Ghosts in the Market-A Tribute to Jamaican Poet Louise Bennett-Coverly

I’ve always hated going to market. It didn’t take long for me to fully understand why my mother always sent me when I had finally come of age to venture out alone. The first lesson learned was never go to market in the morning when the sun is high, go when dawn is breaking. If you don’t you’ll get leftovers, rejects, the smallest potatoes and carrots, the flawed tomatoes and marble-sized onions, and for the same price of the choicest if you never learned how to haggle.

After a while you make friends and patronize your preferred people more than others, which at times can lead to jealousy. However, I’ve learned that the Coronation Market can facilitate jealousy in other bizarre ways.

On a cold Saturday morning, at around four thirty, when I opened my eyes I wasn’t absolutely sure they were open. Shivering under thin sheets in the middle of spring, I reluctantly crawled out of bed in the dark.  Even the tiles were hauntingly cold, which had me walking briskly towards the bathroom where I sought relief standing on bath rugs I could see slightly because of their whiteness.

I stretched my arm back to the wall to switch the lights on. Stepping off the rug into the equally cold enamel bath was a warning. My heart stopped when needle-like streams of ice water made contact with my skin. I jolted backwards hard and screamed, catching myself mid-scream only to muffle the scream averting waking my aunt in the bedroom beyond the bathroom wall.

When the year is right and winters are longer we get cold fronts even in spring, and they are usually mild for anyone who has experienced winter outside the Caribbean. However, for Kingstonians in Jamaica, cold fronts mean chattering teeth and white, cracked lips. I resorted to using the instant water heater, surprised it still worked since I rarely used it, and got dressed right after, grabbing rarely used market bags in the kitchen off the food rack. I fastened a note for Aunt Vinette on the refrigerator, and shot out the door on route to market as I remembered doing so often as a teenager.

 Aunt Vinette opted for vacation with me that week. Visiting from London, she could have enjoyed the more familiar climate at a hotel in the cool hills of Manchester, in the town of Mandeville, in the county of Middlesex, yes, on this island called Jamaica. Mandeville is where she chose to build her home for retirement. It is a popular place for returning residents who come home and speak with a semi-British accent.

Her mind was a cauldron of African superstition. No one would know by judging her appearance. She had one shade of lipstick, ruby red, and wore makeup a tone or two lighter than her natural could blend. She slept with rollers in her hair, and drank tea at noon out of bone china tea cups from a set she brought from England.

She said I could keep the set until the contractor completed her home in Mandeville. I guess they were too nice for me to keep permanently.

I hoped she’d awaken to see the note I left before she called. When she did, ten minutes after I walked out the door, she asked me to grab East Indian mangoes in the market for they were in season. I added sweet, ripe East Indian mangoes to my market list and carried on to the Coronation Market downtown in the brisk morning air, and with my market bags tucked away under my arm.

Upon entering around a quarter past five, and with vendors, buyers and suppliers intermingling and haggling with each other over prices, a heavy fog blanketed the vicinity of the market. It was a morning where I didn’t mind the sharp, aggressive calls for patronage and the bumping into all and sundry while making my way through congested market corridors. Warm morning breath was warmth none-the-less.

  I knew exactly where the mangoes were and as the crow flies, I headed straight for them. Sure enough, Mas Eaton sat on his lop-sided wooden stool beside his stall, arranging mangoes on display of every size, shape, grade and shade one could imagine in the tropics.

As I approached him I called out, “Mas Eaton, how you doing sir? Got any noice East Indian fi mi inna di mawnin ya?” and surprisingly after so many years, Mas Eaton instantly recognized me and smiled.

His smile was the warmest experience I had that day. When he did it touched his ears, and his head leaned back as if he knew he already sold all his mangoes. He sniffled and shivered, hunching over slightly, seemingly cold or slightly unwell, but as I remembered him, always cheerful.

 “Daughter, I know you coming for Vinette mango,” he said, continuously sniffling when he stood, picking up a large plastic bag, and rubbing it between his thin and wrinkled fingers to get the bag open, “I got Vinette mango right here. How long she staying?” he asked, sorting through the neatly arranged stacks of mangoes to sift out the biggest and ripest East Indian ones, the kind of mangoes I remember he’d usually price one at a time to sell by the dozen.

For Vinette he didn’t count them. When the bag was full, he stopped, and handed it to me, “Vinette love snow, no mango no deh a England,” he said sarcastically and with a smirk.

“That’s why she come fi dem. Is where you get these mangoes, how them always so big and pretty and sweet Mas Eaton?” I asked. Impressed by the weight of the bag, and enchanted by the nectarine fragrance of the mangoes burning my nostrils, I looked inside the bag one last time before tying the bag shut and reaching into my purse to settle Aunt Vin’s bill.

Upon seeing this Mas Eaton frowned, and in a deep voice he grumbled, “Oye, tell Vinette fi come talk to me, don’t bother with that,” and returned to sit on his lop-sided stool, panning around the market in anticipation of his next customer.

“Alright Mas Eaton, you take care, and thanks,” I said, leaving him behind to check off the remaining items on my list, which I did in a hurry, and lumbered out of the market, clenching tightly and swinging the heavy bags on either side like a beast of burden. I hailed a taxi quickly and paid an extra fifty dollars to be taken to the front door of my apartment so I wouldn’t have to walk another two hundred or so meters with the heavy load.

By then it was broad daylight. However, the sun continued to hide behind lovely English weather. I didn’t think Aunt Vin minded in the usually sweltering capital of the island.

Aunt Vin greeted me at the door to help with the bags, and I learned then that even after being away for so long, she still remembered our bastardized English dialect, “Good, good good, them sweet like mi nice, clean sister pickney. Dis ya sugar wi drunk yuh, mi smell dem from yuh open di gate. I need one right now, no coffee, no tea. Mango is my breakfast this morning,” she said, clutching the bag of mangoes in one hand and another bag of produce in the other. I followed her up the narrow stairs into the apartment, still holding tight two more bags of produce from the market.

Watching her loft the heavy bags onto the counter I said, “Mas Eaton says you are to go and talk to him. He refused to take payment for the mangoes. Is he yuh boyfriend?” I asked, curiously waiting for her answer.

Aunt Vin chuckled, and answered, retorting to the honey-smooth, golden and more acceptable English this time around, and with her back and shoulders straight and her head held high, “Master Eaton is searching for a wife. I know how to get good mangoes my dear girl. Master Eaton has had affection for me for a long, long time, that’s why he sends these mangoes,” she said, and then abruptly switched to our native dialect again, and in a more assertive tone, “When him start fi get too bright, mi pay him fi dem. You should have insisted and paid him for me, but mi wi always get good mango,” she said, and then selected two of the biggest out of the bag to devour them.

She washed them at the kitchen sink and sat at the counter, mauling the mangoes one at a time until the orange-colored, succulent pulp disappeared and the seeds turned bone white and dry. She then sighed and looked up, “Amen,” she said, and turned to me and said, “Mango deh here girl. Eat what you want, careful, dem suh sweet dat dem wi drunk yuh,”

For some strange reason I no longer wanted to eat mangoes. It could have been the sugary fragrance that overwhelmed my affinity for them. However, I picked up a dozen of another fruit I enjoyed as much as mangoes in the market. They were purple star apples, and even though star apples are not as sweet as mangoes, their milky white and veiny pulp is a milder indulgence without the sweet intoxication.

I washed two star apples at the kitchen sink, and used a knife to slice them into halves, revealing the star-shaped core surrounded by milky white pulp. Wasting no time, I squeezed the pulp of one half into my mouth, seeds and all, using my tongue to separate the seeds so I could spit them out before swallowing, but for some unknown reason, communication between brain and gag reflex bungled and I swallowed seeds and all!

The seeds lodged exactly midway down my trachea! How they got that far is still a mystery to me and I panicked hard, thumping my chest and to my horror helped the seeds down a little further. My eyes bulged and I stopped thumping. I thought about calling Aunt Vin and realized that too was impossible. Flashing my hands back and forth in desperation, I felt an almost unbearable thud on my back, after which the seeds flew out of my mouth with the pulp across the counter.

I gasped a few times with tears streaming down my face, cascading at least a gallon of water down my throat, and heaved the gift of life back into my lungs. When I turned to thank Aunt Vin for saving my life, to my surprise she was already gone! I ran to her room and called out to her, “Aunt Vin, thank you, thank you so much!” I said, and squeezed her so tightly she gasped for breath herself.

She pushed me away with a grimace, and said, “Child, what wrong wid you, a so you a dead fi two little mango?”

Embarrassed, my walk of shame ended in my bedroom where I spent half the day trying to understand Aunt Vin’s weird reaction to my near death experience. That’s when she barged into my room, “So you are a trouble maker! Who sent me mangoes this morning?” She asked with a stern look and eager eyes.

I was taken back in confusion to the conversation I had with Mas Eaton earlier, trying to make sure I didn’t miss or misinterpret anything he said, and then I said, “I told you Aunt Vinette, Mas Eaton says you are to go and talk to him,”

Aunt Vin turned around a few times on the spot, put her hands on her head and cried out, “Lord Jesus! Donette, I called June and tell her Eaton send me nice, nice mango, and she better go get some before they finish. June called Sheryl, Sheryl called Roger, Roger send Betty fi go to market for Eaton mango. Betty go market a look for Eaton, called Roger, Roger called Sheryl. Sheryl called June and June called me, tell me Mas Eaton dead from last week!”

I licked my lips a few times choking on words, “There has to be some misunderstanding here,” I thought, and barged right past Aunt Vin back into the kitchen to see again the bag squatting on the kitchen counter under the full weight of  real mangoes inside it.

Aunt Vin walked up to me and stood beside me, “Donette, who sent mangoes for me child? Dash dem weh, you throw them away right now!” she said, pointing towards the counter where the unexplainable grinned at us.

Our shared knowledge of the unspoken African folklore suggests food from an unknown source isn’t a gift; it is your last meal. I am not a believer. Still, I managed to convince Aunt Vin, only for the sake of brevity of the ensuing quarrel, that I’d take all the mangoes with me on my way back to the market. I couldn’t throw them away. I was sure she was as mistaken as her cousin June, and as Sheryl, and as Roger and Betty was. I got those mangoes from Mas Eaton, and I prepared to go back to Coronation Market to find him and sort this debacle out!

 I stepped heavily through puddles of water to hustle a ride back to market with the bag of mangoes, in search of Mas Eaton. When I stumbled onto his empty stall with black ribbons tied around the feet of his lop-sided stool, I sank into despair, anxiously looking all around for Mas Eaton, and shouted, “Mas Eaton, Mas Eaton! Where is Mas Eaton, where is Mas Eaton?” 

An elderly female shopper, apparently also a customer of his, answered me, “Eaton gone home mi girl. Eaton is walking with the angels. Is what that you ave in the bag, mangoes? Where you buy them? Show me please, I want to buy some,” she said, smiled and waited for an answer.

If I hadn’t choked on star apple seeds and then words, I was certainly choking on my own saliva. Bewildered, and slowly turning around on the spot, understanding the superstition behind it as a non-believer, and with the bag of mangoes in a rigorous grip of fright I finally said, loudly, “Who gave me mangoes this morning? I want to pay for them now!”

I heard a voice coming from behind, a vendor with an annoyingly screechy voice shouted back, “No mango nah sell in ya until tomorrow. You want Eaton slap we out of here?” a reply steeped in fear, fear of something I would hardly believe, had a bag of mangoes not betook itself to my apartment in the morning.

I became fearful since, according to folklore, a slap from a poltergeist is not always survivable.

In the middle of the market I stooped slowly and rested the bag of mangoes on the ground, leisurely exiting the market as if leaving in slow motion wouldn’t get me noticed.

At home, Aunt Vin waited for me in the hall with her arms folded across her chest, “Did you find Eaton, Donette?”

“No,” I said, distraught and rubbing my face while I passed her by.

“Where are the mangoes?” she asked.

“I left them in the market,”

When I heard Aunt Vin’s groan of despair I swung around in time to witness her fervently looking towards the ceiling with outstretched arms, and she swayed, “After me nyam two! Jesus have mercy on Donette, she a see duppy. Have mercy on me my Lord,” she exclaimed.

I tried to assure her she would be ok, that the two mangoes she ate were not poisoned or cursed, and simultaneously tried to convince myself that I did not see or encounter a ghost in the market as she believed, but Aunt Vin came from a different tribe. I was unable to sway her. I made myself an excuse, that someone else gave me the mangoes, and that I misidentified the person as Mas Eaton. I did for sake of the preservation of my own sanity, even until today.

Aunt Vin never forgave me, and never vacationed at my home again, bringing her fancy China with her on her way out when she walked out the door for the last time. I did try to thank her for saving my life again that morning. She asked me what I was thanking her for because she thought I had thanked her for the mangoes. When I explained how badly I was choking on the star apple seeds when she almost shattered my spine with a thump, she asked me to see a psychiatrist, insisting she didn’t thump me in the back and was in her room when I barged in overly excited and emotional.

I couldn’t get past that strange episode in my life no matter how hard I tried to forget it. Eventually I researched the market, and discovered that my story echoed several other strange encounters there. It is said that the Coronation Market had been built on top of an old burial ground for African slaves brought to the Caribbean during the slave trade.

Mas Eaton always boasted about his ancestry, being of maroon blood, the blood of warriors of the Ashanti who fought for freedom and the abolition of slavery on the island.

I have new found respect for the food I buy in the market. Even though I still haggle for the best prices as I learned to do over the years, and with some very cheeky mathematicians. Every year I place a mango on the stall where Mas Eaton sold his produce. The new vendor at his food stall asks me every time why I give her such sweet mangoes every year when she sells in the market and can get them in abundance for free.

I simply smile and tell her, “One mango from me pays your rent,” and then we laugh together. I never try to explain my answer and she never asks for one.

THE END