AN UNTRAMPLED PATH

When she was young, Ms. Ivy May Tallon had separated herself from her three elder siblings. It was her way to avoid falling down a familiar path. She didn't want to follow their mundane direction.

Up there, behind the grassy hill, there was a fruitful Rose Apple tree that bore an abundance of scrumptious red fruits. Everyone would pick from its branches, leaving it bare. They never nourished or watered its roots, but the tree continued sprouting apples each season. Ivy May recognized the vulnerability of the tree, so she never stripped it of its fruit. In fact, she forged a different path to get around the tree, alleviating the temptation to pluck it. Her divergent direction separated her from her three other sisters: Nettie, Cornelia, and Dellmarie. But there was no turning back to meet them halfway on the trail.

They were a family of four handsome and healthy girls who owned a chicken farm in Dias, Hanover. Their father, Hugh Tallon, had died when they were very young, leaving their mother, Ms. Hermine, to carry the weight. They were a poor but plucky clan who survived on their nimbleness and wit until their mother died some years later. Ms. Hermine had sheltered her daughters from being battered by the winds that passed over their lives before she died. When the biggest wind came, it nailed her onto the wall, lashing itself against her tattered body, killing her instantly.

“What will we all do now that Mama is gone?” asked Cornelia.

She was the eldest sister, tamarind-brown in skin tone, with a tall, slender, and elegant figure like an African warrior.

“We'll continue as we've always done—the same way Mama carried on after Daddy died,” replied Nettie.

Nettie was the smart, odd-looking, plump one with her ruddy skin and freckles. She had a mass of thick, woolly red hair piled on top of her head, and she glared at others with calculating, see-through, pale, blue-gray eyes.

“But after a while, we have to part ways to live our own lives,” commented Dellmarie, the second sister, who was the prettiest of all four girls. Her long, curled eyelashes were the talk of the district, and her natural charm won people over. She would later move to Kingston and marry a Lebanese rum merchant.

“That's all I ever wanted, to live my own life as I see fit,” Ivy May said in a low and timid voice that did not stand out from the crowd.

She was robust in stature and displayed a manly disposition, unlike her sisters. She wore her deceased father's old clothes, donned a red, gold, and green-colored tam1 on her head (the colors of the Rastafarian flag), and behaved “common and vulgar.” She would later conceal her gender and work on the dock as a longshoreman at Kingston Harbor. She would go by the name of “Roxroy,” while her teammates shortened it to “Roxie.” No one knew she was a woman and admired her fierce independence and shrewdness.

At first, the three other sisters couldn't conceive Ivy May’s diversion from the usual dichotomy as they tried hard to accept her as a part of their lives. Their mother, Ms. Hermine, an unconventional woman, would have welcomed her with open arms if she knew. But she didn't live to see Ivy May break free from her “dark” personality. Ivy May had hidden herself, molding her personality to whatever her family wanted her to be until her mother's death. After this, she blossomed into a “Jack in full bloom” and felt happy as a lark.

“Why don't you stay on the chicken farm and take Mama's place,” Cornelia asserted to Ivy May. “You're the most capable one on the farm because you worked alongside Mama all your life.”

Ivy May was young, shy, and somewhat compliant with her sisters’ wishes. Although her heart felt miles away, she remained sanguine amid the strain. So, some two months after the death of their mother, she quietly slipped away, leaving a note that she'd gone to Kingston and would never return.

“I guess she wanted us to carry on without her, so we'll go on,” said Cornelia. “I must have pushed her too much!”

The other sisters stood by in wonderment and thought about how a seemingly diffident younger sister could have taken it upon herself to run away to a big city like Kingston.

“Trust me, she has her own reasons to run,” replied Nettie. “Staying in the country wasn't a part of her plan!”

“I'm proud of her. Living on the farm will trap us here forever,” added Dellmarie. “When Mama died, she willed us to this place of death!”

The other sisters turned their heads to look at Dellmarie with mutinous rapture. But the baby sister knew what was in store for her had she stayed on the farm with her sisters: she'd be used up for her equanimity. Ivy May decided to take the road less traveled— branching out into her own person. She refused to see them until she was sure they wouldn't try to change her mind or make snide remarks about her lifestyle or unconventional choices.

Unbeknownst to her sisters, Ivy May kept track of their every move through Bonnette Lyn, a close-mouthed, very feminine woman from the district whom she groomed to trust her.

“This will be my special way of not letting go. They shouldn't know that I still check in so I can be part of their lives as I've always been,” Ivy May told Bonnette Lyn when she met her on the dock in Kingston about a year later.

Bonnette Lyn was surprised at Ivy May’s new appearance. She'd grown bold and her soft, pretty, oval-shaped face had become angular and sharp in the jaws.

“Call me Roxie, for no one here knows me by any other name,” she told Bonnette Lyn.

Bonnette Lyn knew of the “anythin' goes” lifestyle Kingston was famous for and saw that it suited Roxie very well. She'd taken up with a series of womenfolk who wore masks of approbation. They'd all meet in a local bar, not far from the docks. All drinking men went there, attracting flirtatious women who loved the nightlife. They'd sit around, talking, drinking, loving, and getting into fights. The women loved Roxie for her fun-loving ways, and she never left the bar without taking a pretty one home.

“You've taken on a new identity, one that you like. I hope that someday your sisters will fully understand,” Bonnette Lyn told her.

There was nothing unconventional in the mountainous town of Dias, Hanover, in the mid- fifties. The women knew their proper place, and the men took advantage of their feminine nature. The wives were expected to be loyal and kind, turning the other cheek to their men's promiscuity and lack of discretion.

“I just didn't want to sit around, hiding my 'Man Royal' 2 self. I had to be me,” Roxie told Bonnette Lyn. “Town was where I dreamed of livin', but I kept it to myself, pretendin' to be loyal to Mama's wishes.”

“But didn't you know of women like you who lived under the table in Dias?” asked Bonnette Lyn.

“I heard some rumors, but no one lived out loud as I do now. Still, they all think that I'm a man and wasn't born a woman. If they knew, I might get a good whipping or even raped by men who think that giving me a lot of teelie 3 will change me back into bein' ‘normal,’” answered Roxie.

But Bonnette Lyn realized that Roxie didn't know the entire story of women loving one another in the parish of Hanover because their private lives were tucked away neatly in the silence of pretense by the ones who dared. Rowena Nangle was one of those successful Man Royals who warded off suspicion whenever her friend, Nesta, would come from the parish of St. Elizabeth for a short stay.

Both were middle-aged women who masked their same-sex preference by marrying other men. But some women were convinced of their “strange” orientation, especially when rumors emerged that they were spotted naked, rubbing soup up on each other's bodies by the clear-water stream in Flower Hill.

“Are you tellin' me that you've never heard stories about those women?” Bonnette Lyn asked Roxie during one of those visits.

“No. I haven't heard any of those stories, and I do not know those women!” said Roxie in surprise.

Whether or not she'd heard stories of such women, Roxie wouldn't have stayed in Dias anyway. Life on the farm entrapped her and made her feel obligated to a family business she had no interest in continuing. Nettie carried the weight after Ivy May left her sisters in secret. Roxie knew if she didn't take up the challenge, someone else would.

“Nettie has expanded the farm by adding domestic animals like goats, cows, and pigs,” Bonnette Lyn told Roxie.

“There was even talk of her marrying Buckley Ebanks, who farms breadfruit and pimento.”

“I'm happy one of us chose to stay. As long as it wasn't me!” exclaimed Roxie.

She hated farm life even though she knew a lot about it. She might have been the “rough and tough” one, as Dellmarie called her, but she wasn't cut out for that path. Everyone in the town of Dias would depend on Nettie's service as they did her mother's. Everyone would owe her money, taking supplies on credit, never paying her back until she sued them in court. Such a life of hassle!

Her sisters would go to her for advice and to temporarily escape from their problematic marriages and cheating lovers. Nettie would have the antidotes for their woes. But all these dilemmas brought on by people that Nettie had to solve, will eventually eat her alive!

In Kingston, life didn't stand still. It moved like a movie camera, shifting scenes and capturing the memorable moments during the lives of its inhabitants. The women were walking down the pavement on the Kingston wharf, feeling the abrasive breeze lash their faces. As they chatted, they could see the shirtless boys diving for pennies thrown into the water by the amusing white tourists.

Fishermen brought their old, picturesque wooden boats near after a hard day at sea. The commingling sounds of the boats and chattering of the fishermen attempted to block out Bonnette Lyn's voice, so they decided to cross the street to sit on a bench near a hotel.

“TELL ME ROXIE,” said Bonnette Lyn shouting. HAVE YOU EVER HEARD OF A SYRIAN WOMAN CALLED MIRIAM MAHFOOD?”

“NO,” she replied, shouting.

The women crossed the street before Roxie answered.

“When I was a little girl, she used to go with this Indian woman named Veneta Rambaran. Tell me, you didn't hear about them loving each other?” asked Bonnette Lyn.

“I knew of them when I was a child. In fact, they both gave me a big, pink, rock candy once to soothe me from crying when Anman Johnson and his friends tried to disrobe me when coming from the shop.”

“They were good-looking women, weren't they? Could both pass for being sisters, ” said Bonnette Lyn

“You mean, they were both Man Royals too?” “Yeh!”

The two women were spinsters all their lives. One was a superb cook, and the other ran a bar with a jukebox. At night, all the barflies in the village of Dias would go to Veneta's bar from midnight 'till early morning to drink beer, eat jerk chicken, dance ska, and get loud. Women freely danced with women without anyone making a fuss, but batty men4 and troublemaking "sodomites" dared not dance together, for it was forbidden. They would get stoned, beaten, or even cut. In that tiny village from which Roxie escaped, women lived brave lives in private. If the women were perceived to be "Man Royals," they'd be called "crazy" or even "weird." Some would receive scorn as if they carried a lethal disease, but no one tried to kill them as they did the batty men.

“Don't worry. Only Cornelia suspects who you are,” Bonnette Lyn told Roxie. “But I'm not so sure the others do. She is even aware that I bring you news of them in Kingston all the time. You see, she has her spies in Kingston who scout you out on the wharf where you work. They bring news back to her about your dressing like a man. She never mentioned anything more to me except that she hopes the mask you wear helps you get a better-paying job,” said Bonnette Lyn.

Roxie took a deep breath while Bonnette Lyn continued.

“What the family doesn't understand is why you've forsaken them as if they never existed. As you know, your sister, Dellmarie, the pretty one, is living in Mona Heights now with her Lebanese husband. She's the one you have to contend with because of the lifestyle you've chosen.”

But Roxie's preference in lifestyle was nobody's business but her own. Like the Man Royal women Bonnette Lyn spoke of, Roxie had also been keeping her private life behind closed doors. People dared not enter through its door if they weren't welcomed or prepared. Condemnation and backwardness were outright wrong! She didn’t encourage such violent talks about same-sex love both in men and women. She believed people ought to choose whom they love regardless of gender.

“I wish there was a place for us to be who we want to be,” Roxie told Bonnette Lyn.

“Those women you spoke about should have had the freedom to live out their hearts in public, not in private. What is the difference between a man loving a woman and a woman loving a woman? Isn’t love the same feeling for all? There’s too much condemnation about love being perceived as strange.”

Bonnette Lyn was accepting and open-minded from the very beginning. Ivy May knew her as a teenager attending the tiny Dias school. They both attended Sunday school together, although Bonnette Lyn was several grades ahead. Every Sunday, she'd visit Ms. Seraphin, a brown-skinned woman in her thirties who lived high up in the green hills of Hanover. Ms. Seraphin was brisk in manner and wore man's slacks and feminine white blouses with frills, lace, and bows that Bonnette Lyn's mother made for her. Roxie never thought anything about their meetings. At least, not until…

“Do you remember Ms. Seraphin and how she would lure pretty, young teenage girls to her two-bedroom house surrounded by cornfields and Jack Fruit trees?” asked Bonnette Lyn.

“Of course, I do,” said Roxie.

“Well, she was a Man Royal too. Mama used to make meals for me to take to her every Sunday evening because she lived alone. I'd walk the great distance up the steep hill without looking back at the sea behind me. When I arrived, I had to go through effaced barbed wire fences and the cornfield in front of her house. There, I'd spot some fair-skinned juvenescent girls walking around topless, bouncing their jiggly breasts while only wearing big, white cotton bloomers. Some of the girls would go stalk naked, wandering around with garlands on their heads made from red hibiscus flowers. They acted as if they didn't have any care in the world. Ms. Seraphin offered them a certain freedom from the contentious tongues of their guardians. No one among them thought it was perverted or even odd. It was the girls’ natural choice to frolic around."

“But what about you, Bonnette Lyn? Didn't you stop by Ms. Seraphin from time to time?” asked Roxie.

With eyes wide opened and a Joker's smile, Bonnette Lyn stared into Roxie's face before speaking.

"Yes, I did at first until my mother found out and put a stop to it. But I tell you, it's the most memorable time of my life. Ms. Seraphin welcomed all the girls condemned by society. When we all frolicked around her, we could show our true colors. No one judged us or viewed us as odd. Some of us found partners, while others remained unlucky in love. I knew I belonged to such a group of womenfolk from the beginning. I think you suspected it too, and that's why you chose me as a go- between with you and your family."

"Believe it or not, I didn't suspect a thing. I only knew you when you were a tomboy one minute and a girly-girl the next. By the time I graduated high school and left for Kingston, you had already started to work at Mr. Crawford's haberdashery. I wanted the freedom and the self-confidence you carried around when you visited Ms. Seraphin. I didn't know about her preference. All I knew was she was free.”

That freedom experienced by Ms. Seraphin's semi-clad girls was what moving to Kingston offered Roxie. When she got there some fifteen years before, she was only seventeen years old, fresh from the country. She was told she could feel free there. But when she arrived, it was a different story.

Man Royals didn't live freely. They had to hide as they did in the country. Yet, strangely, Kingston offered the freedom from small-town gossip and other stigmas. No one knew Roxie was a woman, so she could easily pass as a man. She wore a waistband to flatten her protruding breasts and picked up the bad habit of smoking a pipe that belonged to her deceased father. That's how she met Lindie, her first lover.

"Mantuh's 5 always sniff each other out. It's our special gift to know each other's nature," Lindie told Roxie on their first meeting at the Victoria Crafts Market near the waterfront in Kingston.

Lindie was a craft vendor who sold straw hats and bags to the tourists who frequented the area. She was some ten years older than Roxie, wore feminine clothing, was slightly plump in body weight, and clean as a whistle. Both women knew they had a lot in common from their first meeting. They'd sit on the grass under a row of Royal Palms trees and share lunch. By then Roxie had talked her way into a job on the nearby wharf as a stevedore.

"Life is worth livin' since you came into my life," she told Lindie. "For me, Kingston was lonely before you came, " Lindie told her.

Lindie was more experienced in life and love than Roxie, and when the women met, the flame of life was set on fire. She was taken under Lindie's wing and learned the trade of living in Kingston before branching out on her own and finding new loves. Roxie hadn't forgotten Lindie and had always credited her for breaking her in. The two women would meet from time to time to talk about the early days and how free life was.

"In Kingston, I love any woman I want because everyone thinks I'm a man," Roxie revealed to Bonnette Lyn.

After Lindie showed her the ropes, Roxie's life "took off like lightning," as the expression goes, and she always moved forward, never backward. After Lindie, she loved a lot of good-looking women, but she never found the one she was looking for. In same-sex love, life could be lonely for one has to be careful when approaching a new prospect. No one wants to get hurt or feel embarrassed when treading new waters. Roxie waited for that “special one” but nobody came. Until…

"That special person should share my heart as well as my soul," she told Bonnette Lyn. "She must understand me through and through, know where I've come from, and want to travel the path with me; we must stick together through thick and thin."

As the day went on, Bonnette Lyn continued telling Roxie about the lives of her sisters, their histories, and how their decisions turned out for them. Cornelia, the tall and elegant sister, migrated to England, following Bertram Henlam, the man with whom she fell in love. She hated England from the very beginning and when their relationship fell apart, she returned to Dias. She never married but has been living happily in the district.

"What they say I can accomplish in England, I could do it right here," she later told Bonnette Lyn.

Cornelia went on to become a teacher, a career she enjoyed for the last decade.

Dellmarie was the success story, for she left the village and went to Kingston, falling in love with a man called Ferman. Now and then, she'd visit and bring her two boys, Waris and Edward. When she'd visit, her husband never came because he was too busy.

"You know," Dellmarie revealed to Bonnette Lyn one day after seeing her at the marketplace in Lucea, "I know you're aware of Ivy May's whereabouts. If you see her, tell her that we miss her and we all want to see her."

She was the sister that Roxie feared the most because of her social position and hypocritical discourses. She had tried to avoid her even though they both lived in Kingston.

"But you women should try to work it out before you decide on not liking each other," Bonnette Lyn told her.

"I guess you're right, but I don't know where to begin," said Roxie. "Her hitey-hitey 6 self must go out the window for me to put up with her."

But the sister who took the most brutal beating was Nettie. Dedicated to the task of carrying on the family's legacy, Nettie decided to stay home and run the chicken farm after Roxie rejected the idea. But the rigorous task kept her domesticated in the same area, never trying anything new. She sometimes felt overwhelmed, wanting to chuck it all, running far away, leaving it behind. But she stayed as Ms. Hermine had done. Everyone came to her for advice, always taking, never giving.

"The last time I saw them all together, they were having a ball. Nettie had a great, big banquet and all her closest friends and family members were invited— except you. You chose to stay away.

They all ate and drank, danced, laughed and chatted. Nettie ran around, making sure everyone felt welcome. But no one asked anything about her well-being. I noticed when the party ended, no one stayed back to help clean the mess. I stayed because I caught her cursing under her breath," Bonnette Lyn revealed.

Nettie had taken their mother's place alright, while she fought hard to escape that fate. No one pushed her into the position to act as the shelter from the storm. As Roxie had seen too many times over, the lacerations Ms. Hermine received when she used her back to block the cataclysmic winds brought on great pain. No one ran to soothe her from the effects of its damage. Nettie would be worn out in no time.

"Thank you for helping Nettie," said Roxie in a congratulatory way.

"You've become the strength I never had after Mama died. You've always listened to me and have never stunted my growth."

But when Bonnette Lyn placed her hand on Roxie's shoulders to thank her for the compliment, she stared straight into her eyes, knowing without an inch of doubt that her special friend had finally come home.

1Tam- a deep, woolen hat, normally used by Rastafarians to cover their locks.
2Man Royal- a butch woman.
3Teelie- penis.
4Batty men- gay men.
5Mantuh- another name to call a lesbian who dresses like a man.
6Hitey-titey- snobbish; looking down on someone you think is less because of social status.

S. D. Brown 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 story entitled, A View from Across the Soursop Tree was published (under the name Sandra Brown) in the Vol. 15, 2019 in Anthurium: University of Miami. Her short stories entitled, Love with the Calypso Cricketer, Love and Decline Amid the Crown Heights Riots, I Know Where I Came From But I'm Not So Sure Where I'm Goin' and Another Country But The Same Ole Friggin' Story, were published both in the 34th and 37th issues of The Caribbean Writer. A Crack in the Well, appeared in the 19-20 issue of Sargasso: Digital Library of the Caribbean. Where My Father Lies appears in Two Thirds North Stockholm University, 2024. Epitaph by her Grave was published in The Journal of Postcolonial Writing (University of Northampton, UK) Taylor and Francis. She is a member of the International Women Writers' Guild.