Tere­sa White

“Al­most every woman in the sto­ry of Je­sus is called Mary... More com­mon­ly, the Marys have com­bined and then di­vid­ed, on­ly to fuse again with oth­er, un­named women in Je­sus’s cir­cle. They seem par­tic­u­lar­ly at­tract­ed to Mary Mag­da­lene, to whom they clus­ter like pins to a dress­mak­er’s mag­net... Mary Mag­da­lene has al­ways rep­re­sent­ed ‘the sin­ner we should as­pire not to be and the saint we as­pire to be­come’.” Mul­ti­ply­ing Marys, by Ma­ri­na Warn­er, Lon­don Re­view of Books, Vol­ume 40 Num­ber 4, 22 Feb­ru­ary 2024.

Pub­lished posthu­mous­ly in 2023, Good­bye Bay is ex­act­ly as its ti­tle promis­es. It is, in ef­fect, Jen­nifer Rahim’s leave-tak­ing (trag­i­cal­ly, ear­li­er in that year) and her “good­bye to all that,” “all that” be­ing a com­plex ta­pes­try of gen­der, com­ing of age, na­tion­hood, and self­hood.

The year is 1963, the year of Rahim’s birth, and our na­tion is a year old. Time and place are crit­i­cal con­texts for this nov­el, and its first para­graph sets the stage beau­ti­ful­ly. Our nar­ra­tor has ar­rived in the myth­i­cal town of Macaima (her route there from Port-of-Spain sug­gests re­al-life Guayagua­yare). It is the Pe­tit Careme. We im­me­di­ate­ly learn of many things hap­pen­ing in that year: the Gov­ern­ment’s con­cerns about mil­i­tant trade union­ism, CLR James’s pub­li­ca­tion of Be­yond a Bound­ary, the ad­vent of Mar­tin Luther’s icon­ic I Have a Dream, the as­sas­si­na­tion of Kennedy, and the ar­rest and re­lease (with­out charge) of a woman sell­ing souse and black pud­ding on the pave­ments of San Fer­nan­do.

Colour is vi­brant and im­me­di­ate. Her choice of text and tem­po is de­light­ful­ly cap­tured in the ca­lyp­soes of the time. In­deed, with all ret­ro­spec­tive fic­tion, it is im­por­tant to get con­tem­po­rane­ity and zeit­geist right in set­ting the stage. And, on that score, I have a beef that I need to deal with quick­ly and con­clu­sive­ly so that I can re­turn to the re­view at hand and give the good book the jus­tice that it de­serves. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, there are some anachro­nis­tic laps­es. Mealy­bug, for ex­am­ple, was not an agrar­i­an pest in 1960s Trinidad (it was first re­port­ed in the Caribbean in Grena­da in 1993 and in Trinidad in 1995; I re­mem­ber clear­ly that there were no hi­bis­cus­es to be seen in the west of the is­land when I re­turned in 1996).

The pros and cons of In­te­grat­ed Pest Man­age­ment (IPM) would have been an un­like­ly post-of­fice con­ver­sa­tion when Rachel Car­son’s Silent Spring had on­ly been pub­lished in 1962 and se­ri­ous re­search in­to IPM did not start glob­al­ly un­til the 1970s. In terms of our lex­i­con, I don’t think the term “for­eign” as a place to be in, go to or be from was used wide­ly then ei­ther.

The prob­lem with such nig­gling de­tails is that they start the read­er ques­tion­ing nar­ra­tor re­li­a­bil­i­ty, and in­stead of paint­ing a vi­brant palette for our imag­i­na­tion, the sto­ry flow gets in­ter­rupt­ed. And this runs the risk of read­ers be­com­ing pedan­tic and, some­times, in­ac­cu­rate­ly so.

Be­ing from Town, I had not heard the ex­pres­sion “Neemakaran” un­til Pan­day’s fa­mous use of the emo­tion­al­ly loaded term in 1986. I thus ques­tioned the char­ac­ters’ use of it. How­ev­er, when I checked with my best friend, who is a lin­guist and grew up in a de­vout Hin­du house­hold with fam­i­ly span­ning San Juan, San­gre Grande, and Moru­ga, she was able to con­firm that it was a well-known in­sult in her and her par­ents’ child­hoods.

It would eas­i­ly have been hurled around in rur­al 1963, far south of The Light­house. This clar­i­fi­ca­tion al­lowed me to put my anal ten­den­cies aside and get on with the sto­ry. And I was a rich­er per­son, as a re­sult, for there is pith in the book.

Good­bye Bay treats sym­pa­thet­i­cal­ly and se­ri­ous­ly with dif­fi­cult is­sues: abor­tion, in­ter­sex­u­al­i­ty, les­bian­ism, un­ac­knowl­edged non-mar­i­tal chil­dren, rape, do­mes­tic vi­o­lence, racism, post-Cedu­la land priv­i­lege, and sui­cide. All at a time when our na­tion was os­ten­si­bly in­no­cent and new­ly born in­to its post-colo­nial fu­ture.

In all of this sea of psy­chic dam­age, it is Rahim’s con­struc­tion of The Sa­cred Fem­i­nine that I find most in­trigu­ing. I think of her Maries and Marias and her de­lib­er­ate choice to con­flate the names. It serves as a spir­i­tu­al mys­tery as well as a sub­tle pen­e­tra­tive and pow­er­ful de­vice.

The Sa­cred Fem­i­nine and its in­her­ent spir­i­tu­al mys­tery are in­tro­duced in the very first pages in the form of Our La­dy, the im­mac­u­late­ly con­ceived Mary, the most saint­ed of all Marys, of all moth­ers, of all women. Our nar­ra­tor has ar­rived at Macaima and is tak­en to where she will live for a year: a sim­ple beach house over­look­ing Good­bye Bay on Church Street where the on­ly oth­er built struc­ture is a church in ru­ins. The church is iron­i­cal­ly named Our La­dy of Vic­to­ry, iron­ic be­cause it is the ill-fat­ed site of a Carib at­tack where an in­ter­lop­ing priest was killed. A woman may al­so have been raped there. It is both over­grown and jad­ed.

Yet, it still hous­es a grot­to with a stat­ue of the Vir­gin Mary. Up­on our nar­ra­tor’s ar­rival, a mys­te­ri­ous woman ho­n­ours the ef­fi­gy with flow­ers and her smoky breath. Though strange and haunt­ing, the in­ci­dent is ig­nored by the lo­cal guide (who must al­so have seen the in­ci­dent) in the way of “some­thing that be­comes fa­mil­iar or as in­dis­tin­guish­able as shad­ows.”

The mys­tery of con­flat­ing the less­er Marys is pre­sent­ed short­ly af­ter­wards in a wel­com­ing let­ter, signed by a Marie, or is it a Maria? Be­yond the salu­ta­tion to our nar­ra­tor, “Dear An­na”, the let­ter is bare. As our nar­ra­tor tells us at the be­gin­ning, “Macaima was an un­fin­ished book and peo­ple brought me their chap­ters. Not all at once, but page by page, let­ter by let­ter.” The book takes us on An­na’s voy­age of dis­cov­ery. The read­er will weigh what it means to be fe­male, ir­re­spec­tive of ob­serv­able sex, what it means to be good, ir­re­spec­tive of or­gan­ised re­li­gion, and what it means to be an in­te­gral part of the flow of life, ir­re­spec­tive of choos­ing to abort or com­mit sui­cide.

Ma­ri­na Warn­er, the Eng­lish mythog­ra­ph­er (with, co­in­ci­den­tal­ly, Tri­ni roots) writes that “A myth­ic clus­ter such as that around Mary Mag­da­lene is a liv­ing or­gan­ism” with three qual­i­ties; first­ly, it is a parei­do­lia (a mech­a­nism for see­ing mean­ing with­in a seem­ing­ly ran­dom vi­su­al pat­tern); sec­ond­ly, there is the ten­den­cy to re­peat these mean­ing­ful pat­terns over time; and this leads, third­ly, to es­tab­lish­ing a map of con­nec­tions across time, “in­fus­ing sto­ries in­to places” and hal­low­ing a spe­cif­ic lo­cal­i­ty. Tak­en to­geth­er, Warn­er as­serts that “The hu­man long­ing to map places ac­cord­ing to hopes and fears, to or­gan­ise time ret­ro­spec­tive­ly to be mean­ing­ful­ly struc­tured rather than ran­dom noise, can be con­front­ed and adapt­ed for hap­pi­er ends.”

Con­flat­ing Marys in­to re­gen­er­a­tive moth­er­hood is no strange prac­tice for Trinida­di­ans. In fact, our con­fla­tions are syn­cret­ic, su­per­sed­ing Abra­ham­ic monothe­ism, as beau­ti­ful­ly prac­tised in the ob­ser­vance of Siparia Mai at La Div­ina Pas­to­ra.

How­ev­er, Good­bye Bay, Rahim’s hal­lowed lo­cal­i­ty, us­es ret­ro­spec­tion to bring to­geth­er and re­solve a more high­ly sea­soned callaloo of earth­ly af­flic­tions and tri­umphs. I can­not help think­ing that if Ma­ri­na Warn­er was in search of a good sto­ry to il­lus­trate the nu­ances of her Mul­ti­ply­ing Marys es­say—one that was ac­ces­si­ble to all and one that could give in­struc­tion and hope—she could find no bet­ter source than the em­i­nent­ly read­able Good­bye Bay.

Jen­nifer Rahim, in her un­planned part­ing, leaves us with mag­ic, sov­er­eign­ty (per­son­al and na­tion­al), reck­on­ing, and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion. An iden­ti­ty and a home: a sense of be­long­ing. A mov­ing body, hair loosed, a place with beau­ty and con­tra­dic­tions, af­fir­ma­tive and joy­ous. For the flow of life, even long af­ter Rahim has left the beach of Good­bye Bay, like the sea that meets its shores, it is “still go­ing on.”