THE CAVE

Towards the end of her life, the old woman, haunted by refulgent memories of a long-lost love, sat in her rocking chair by the window recounting her love affair with a much younger man years earlier. She still harbored feelings for him, although he'd gone far away to another country while she stayed behind, absorbing the tranquility of her return to the tiny, picturesque fishing village of Broughton in the parish of Westmoreland. She was a woman in her mid-seventies and remained unmarried for three decades, and she knew that it was her independent spirit that had kept her alive. Sitting by the window in her bedroom on a small wooden rocking chair with a crocheted blanket tossed across her sensitive shoulders, Ms. Dolcy Gibbon stared out at the incoming dribbles of rain, recounting her love affair with Maurice Baugh decades before. She couldn't forget her lover and felt satisfied thinking about him as her life slowly slipped away. Maurice was the only man she'd ever loved; she would die loving him forever. Theirs was an affair well-lived until they both exhausted each other.

The rain came in small dribbles, then poured down like sharp needles, causing Ms. Dolcy to draw the blanket even closer to her withered shoulders, protecting her from the incoming draft of cold air. The coffee she'd been drinking had emptied, and she desired more, but at that moment, she suppressed her appetite and basked in her feelings of safety. She was happy to still be alive as she pulled along in her mid-seventies. She'd been living in the provincial district amid the obsolescent residents who kept a stiff and godly upper lip against members of the community whom they perceived as amoral. Ms. Dolcy knew she was cast into that category when they found out about her love affair with Maurice before he departed for America many years ago. His mother, Ms. Inez, stayed back in the village, making sure that Ms. Dolcy's name was soiled without any possible mending.

She’d gossip with the villagers about losing her only son to the hands of an “old woman with loose morals.”

“Dat’s all she does in the village, takin’ our sons to her bed by buying them off with her American money!”

Later, the villagers came to see Ms. Dolcy in that same pathetic light.

But Ms. Dolcy had taken it in stride, using the little money she brought back from her years spent abroad in America in the '40s to keep herself afloat. At the end of her long life, she wanted to rekindle her sense of self she'd lost living in such a bleak town. Once, she was robust and candied like sugar beets, filled with enthusiasm, arrogance, and the confidence of a man. She hungered and satisfied her appetites with the younger men who wanted her for the little retirement money she'd acquired through sewing in the diaphoretic atmosphere of a dreary clothing factory.

As the rain pressed on, beating against the zinc roof of her ample-sized abode, Ms. Dolcy rose from her antique rocking chair and walked slowly to the kitchen to pour more coffee into her large, white, chipped enamel mug. As Ms. Dolcy walked back to the rocking chair by the reminiscent window, she thought for a moment when she and Maurice first made love in the small corridor, halfway between the kitchen and the small bedroom by the window from where she came. Being by the window helped her to see them more clearly as the decades pushed on. The years had gone by quickly, and although she remained stout and sturdy in her ample hips, Ms. Dolcy's pretty face had faded significantly. She no longer had that fecund head of woolly hair in abundance but had become bald. Her once shiny and smooth skin, the color of coffee beans, was filled with creases. The confidence was in her erect stride as she walked by the same corridor where she first seduced Maurice— or was it he who seduced her? It's been so many years… Who could remember?

When she first returned from America in her mid-forties, she was a majestic figure of a woman with a pile of fluffy pubic hair on her pronounced mound. She remembered that Maurice had delivered some bottles of milk in the afternoon rain and had seemed somewhat tired and weary from the day's trips.

“Come,” she told the lad, reaching for his hand to hold and walking him to her bedroom.

He was bold and mature, not in age but in personality, so he stopped her there in the corridor and allowed her to disrobe him while she stared straight into his frazzled face. She kissed him passionately.

“I've waited for this moment for so long,” he whispered, to her surprise, into her ear.

Ms. Dolcy might have dismissed his genuine attraction to her, for many of the young men in the village talked about her wealth. Ms. Dolcy hadn't expected a young man, the age of someone who could have been her son, to harbor a hidden desire for her. The other men who attempted to woo her were much older than he, making sure she knew of their intent to receive her gifts in return for their pleasure. Her pittance brought pleasure, not love, and Ms. Dolcy learned to accept the fact that in a provincial town like Broughton, where young men were desperate to escape, the little money she had would go far.

“It's not yuh money I'm after. It's you!” Maurice let her know from the very beginning.

At first, she didn't believe him and thought of Maurice as a silly boy.

“You go on your way back home to your Mama... before I... I...”

But Maurice didn't leave her that rainy day. Instead, he chose to spend the evening with her cuddled up in bed. It was the talk of the villagers the next day and years to come. His mother, Ms. Inez, didn't take it in stride and visited Ms. Dolcy the following evening, vexed and perturbed why an 'old' woman had a wanton relationship with her son.

“Yuh should stick to men in your own age group,” Maurice's mother retorted.

“Shhhhhhhhhhh,” commented Ms. Dolcy. “It's nobody's business but our own.”

She gently closed the door into Ms. Inez's face and went about her own business. But the opened doors of the village women welcomed the gossip, and Ms. Dolcy was put on trial with the court of public opinion. The women of the village questioned her moral judgment.

“It's not de first time she did it!” complained Ms. Bessie Johnson. “She's had mi Buckley, too.”

“Damn dat woman to hell!” said Lainey Bell, a young woman whose older brother also had an affair with Ms. Dolcy.

“She sleeps wid every man 'round here,” said Ms. Crisslyn Porter, “Even Vida's husband, Clevert.”

It’s nobody's business but my own, retorted Ms. Dolcy in private.

She'd brought big ideas from America back to the small-minded village of Broughton, a town where people stuck to their ancient beliefs. She'd moved on, finding a profound solution to her gaping loneliness, but they refused to let her live her life the way she felt it ought to be lived.

“But look at Livington Flanigan,” Ms. Dolcy managed to blurt with gumption, “didn't he live as man an' wife with Clarine Waugh when she was fifteen before he married her?”

The villagers hadn't thought about the incident long ago when Ms. Dolcy first came to Broughton in the late '50s. Mr. Flanigan, a local fisherman in his late forties, had gone to the village of Chatham in St. James and picked up a poor local girl whose parents had given her to him because they couldn't sustain her livelihood any longer. When he brought her to the village of Broughton, no one paid them any attention. Ms. Dolcy, with her modern way of thinking, couldn't understand why the villagers couldn't see the parallel to her life as an older woman desiring the company of younger men, as with Mr. Flanigan taking up with Clarine many years prior.

“There,” she told them, as flippantly as she could, “now, who's got double-standard? Is it me or you?”

“But Maurice is mi only bway and yuh an old woman!” Ms. Inez told her in actual fact. “It jus' not the same. Yuh is a woman and should hav' better judgment on these matters!”

“Leave us alone. Maurice is a young man who can make decisions for himself!” she told his mother adamantly.

By the end of the day, Maurice had moved in with her, leaving his mother and younger sister behind in their desperation. Life was hard for his family, but with him gone, there was one less mouth to feed. Besides, living with Ms. Dolcy afforded him a more upgraded lifestyle, and they benefited from his absence. Whatever wages he garnered from doing odd jobs, he handed it over to them.

“De situation isn't suh bad as ah thought it would be,” his mother told Maurice later. “Wi hav' more than wi expected!”

“So, wat yuh think of my woman now?” he'd ask his mother.

“Son, don't ever mention her name to mi ever again?” Ms. Inez had shot back.

Maurice never mentioned his lover's name to his mother ever again. His mother couldn’t accept his love for Ms. Dolcy. In reality, he did, in his own way. It was not out of sheer gratitude but stemmed from genuine passion. She'd brought futuristic ideas about life back from America that had enlightened him. The act of love and making love wasn't “nastiness,” as the villagers called it. By living with Ms. Dolcy, Maurice realized there was something soft and genteel in her manner and how she approached life with ease, unlike the people who toiled and struggled to make ends meet around him. It was the passion they shared that lingered in his mind.

“Let me take yuh inside ah secretive lickle cave named Negrillo,” he told Ms. Dolcy one evening after delivering several bottles of milk.

By then, Maurice had purchased several cows. They birthed many calves, so he employed another young man named Melford to help him in the little side business he had started. Ms. Dolcy said nothing and was not surprised in the least. Being with Maurice had enabled her to relive a second youth—not that she'd died, although living in Broughton sometimes made her feel as if she was not among the living. But that cave of a town started her ascension into awareness and made her live again without fear or regrets. She had emerged, turning a deaf ear against the bitter words tossed at her by shallow-minded villagers who hadn't a notion about romantic love. They lived in a world of sordid judgments about complex human emotions and other longings.

It was sundown when they got to the town of Negril, a place inhabited by the Ciboney Indians thousands of years before. Ms. Dolcy felt young and rejuvenated again as she sat at the edge of the sea cliff, overlooking the waters of the Caribbean. She felt as if she'd entered another world that embraced new ideals as they watched the young, white hippies in dreadlocks frolicking and cooking seafood on the beach.

“I've rented us ah room for two days inna ah local guesthouse run by a local woman called Ms. Rema,” Maurice told her.

He'd gotten used to Ms Dolcy's refined taste after living with her for over ten years. “Mi would lik us to make it wi special rendezvous place.”

She smiled at him, realizing how much they shared even though they were born generations apart. The nautical essence of the surroundings added to the simple pleasures in life. Whenever they could, they’d both frolic about holding hands and kissing. Ms. Dolcy refrained from talking about their future together, for only the moment mattered. At night, when Maurice’s dealings with the tourists were finished, they’d play dominoes with his friends. She’d be the only woman among a group of rowdy men. Ms. Dolcy liked those moments spent with the men for her gender, which made them behave humanely without cursing or drinking too much rum.

Ms. Dolcy had never seen Maurice so happy until that day they spent together with the idealistic white hippies in Negril. That night, as they lay in bed in Ms. Rema's outside cottage, he questioned her about her time spent in America.

“America mus' be ah hell of ah place to live,” surmised Maurice, with a look of adventure in his eyes.

“It has its moments of happiness and down points too,” Ms. Dolcy told him.

She never mentioned to Maurice that America was a country for whites only and that the ambitious black and brown-colored people took their chances despite painstaking prejudice and disbarment from good job opportunities.

“Yes,” she reiterated, “It sure is a hell of a place!”

“So why yuh return?” Maurice had asked her rather quizzically. “Why yuh com' back to such a rubble dump?”

“Look here, Maurice, I have my piece of mind and my sense of dignity. I had to put up with a lot to get so little...” she told him before ending the conversation.

He was unsure of what Ms. Dolcy was trying to tell him, so he fell asleep.

Maurice spent the next morning with his friend, Flavius, shuffling the hippie tourists back and forth from land to beach. He admired their happy-go-lucky nature as they went about their business 'spreading love, not war' in the Negril area. Even though they were on vacation, Maurice decided to help his friend and make some money in the meantime. He hadn't had time to take Ms. Dolcy to the cave he'd promised her, and she spent her time looking out over the desolate cliff, a place no one had visited. Before it got too dark, and Maurice had made enough money transporting the American tourists, he decided to leave Flavius and spend more time with the woman of his choice. He could see that she felt neglected by him as he crept up behind her and grabbed her by the waist. She stood at the edge of the cliff, staring out to sea.

“What do you want to do, frighten me to death?” she yelled in a loud voice.

He laughed at her, but when he spun her around, he could see that Ms. Dolcy was hiding her tears.

“Why the hell did you bring me here if you wanted to spend time with your friend?” she asked him.

“I'm ah man who needs money. I cyann live off yuh forever. It will mek mi lose respect for miself!” Maurice told her.

Ms. Dolcy listened silently, without saying anything at first. Then, she embraced him in a way that told him she understood.

“But you promised to take me to the cave,” she pleaded with him.

“Dat's the reason why mi com' back to tek yuh there wid mi,” he told her, carefully leading her downhill between a maze of complex white and yellow limestone rock formations and other entanglements.

As they both stood at the mouth of the cave, she was tempted to withdraw from going inside because of its darkness, but he gripped her hand so snugly, assuring her she was safe in his care. The cave's entrance smelled of rotted sargassum and mildew. Maurice had no torchlight, for he said he knew every crevice and corner of the cave. His confidence caused her no fear until they encountered a cloud of bats flying into them. Maurice told her they would emerge into light sooner than she knew it. As they moved closer to light, Ms. Dolcy could feel the wetness of cold sea water rushing to her feet, and she remained agitated by the surprise ahead.

“My good God!” she exclaimed when she got to the edge of the underground cove and saw the sparkle of a celestial beam spray its rays upon the transparent, cyan-colored water. “This is heaven on earth!”

Ms. Dolcy watched the violent seawater lash its waves against the rocks that formed the entrance to the cove. She stood in silence, impressed by the awe of her fragile human state, which stood the test of time against the inimitable force of nature before them. Maurice held her from behind and watched in amazement the savaged water as it beat itself against the floor of the cove.

“Before mi met yuh, ah always com' here to think about life and where mi ah guh,” he told her with tenderness in his voice.

Then he kissed her passionately, holding her so tightly as if he wanted to squeeze out the life from her body. She wasn't afraid that the kiss of love could feel just like the kiss of death, obligate and immortal.

“Let us go in for ah swim,” Maurice insisted to Ms. Dolcy.

At first, her whole body shivered as she allowed her thin yellow cotton robe to fall to the cold, wet concrete floor of the cave, revealing her fine, full figure in a black and white polka dot, one-piece bathing suit. Maurice stood before her in brown paisley-colored shorts; Ms. Dolcy had never seen her young lover in pietistic glory before. His young, thick, and broad sable-colored chest puffed up with youthful masculinity. His broad nostrils flared as he grinned at her timidity, crouching down to remove her flimsy straw sandals, causing her shyness to once again resurface, allowing her to forget that she was the older of the two. Ms. Dolcy liked those moments spent with Maurice—when his sense of maturity dominated hers, causing her to feel vulnerable in his presence. When she rose, Maurice could see her shapely figure like that of an Otaheite apple, small at the top but heavy in the rear.

“Let wi go for ah swim!” he suggested excitedly, diving into the anticipative water with its aquamarine clarity.

Ms. Dolcy could see her lover's thick arms moving at great speed in and out of the sea as he swam further. She followed him by climbing down some stable rocks and lowering herself into the water, then began to swim after him. Suddenly, the yell of her lover commanded her to look ahead. There, she saw a gigantic black serpentine creature strike him in his back. He went down into the water thereafter. Racing in fear like an anxious schoolgirl in flight, Ms. Dolcy swam faster to retrieve her young lover. She couldn't find him; she became disoriented from the shock. She remembered going dim before fading away into nothingness.

As the years moved on, Ms. Dolcy had been carrying the secret of what she saw in the cave in her memory. She didn’t reveal it to anyone, for she felt that they would think of her as being delusional. After waking up, she realized she needed to take life as it came and be as flexible as the water that rushed to the seashore. When Maurice decided to join the farm workers program, she understood his urge to become an independent man and not develop the bad habit of living off her hard-earned money.

“Then go! Do what you need to do!” she remembered telling Maurice.

They had spent a decade living together despite all the lashing tongues of the villagers, sending a wave of condemning messages into their ears. The reality of the matter was that Ms. Dolcy knew their love would not last due to their age difference, which had set them apart. Their love had exhausted itself to an apex of delight until it began to fade. Maurice became restless, withering away in that backwater village.

“Mi ah grown man but mi cyann read and write properly. Ah need to better miself and see the world,” Ms. Dolcy remembered her lover telling her.

She understood him clearly, and he didn't need to explain his position to her any further. Many decades before, she had felt herself withering away in her tiny village until she read the advertisement recruiting domestic help for Canada and America. She applied for a position in America, and it came through just in time for her to leave the stagnant island where the beautiful water flowed. However, Ms. Dolcy hadn't revealed the incident in the cave to Maurice, for she would later attribute the encounter with the unknown to be responsible for the drastic change in her discourse on life.

But I did see him clearly, and it wasn't a dream. He stood there looking down at me for a while before flying away, she'd often repeat to herself as the years moved forward.

The experience had left her with confidence, enabling her to live life with a certain candor that allowed no one in the village to taunt her out in the open. The tall, dark giant, with a bird beak's nose and the wings of gold she'd encountered in the cave, had protected them from dying in the torrential swirl of the sea. She had awakened just in time to see the disturbance upon his face while he gazed down at them before flying away. His facial distortion was her inner joy, and from that day on, Ms. Dolcy inherited peace of mind. The mere sight of him had eradicated her sense of conceitedness, which allowed her to give up Maurice so easily. She felt a strong feeling of contentment, knowing that if she didn't find love again, she could live off their love for the years to come.

It had been ages since her former lover had sent her a letter. As the years moved on, his venomous mother, Ms. Inez, spread the message that he'd gotten married to an American and was the father of three. Ms. Dolcy felt happy for him because she had the joy of memory.

“Tell him that I'm happy for him,” she shouted at Ms. Inez with a wave of a hand.

And she did move on graciously without faltering. The silent memories of her young lover kept her going. She was old now but not necessarily lonely. She'd advanced the milk business started by Maurice and made enough profit to enhance her sum. Even when her physical health began to erode, Ms. Dolcy's spiritual countenance remained bolstered. She had been living alone in that same old house they both shared together. The comfort found in her memory of Maurice and the helping hands she received from the church members were the cause for sustaining her long life. She had been waiting for death to arrive, for she felt the ache in her heart for over a year. Ms. Dolcy was sure her neighbors would bury her and take the remains of her hoard. The place where she was going would not welcome such flamboyant objects. Her lace curtains, silverware, dinnerware sets, scented soaps, wall pictures, and lavender sachets would create empty spaces.

As Ms. Dolcy sat in the rocking chair, a strange sensation crossed her, and the same dark figure appeared to her once more, perhaps in reality, or was it a dream?

She dropped the chipped, enamel cup filled with coffee and held in the heavy weight of her heart that was threatening to rip wide open her old brocade duster.

“You've come to take me home,” she whispered to the tall figure of a man with gold feathered wings.

She could clearly see him standing there with a rumpled forehead and an eagle's eye. But before Ms. Dolcy could whisper another word, a glare of light shone through the window and placed itself upon her forehead.

“I've seen the light! MY GOD, I'VE SEEN THE LIGHT!” she repeated before falling from the rocking chair.

S. D. Brown is a postcolonial writer who was born in Kingston, Jamaica. She received a B.A. in Liberal Arts from The New School for Social Research in New York City in 1990 and a M.S. in Literacy from Adelphi University. Her short stories have appeared in Anthurium, Sargasso, Two Thirds North, The Journal of Postcolonial Writing, Adelaide Literary Magazine, issues 71, 81, 83, 84. The premier issue of The Lemonwood Quarterly and the 34th, 37th, and 39th issues of The Caribbean Writer. She's the author of The Roar of the River: Slave Stories Inspired by Thomas Thistlewood Diaries, 1750-1786, published in paperback and Kindle formats on Amazon. She is a member of The International Women’s Writing Guild. Her short story, Planter's Punch, has just been shortlisted for the 9th Adelaide Literary Prize.
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