Chapter Four of my work in progress presents the second portrait of a woman in my life. Auntie Katie was an inextricable part of my childhood. She lived in the adjacent flat in the tenement yard, where we shared the same toilet and bathroom. Unlike other neighbors in the yard, she did not complain if we were too noisy. Perhaps, she considered that we already had our fair share of corporal punishment.

For some reason, she tolerated my curiosity and treated me with kindness. I liked and respected her. In her simple and quiet manner, she taught me that the color of our skin did not matter. What was in our heart mattered. How we treated others, even the little ones, mattered. Though she has been long gone from the world of the living, she remains close to my heart.

In Chapter One of my debut novel, Under the Tamarind Tree, she makes a small appearance as herself. More importantly, she became the inspiration for my most beloved character, Mama Chips, the protagonist’s surrogate mother following his mother’s death when he was thirteen years old.

The period described in Chapter Four is the 1950s and 1960s in then British Guiana.

Chapter Four: Auntie Katie – A Good Neighbor

Auntie Katie—as Mother and we children called her—lived next-door in the bottom flat of our two-story, wooden unit in the tenement yard. After Mother, she was the second most influential adult female during my formative years. A childless widow who lived alone, she seemed ancient to a kid, though she was probably only in her forties. She was an independent, self-reliant woman who didn’t have to put up with an abusive husband like Father. Was that the reason why she had never remarried?

Quite a go-getter when it came to making money to support herself, she was always busy with some task. She spent most of her time washing laundry for clients in the neighborhood. Her wooden wash basin, about two-feet wide and one-foot deep, together with a wooden scrubbing board, sat at the foot of the backstairs where she worked. The cuticles of her fingernails were puffy after years of using the harsh, laundry bar soap. As a curious child, I would watch her apply a soothing balm to the cuticles whenever they became inflamed. She never complained of any pain.

Her other source of income came from the sale of black-pudding, sweet potato pudding, and souse. Making the sausage is messy work. It involves working with the pig’s large intestines and cow’s blood. The intestines or runners, as they are called, are stuffed with seasoned boiled rice or grated sweet potato mixed in cow’s blood, tied to avoid leakage, and then boiled in a large pot. As a kid, I preferred the sweet potato pudding, but the rice-filled pudding became my favorite when I grew older.

While preparing these savory sausages, Auntie Katie always kept her kitchen door closed. The narrow hallway, leading from our flat to the toilet and bathroom that we shared with Auntie Katie, went by her kitchen door. One lucky day on the way to the toilet, I noticed that her kitchen door stood slightly ajar and sneaked a peep. All I spied that day looked like long, huge, slithery, pale-skin worms. No blood.

Black-pudding was always served with souse. Don’t ask me why. Another time-consuming dish to prepare, souse is made with pig face and ears, pig trotters, and pig shoulder steak. They are all boiled until tender. After draining and cooling, the meat is seasoned with onions, pepper, shallot (spring onion), celery leaves, and cucumber, then left to marinate for at least three to four hours in a mixture of lime or lemon juice, vinegar, and water. Auntie Katie’s black-pudding and souse were a special treat for our family on a Saturday evening.

Added to doing other people’s laundry and selling her specialty dishes, Auntie Katie straightened the hair of her young female black clients. Although she worked outdoors in the backyard, we could not avoid the horrid smell of burning hair. In those days, she heated the metal comb over a coal pot.

Used for outdoor cooking, especially in rural areas, the coal pot was an earthenware or cast-iron stove with a top basin, about six inches deep and a foot in diameter, for holding the hot coals. The ash fell through holes in the basin into the hollow cylindrical base about six inches deep. Holes in the base, used for removal of the ash, allowed for air flow.

Straight hair, like that of white people, was the preferred hairstyle for black women. I was not exempt from such vanity. Beginning in my teenage years, I began straightening my wavy hair with large plastic hair rollers. At nights, I endured sleeping with a headful of rollers. The things we women do to achieve the beauty standards of our day!

Every Saturday afternoon, Auntie Katie dressed up in her best outfits—with matching hat, handbag, shoes, and costume jewelry—to attend the African Methodist Episcopal Church, called the AME Church, just two blocks away from home. An active church member, she also took part in church events to raise funds for the poor or to go on excursions to places outside of Georgetown, the capital city. She took Mother, me, and two other siblings—old enough to know not to give the grownups any trouble—on some of the excursions. On one occasion, when I was six or seven years old, Mother and I joined Auntie Katie on a two-week stay with her relatives in New Amsterdam, the second largest urban area, about fifty-eight miles by rail from Georgetown.

Reflecting now on that period of our joint lives as neighbors, I believe that Auntie Katie, in her own little way, did what she could to give Mother time away from her hellish day-to-day life.

To help Mother raise money for the downpayment of a newer model of the Singer sewing machine, the one with the foot pedal, Auntie Katie invited Mother to join her box-hand with her trusted friends from the AME Church. The box-hand is a savings scheme in which each participant makes a fixed weekly or monthly contribution. The total sum received in the box-hand is given to the person when it is her turn to ‘draw.’ Mother kept a record of her contributions and the group’s ‘drawings’ on a calendar hanging on the kitchen wall. She and Auntie Katie had a terrible argument and falling-out over Mother’s turn to receive the box-hand. Good friends fall out, I learned then, and can make up again.

Auntie Katie and Mother disagreed about the best man to lead our country to independence from Britain. Auntie Katie was a staunch supporter of Forbes Burnham, the leader of the majority black political party. She raised money for his political party through the sale of her black-pudding and souse at the party’s fundraising events. I recall an incidence when Burnham, the British-trained lawyer and party leader—he would have been in his mid-thirties at the time—visited her flat to collect his black-pudding order. For her as a black woman, he was the black Moses who had been raised up by God to free the Guianese black people from white oppression. A gifted speaker who loved to quote the Bible, he enthralled her with his charisma.

Mother did not like him. “He got too much sweet-mouth,” Mother told Auntie Katie, referring to Burnham’s flattering talk to win people over to his side.

Despite their differences, Auntie Katie looked out for Mother and for us children. When Mother had to deliver a client’s dresses or buy sewing materials, Auntie Katie would keep an eye on us. The incident that sealed my high regard for her occurred one Christmas season, just two days before Christmas Day. Mother was too busy with her sewing to take me, my brother, and sister—the three eldest children—to visit Santa Claus, as she had promised us for good behavior. Auntie Katie offered to take us. Off we went by bus to the downtown shopping area to the two top department stores, Bookers Stores and Fogarty’s, to pay for and receive our Christmas presents from Santa Claus himself. What joy for a poor kid!

Although the Burnham government’s restrictive policies affected her as a poor working-class woman, Auntie Katie remained a loyal party member to the end of her life. When they attain power, the men that we women support, in our joint struggle for freedom and justice, do not always have our best interests at heart.