Women’s Chronicles

The telephone on my desk rang. I answered and was informed that I had a visitor.

“My father put me out and now he say he will tek back me son, but he don’t want me back at the house.

“I wanted to die,…. I remember one time going to the harbour bridge at about three one morning with every intention of jumping over and this policeman pulled me over and he sat in the car and just talked to me.

“I am disappointed, and for me from my point of view I wouldn’t encourage nobody right now to go and try to get justice because if she did not get justice I don’t who could.

“Look just give meh a knife and leh meh kill meh self.

“I don’t know how to feel but the matter get dismiss on the same day when was International Women’s Day.

“I would close up like around 10 sometimes, you know, because people coming from work does stop and buy.

“It was too overbearing and sometimes you feel like a slave in you own country and one day I just couldn’t take it anymore and me and another girl we just have to stand up fuh we rights.

“Being a single parent has it positives and  its negatives. For me I have learnt to look past the fact that I am a single parent because honestly sometimes I don’t even remember that these children have a father.”

“The worst part was being there and looking at my mommy feeling so uncomfortable on that hard, wooden bench.

“I never give up on my children. I always fight fuh them and even if I have to catch crab to help mind dem I do it,” the words of 47-year-old Cheryl Benn, a mother of 14.

“Tell me we get paid since the 22nd of December last year and to date we can’t get no money.

She sat across from me, shaking. It was hard to decide whether it was because she was cold from the air-conditioner in the room, or fearful.

I had a pap test. This is a test that is done to ascertain whether a woman has cervical cancer.

“You know I don’t really get to enjoy me fairy lights and Christmas decorations because now is time to tek down and is like only the other day I put them up,” Marian said with some amount of genuine disappointment.

“I am a hairdresser and I am proud of what I do.

“About a year or two ago I actually started being vocal and stuff.

“I felt handcuffed. I felt like if a gun was being held to my head.

Last Tuesday at midday a few women assembled in front of the Bishops’ High School calling for the removal of the school’s head Winifred Ellis.

“I does sit down in the yard all day. I don’t mix or nothing but I does just sit down in the yard because I don’t have nothing to do.”