Ronald Thwaites | Weight of a fish...

She told me to call her ‘Baby G’. She came needing help for one of the children who “don’t have a good head” and told me her story. Long before, young, kinda pretty, unemployed and ‘out of doors’ (she didn’t like the way her mother’s new boyfriend followed her around), she had gone to where the fishing boats dock out west to beg some sprat or wenchman to cook.

There she met Charlie, who “look pon her a way” and soon started to “put question” to her. She found out two things about him. First, that he was a well-established fisherman, and next, that he had certain relations with most of the women on the beach and, it was said, with many others who seldom visited but were ‘connected’.

Baby G soon became one of their number. Charlie’s modus operandi was to ‘fren’ whole heap of women, give them a baby, and then set up each of them with a scale and a weight of fish to sell, and that was that.

She found the proposition irresistible. She didn’t wait on my moralistic, middle-class brow to furrow. “Whey you woulda want me fi do? Save up mi ‘ting’ and starve”? Both indignant and resigned now. “Whey yu woulda want him fi do, eeh? Marry di whole a wi?”

Charlie died not so long ago, reportedly leaving 47 children. Rest in peace, Maas Charlie!

The few of the other Charlie babymothers/small businesswomen who, like Baby G, thought that they had been offered a reasonable opportunity by a venture capitalist. The response of the other men she moved with was to laugh enviously at Charlie’s business/family model.

In Baby G’s case, things had worked out. She was still selling fish and was. in fact, doing value-added production by frying and peppering every parrot, grunt and occasional snapper she could get.

Her problem now was that she felt strongly that Charlie’s son should get something out of his father’s ‘dead-lef’, even although the Charlie’s name and those of all, save for two of his remaining progeny were not on their ‘age-papers’.

LAWYER’S HELP

She needed a lawyer’s help. “I want justice! “Because him left one big gyal daughter who seh she a di first and want to control everything – boat and house, van and net. Every gawd ting”!

Baby G’s story is not unique. Years later, I visited a school in Westmoreland, near the sea, to encourage traditional careers and responsible sexual relationships.” Who tell minister to come wid dat?” was the unspoken reaction of some of the big girls – not to mention the stimulated boys.

Their realistic ambition was to link with a guy who secured a seat in a boat going to Pedro Bank and on his return, to lap their skirt at the water’s edge to collect ‘supportance’ in the form of (you guessed it) a weight of fish. No doubt the young fishermen, just like the iconic Charlie, would get their recompense later on, not in cash, but in kind.

But what’s the beef, really? “Whey yu want dem do”? As Baby G had said, “No better no deh”. Is it convincing?

It has always surprised me that the admirable feminist movement has never identified how the combination of poor fathering, pity-mi-likkle schooling and economic inequality place good-good women at the mercy of Charlie and his kind. Surely, this is where the struggle has to be engaged.

And even if the Baby Gs of this world are resigned (could they be happy?) with their lot, what about the children?

Because, I have to tell you, Charlie’s son who never have good head didn’t get any inheritance after all. And since the weakness in his head did not affect any other part of his anatomy, the problems associated with Charlie and Baby G ( not that they thought anything was problematic) soon became intergenerational.

There’s a weight of fish as a prize for anyone who thinks we can build a prosperous society on such foundations.

Rev Ronald G. Thwaites is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.