In the last three chapters, I’ve shared the stories of three women who played important roles in shaping the person I would become: Mother, Auntie Katie, and Auntie Baby. In Chapter Six of my work in progress, I tell the story about the handsome, young seminarian who entered my life and changed its course: Michael (fictitious name), my first love. At thirteen years old when we first met, I had already developed a close relationship with Jesus, but it was Michael who set me on the path to the religious life.

My deepening relationship with Jesus was a well-guarded secret. To speak of my love for Jesus was out of the question. As I’ve mentioned in an earlier chapter, we were not a family of huggers and kissers. What’s more, those three little words “I love you” were not uttered among us.

For right or wrong, good or evil, truth or deception, I was shaped by the society that sustained me. During those early days of youthful innocence, our country was undergoing political, economic, and social upheavals that would later remold my self-identity.

Chapter Six: My Secret Love

Mother and Father were not church goers, nor did they share any religious beliefs with us kids. Father, though, told us stories about his encounters with the spirit world. We learned about the time a spirit sat down at the foot of his bed. Did the spirit say anything, we asked him? Was it someone he knew? He had lost both of his parents at a young age. Father didn’t see the spirit nor hear any sound. But he had seen the indentation of the bed where the spirit sat watching him. He remembered shivering with cold. My young mind was enthralled.

Several times, he told us, in the quiet of the night, a spirit would call his name. Father didn’t know why. He always took it as a warning of trouble to come. Trouble always seemed to follow him, Mother used to say. Like the day, during a cricket match with his friends, the hard cricket ball struck him in the face, breaking his nose. Distrustful of doctors, Father never got his nose fixed. It healed crooked, making his handsome face mean-looking whenever he got angry.

Was the woman we called “Grandmother” watching over us? At the time, she was the only person I knew who had passed away. Auntie Baby told us that, after her adopted mother’s death, she sometimes heard her rocking chair creak in the adjacent bedroom she occupied in life.

Stories of individual encounters with spirits of white slave owners and overseers abounded in our small world. The brutality of slavery and indentureship haunted us still. The tormented souls of our ancestors seemed to cry out to us from the earth beneath our feet.

Such experiences that we humans are also spiritual beings, with souls that live on after death, became an indisputable part of my belief system. From an early age, my soul was as real to me as my face, hands, and beating heart. My acceptance of an invisible divine being, Creator of the Universe, came as natural as breathing.

When Auntie Baby moved in with us in the tenement yard bottom flat, I began attending Sunday Mass with her. As I learned more about God our Creator at primary school run by Catholic nuns, my life changed. Belief in the divine power residing in my soul gave me the courage to face my fears and deal with the violence that was part of our everyday lives. After completing elementary school, I moved on to the high school managed by the same religious community.

I was a thirteen-year-old junior high school student when a handsome seminarian entered my life. Michael, the nineteen-year-old son of the landlord of our Queenstown bottom flat, returned home in August that year while we were on school holidays. At the time, he was studying for the priesthood at the seminary located at the Mount Saint Benedict Abbey in the Caribbean Island of Trinidad. During his first week home, my siblings and I became his captivated audience. Bible stories, like that of David and Goliath, kept my three younger brothers still and quiet, at least for a while.

On Sunday mornings, off we all went to church with Michael. He encouraged us to attend daily morning Mass, but I was the only one who prevailed after he returned to Trinidad. Witnessing his love for God set my feet firmly on the path to a devout Christian life.

My religious fervor grew in high school where, in our Religious Knowledge classes, I became acquainted with the life and teachings of Jesus. I had no doubt: Jesus loved me. His love resided in my soul, the deepest and innermost place of my being. My secret place where no one else could enter.

When my curves filled out into a blooming fifteen-year-old young lady, Michael began to see me in a different light. The morning he took me to Church on his bicycle, I was in heaven. When we got to church, he didn’t sit next to me but took the seat behind me. Before Mass, while I was seated in the pew, he knelt behind me, his head close to my right ear. “You have a beautiful neck,” he whispered.

That year, my admiration for the seminarian grew into infatuation. Whenever I heard the clang of the landlord’s gate, I ran to our front window to watch Michael ride by on his bicycle. My heart hammered with excitement. Mother’s keen eyes didn’t miss the new development in our friendship. During one of his conversations with Mother, with me present, Michael mentioned that, if he ever chose to marry, he would like to have a large family. I wanted no children but said nothing. Besides, marriage was not part of my plans for the future.

Another time, when the subject of cooking came up, Michael said that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. I fell for the bait and invited him to dinner. Father showed me how to prepare his Chinese chicken recipe, a favorite of mine. I reveled in Michael’s company as he sat across from me at our dining room table to eat what I had prepared for him. Mother showed no disapproval of my flirtation with the landlord’s son.

Father’s intentions took a different course. One of his Chinese friends, Trevor, a young man in his twenties whose family owned and operated a hardware store in downtown Georgetown, showed an interest in me. When I told Trevor about my plans to enter the convent, he tried winning me over to his church, Jehovah’s Witnesses. We often got into heated religious discussions. Their belief that only 144,000 people would enter God’s Kingdom in Heaven at the End of Days was one of my top issues of disagreement. Assured that his church held the truth, he would smile at me as I defended my position.

With the permission of Mother and Father, I accepted Trevor’s invitation for a ride on his new motorcycle. I clung to him around his waist, exhilarated with the wind in my face and hair. On another occasion, he took me to the cinema to watch a movie I had indicated an interest in seeing. No kiss occurred, much to my best friend’s disappointment.

As a senior high art student, I had Trevor pose for a portrait done in pencil. He thanked me with a box of small tubes of acrylic paints, made in China. The paints were a hit with the other two students in our advanced art class. Imported Chinese products were rare in the late 1960s. When he discovered that I liked the Chinese sour candy dried plums, he began bringing me a packet on subsequent visits.

Imagine my shock, the day he broke the news of his upcoming marriage. I refused to believe him. He had never brought any girl to our house during his visits with Father.

“I’ll believe you when I see you two at the altar,” I told him.

Trevor just gave me his usual all-knowing smile, guaranteed to irk me.

The news also surprised Father.

“When you see so,” Mother said, after Trevor had left, “it must be an arranged marriage.”

The following month, together with Mother and Father, I attended Trevor’s wedding reception held at the Chinese Association building. On observing the newlyweds together, I had to agree with Mother’s assumption. The bride was like a swan; the bridegroom was more like a rooster.

That same year, Michael was ordained to the priesthood. Other teenage girls flocked to hear him say Mass, robbing me of his sole attention. Over the next two years, before I left home to enter the convent, our paths rarely crossed as he no longer returned to his father’s house in Queenstown for the August holidays.

I could tell that Father was disappointed in not having Trevor as a son-in-law—a young man he liked and trusted and who would’ve given me financial security. What Father couldn’t see or refused to accept was that I had already made my choice. My heart belonged only to Jesus the Nazarene, my secret love.