What a mother’s love don’t teach you

Jamaican writer and lawyer Sharma Taylor, author of What A Mother’s Love Don’t Teach You (Virago Press, 2023), will be honoured on Wednesday with the prestigious Jamaican Musgrave Medal (Bronze) for excellence in Literature. Taylor, who counts the late Wayne Brown, Jane Bryce, Dr Erna Brodber, Ingrid Persaud, Karen Lord, Monique Roffey, Kei Miller and Jacob Ross among her mentors, is no stranger to accolades.

Earlier this year she was shortlisted for the V S Pritchett Short Story Prize 2024. Tayor has been shortlisted for the hugely competitive Commonwealth Short Story Prize four times (2018, 2020, 2021, and 2022) and longlisted twice (2019 and 2023) and in 2019, won the Bocas Lit Fest’s Johnson and Amoy Achong Caribbean Writers Prize. In 2020, Taylor won the Wasafiri Queen Mary New Writing Prize, the Frank Collymore Literary Endowment Award, was a finalist in the Elizabeth Nunez Award for Writers in the Caribbean Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival’s (BCLF) and placed second in the First Novel Competition (Daniel Goldsmith Associates Ltd UK).

On her affinity for writing and inspiration for her debut novel What A Mother’s Love Don’t Teach You, Taylor says her first teacher was Hortense, a housemaid who “looked after her from the day she was born” when her mother was at work. “Hortense was in her early 20s and loved me like her own child–gave me the gift of spoken language by teaching me her name. When I was nearly two, Hortense disappeared, and I never heard from her again.”

Taylor says her debut novel was a process of self-discovery, “I thought about how losing someone important to you and believing you’ve found them again can change your definition of family and belonging. I thought of the secrets we keep from those we love and the secrets they keep from us.”

Currently Writer-in-Residence at the University of the West Indies, Mona Campus, in the Department of Literature’s Creative Writing programme, Taylor says she writes “stories she likes reading with colourful, complicated characters and distinctive Caribbean voices.”

What A Mother’s Love Don’t Teach You is told from multiple perspectives in patois and English to give the reader a sense of the social context of 1980s Jamaica. The following is an excerpt with full permission from the publisher Virago (a Little, Brown imprint, part of the Hachette group): exclusively for the Sunday Guardian WE magazine.

WHAT A MOTHER’S LOVE DON’T TEACH YOU

“When I was eighteen, Leroy, mi wutliss boyfriend from All Age school, wrestle with mi one evening in the canefield. I still had on mi shorts and panty, so it was pure shock when mi period stop. Nine months later here comes a cotton-hair boy-pickney. Hair picky-picky like mine. Skin smooth like Leroy, head just as big. Face wide and beautiful. Mi never see eyelashes long so yet. Lips so fine and full and him likkle fingernails so pink and perfect. Long, long fingers like Mama. A strong, firm nose, like him know him going to be one important man. Mama nearly get epileptic fits when mi tell her mi pregnant. Is just two years I in the job with the Steeles, a expat couple who work for the US Embassy in Kingston. Mi neva know what work Mr Steele do at the Embassy but because of how everybody talk to him, I figure he must be a big shot. Dem say him work for the CIA, but mi don’t know if is true. People even say Steele wasn’t dem real name.

That is a false identity and dem in Jamaica to spy on we ’cause Uncle Sam suspect we going get friendly with Fidel Castro in Cuba and Americans never want any more Communism in dem backyard. ‘Let him get yuh a US visa!’ Mama used to say; but mi never ask and the Steeles never offer. Mr Steele white, pale like a full moon. Mrs Steele was a Black woman, but she much more lights kinned than Mama. Her scarves dem did smell like lavender and she did wear plenty bangle that look like dem about to drop off har hand. She used to dye her hair red. When it was growing out, the roots used to black. The red hair usually drop across her eyes, so it not easy to see her small face. She let mi borrow her books and I read dem when I finish work early. ‘That’s poetry from Shelley,’ she did say. ‘Or Lord Byron.’ Mi study poetry I never understand and talk it out loud. The recitals did please her. ‘Dat ooman filling up yuh head wid words,’ Mama say and suck her teeth. ‘Yuh can eat dem, fool fool gal?’ Mi picture Mrs Steele in a white apron serving some plump and juicy words on a plate, and mi laugh.

Some evenings Mrs Steele tell mi about the years dem did live in Africa, their postings in places I never hear about yet but she show mi on a map. She teach literature at universities there, she said, and I watch her eyes turn glass, like she was in a trance. ‘Such beautiful people,’ she said. ‘Sweet little babies …’ And then she would get quiet. The Steeles never have any children, although mi used to hear Mrs Steele telling her friends whenever dem come over to the house with dem pickney, how much she did want a baby of her own. Mi surprise when they say they having what Mrs Steele call a ‘baby shower’ for mi. The party did dead: between mi acting like mi want to be there, the too-sweet drinks Mrs Steele make, the balloons losing air, the stale biscuits and the crush-up ‘Happy Delivery!’ sign across the hallway. It was just the four of we–dem, Mama and me. Mama did wear her only good dress–a stiff, white-collared black shift that make her look like all the blood suck out of her face. The Steeles did wear some loose trousers and floral tops Mrs Steele say dem buy in Ethiopia.

I was in distress since Leroy take up with a browning named Shelly and move to Montego Bay. Mama say she not surprise: Leroy wouldn’t want a black girl like mi. During the baby shower, I still reeling with shock, sick from the baby or the break-up, or the two of dem together. Mi couldn’t stop wriggle in the chair. ‘So you have no support?’ Mrs Steele say. I never know how to answer so mi look over at Mama drinking her Darjeeling tea. ‘We could solve your problem.’ Mrs Steele voice shaky bad. She look on her husband who did stand up beside the glass window. Mr Steele all of a sudden looking hard-hard on something outside. She rub her throat with her fingers and cock her head to one side. Then she say: ‘You’ve worked for us a long time, so I know you know I’d be a good mother … I always wanted my own child.’ I wondering what that have to do with me. Same time, she come out and spell it out plain: ‘How about we adopt the baby when it’s born? After all, you can’t possibly look after it. I promise I’ll take good care of it … I mean, the child. Think what it would be like for them, growing up in a big house like this.’ She move her arms around the room, like she swimming in the middle of the ocean doing a backstroke.”

–End of excerpt

Sharma Taylor holds a PhD from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.