Montserrat on My Mind

I visited my birthplace, the Island of Montserrat, in the summer of ’94.  It was hotter than usual.  No one could explain the surging temperature.  Swarms of earthquakes shook the Island almost daily, and while I was alarmed, the residents shrugged them off as mere annoyances.  The house vibrated.

“Did you feel that?” my cousin asked.

“Yes.  What was it?”

“Another earthquake,” she said casually.

I wondered if they knew the consequences of such tremors.  I no longer had any doubt, when she showed me the diagonal split on the wall of the master bedroom.

“We’ll fix it soon,” she said.

Later, it was my turn to show her the crack on the wall of the formal dining room.  I helped her to remove the fallen plaster.  I thought that my relatives were either fearless or stupid to be so callous about living on an Island where earthquakes were so prevalent.  Then I thought of the people of California who also live under the threat of destruction by earthquakes.

The following day, we visited our family’s homestead.  My great-great grandfather had built the house at the close of the nineteenth century.  The more affluent relatives purchased property in the prestigious neighborhoods of the Island and only visited the family’s land to harvest its fruits and vegetables in season.  I looked at the old house, and thought, “I was born here.”  I imagined hearing the voices of my brothers and sisters as we ran from room to room, playing hide and seek.  I begged my cousin to open the house.  We entered.  I opened its windows and doors widely, and examined each room.  The floors squeaked.  Daylight filled the rooms once more.  Though cobwebs hung from the rafters, I told myself that I would retire there some day. 

I stood at the portal, and observed the fruit trees.  They hung low under the weight of their fruits.  It was then that my cousin revealed something I had not known before. 

She said, “I remember the night you were born.  Grangran, (the name given to our great-grandmother) buried your umbilical cord at the root of that tree.”  

She pointed to the oldest coconut palm on the property.  I felt my whole body tremble.  I ran to the tree and attempted to embrace its trunk.  I hugged it as I would have hugged my deceased mother.  I felt a strange bond with it.  My heart beat rapidly.  

I broke away and admired the palm.  It stood tall.  Its green fruits clung together in clusters.  I remembered drinking water from its fruits and eating the delicious jelly from its husk in my childhood.  No one bothered to pick its coconuts any more.  Dried branches and fruits lay at its base.  My relatives had long planted dwarfed coconut palms whose fruits were accessible from the ground. 

“I would like to drink water from its fruits again.  Can I get a boy to pick some coconuts for me?”

“Not in Montserrat,” she said.  “Boys don’t climb tall coconut palms anymore.  That’s why we planted the grafted ones.  You can have as many coconuts as you want.  You’re tall enough.  Just reach up and pick them.”

“No thank you,” I said.

I selected six of the dried coconuts from the base of my special palm and took them to my cousin’s house.  I took a machete and ripped off the dry husks.  I opened three coconuts, threw my head back, and drank the sweet, mellow water.  My cousin mimicked me and laughed heartily.

That evening, I made coconut pies for the family.  While they ate, I reminded them that the coconuts were from the palm tree that was nurtured by my umbilical cord.  I returned to the homestead and embraced my special palm several times that year before I returned to New York.

In the summer of ’95, scientists revealed the reason for the swarms of earthquakes.  The volcano at the Soufriere Hills erupted on July 18^th.  The first eruptions claimed my family’s property, burying it deeply in tons of pyroclastic flow.  It was sad enough to lose the old house and the thirty-two acres of land, but I cried for the old coconut palm, for like all of my ancestors, it too was lost forever.