Island Gyal Drinkin' Bush Tea

Sister Mary Catherine of the Order of St. Benedict in Nassau brewed a pot of the stinky, smelly bush herb tea for my stomachache, which seemed to me had gone on for days and days. My protective father had left me at the convent on the big island a week earlier, which parting was more difficult for him than it was for me, as all that I could see and hear of the convent detailed acres and acres of green grass, two garrulous pigs squealing in their backyard pen, big dogs running wild and more than thirty other island girls to play with. And after years of sharing a bedroom with my two younger sisters, I now had a cool older suite mate to compare notes with, which seemed eminently more interesting than fighting with my sister over access to the full-sized David Cassidy poster that took turns over our individual bunk beds.

I sipped the nasty tea quietly, waiting for it to cool down so that I could knock it back instead of having to actually taste it. I had heard so much about cerasee tea and its various healing powers. Back home, I had once helped Nurse Raho midwife Louise's mother's baby by pouring cup after cup of the tea to help her speed up her labour contractions. Another time, my classmate Ruth had an awful head cold that was magically cured after a few doses. And now, despite the white Franciscan nuns' earlier admonitions at the local island elementary school that herb tea was only for unsophisticated savages, I had an entire pot of my own to explore.

I was eleven years old and on my own for the very first time, and felt terribly grown up. After all, I had just spent three months overseas visiting my grandmother in California, and therefore assumed the role of the world-weary traveler, which much have greatly amused the wise Sister Mary Catherine and the other nuns.

The massive odor of the herb caught my fancy, and forced me to focus on what I was asking my body to ingest without complaint. The leaves swam low in the cup, and offered a residue of rotten eggs, sulphur blues and essence of stale seawater, heightened by the wretch of fragrant spoiled mushrooms. But I was determined to make the tea my own, and without complaint, just to show that I was a big girl and ready to make my way in the world.