With only two days in Jamaica, I chose to spend eight full hours locked in a tour bus with the poster child for Mad Cow
Disease. I thought the tour to Black River and YS Falls would be an efficient
way to see something besides the topless Europeans and bloated North Americans
broiling away on the beach in front of my hotel. I wanted a little adventure,
but not so much that I was willing to rent a car on my own and risk stumbling
into the Scary and Very Private Ganja Forest and having my head blown off,
which in hindsight sounds much less traumatic than the tour I endured.
The tour bus picked me up first and then wound through the streets of Negril
collecting other victims at hotels along the way: five pasty and solemn
Englishmen, a couple of stone-faced Germans who wouldn’t make eye-contact, and
a few more equally forgettable travelers.
Then she got on the bus.
She hadn’t missed a serving of steak-and-kidney pie or pint of ale in her
life. She packed the evidence of her healthy appetite in a pair of black Lycra
shorts, stretched to an astounding thinness and pilled with snags where she
must have brushed up against every concrete wall she passed, and a tiny
crocheted bikini top tucked almost entirely underneath her boobs. She tottered
aboard on a pair of black spike-heeled sandals, backless.
Apparently, her hairdresser hadn’t told her the wet look was dead. She plopped
down in the seat across the aisle from me. I hazarded a smile in her direction.
I’m not sure if she smiled back or not because her features were sunk into her
flesh like raisins in a batch of particularly puffy cookies. She didn’t carry a
thing with her, not a purse or a wad of cash or an extra pair of dress pumps.
There were no pockets. I wondered where she stashed all the citations she was
issued by the Fashion Police.
The two Jamaican guides and the bus driver stared at her briefly,
opened-mouthed, then faced the front of the bus and never looked back. Everyone
else on the bus was deep in the study of the toes of their shoes. I could feel
her eyes on me, so I turned, gave a little wave and said, “Hi, I’m Suzy.”
“‘ello!” she screeched back, in a perfect imitation of Monte Python’s Eric
Idle imitating a medieval English peasant woman. “Oy’m ‘Arriet!”
One of the guides had begun her prepared discourse on “Jamaica, The Land of
Never-Ending (fill in the blank: fun, sun, rum, rain, reggae, tours), so
‘Arriet settled back in her seat and began to sing her version of Never-Ending
“Kumbayah,” effectively drowning out any tidbit of Jamaican trivia I might want
to hear. “Sum one’s eatin’, Looord, Kumba-yaaah!” She tried bumming a
cigarette from several passengers and when one of the badgered Englishmen
finally relinquished a filterless Camel, the guide pointed to the big “No
Smoking” sign. This inspired ‘Arriet to add another chorus: “No one’s
smokin‘, Looord, Kum-ba-yaaah.”
Not one to sit idle and watch the emerald countryside whiz past, ‘Arriet
needed something to do with her hands, so she began to fiddle with the only
thing she’d brought with her in ample supply: herself. She propped her left
ankle up on her right knee and began to inspect a pancake-sized wound on her
inner thigh. Obviously unhappy with the route this wound had taken to heal, she
decided to start over and laboriously picked the scab and dead skin off the
offending spot.
By then, I was jammed against my window, as far from her as possible without
actually flinging myself from the hurtling vehicle. When I made the mistake of
glancing to my left to see the old sugar plantation the guide pointed out, I
got an eyeful of ‘Arriet’s self-surgery. Her lap and the floor around her were
littered with the scraps of her handiwork. Satisfied that her wound now looked
much better, she began to clean her fingernails with her teeth.
I immediately started to dry heave. Once again, I plastered myself onto my
window, like some giant, frightened, suction-cup-footed Garfield. My
convulsions passed after a few minutes, but I then realized I was rocking back
and forth like a shock victim or Raymond the Rain Man, grunting softly. Uh-oh.
I was suddenly quite concerned about the conditions at Jamaican insane asylums.
Our arrival at the boat launch at Black River is the only thing that saved me
from complete catatonia.
‘Arriet departed the bus in a flurry of skin flakes and immediately began chain-smoking (and
chain-bumming, as well). The rest of the tour group hung back as she boarded
the boat and when she had nestled her considerable bulk in one of the seats
near the bow and began to clean her toenails with a small twig, we all jammed
ourselves precariously in the stern. For our own safety, the perplexed boat
captain had to push us forward, distributing us around the boat like so much
ballast — which is about what we were behaving like. We would occasionally
shoot one another slightly terrified looks when ‘Arriet would open her mouth to
speak — “Say, ain’t anyone gawt a ciggie I kin bum?” or “Ain’t there anythin’
to eat on this baaarge?” — or roll our eyes when she lumbered across the boat
to root around in the little refrigerator, but, for the most part, our mutual
enemy did little to unite us other than turning us all into sociopathic
introverts. The more expansive she became, the further we all retreated from
humanity in any form.
Although seldom prone to primness, I felt myself transformed into a Victorian
schoolmarm, lips pursed, sitting ram-rod straight, feet flat on the floor,
hands folded in my lap, staring straight ahead at miles and miles of mangrove
swamp. Everyone on board seemed in the throes of a similar internal journey to
find some sanctuary from ‘Arriet, who caterwauled at the snowy egrets and
flicked her butts into the wildlife sanctuary’s lagoon. (I finally pried my
clinched jaw apart long enough to snap, “Don’t throw one more butt overboard or
you’re following it.” She whirled to face me and the briefest flash of anger
flickered in her raisin eyes.)
When we slowly approached a Black River crocodile, who was waiting patiently
in a murky inlet for his daily feast of raw chicken from the captain, ‘Arriet
began lurching about the boat which rocked precariously on its pontoons,
dipping in response to her movements. She draped herself across the back of
anyone leaning over the rail to snap a photo of this fat and languid — but
very toothy — crocodile named Judge, pressing the objects of her unwanted
intimacy much closer to Judge’s serrated jaw than they cared to be. One of the
Englishmen under attack reared back suddenly and she stumbled backwards to the
opposite side of the boat, her weight pressed against the aluminum railing,
pinwheeling her arms in an attempt to regain her balance. Everyone stood
steadfast. No one rushed to pull her forward. Everyone watched without emotion.
She did not fall in. The disappointment among her fellow passengers was so
apparent it became a solid form hovering about the swamp.
“Yeoww! Me gawd!” she shrieked. “Oy need a ciggie bad.”
The German couple handed over their last Marlboro. She lit it and flicked the
match onto Judge’s head with a searing look in my direction. It’s a damned good
thing I don’t own an AK-47 and I hadn’t smuggled it on my vacation with me or I
would’ve blown my Victorian schoolmarm persona in a blaze of bullets.
Things did not improve when we arrived at YS Falls. One of the guides had
picked a mango and was cutting off slices and handing them to us. Perhaps it
was an attempt to cheer up the glummest group of vacationers they’d ever taken
on a tour. As we munched on the mango, ‘Arriet, who had been off bumming smokes
from other groups at the falls, sprung on the scene.
“Whaat’s that?” she yowled, like a pre-Henry Higgins Eliza Doolittle. No one
answered so she poked me on the shoulder. “Whaat’s that?”
“A mango,” said the terse, wizened, humorless spinster I’d become in less than
four hours.
“What? What’d you say?” she shrieked.
I walked away and boarded the tractor trailer that would haul us all to the
base of the falls where I would pray for a boulder to dislodge after centuries
of wear, tumble down the hill, and smite my enemy. As we chugged up the muddy
road, ‘Arriet began to screech, “Hey, hey, American. You! Hey, you chickie.”
I turned my head slowly, � la Linda Blair in The
Exorcist, in her direction.
“Say `mango.’ Go on. Say it,” she insisted.
“Mango,” I repeated. Never had the name of a tropical fruit contained so great
a threat. Everyone in the trailer shuddered. Everyone except ‘Arriet.
“D’you hear that?” she nudged the passenger next to her, who had also fallen
into an escapist stupor. “Man-go.” She howled with laughter at her abhorrent
attempt to imitate my delicate Texas twang. “Man-go!”
“Excuse me. You aren’t making fun of my accent are you? My accent?” If
my words had been daggers, she’d have died instantly. “Don’t get me started.”
Fortunately, the roar of the falls drowned out ‘Arriet for a spell. I scrambled up rocks where her
spike-heeled sandals would fear to tread and enjoyed a half hour of serenity
staring at the torrents of muddy water that rushed around me, imagining ‘Arriet
swirling helplessly about, until she was swept down the river and out to sea.
Much too soon, it was time to get back on the bus for the drive home. Ninety
minutes. Could they strap me to the roof?
Within a nanosecond of departing, ‘Arriet attempted to light another
cigarette. One of the guides turned around and fairly slapped it out of her
hands. “Woiy? Woiy? Woiy cain’t oy smoke?” she demanded of the back of the
guide’s head. Sensing the hopelessness of pleading her cause, she was struck
with an idea, a very frightening occurrence to observe. “Oy’ve gawt to go to
the toilet,” she squawked. “Oy gotta go nowww!” The bus driver cranked up the
radio in response. For the next hour, we listened to Ziggy Marley at 110
decibels, punctuated by ‘Arriet barking, “Me bladder!” at 140 decibels.
Then, just as I was becoming comfortable with my anger and disgust at having
spent the entire day with this beast, determined to store this anger for use at
a later time, possibly calling on it for the strength to fend off an attack by
a group of gladiators or raise a Ford truck off of a little old lady pinned
beneath it if I should ever come across such a scene, a terrible thing
happened. During a lull in the music, one of the other passengers ventured to
ask me what I did. “I’m a writer,” I said.
“Yeow. A wroighter! You ought to wroight about me ‘oliday,” she said, turning
those beady eyes on me. “Oy gaught engaged on me ‘oliday.”
“Oh?”
“Oy was just here two days, when a bloke on the beach fell for me. A rasta
man. We’ve been screwin’ loik rabbits eva’ since.”
“Lovely image,” I said.
“I only came on this stupid tour ’cause he hadda ‘elp his mate today. Fishin’
or sumpin’. ‘e’s coming back to Yorkshire wit me ta meet me mum and dad. Oy
gave him the money for the ticket today and we’ll be off tomorrow. Me an’ me
new fianc�.” She grinned at me, showing her tiny, even teeth. “Bet your
‘oliday cain’t beat that, hey, Missy Prissy American Mango Eater.”
All my anger dissolved and I was powerless. “No, Harriet, it can’t,” I said
and tried to smile.
This article appears in October 11 • 1996 and October 11 • 1996 (Cover).