Going through the LPs that had always been there, but on the margins of curiosity, I tried out different songs on my ears and would get stuck once one fit. ‘Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme’.
The voices of Simon and Garfunkel were ethereal and soothing and, although these lyrics were a little too airy-fairy for me, one song led to another which brought into my knowing, the ‘Sounds of Silence’. The comfort it brought, independent of my understanding plainly its meaning:
“People talking without speaking, People hearing without listening, People writing songs that voices never share, No one dared Disturb the sound of silence.”
The Bad Lands of Barbados
However, John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids would always be fresh as a reference from English lit. and I’d been banished to his Badlands, which, in spite of its name, was the good place to be, as it was where I could be around others like me. Here, in Bim, where I’d been raised w8th other sheeple, were the true bad lands with its strategically positioned shepherds watching over, to manage and better ensure the continuation of our fear-based addictions.
Wrapped in brown paper, a cardboard smell accented with that of blood—half a hog’s head is in the sink. This is not a scary thing where I come from, the Bad Lands. It is the middle of a weekly story that began at granny’s, where memories come into focus just long enough for me to catch a moment that could be an intact truth. The sandflies the sun would call before sliding between the sky and sea, were too much to bare—little black specks, their stings would leave unevenly edged, coin-sized welts that took their time being finished with itching you.
Granny
How I remember my granny
Granny—a woman with short white plaits, only hidden under a curly grey and black wig on Sundays—was always chewing with phantom teeth. She kept chickens that would set off each other’s alarm calls, for being chased by a human or dog; a cousin bred pigeons that cooed like Simon and Garfunkel and a turkey beat my father for trying to stand on its wings to cut off its head. There were also pigs. They smelled like pigs, and I was silently against rotten food being thrown into their faeces for them to dig out with their snouts. (I was also for most things silently). “You might be eaten alive so shouldn’t go close to the pen” was one of many lies told to keep me in a state of fear and, so, easily coercible.
And then, mysteriously, one of their heads, cut in half and wrapped in brown paper, blood running down the kitchen sink’s drain. I do not remember if its one eye would be staring back without blinking, but it must have been there because surely an empty eye socket would have been the only thing I’d have remembered about the half-a-hog’s head in the sink. Into a pot of water it would be placed, a pot the size of one used to cook in when family members who did not live in your house invaded it. The pot is tickled by flames in the colours of the Barbados flag.
Pudding and Souse
Parsley and thyme are the ones that made it from that song into our culture. It is a culture that includes eating a dismembered, disemboweled pig on Saturdays. Called ‘pudding and souse’, the souse part is pig’s feet, and ears cut into shapes you no longer recognise as ears, and other pieces that may have dark meat hanging from gristle, others that may have bristling hairs, all cooked and pickled in lime, cucumber, Scotch bonnet pepper, parsley and thyme with breadfruit slices.
Pudding and souse
The pig’s foot was the only thing I could eat, even if I remembered how it’d been buried in its owner’s excrement. I often thought about the life cycle of Taenia solium, which I’d learnt from biology class would sometimes be ingested by a human rather than a pig and might make its home in the human’s brain instead of the pig’s muscle. The pudding, which used to be pig intestine stuffed with seasoned and fried blood, was now stuffed with cooked and seasoned sweet potato, and I do not know what gives it that gelatinous consistency, but, tasty as it was, I could only ever eat it if I was sure no intestine had been involved in its preparation.
Market for Herbs
There’s a market for parsley and thyme because people will have pigs killed so they can eat their flesh on Saturdays, but herbs are also used in many different dishes including the vegan version of pudding and souse.
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. Should I grow them because there is a market and herbs are the only thing monkeys aren’t interested in stealing or destroying? Shall I rewrite the song to be Parsley, chives, sweet marjoram and marijuana? Because they’re used more and easier to relate to in Bim?
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