Back in the early 2000’s, growing up on the island of St. Kitts, a tiny island in the West Indies, my childhood could have been quite a terrible experience for me if it wasn’t for the infinite love of my family. From what I understood, in 1993, my father had convinced my mother that he was leaving the island for New York to seek work, when I was about two years old, leaving both me, my mother and my older brother behind.
It was quite a strange experience for me growing up without my father’s presence. I barely knew him because I was so young when he left. Dark clouds of emotions would rain a sense of jealousy and unhappiness upon me when I would see my friends with both parents active in their lives.
My father would visit the island once a year, every Christmas, but that just wasn’t enough. I was a child and quite fragile, I needed to be cradled, I needed to feel that sense of protection of a “father”, that of which I have yet to feel. I have yet to understand how this man who was supposed to be my father, my first male role model, someone I am supposed love, respect and to look up to would fly over 2000 miles from New York to St. Kitts to visit us with his hands swinging, as if his children need not to be fed and clothed. When my mother would comment on the matter, he would always have excuses as to why he couldn’t contribute to the rightful upbringing of his own flesh and blood.
Of course, she believed and was quite submissive to him, for he was her first love, but little did she know. The world is such a small place, and, it’s true that what happens in the dark always make way to light, for it was an uncle of mine, relative by marriage, who was able to unravel and expose a few of my father’s dark secrets. Apparently, my uncle had attended an annual Caribbean party held in the Bronx, sometime in the mid 1990’s, where he met this lady through some mutual friends.
They all ate, drank and danced and had a grand time together, but my uncle was never a fan of alcohol because he was a strong believer in the faith of Rastafarianism. One of his favorite quotes opposing alcohol were, “God made Ganja, and man made alcohol. In whom must I trust?” After the party the party was over, my uncle volunteered to be the designated driver and chaperone to his companions, including his newly made compadre after he recognized they might have been a bit knackered and too intoxicated to have made it home on their own.
For some reason she was this new friend of my uncle was the last passenger to be taken home, I guess it was meant to happen that way. Along their journey, they were getting to know each other, being that they had so much in common and were both from the same island but different parishes. They started sharing information on where they came from and how they both ended up in New York.
I guess she thought my uncle was into her, because for some strange reason she started getting into details about who her husband was and where he was from originally and that they both had three children together. This revelation was quite a shocker for my uncle, not because out of the blue she started she started sharing unrequested details about her husband and their children, but because he knew exactly who her husband was because both played soccer together and ate dinner at my aunt’s house almost every Sunday. Her husband was my father; my father had been living a double life.
