St Ann s Infirmary

40 Creative Essay

Our bus clamored over uneven potholes and around wandering goats as it eased its way down the coastline. Clear, cyan water arched into frothing, white-peaked mountains before slamming against the jagged rocks below the highway’s edge. A black and white checkered goat strutted along the wall adjacent to our bus, its split hooves leaving patterned marks on the concrete from the ocean’s haphazard spray. A fraying rope clung loosely to its neck, twisting around its unsteady legs every few steps before the animal grew impatient and stopped to gnaw at the splitting twine.

I peeled my forehead off of the cool window, the animated hum of voices clawing back into my ears as my eyes bounced towards the front of the bus. Our driver, Uncle, was bellowing into the loudspeaker, his raspy Jamaican accent reverberating against cloth seats. I glanced around the bus. Every person’s eyes were glued to the front as Uncle belted an uneven rendition of “If You’re Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hands” across the sound system. His thick drawl spat the words, the edge of a smile biting at his thin lips.

“If you’re happy and you know it, say ‘Ya Mon,’” he cheered, a chorus of voices echoing after him.

His eyes peered into the rearview mirror, chocolate pupils gleaming. “If you’re happy and you know it, say ‘Irie Mon,’” he continued. I let out a knowing laugh, and Morgan, the girl sitting next to me, grinned. The busload of people continued to chime along to Uncle’s game, their voices echoing with the crackling of the loudspeaker.

“If you’re happy and you know it, say ‘Jamaica Mon.’” Morgan elbowed me, chuckling. “Liv, how many times do you think we’ve heard this?” She pushed her knees against the seat back in front of her, feet swinging along to the conglomeration of voices that were the back drop to our conversation. “If you’re happy and you know it, say ‘All three,’” Uncle paused, excited eyes scanning the rearview mirror again. The chorus responded, “All three!” Uncle’s cackle exploded across the speaker, one of his calloused palms bouncing heavily against the steering wheel.

“No, no! You’re supposed to say, ‘Ya Mon, Irie Mon, Jamaica Mon.’ That is all three!” His cackle erupted again and the bus joined him in nervous laughter. I shook my head, playing with the lid of my sweating water bottle.

“So many times by now,” I laughed to Morgan, taking a gulp of icy water. Morgan and I had traveled to Jamaica four summers in a row and during that time we had inevitably become familiar with Uncle’s humor, his bus-ride jokes, and his broken record of a playlist that always blared in between his make-shift entertainment shows. More importantly, however, we had inevitably become familiar with Jamaica as a country; the way the ocean races alongside our vehicle as we veer through Jamaican foot-traffic, the way the mountains cascade and nestle us against the water, the way the salty air clings densely to every part of our bodies as we work our way through ninety-degree days.

The bus began to zip away from the oceanfront, leaving behind boats swaying indolently against the churning froth. Thick layers of palm trees obstructed our view before little buildings began to litter the side of the highway. Jamaicans crouched on the stoops of dilapidated and splintering wood houses, pieced together chaotically with a mixture of tin and cardboard roofs.

Morgan let out a long sigh next to me, dropping her knees and rearranging herself so she was facing me. “You gonna go see Ryan?”

I smiled, rolling my shoulders upwards as I leaned heavily against my seat. “I’m not sure Gritter will let me right away, but I’m definitely going before the week is over. Wanna come?” Mrs. Gritter was our trip leader and my

mentor. She had been leading teams to Jamaica for thirteen years now, a feat that Morgan and I could only hope to accomplish. Morgan’s head fell into a nod, loose blond curls falling around her face from her messy ponytail.

The bus screeched, pulling up to a rusting, iron gate. Intrigued faces peeked over purple seat cloth as they attempted to gain a glimpse of our worksite for the week. An off-white, concrete building extended behind the gate in a giant U-shape, trimmed with fading olive-green paint along the roofline. A lethargic security guard fiddled aimlessly with the chains around the gate, before he unlatched it and pulled it open, its hinges groaning loudly. Uncle maneuvered the bus through the opening, abruptly halting after we had inched forward. The bus let out a whirl of exhaust as the glass door peeled open and our team began to file out. Morgan and I followed suit, our dirt-stained tennis shoes forcefully making contact with the uneven gravel that clothed the makeshift driveway.

The Infirmary extended around us, its curious inhabitants slowly ambling out of their rooms to peer at us. Dolores, a well-known and well-loved member of the Infirmary galloped towards our group, a ragged washcloth hanging from her mouth, a huge grin peeling her lips away from her teeth. She enthusiastically grabbed Mrs. Gritter’s hand, thrusting it up and down.

“Dolores! Oh my goodness, hello,” Mrs. Gritter laughed, placing a slender arm over Dolores’s shoulders. “Everyone, this is Dolores,” Mrs. Gritter mentioned to our group, before attempting to corral the nervous team. Dolores ran around to members of our team and grabbed their hands as Mrs. Gritter explained that we were here to work now and visit later. Million, a Jamaican that helped IsleGo with teams that came in, began to trek up the driveway, through the ladies’ common area, and down the back staircase. The stairwell opened up into a vast backyard. Clotheslines oscillated in the stiff breeze, rows of drying t-shirts bouncing along with the wind. A long, charcoal wall offered a barricade from the waterfront, the placid crashing of waves humming just over it. We all stood in an awkward line, drinking in the worksite before us.

Million interrupted, his thick accent attempting to outweigh the competing waves. “You guys are going to build a ramp this week that leads down to the wall, so that people in wheelchairs can wheel themselves down. We are going to blow out that wall, so that, eventually, they can have a view of the water. Such a shame that it has been here all this time and we have not done this project sooner.”

The rest of that day was filled with shoveling sopping, freshly mixed concrete into rusting buckets, our work-worn tennis shoes becoming caked in the gray, hardening liquid. It splashed up our legs, thickening into burning, ashen splotches. Morgan and I claimed shovels and joined the cause at the foreground, unloading our heart for the project into the dusty, crumbling buckets. Curious bystanders occasionally peeked around the corner of the stairwell, intrigued eyes bouncing across the backyard in eager anticipation.

I pulled my hat down over my eyes, running my forearm across my sweaty forehead. Morgan leaned against the wall of the Infirmary next to me and sighed heavily. Popping the lid off of my water bottle, I took a long swig and propped a layered shoe on top of the shovelhead. “I forgot the love-hate relationship I have with shoveling concrete,” I laughed, motioning to the battle wounds I had scattered across my arms and down my knees.

Morgan snorted, wiping her eyes with the inside of her t-shirt. “For real. I think we’ll be permanently stained for the rest of the week.”

The week followed similarly, the ramp expanding slowly in the searing afternoon sun. Infirmary inhabitants hesitantly made their way further than the stairwell, throwing themselves into the middle of our work; neither helpful nor productive, but we enjoyed the break in our routine and the overflowing joy that came from conversation. Dolores animatedly ran around to our team multiple times, flashing her left hand to display the plastic ring that balanced on her ring finger. Donovan, her fiancé, continually sat beaming at the bottom of the stairwell, crippled hands fidgeting with the top of his wheelchair’s tires.

The last day that we were there, Morgan and I ventured away from the worksite for the afternoon to find Ryan. He sat, nestled into a corner bed in the men’s wing, plastic fan ruffling his wrinkled bed sheets. His eyes lazily rose, traipsing over our concrete-stained ligaments before he let out a crooked smile. “Well, look who decided to pay their old friend a visit,” he crooned, using his lanky arms to adjust himself on his sheets. He pulled a tattered blanket tighter around his waist, shielding our already knowing eyes from his lack of legs.

Ryan is twenty-eight years old, the youngest person to call the Infirmary home, and has been living in there since 41 Creative Essay

42 Creative Essay he was a teenager. When Ryan was little, his mother had been giving him a bath in their home when she looked away for a second. In that moment, Ryan fell over out of the bathtub, damaging his spinal cord. The one doctor in Jamaica that could surgically assist him was out of the country; therefore, he never had surgery. His legs were permanently stunted as a child, and out of use. Taking care of him became too much of a burden on his mother, as is the story with most of the Infirmary’s inhabitants, so she brought him to there to be taken care of.

“You think I’d go all week without coming to give you a hard time?” I joked, crouching down on the tiled floor in front of his bed. Ryan huffed, shaking his head vigorously. “Olivia, you do not know how, remember? I thought you were dumb,” he erupted into harmonious laughter, his horse laugh catching on the wind propelling from the fan in front of him.

I rolled my eyes. “You’re never going to let that go.” Morgan crossed her legs under her, laughing. “I love this story.”

Ryan smirked. “Maybe if you spoke when we first met, Olivia, I wouldn’t have thought you were dumb.”

“You just point blank asked me, ‘Are you dumb or something?’ I was extremely offended before I realized you were asking if I was mute.”

“Friends now though, right?” A cautious grin played with the corner of Ryan’s lips as he held out a calloused palm towards me.

“Always friends, Ryan,” I chuckled, shaking his hand. I glanced over Ryan’s corner of the room, taking in his splintering, lopsided wardrobe and stacks of books precariously teetering on his plastic nightstand. At the top, a worn and tattered Bible sat, its leather covering peeling away from the glue as a result of stifling Jamaican afternoons and years of use. “What’ve you been reading recently?” I asked, nodding my head towards the Bible.

Ryan leaned backwards and grabbed it, flipping through its thick center until he settled on a dogeared page. He extended it towards me, tapping his fingertips on the dark black words sprawled across the page. “Psalms, mostly. But particularly Psalm 27.” He let his round eyes tremble closed, folding his palms on top of his sheet. “Cast me not off; forsake me not, O God of my salvation! For my father and mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in...” His voice tapered off, hesitantly opening an eye to peer at us. He shrugged his shoulders, reaching to take the Bible back from my hands.

I smiled, letting out a slight sigh. “I love that, Ryan. I love even more that you are searching.”

He let out a reverberating laugh. “He teaches me a lot through the search. Humbles me a lot too, if you could believe that I would even need humbling.” A smirk played with the corner of his lips again as Morgan and I both shook our heads.

Morgan stretched her arms upwards, before rocking onto her heels. “Hey, do you wanna go see the ramp?” Ryan’s eyes glistened as he adjusted his weight with his arms. “You mean it’s done?” His hoarse voice rippled across the stifled room, as men chattered amongst themselves on the beds around us. I glanced at Morgan, whose toothy smile ran across her face.

“We finished it this morning. We’ll bring you down,” She said, nudging Ryan’s wheelchair closer to the edge of his bed. He lifted himself into it and we made our way into the dense Jamaican sunshine. Ryan’s fingertips pounded against the wheelchair’s arms in nervous excitement, his large eyes bouncing from left to right as we passed by his fellow roommates. As we neared the ramp, he swatted at Morgan’s hands. “Let me do it.”

Morgan released the handles, as Ryan’s palms began to push the rusting wheels down the newly dried concrete. The ocean opened up before us, pieces of rubble still layering the white sand. A large tear caressed his thin cheekbone, before he glanced back at us. “Thank you guys so much.” *** Now members of the Infirmary can ride their wheelchairs down to the oceanfront and bask in the fading afternoon light every day. Dolores and Donovan can now sit on the sand and watch the undulating water as it races towards the shore. My friend Ryan is now able to watch the frothing waves slam against the plush, white sand, and even, with assistance, he can go swimming. His legs become unnecessary as they buoy under him, arms propelled by floaties, grin swimming across his cheeks.