They came for my laughing father late one evening.
Dad was playing dominoes with jolly friends outside in the yard, as he did most afternoons after construction work, slamming the tiles with such force, the makeshift table that was really a leftover slab of peeling, painted plyboard, shivered for a second, sprung up and settled back down, shaking with surprise.
One player crouched at the top of the short, wooden steps my dedicated mother had hand scraped and scrubbed to a sheen, studying his pieces and next moves, while bracing back on the closed double panelled door. Perched on our prized vintage Bentwood spindle-back chairs borrowed from our tiny kitchen and living room, the others concentrated on their hands, unable to believe shrewd Dad had strategically blocked them at both ends in the game variation chosen that day. Invariably, we would hear the grudging repeat concession from the cornered pair or three, “RAP, RAP, RAP!”
Our father would lean over and move in for the final deafening blows, delivered with the confident staccato display of the seasoned champion, while delivering a comic commentary that concluded only when his tiles were all on the board. His shocked foes would stare in disbelief before bursting out in guffaws. “Raz’r boy!” they would break the tension, shaking their heads in admiration, using an affectionate nickname that celebrated his biting wit and sport sharpness.
The group of policemen showed no identification or warrant. Always the comedian, my disbelieving father, chuckled and continued with his dominoes, unwilling to abandon a favourite game. He waved them on to search the few small rooms we occupied in the sectioned rental apartments of the former stately home that had fallen on hard times. They demanded my startled, petite mother open our lone wardrobe ignoring her defiant request for an explanation, while my siblings looked on struggling to make sense of the bizarre intrusion.
By the time I received the message at my aunt’s home in the next street of Middle Road, they had already hauled away my protesting father in their vehicle. In the dusk, I remember frantically running along the connecting lane to Albouystown, that remained a hazardous brick-strewn muddle of pot holes even in the dry season. My traumatised mother was inconsolable, crying plaintively, the neighbours standing around her wide eyed and whispering. Homework lay abandoned on the desk, the dominoes scattered and upturned across the table, the empty chairs still outside, and my father’s friends and older brother off to try and find him.
Our home was in an unprecedented mess. All the drawers had been opened and ransacked, the few pieces of dress clothing my family owned and kept for special occasions lay strewn on the floor, the couple of cardboard boxes hauled out from under the metal beds. Even my father’s prized collection of silver trophies for dominoes and pools had not been spared, the covers separated from the cups, the remainder thrown off the bases and stands.
I stood on the deteriorating bridge outside the rusting gates, cold, numb and disbelieving, hugging my chest and staring at the stars, helpless and afraid, pacing and waiting for word, thinking of the tyrant who ruled us with an iron fist. Remembering the immortal poetry of Martin Carter, and all those who had disappeared in the sporadic unrest. Others had recently died like the historian and political activist Dr. Walter Rodney, assassinated on the eve of my 13th birthday. Unable to sleep or cry, exhausted and worried, we gathered as if preparing for a wake, jumping up to peer through the windows into the late, inscrutable night. A poor family, we had no weighty godfathers or political contacts to beg for assistance and information.
A day would pass before we learned our father had been detained and kept in custody. The next time I saw him, he could barely walk and had to be helped from the car and through the gates and door. Dad had been beaten so badly; his face was swollen beyond recognition, the bloodshot eyes, mere slits, the mouth, a fat grimace. He had been taken by the forces to a lonely area near to a canefield, tortured, pummelled and kicked to the ground, his testicles hammered until he passed out, his screams and insistent denials further enraging his attackers and echoing in the emptiness of the backdam.
By the time we got him back, he was vomiting blood, his body was black and blue, and the trademark chortle had evaporated. The private doctor gave him painkillers and told him he was lucky to be alive without major broken bones after such a battering. Our mother did her best to physically patch him up, sapping the wounds with warm water, feeding him soup, as he winced and pushed the spoon away. We fussed over him, as he tried to smile at us, a grotesque representation of the man we had known, and the parent we had nearly lost.
Eventually we would learn that the dreaded black clothes squad had no name and mixed up the numbered addresses. They had been searching for our neighbour, according to a description provided by some unknown aggrieved party, at 314 Independence Boulevard, across the lane on the eastern side of us. Instead, they had come to 315 Independence Boulevard, and found our father, also of Indian ethnicity, but darker and much older.
The guilty individual’s crime was purchasing a stolen VCR. On seeing the Police at our home, he had quietly bundled his family into his car and fled the city for the far side of Berbice, headed if need be to neighbouring Suriname.
My father changed, the light went out of the distinct gray brown eyes, the smiles grew subdued, the dominoes, quieter, and he told us bluntly to get out while we still could. When I later turned down the marriage proposals of overseas-based Guyanese strangers, who had sent representatives to my parents, Dad asked me, if I was sure that I wanted to stay single, put, and to continue working. His marriage to my mother had been arranged, like his parents, and grandparents, and our ancestors before them. Dad would be felled a few years later not by a policeman’s boots but a massive heart attack at 47, on July 24, when he and my mother marked their 23rd wedding anniversary, a day after their older son turned 21.
ID watches her grown Barbadian children play dominoes after she told them some of the stories of their grandparents. The immortal lines of “This is the dark my love” by Martin Carter, is seared into her brain.
