LUCY

LUCY
－－－Jamaica Kincaid

It was January again; the world was thin and pale and cold again; I was making a new beginning again.

I had been a girl of whom certain things were expected, none of them too bad: a career as a nurse, for example; a sense of duty to my parents; obedience to the law and worship of convention. But in one year of being away from home, that girl had gone out of existence.

The person I had become I did not know very well. Oh, on the outside everything was familiar. My hair was the same, though now I wore it cut close to my head, and this made my face seem almost perfectly round, and so for the first time ever I entertained the idea that I might actually be beautiful. I knew that if I ever decided I was beautiful I would not make too big a thing of it. My eyes were the same. My ears were the same. The other important things about me were the same.

But the things I could not see about myself, the things I could not put my hands on—those things had changed, and I did not yet know them well. I understood that I was inventing myself, and I was doing this more in the way of a painter than in the way of a scientist. I could not count on precision or calculation; I could only count on intuition. I did not have anything exactly in mind, but when the picture complete I would know. I did not have position, I did not have money at my disposal. I had memory, I had anger, and I had despair.

I was born on an island, a very small island, twelve miles long and eight miles wide; yet when I left it at nineteen years of age I had never set foot on three-quarters of it. I had recently met someone who was born on the other side of the world from me but had visited this island on which my family had lived for generations; this person, a woman, said to me, “What a beautiful place, ” and she named a village by the sea and then went on to describe a view that was unknown to me. At the time I was so ashamed I could hardly make a reply, for I had come to believe that people in my position in the world should know everything about the place they are from.

When I told Mariah that I was leaving, she sail, “It’s not a year yet. You are supposed to stay for at least a year. ” Her voice was full of anger, but I ignored it. It’s always hard for the person who is left behind. And even as she said it she must have known how hollow it sounded, for it was only a matter of weeks before it would be a year since I had come to live with her. The reality of her situation was now clear to her: she was a woman whose husband had betrayed her. I wanted to say this to her: “Your situation is an everyday thing. Men behave in this way all the time. The ones who do not behave this way are the exceptions to the rule.” But I knew what her response would have been. She would have said, “What a cliché.” She would have said, “What do you know about these things?” And she would have been right; it was a cliché, and I had no personal experience of a thing like that. But all the same, where I came from every woman knew the cliché, and a man like Lewis would not have been a surprise; his behavior would not have cast a pall over any woman’s life. It was expected. Everybody knew that men have no morals, that they do not know how to behave, that they do not know how to treat other people. It was why men like laws so much; it was why they had to invent such things—they need a guide. When they are not sure what to do, they consult this guide. If the guides give them advice they don’t like, they change the guide. This was something I knew; why didn’t Mariah know it, also? And if I were to tell it to her she would only show me a book she had somewhere which contradicted everything I said- a book most likely written by a woman who understood absolutely nothing.

The holidays came, and they did feel like a funeral, for so many things had died. For the children’s sake, she and Lewis put up a good front. He came and gone, doing all the things he would have done if he were still living with them. He bought the fir tree, bought the children the presents they wanted, bought Mariah a coat made up from the skins of small pesty animals who lived in the ground. She, of course, hated it, but for appearance’s sake kept her opinion to herself. He must have forgotten that she was not a sort of person who would wear the skin of another being if she could help it. Or perhaps in the rush of things he gave his old love his new love’s present. Mariah gave me a necklace made up of pretty porcelain beads and small polished balls of wood. She said it was the handiwork of someone in Africa. It was the most beautiful thing anyone had ever given me.

The New Year came, and I was going somewhere new again. I gathered my things together; I had a lot more than when I first came. I had new clothes, all better suited to this new climate now I lived in. I had a camera and prints of photographs I had taken, prints I had made myself. But mostly I had books- so many books, and they were mine; I would not have to part with them. It had always been a dream of mine to just own a lot of books, to never part with a book once I had read it. So there they were, resting nicely in small boxes—my own books, the books that I had read. Mariah spoke to me harshly all the time now, and she began to make up rules which she insisted me to follow; and did, for after all what else could she do? It was a last resort for her—insisting that I be the servant and she the master. She used to insist that we be friends, but that apparently not worked out very well, for now I was leaving. The master business did not become her at all, and it made me sad to see her that way. Still, it made me remember what my mother said to me many times: for my whole life I should make sure the roof over my head was my own; such a thing was important, especially if you were a woman.

On the day I actually left, there was no sun; the sky had shut if out tightly. It was a Saturday. Lewis had taken the children to eat snails at a French restaurant. All four of them liked such things—and just as well, for that went with the life they were expected to lead eventually. Mariah helped me put my things in a taxi. It was a cold goodbye on her part. Her voice and her face were stony. She did not hug me. I did not take any of this personally; someday we would be friends again. I was numb, but it was from not knowing just what this new life would hold for me.

PUT HANDS ON: understand easily
COUNT ON: depend on
CLICHE: an idea or expression that has been used too much
CAST A PALL: produce a dark covering; create sadness
PUT UP A GOOD FRONT: face a situation with pretended confidence
A LAST RESORT: a last possibility
DID NOT BECOME HER: was not appropriate for her