by with the perpetrator getting off scotch free. My mother had forced my Brother Honey into silence. Like a good first son, Honey obeyed her. Something's that would later come back to haunt Honey. Nevertheless my question was again: why? </div> <div> Today I laugh real laughter of things that happen only years before. My sister Doreen always asked, how, did I always ends up winning. How did I always ends up on top, in spite of? She told me that it was not fair for me to end up with him, meaning my son, meaning the somewhat "reincarnation of daddy." I laugh at her. If only she knew. Now she will know. I deserve winning. I am a winner.<FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#6666CC" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> My son is not my father's reincarnation. Instead, my son is he, himself, a person more powerful than my father.</div> <bR> <bR> <div> <B><U>September 2001</U></B><FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#6666CC" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <div> I went home and did what I had to do. I went back and cried, the tears that I should had shed that November 1980 at my father's funeral. </div> <div> I stood there and let the tears flow. Then I knew that I was home and that I had closed that chapter. </div> <div> I fell asleep in my room. No one turns out the light. No one would turn out the light. I heard my father's footsteps. He hadn't crossed over. He came, looked, but didn't turn out the light. He has to look at me. I felt his presence in the doorway.<FONT SIZE="4" COLOR="#6666CC" FACE="Arial" > </FONT></div> <bR> <div> My stepfather was there on the other side of the house. He slept in my father's room; my father's house. </div> <bR> <div> The light stayed on in the passageway, a symbol that 'daddy' didn't have to come to turn off the light anymore. For the light will burn in the new creation of him. The circle has closed, at least for awhile. Daddy was to remain for awhile longer. </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B><IMG SRC="3c0c8850.jpg" border=0 width="200" height="133" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <bR> <bR> <div> <TABLE BORDER="2" CELLPADDING="1" CELLSPACING="1" WIDTH="688" BORDERCOLORLIGHT="#C0C0C0" BORDERCOLORDARK="#808080" FRAME="BOX" RULES="ALL" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" > <tR> <tD VALIGN=CENTER BGCOLOR=#000000 HEIGHT= 57 WIDTH="678"><div> <I><B>This site and its pages are Copyright 1998-2008. Noamie's Negril- Jamaican Tea Room. All Rights Reserved. Web site Designed by: Noamie</B></I></div> <bR> </tD> </tR> </TABLE></div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>