Washing dirty secrets 'pon di river'

The report in last Wednesday's Gleaner, 'Jackets: made in Jamaica', was no news for those of us who've read Sonia King's wicked little book Jacket ... Or Full Suit?: Paternity Testing from a Jamaican Perspective. The formidable Mrs King, who headed the Paternity Testing Unit at the University Hospital of the West Indies for more than three decades, dealt with several visa cases over the years.

In a chapter titled 'Immigration Woes', she puts a human face on raw WikiLeaks data: "One in every 10 men who turns up at the Liguanea offices of the US Embassy is told the DNA test proves that he is not the biological father of the child he is filing for." This is how Mrs King describes one of the immigration tests that haunted her:

"Some of the saddest cases I worked on were sponsorship cases referred to the lab by the US Embassy. Perhaps the most heart-wrenching of these was the case of a man who came to the lab in a very distraught state. He had just been to the embassy where his visa application had been turned down on the grounds that his sponsor had been excluded as his biological father. This man suggested that I must have done something wrong in his test."

Mrs King patiently explained that she had done the test carefully, repeating it with a different set of reagents. Unsatisfied, the despondent man insistently declared: "But, Miss King, mi know seh a mi fada - mi born an see him." All she could do was suggest that he talk frankly to his mother. A week later, he returned to tell an instructive story which Mrs King relates:

"When she was about three months pregnant his real father went on farm work and never returned. In the meantime, she met an old boyfriend who she used to 'talk to' and they started 'talking' again."

She told him she was pregnant, although it was already obvious, and they married before the baby was born. So the man was right when he said: "Mi born an see him."

"This stepfather brought up the child as his own and later migrated to the US where he eventually started a business. Now that he was 'getting on in age', he wanted his son to come and learn the business and help him. The stress this man felt on learning that the man he knew and loved as his father for 43 years was not, in fact, his father made him appear suicidal, as he stated that he had nothing to live for.

"'Den wat you can do fi mi, Miss King? Mi life no done yah so now, is mi only chance fi help mi self.' It was painful to again explain to him that I had done his test to the best of my ability and although I was sorry for the result, I could do nothing else. Adoption was not an option here, but I had suggested it in similar cases where the 'child' was under 18 years old. Many months later, I continued to look for that name in media reports of suicide cases in the country."

Jackets and ready-made shirts

What is so unsettling about this story is that the child was not a 'jacket'. The woman could not deceive her husband even if she'd wanted to. She was visibly pregnant when they started 'talking' again. Like many nurturing Jamaican men, her husband willingly accepted paternity for a child that was not his own. All the same, by failing to legally adopt his stepson, the father could not claim the child. What a tragedy!

Most of the cases in Jacket ... Or Full Suit? are cut from a quite different cloth: plenty jackets. Incidentally, given the extent of false paternity in the society, it's surprising that the Dictionary of Jamaican English does not have an entry on this colourful term. In the Eastern Caribbean, our 'jacket' becomes a 'ready-made shirt'. The identical image of dress suggests the straightjacket that many a man is forced to wear when a woman deceptively names him as the father of her child. 'Jacket' also suggests the formal dress code of British 'respectability' to which the man must submit.

Of course, in some instances, men who consistently 'fire blank' are quite proud to claim children they could not possibly have fathered. So, in this instance, the jacket allows the man to 'brandish' sexual potency. Indeed, there are jackets and jackets, some of which fit much better than others.

In the very first chapter, 'Whose Jacket?', Mrs King tells the entertaining story of the man who gave the book its title. He'd done a paternity test to prove to his doubting wife that his 'outside' child was really his. She knew she was fertile because she'd had a child before they'd married. But her husband hadn't been able to impregnate her.

They lived in England and she was quite amused when he suddenly became fertile after a solo holiday in Jamaica.

If you want to hear the rest of that intriguing story and so much more, you can catch Sonia King this afternoon at Kingston Pon Di River, the new literary festival at Boone Hall Oasis in Stony Hill. Yesterday, the inaugural Two Seasons Talking Trees Literary Fiesta was staged in Treasure Beach. Last Sunday, the Asante Adonai Literary Lyme sprouted in Winefields, St Ann, 'where creativity meets creation'.

The Calabash Literary Festival should have watered our souls again this weekend. But it shattered. Perhaps, it's just as well. Genius cannot be contained within a single vessel. The festival is dead. Long live the festivals!

Carolyn Cooper is an ideator. Visit her bilingual blog at http://carolynjoycooper.wordpress.com/. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and karokupa@gmail.com.