The Sugar Planter's Daughter by Sharon Maas Page B

hanging low. Hibiscus and frangipani and oleander, and the rose fragrance wafting through it all, carried on the wings of a cool sea breeze. In Promised Land, stepping out of the front door was like stepping into a Garden of Eden, framed by birdsong – the sweet fluting of the kiskadee, the whirr of the hummingbird flitting from flower to flower. The flutter of butterflies, their sun-filtered wings like artists’ palettes.
    How different were the narrow streets of Albouystown! Our cottage was just one in a row of similar ones, although surely the best-maintained. The cottage next door to the east – well, it was little more than a hovel, and the one to the west hardly better. And so it was all along Butcher Street, lines of cottages in various stages of dilapidation. They seemed to totter on their stilts, like falling birds. The staircases leading up to the front doors had missing treads and gaps in the balusters. The windowpanes were cracked; shutters were falling off their hinges. The street itself, potholed and cracking apart, had gutters on either side bridged by planks of all shapes and sizes, some rotting, so that one had to step precariously across them.
    But all of that I swallowed easily. I’d seen similar in Kitty, when I’d stayed with Aunty Dolly. It was the people who upset me the most, to be quite honest. I had expected neighbourliness, friendliness. What I got was mistrust, rebuffs, rejection.
    It started on my very first day, the very first time I left the house with Ma, on my very first expedition to Bourda Market. The lady from the cottage next door happened to be in her front garden (if one could call the patch of unkempt green between front stairs and front gate a garden!) She was bent over, seemingly picking peppers from a bush. She straightened up and glanced over as we proceeded to the bridge. She and Ma exchanged a short greeting, then her gaze turned to me. I smiled, waved and called out: ‘Good morning! How are you? I’m Winnie Quint, your new neighbour!’
    I expected her to smile and wave back, call out a return greeting, introduce herself. Instead, she stared a minute, did not respond to my friendly greeting and bent back down to her pepper bush.
    I blushed – it seemed I had made a huge faux pas. Obviously, I should have waited for Ma to introduce us; but Ma had walked ahead of me, saying nothing.
    â€˜Ma,’ I said once we were on the street and past the house, ‘who is that lady? Why did she not return my greeting?’
    â€˜What you expect? You, a white lady, calling out like that?’
    â€˜I was just being friendly!’
    â€˜People here don’t want white-people friends.’
    â€˜Oh! Really? Why not? I would have thought…’
    George had warned me of this but I had not believed him. After the trial I had been something of a heroine. The poor of British Guiana, whether of African or Indian origin, knew I was on their side; how they had cheered me after the trial! They knew that I supported them, that I held no racial prejudice. I thought of all people as equal, and my decision to marry George and live with him here in his own community was proof of that.
    I was rather proud of myself, in fact. I loathed the snobbery most people of my race display towards those of dark skin, and I had made up my mind to be different, to demonstrate by my own actions, my own life, that we were not all of that ilk. That we could be better. That some of us knew what it really means to be a Christian. And I thought my sense of equality would be immediately reciprocated by those abused by our terrible system. That very first day I learned my lesson: it was not to be so easy.
    Ma and I strolled down to the market, baskets slung over our arms. We passed several other pedestrians. Ma seemed to know most of them; she greeted them, sometimes by name, and they greeted her back. And then dark eyes would alight on me, and smiles would fade, and lips that