By Johnny Coomansingh
Memories of my childhood chased each other in my mind until I decided to write about The Little Pink House, a place where every Christmas was like living in a fairy tale. It was not a gingerbread house; not even close. All I could have done during that era of my life was dream, dream, and dream some more.
I remember the night we migrated from Picton Street to the corner of Adventist and Ramdass Streets, Sangre Grande to The Little Pink House…a one-bedroom adobe house where Isabelle Moreau, my great grandmother once lived. The street was named ‘Adventist Street’ because it is felt that the first building on the street was the Seventh Day Adventist Church, built in 1939.
Roughly 65 years ago I will never forget the muddy track and the steady hand of my aging Aunty Emelda holding on to my tiny hand while we ambled through the darkness. As a four year old, I had no idea where we were going but I trusted my good aunty ‘Melda’… a blessed woman she is. The next seven years living with my eight siblings and an overworked mom were quite eventful, not to mention the heated sibling rivalry on occasion.
It was during this period I was baptized in the crystal waters of Valencia River. Oftentimes I drive past that river and remember how I was ducked under the water to declare to the world that I decided to serve God. I rose up from the water with one biblical text in my mind: ‘Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you” (Matthew 6:33). On that Sunday morning, the water was clear and cold which reminded me that I would now be able to see things a little clearer in a cold and sometimes unfriendly world. Sad to say, the river is not what it used to be back then in 1965.
It is not at all strange to me that some of the people who offered me ‘the hand of fellowship’ and welcomed me into the ‘fold’ at church were some of the same people who turned around and badmouthed me with their evil surmising. Why should I complain? Why should I worry? Human nature is so unpredictable. Better things would come out of this though. What I came to understand is that I should give more, hate no one, and expect less as a guard against disappointment. I was counselled to believe that every disappointment is a blessing in disguise.
My successful completion of the Common Entrance Examination (CE) and departure from the elementary school stage was a milestone. I became a collegiate at Northeastern College, Sangre Grande, Trinidad and read for the Cambridge University, General Certificate Examination.
I remember the coconut bake (flatbread) and scrambled egg sandwiches, guava jam and peanut butter, saltfish (cod) buljol and ‘blue food’ (dasheen), the yam and moko, fried fish, callaloo and stewed common fowl, curried seim with salted beef in coconut milk and white rice, the split peas and dumplings and yes, ochro rice “cook up” with coconut milk and salted beef. Good food I must admit, but nothing came near to my mother’s sancoche, nothing! That mixture of ground provisions, green bananas, dumplings, yellow split peas or pigeon peas and salted beef was seasoned to perfection…ahh it was so good!
My penniless mother was untiring in her effort to provide palatable food and clean clothes for us. I sold newspapers and beer and rum bottles, worked in the lime (citrus) fields located in Anglais Road, Cumana. During the summer, I cleaned people’s yards, made and sold bamboo brooms, and did whatever could have earned a penny or two to help with the family income and buy some of my school books. And yes, I studied. I read everything in sight when we had electricity and when we used candles. We used candles when we could not have paid the electricity bills. I was hungry for knowledge, yearning to succeed. Such was the life in The Little Pink House. It was part of the dream becoming a reality.
But the best part of The Little Pink House in that blessed corner was Christmas time. It was as though a special light shone on that Little Pink House where a single mom and her nine children dwelt. Those times were hard economic times after my father deserted us. Up to this day I don’t know why he left and I do not care to know, for the memory of the infidel is forgotten, as one who is dead without a gravestone marker. My older brothers and sisters really cared for us smaller ones and tried to make us happy with whatever they could have provided.
Long gone are the days when we used to find fun in leepaying (plastering in Hindi) the house. The house was made of tapia (adobe) and every year we would mix cow’s dung (gobar), tapia grass and white clay to patch the holes in the house just before Christmas. It was great fun to pelt the remnants of the plaster at each other and then go take a standpipe spray down.
When the plasterwork dried we would mix whitewash and red ochre to get the right tone of pink for The Little Pink House. Windows, doors and sills were painted in brown or green. The Little Pink House glowed. The lawn was brush cut with a swiper (brushing cutlass) and the walkway edged to perfection. Muddy box drains around were cleaned and even the path to the pit latrine was clinically groomed. This area is in the floodplain of the Guaico River where venomous coral snakes are seen from time to time.
Although we had no idea where Christmas presents and food were coming from, everything was done to welcome Christmas. Good people are everywhere; Christmas brings them out of the woodwork. Without fail, the toys and the food came from somewhere…only heaven knows.
I could still remember the smell of hot home-made bread, coconut sweet bread and black fruitcake in the house on Christmas morning. And yes the bright red sorrel drink brewed from the flowers of the sorrel plant (Hibiscus sabdariffa) and that infernal ginger beer that I used to dislike because it burned my tender throat on its way down. Memories, memories, memories…and then the Parang!
The wonder of Christmas was told in the Parang. How lovely it was to get out of bed at two o’clock in the morning to welcome a group of paranderos singing a sweet Spanish Serenal outside the door. Happiness and joy was the language the music spoke. It was all about the annunciation of Angel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary and the miracle of salvation. Sometimes the singers were old men with missing teeth but the melody sounded even sweeter with the accompaniment of a good cuatro, guitar, mandolin, saltbox base, toc-toc and a shac-shac (maracas). And oh yes, the coffee pot would be on the fire and sancoche and sweetbread would be served; we shared whatever we had with the paranderos.
Our house always received a special blessing at Christmas. We had so little, yet we gave so much…the love, the cheer, the joy that we experienced because we were contented with what we had. It did not matter if we hung plastic ‘curtains,’ it did not matter if we did not have new clothes, it did not matter if people poked fun at us. Sometimes I wish for some of those moments we shared in that house…so distant now. (A story from my soon-to-be-published book: Leh Mih Tell Yuh).
