In Hindsight.

The drive up the high, winding mountains increased Kendra’s anxieties. Nothing was detectable in the dense darkness, except for the two permanent beams from the jeep's headlights. The narrow roads, dotted with unsuspecting potholes, were just as Kendra remembered. Her father's sister, Aunt Travis, had shown little interest in slowing over the holes since leaving the airport in Kingston, Jamaica.

Halfway up the mountain, the jeep stopped in front of a small wooden shop. A few men were sitting under a gas lamp playing dominoes and drinking rum. Kendra watched as Aunt Travis left the engine running and walked into the dimly-lit building. The memory of her father was present in the aroma of overripe mangos, and in the white liquor she detected on the domino table. Minutes later, Aunt Travis returned, carrying a loaf of hard-dough bread. Kendra wanted to ask if the bread was for the funeral, but she could not. She also wanted to ask Aunt Travis about her ex-husband George, and about her son Michael, but she could not bring herself to do so.

Deciding to return for her father’s burial was not an easy decision for Kendra. She would have stayed away if it were not for the criticism she knew would come from Aunt Travis. Her father, Henry, was not the most pleasant man. She knew him only by his furious temper that would appear like the unsuspecting potholes. She remembered him pinning her down as he slapped her face over and over again.

“You father,” Kendra recalled her mother telling her. “He was never a drunkard. He just loved his liquor too much.”

The jeep continued up the hill. The thought of seeing everybody again for the first time since leaving with her mother for England, made Kendra uncomfortable.

“He would have killed us. I feared that he was going to flog you to death with that belt. His rum would have let him do it. You’ll never see him again,” her mother had told her, months after arriving in England.

The jeep swung off the main road and in through two concrete posts that supported a wooden gate. Seconds later, they were slowing over a sloping pebbled path, occupied by a host of fireflies. A large colonial house with a long veranda caught the headlights of the jeep. Kendra held her breath. Aunt Travis switched the engine off and pushed the jeep door open. It was the emptiness that Kendra noticed at first, and then the singing of the night insects. How different the atmosphere was from all those years ago when her grandmother had died. There were no large gatherings of friends, neighbours, or people wanting to pay thier final respects. This realisation soothed Kendra’s anxieties a little. She stepped down from the jeep onto the gravelled path and remembered running down the slope towards the house over a decade before, to escape her father’s wrath. Henry had staggered up to the doorway cursing Aunt Travis to send her out, but Aunt Travis would not. Years later, after coming home from church in England, Kendra’s mother said to her:

“Write to him if you want, he is you father.”

Kendra’s letters were few. She had very little to say and Henry never replied. When her mother died, Kendra received a single telephone call from him.

“You mother’s sins catch up wid her. Am calling to tell you dis. You know noting bout our lives before you were born. I was only doing me best. I tried to make life easy. But I couldn’t please her. I didn’t beat you wid noting to harm you. Now you’re in England alone. You see the fruit of her labour?”

It had taken Kendra some time to heave her large grey case from the back of the jeep. When she did, she buckled under its weight and had to let it fall.

“Bring cool clothes. The weather is the only ting in Jamaica dat stay the same,” Aunt Travis’s voice had echoed down the phone-line. “You father need burial clothes. He was never a big man and the rum sucked him out at the end.”

This was the first and the last gift Kendra would ever give to him. Standing in the store two days before, she remembered his khaki shirt blowing in the wind as they travelled on his bicycle to the beach for their Sunday afternoon dip. Her mother begging him not to drink before the swim. He never drank on those days, he was always cautious around water.

“It’s a pity you mother took you away from him so dat you never get to know him properly,” Aunt Travis had told her over the telephone.

The suitcase remained on its side until Aunt Travis stomped across the veranda. She picked the case up and carried it through a crowded lounge, then into a small bedroom. Kendra followed her in.

“I’ll leave you bag here and I won’t tell you how glad I am to see you. You mother was no saint, you will see for you’self.”

Kendra sat down on the single bed, under the sedating glow of the lightbulb. Traces of Michael were present in the room. His graduation gown and cap hung like a sacrifice behind the wooden door.

Kendra opened up the suitcase and removed the suit she had brought for her father’s burial. It was still cold with the English weather. She ran her hand over the fabric, ironing out the creases before taking it into the hall and showing it to Aunt Travis.

“Had you mother told you who you father was? Did she tell you why Henry used to beat you so much? Did she tell you why she really left Jamaica?” Aunt Travis said before leaving the room.

Out in the lounge, Kendra sat down on a patterned settee. Aunt Travis returned from the kitchen, carrying a dish with fried fish and a few slices of the hard-dough bread.

“You uncle George him coming to see you. Him not coming to see me, jus you. You cousin Michael might fly over for the funeral, I wrote to him.”

The fried fish still had their eyes open. Kendra felt uncomfortable at the thought of seeing uncle George again. She remembered her mother warning her:

“Don’t let you father see you talking to George. You know how much you father hate him and he will beat you again.”

Kendra stared at the dead fish and took a slice of bread from the dish.

“You know you travel all the way from England to find out who you really are!” Aunt Travis said. “Henry didn’t want you to know until him dead. It would a hurt him heart too much. Eat, you mus be hungry from the plane journey.”

A familiar feeling of dread occupied Kendra’s thoughts. Had she really travelled all the way from England to discover a hidden secret? She replayed Aunt Travis’s words: You uncle George him coming to see you. Henry didn’t want you know any of dis until him dead. Did you mother tell you why you father used to beat you so much? She could feel her anxieties returning.

Uncle George arrived an hour later, guided by a torch along the footpath. Aunt Travis showed him to a seat on the veranda and accepted the bushel of mint he had brought her. He thanked her for hosting Kendra and spent a few minutes grinning and nodding in silence. Kendra had adopted a tense position on a wicker stool opposite him. She watched the fireflies floating in the dark and listened as uncle Goerge breathed heavily.

“You knew none of dis," he finally said. "You might want to blame you mother, but she was never alone in dis. I put myself where I shouldn’t have gone. I wasn’t man enough. In hindsight, Henry was more man than I ever could be. He loved his rum because he loved you mother and I spoiled that for him. He was never a drunkard! Him only drank to forget the life I robbed from him.”

There was a long pause as he waited for Kendra to speak but she said nothing because she felt nothing. The fireflies were dancing now up the garden path and all the way out to the gate. She was no longer seduced by his big brown eyes or by his charming smile the way she had once been as a child. Aunt Travis had been trying to warn her, as had her mother and to some extent, her father. Kendra nodded and shook his hand at the end of the silence. He then asked if she had brought him a gift from England. She wanted to say that the gifts she had brought were for her real father whom he had robbed her of - her gifts were for him. Instead, she shook her head. He smiled again, then left. She watched him slowly disappearing up the garden path hunched at the shoulders and hoped that she would never see him again.