Kerry Young - Pao

We drive down to the Baptist church in Half Way Tree. The church not no Holy Trinity Cathedral, but it big and it beautiful with all the flowers that standing up there at the altar and hanging down the end of every pew.

This church not just no church, although it busy doing that as well, because Gloria tell me it got over eight hundred and fifty members. But the thing that Gloria like ’bout this church is that it a JAMAL adult education centre which Gloria tell me stand for Jamaican Movement for the Advancement of Literacy. It got all sorta thing going on there like a Christian education centre and a legal aid consultation service that Gloria think is a very good thing. Gloria tell me she been attending this church since 1968 when they start take an interest in social and welfare issues.

She surprise me. I just sit there in the car and look at her. I never figure Gloria for no church-going Christian. It don’t really seem to go with everything else that she do.

She say to me, ‘I used to be a regular church-goer as a child, yu know. Every Sunday morning my mother would make sure we scrub and dress and march us down the dirt road in all sorta frock with crinoline so we could go listen to the pastor pound that Bible.’ And then she stop. And then she say, ‘But it not God that I come here for. What I come here for is the chance to make a contribution and to help people change their lives.’

When me and Esther walking down the aisle I see Rajinder at the altar. And as I am getting close to him I realise that I never see a man look so happy. He look so happy it seem like him almost going to bust. Like him can’t believe this woman is actually going to marry him. Like he is waiting there in that church surrounded by all his family and such and she is coming towards him and some dream he been having for god knows how long is finally going come true. So I start fret that the man going collapse before we get there, there is that much going on in his heart. But we make it, and the pastor say, ‘Who gives this woman?’ and I done my part.

I step to the side and all the time I am standing there I try to remember how I felt on my own wedding day. Well I know for sure that when Fay was coming down the aisle on Henry’s arm I didn’t look nothing like how Rajinder look. I think I was more worried than happy. Worried that any minute now she was going stop and just turn ’round and walk out the church and I would be there looking at her back like I done a hundred times before at Lady Musgrave Road. And even after she say ‘I do’, I still didn’t believe it actually happen. That she actually marry me. The only time it seem real to me was when we was sitting in the car looking out at the cathedral and the crowd that was out there because I reckon all these people must have been bearing witness to something.

After they done with the praying and the singing and the signing we finally get to go sit down in New Kingston in the splendour of the Pegasus Hotel because Gloria take a liking to the fact that only last year the government acquire the controlling interest in the hotel and she very much in favour of the people taking over the tourist industry. But in truth there is not a lot of sitting. How much family this boy have is nobody’s business because I am shaking hand after hand of this auntie and that uncle and the niece and the nephew and the brother-in-law and sister-in-law, and first cousin and second cousin and third cousin, which I don’t know what kinda relation that is anyway, and the grandfather and grandmother and the mother and father and three brothers and six sisters. And all the time you doing it a whole army of little children running up and down the place like nobody got them under control.

I think my arm going drop off but Gloria say I must shut up complaining because it only the one chance I going get so I should enjoy it, which tell me that Gloria don’t think Mui ever going come back to Jamaica, or if she do then it after she already married.

So now instead of standing there enjoying Esther’s wedding I am thinking ’bout Mui and thinking that maybe Gloria right I never going see a day like this for her. And I think that is funny. Well it not really funny as such, because it was Mui that put me in mind of Esther in that first letter she send back to me after all that mix-up with Morrison going to look for Stanley. It was Mui that write ‘I hope Gloria and Esther are well’ and make me think I should go pay the child more mind. It was Mui remind me that I had another daughter.

All the way through the snapper and the chicken I am thinking what kinda child Esther was. And what I realise is that when she young Esther was like two completely different people. She quiet and careful with me, but when you read her school report it seem like she this carefree, long-jumping, volleyball-playing, drama-society, school-choir sorta girl. Yet never once did she ask me if I wanted to come watch her do her sport thing or see her school play or listen to the choir sing. And Gloria never mention none of this to me. Maybe she thought that after I read the school report I would ask for myself if I could go see something that Esther doing. Maybe she wanted me to make the first move. But it never dawn on me to do nothing. I just used to read the little report because Gloria give it to me and feel puzzled ’bout how come this nuh seem to be the same girl at all. Or after I read it and giving it back to Gloria I would say, ‘She seem to be doing good.’ And that would be it. In truth, a lot of the time it just felt like Gloria give it to me because she reckon I entitled to see it because I pay for it. Like I pay the school fees so I have a right to read the report. It was like that. And it didn’t seem to me like I had any right to expect anything or ask for anything more than that.

It wasn’t till Fay take the children that all of that change, maybe because Gloria think I only got the one child now so I can concentrate on her. So Esther only really become my daughter after Mui and Xiuquan was gone.

When it come to the speeches I already done tell Gloria that I didn’t know what to say. What yu going say ’bout being the father of a woman you don’t hardly know? And you busy giving her in marriage to some man you maybe meet two or three times. What yu going say? That for the first fourteen years of this woman’s life you all but ignore her? You can’t even remember how many times you see her and even when you did happen to come ’cross her you can’t remember any conversation you ever had with her about anything at all. That in fourteen years you never read her a book in bed, or play a game with her, or take her to the beach, or help her with her pyjama party, or take her to the pictures, or eat ice cream with her, or watch her blow out any birthday candles. Yu can’t even remember what present you ever buy her or what Gloria get for her and tell her it come from me. And then yu wife kidnap yu other two children and that is when you realise that you have another child. So it is only since the others gone that you start to get to know this woman and what you discover is that she is smart and funny and a caring person. Everything you would want yu child to be. Maybe everything you would wish you could be yourself but you are not. And on top of all of this, the very special thing about Esther is her forgiveness. That she had it in her heart to forgive me and just wait for the day that I would be there for her as her father who love her and feel pleased and proud that she is in this world.

Gloria look at me and say, ‘That is fine. It honest.’

So when the moment come I get up and I say it. I tone down the first part a little bit and when I get to the part about being her father I say, ‘Who she can call Daddy. Who love her and feel pleased and proud that she is in the world to be a daughter to me and Gloria, and a wife to Rajinder, but most of all to be a person to herself.’