yesterday, one of my mother's oldest friends, pamela, came to visit. it was curiously random since i was about to leave my house and i haven't seen pamela since 2012, right after my mother's death (she didn't find out in time to attend her funeral).
my mother and pamela met at a workshop when i was a toddler - maybe 5 for the most. pamela lived just around the corner on the lane my mother and i rented on. she is Black, slim, with a v-shaped jaw, sleepy eyes and long braids. from the time my mother and pamela became friends, they were in constant contact. i remember my mother swinging around to pamela's house on our way home from karate or swim practice just to say hi and have a quick catch-up. sometimes we wouldn't leave the car nor would pamela open the gate to her yard. she would simply bend down right there and talk to us through the bars. it was just two women who had found a connection.
pamela taught kindergarten and my mother was a secretary for a boss at an insurance company. they exchanged stories about child-raising, their lives, their families and work. pamela became family. my mother and her would always have little shopping trips into port of spain on weekends and i would gladly laze around at home or play in our grassy backyard. i was about 7 by this time.
they would always buy the same of EVERYTHING. not clothing, thankfully, although who is to judge. if one bought a pair of earrings, the other had the same pair. if a tablecloth had beautiful roses on it, it would look great in both their kitchens. if one thought this bar of soap smelled delicious, the other had to have that delicious. i specifically remember seeing a tiny, colourful china vase in pamela's apartment, and receiving exactly the same vase as a valentine's day present from my mother a week later. they had similar tastes and i imagine their conversations and exchanges were ecstasy. they were sisters, women who came from completely different backgrounds (religion, colour, class) but who had found themselves in similar situations in life. both single, in their early 40s, with their lives dedicated to others rather than themselves. it must have been a fabulous escape for them both.
pamela treated me like family, too. she always bought me small knick knacks, and never complained when i would make all her stuffed toys explode off the bed in her room (although i'm sure that was a bitch to recover from). once, after my mother had given me an especially severe cut-ass with her leather belt, pamela visited our house and my mother recounted the entire story to her, while displaying the belt like it was a piece of evidence in a court of law. my mother even called me over to show pamela the marks on my skin (more evidence, prosecutor). looking back now, it is hilarious that they even shared things such as these.
my mother had blood siblings, but they always seemed to be in some sort of riff. petty familial arguments that helped me understand from an early age that some of your truest family are the people you choose. pamela was my mother's confidante, her supporter, her best friend. sometimes it felt like she was all those things to me, too. she even came to my primary school graduation. there is a picture of a chubby, beaming boy in an oversized, white long-sleeved shirt next to a woman he adores.
i adored pamela for similar reasons to my mother. but it is only after her visit yesterday - and through my decision to write this piece about her - that i realised the reason i truly loved her, and still do, is because of how happy she made my mother. even then, i knew my mother hadn't much in the world apart from me, and that the love she and i had was unparalleled, but that sometimes a woman needs more than just herself and her child - she needs life.
while i was still in primary school, pamela moved to a small apartment in woodbrook at a women's lodge. small is the perfect word. miniscule would be even more perfect. there was a main bedroom as you entered, a small kitchenette in the back, and a bathroom off the kitchenette. so many of my childhood memories happened in that small apartment.
there was the time pamela got a huge colour television set. huge! and the time pamela got a beautiful wooden armchair she had found in the street and had refinished that could barely fit in her room. and all the little amazing snacks she shared with me that my mother would never allow me to buy at the grocery store. but the best memories are their conversations. i don't remember any in particular, but i remember they were rich and always fluent. they would talk about their days, and plan things to do, and exchange recipes, and gossip about things i had no idea about. i remember being bored sometimes, and absolutely enraged the times my mother would hang on at the gate to talk to pamela, while i waited in the car for sometimes over half an hour, stewing with anger because i was ready to go home (this happened many times).
eventually pamela moved away from port of spain and went to live with wayne, the man she would eventually marry. she moved to a little house up a steep hill in east trinidad. it was breezy, part wood/part concrete and crowded. wayne had a penchant for collecting "tings". anything from anywhere. soon, their front garage was packed to the brim with odds and ends.
inside was furniture wayne had either salvaged from others or had found. but pamela's armchair from her tiny room in woodbrook always remained. even years later, the three of us would muse that the armchair had stood the test of time, and looked better and was more comfortable than ever. but i knew we were truly fond of it because it was a link to the past the three of us had shared.
when my mother and i would visit pamela and wayne up the hill, there was always a to-do. neither of our families had much but we always had a roaring good time. wayne was boisterous, broad, tall and hilarious - and a little rude/tongue in cheek which was a great thing to see my catholic mother react to. he was a great cook, and he knew the food that i loved specifically and would always go out of his way to make my favourites. bhagi and dhal, curry pork, stew beef, pigeon peas, red beans, mashed plantains, crab and callaloo, passion fruit juice - the man was a god.
wayne would always wash our car for us - it was almost his duty when we parked outside their house on that steep hill that he cook us a spectacular meal to share and washed my mother's car for her. he understood that he had inherited a sister as well, and he took care of us. he would tell funny stories about his life with pamela, and she was always there to combat his words with her own input. he would roar, "JAMESYYYY!!!!! YUH HEAR HOW PAMMY LYING ON ME?!?!" and i would just die. on one visit, there was a golden-brown rooster walking around the house. pamela explained that "levi" was a chick when they found him in the road with a broken foot, and they raised him, and now he lived in the house. being that i was terrified of roosters - it's their scaly feet and pointy nails and rubbery what-the-fuck headdress - levi had to be confined to the bedroom during our visit.
that didn't stop him from fluttering up through the rafters and coming right for my ass, which led me to run out the house screaming bloody murder for all the neighbours to wonder if an exorcism was in session. of course, pamela noted now that levi was part of the family, she could never imagine killing him for meat. i could.
we would stay at pamela's into the late hours of the night during those visits, stuffed from all the food, tired from the heat and watching the same television from her apartment in woodbrook, remembering the past, talking about the future or conversing about right now. pamela and my mother celebrated everything about each other. if pamela found a new job, it would be what we spoke and hypothesised about. if my mother had found a new shade of lipstick, she had to show pamela who would write down the exact colour to get it on her next shopping outing. but one of their strongest connections was me, a kid they had both raised in great and small ways. any academic achievement or creative writing essay or small personal victory or karate belt was theirs as well.
up until right before the time my mum became ill, we would visit pamela and wayne. they were a part of our lives until the almost-end. their sisterhood was a mark of happiness and satisfaction to me. it was founded on sharing and genuine caring, and entwining lives that eventually became impossible to untangle.
when pamela visited yesterday, we reminisced about some of those times. she only stopped by to say hello, and we spoke about mum and our lives today for a bit. after she left and i had locked the gate behind her, i heard her call out to me. i turned and there she was, through the bars, just like old times.
"jamesy, if you find anything of yuh mummy's that you think i would like, don't hesitate to put it aside for me. you know we always had similar taste in tings."
i nodded and said, "i know, pamela."
