Written piece
Nutmeg
David Salmon
Jamaica
About this piece
Nutmeg is the story of an elderly Jamaican woman who uses the grating of nutmegs to provide a cathartic release from her challenging life in the UK. As she confronts the ageing process, grating nutmegs is the only exercise that keeps her increasingly fragmented memories intact.
NUTMEG
Nana grounded the nutmeg against her beaten-up grater, never getting tired of the kick the spice would give her. This was her ritual especially in summer as she lounged on her veranda in Brixton.
The sweet scent of that little nut danced in her nostrils. Transfixed by the exercise, she wouldn’t notice her bulbous joints swelling from arthritis. This practice she kept up long after her daughters gave up trying to convince her to use store-bought powder.
“My Maa did this, it’s good enough for me!” she declared to her frustrated children.
“Doh worry bout your Ma-ma,” Donovan would reassure his two daughters. “She’s hard but got a sweet centre.”
The Antiguan never lost patience with his Jamaican missus. How this was possible? Their daughters never understood.
Yet, when the summer sun shone on Nana’s tired brow, their daughters would see an occasional crack in the shell, a sliver of gentleness they rarely knew. Years and years of scrubbing hospitals’ wards and cleaning its stricken had hardened her. At times, even Nana’s children shuddered at her biting iciness.
But Donovan was her whisperer. Her church sisters saw the obligatory smile; that performative expression plastered on her gaunt face. It was like the brilliant red mace she used for the Christmas cake. Their daughters saw her impenetrable shell, the toughness she would deploy to survive sixty-five bitter British winters. Her husband saw the aromatic centre, the last remnant of their tropical home fast receding from her catalogue of memories.
Grating the nutmeg, on the porch he had built, tied these loosening threads of memories together. Of all her spices: the citrus, the cinnamon, the ginger, it was the nutmeg that was her favourite. It was the only one that reminded her of their effort to build life away from home.