The mountains frowned down, blue as her mood, as Mrs Hamilton and her husband drove through the gates of the University of the West Indies.  

‘Mona’, Mrs Hamilton, moaned. The clock on the dashboard of the Mercedes rolled forward to nine. Mrs Hamilton scowled at having to arrive an hour early for a 10-o’clock ceremony, to say nothing of the ridiculous suggestion on the invitation that they should arrive at eight.  

Mr Hamilton parked the car in the VIP lot and guided his wife in her unsteady heels along the gravel path that led to the massive tent that had been erected for graduation. Once inside, he slipped the usher a $1,000 note, discreetly nodding at the seats in the front section. ‘Those are reserved for faculty and VIPs, sir.’  

‘Yes’, he replied, ‘I’m Dr Hamilton. I’m an honorary graduate of this university.’ When the usher’s face didn’t change, Mr Hamilton followed up with a $5,000 note, shared far less discreetly. The usher’s face lit up at the brand-new note. She took the couple to the front section, and they sat down. 

Mrs Hamilton had to admit it was better than she’d expected. The tent was festive — columns wrapped in red, flags hanging from its uprights. The University of the West Indies had not been on her radar of potential colleges for Hannah. She’d assumed that her daughter would go away for college — Canada, the US, England, maybe somewhere more exotic — the Miller boy was doing grad school in Paris. But business was bad, and the dollar was worse. No matter how many ways the Hamiltons tried to calculate it, they could not find the tuition money to send Hannah to any school worth going to. Mrs Hamilton loved her daughter, but she had not deemed it necessary to give up her weekly hair appointments to finance a degree from Nova.  

And Hannah. Sigh. Hannah was not the kind of child who could win scholarships. 

Mrs Hamilton settled in her seat and listened to the voices rising around her.  

‘How yuh put dem people deh front a we? Look how long we deh yah! We get up from tree o’clock this morning fe come yah from Clarendon.’ 

‘Me haffi walk up yah barefoot cah mi shoes cyan walk pon da suppen deh. Dem people suppose fe deh behine we. We neva come yah come see nobody.’ 

‘Ma’am, the front section is for staff and VIPs’, the usher interjected feebly. 

‘All a we a VIP. All a we a de same.’  

Mrs Hamilton bristled. She busied herself by trying to make out the flags of the islands. Fifteen flagpoles formed a backdrop to the stage at the front. Two rows of flags hung from the main support beams under the ceiling of the tent. Crests of the nations were attached to the eight large columns. Mrs Hamilton recognised the Jamaican flag, of course. Trinidad was easy to spot. But the rest of the flags were a mystery. She might as well have been watching the Olympics. 

A flash of tinfoil caught her eye, and Mrs Hamilton gasped as a woman in the section to her left pulled out a vinyl carrier bag from under her chair and began unfolding foil-wrapped parcels. The woman reached back into the bag for a large ice cream container then pulled out a stack of plastic bowls and distributed them to the children seated next to her. Using one of the bowls as a scoop, she ladled out food, the children stretching their bowls across each other’s laps. Mrs Hamilton swallowed hard as the pungent scent of brown stew chicken trampled the memory of the rice crackers she’d eaten that morning. Brown stew chicken for breakfast. These people reminded Mrs Hamilton of people she had tried hard to forget. Their flat accents, loud voices, their brown stew chicken and oh my God, what was that? Was that gungo rice and peas? Mrs Hamilton’s stomach grumbled and her mouth watered. She found herself leaning over to see what else the woman was going to share. Two girls sat to the woman’s left. Two boys to her right. They ranged in age from five to about 15 or 16.  

Mrs Hamilton leaned over to Mr Hamilton to raise her usual lament, ‘Can you believe these people?’ But the woman moved again, and Mrs Hamilton stilled. The woman reached back into the bag for a stack of plastic cups and an old-fashioned Thermos. She poured drinks for each of the children, and Mrs Hamilton felt like she was in church, watching communion. There was something rhythmic, almost holy, about the woman’s movements. The family moved and swayed together, like living puzzle pieces, each individual movement contributing to the collective choreography. 

Mrs Hamilton scanned the rows of people seated under the tent. She fanned herself with the thin VIP card, clutching it like both sword and shield. There must be other people like them who’d been forced to send their children here. Hannah’s best friend, Suzanne, had decent parents, but they were off the island on holiday.  

Then she saw her. The boy’s mother.  

The boy’s mother was wearing a large Easter hat, the brim about a foot wide. Purple. With red feathers pluming from a gold and purple striped band. The dress was a long-sleeved, knee-length sheath of shimmering purple sequins. Her feet were shod in ankle-high gold and silver sequined boots. Mrs Hamilton blanched. Though only the woman’s neck, hands and calves were visible, Mrs Hamilton could recognise the boy’s mother anywhere. The hands. Mrs Hamilton would have laughed had it not been for her fear that any sound might cause the boy’s mother to look her way. 

Of all the reasons to dread this ceremony today, she had forgotten about the possibility of running into the boy’s mother.  

Hannah had dated the boy in her first year at UWI. It had been a long year. The boy himself was not bad. He was what Mrs Hamilton thought of as a trier. He was handsome — she gave Hannah that. But English came out of his mouth the way paper came out of a shredder, his beautiful teeth splicing h’s off vowels, biting the g’s off present participles, his thick tongue pushing words into clumsy combinations. Listening to him threatened all the good work done by her blood pressure medication and morning walks. ‘Where are you from, dear?’ she had asked the first time Hannah brought him home.  

‘Matches Lane’, he replied.  

‘Where is that, dear?’  

‘Matthew’s Lane’, Mr Hamilton supplied.  

She tried again. ‘Where did you go to high school?’  

For Mrs Hamilton, there were only three right answers: Campion, AISK, Hillel; neither she nor Mr Hamilton had attended any of those schools, but that was beside the point. She could work with George’s and maybe even Ardenne. Wolmers, possibly. Kingston Tech? ‘What is that?’ Her eyes asked Mr Hamilton. But he just smiled and nodded and continued the conversation. She had spent the rest of the year conspiring ways to get Hannah away from the boy. She couldn’t understand why her husband didn’t care. He and Hannah were alike in that way, thinking they could just blaze their way through life without following rules, without giving a thought to how society worked. If Mr Hamilton had paid just a little more attention to social rules, tried a little harder to gladhand the men at Liguanea Club or join the Rotary or Lion’s Club, maybe they wouldn’t have found themselves sitting under a godforsaken plastic tent at UWI, when they could have been flying off to Boston or Miami for graduation. He could even have joined a lodge. Who cared about the rumours? A couple of dead goats would have been a worthy sacrifice for the network they needed to shore up their declining fortunes. 

Since they’d lost their shirts in the Olint collapse in 2009, nothing had been the same. The last 10 years had been a dismal decline into mediocrity, a state Mr Hamilton uncharitably referred to as ‘real life’. 

And here they were. When it was their turn to jet off to a graduation, instead they were at UWI. 

‘Did you see here?’ Mr Hamilton said, reading from the programme. ‘It says UWI ranks among the top 10 per cent of universities in the world.’ 

Mrs Hamilton kissed her teeth loudly. ‘Who says that? Do you see these people? This is definitely not the top 10 per cent.’ 

What was there to brag about in going to a graduation at UWI? You wouldn’t even get to say, ‘Oh, these? I bought them when we went to New York for Hannah’s graduation.’  You couldn’t ring up old relatives in Vancouver to say you were planning a visit since you’d be in Toronto for Hannah’s graduation. Mrs Hamilton had been waiting Hannah’s whole life to drop nuggets like these into conversation. There would be no postcards to buy, no keyrings and trinkets to bring back for friends and neighbours. She would have nothing to show for these three stupid hours under a goddamn tent in Mona.  

And worse, the absolute worst part was that there was no opportunity to answer her favourite question, ‘Where are you from?’ No opportunity to tell the surprised foreigners that they were Jamaican. That they planned to do a bit of sightseeing before they headed back and that their newfound friends must surely look them up if they ever came to the island. Everybody and their mother here was Jamaican. There was no way to differentiate herself from the sea of black faces. These people were not her people. Too common and too coarse.  

Now here she was with just a few rows of plastic chairs separating her from the boy’s mother. They had never been this close together, though Hannah had dated the boy for a year. Mrs Hamilton had managed to maintain a healthy distance, refusing to make eye contact whenever they had been in the same space. But once the purple sequins had crept into Mrs Hamilton’s peripheral vision, it was impossible to unsee the boy’s mother. The boy’s mother was not a small person. She, her sequins and her hat commanded attention. And lest her costume fail to achieve that purpose, she kept up a steady stream of commentary for the duration of the ceremony. 

Her cries punctuated the National Anthem. After every ‘Jamaica’ she supplied a lusty ‘boom’.  

 She shouted ‘Hallelujah’ at every pause in the Chancellor’s address.  

‘Yes, Jesus’ she said as the Honorary Graduand received her degree and made her remarks.  

Mrs Hamilton was not impressed. The Honorary Graduand was an ice cream entrepreneur who had started a social enterprise by harvesting fruit going to waste around Kingston. She’d started her business while she was a teenager living near UWI, picking up the wasted fruit on campus and hiring students. As her business grew, she recruited street boys and high school students in need and expanded her network across Kingston. Now the company was listed on the Jamaica Stock Exchange.  

An honorary degree for ice cream? Mrs Hamilton sighed. Surely that cheapened the value of Mr Hamilton’s degree. The boy’s mother received the ice cream lady’s speech like the gospel, bowing her head and waving, occasionally stomping her foot and muttering, ‘Amen, amen. It shall be so.’ 

Mr Hamilton resumed his reading. ‘Listen’, he said, gesturing to the programme again. ‘It says UWI has produced three winners of the Nobel Prize, 72 Rhodes Scholars and 18 current or former heads of government. How can you call this settling? I’m proud Hannah is graduating from here.’ 

Mrs Hamilton scoffed.  

Mr Hamilton ignored her and kept reading. ‘Lots of writers too. One Man Booker Prize winner and an American Book Award winner and multiple Commonwealth Short Story Prize winners. Maybe she’ll be ok. Maybe she’ll find her footing.’ 

Mrs Hamilton sighed. She was never going to escape this place. Ever since she’d given birth to Hannah here, UWI had haunted her. Mr Hamilton had convinced her to have Hannah at UWI Hospital instead of flying to Miami and giving birth there like she’d wanted. If they’d done that, Hannah would’ve been a US citizen, and their tuition woes wouldn’t have been as stark. Once Mr Hamilton had got his honorary degree, he’d latched on to UWI like a new religion.  

Hannah had finally lost interest in the boy around her second year. But alas, things had only got worse. At least the boy seemed to want to improve himself. Hannah’s new interests took her further and further into the ghetto. In the name of academic inquiry, she spent all her time going to parties in inner-city communities and reading and writing about dancehall music. Mrs Hamilton was sure that this kind of foolishness would never have happened had Hannah gone to school in the US. All she could hope was that a Master’s degree would set Hannah straight. And this time, even if she had to sell her car or take out a loan, she would make sure that Hannah went to a sensible school in foreign. 

A glint of purple sequins and the announcement that the graduands were about to be called up brought her back to the present.  

Mrs Hamilton fingered the programme and sighed. There were thousands of names listed. The recitation of names and the accompanying ululations from the boy’s mother would surely do her in before it was Hannah’s turn.  

‘Our time now. Our time now. Hallelujah!’ The boy’s mother exclaimed as the Faculty of Social Sciences was called. 

‘Praise Jesus’, she wailed as each student took the stage.  

Out of the corner of her eye, Mrs Hamilton saw a rustling in the long line of students snaking their way to the stage. The boy was pushing past the people in line ahead of him, drawn like a magnet to the purple hat. He hugged his mother fiercely. and Mrs Hamilton felt a pang of something; a sharpness followed by a sticky oozing as though blood had been drawn.   

‘My pickney dis. My son dis. My one son. My one son.’ The people sitting around the boy’s mother clapped and cheered. Mrs Hamilton wondered what had become of decorum. Hands reached forward to pat the mother on the shoulder. 

‘Go deh, Mummy.’  

‘Big up yourself, Mummy.’ The boy returned to his place in line. Mrs Hamilton could only wonder what shenanigans and exclamations the mother would come up with when her son finally crossed the stage.  

Mrs Hamilton caught sight of Hannah at the back of the line. She wondered if Hannah would push her way forward to hug her and her father as the boy had done. The line inched slowly past them, and Hannah smiled and waved. Then she turned and blew a kiss to her father. 

Mrs Hamilton looked at the line of graduating students. So much fake hair. And where were all the men? The one other man in the line with Hannah had dreadlocks so thick, Mrs Hamilton was sure he must have had his mortarboard made specially. She leaned over and whispered to Mr Hamilton, ‘Now I understand why Hannah took up with the boy. There was no one else here to date.’ 

‘Peter’, Mr Hamilton sighed. ‘His name is Peter.’ 

The first time Mrs Hamilton saw the boy’s mother, she recognised her instantly, the woman’s hands triggering memories even before her face came into view. Her fingers were so deeply stained with curry, it reminded Mrs Hamilton of the old television show, The Incredible Hulk, she used to watch as a child. The Hulk was a normal man who turned into a green monster when he was angry. The boy’s mother looked like she was always on the brink of transitioning. She had been the helper for Mr Whittaker, a married man with whom Mrs Hamilton had had an affair long before she met Mr Hamilton. Back then, the boy’s mother was regularly sent to fetch cool drinks for the lovers as they lay together in the air-conditioned bedroom, to cut chocolate bars into small squares and lay them out on long white platters with assorted nuts and strawberries. Mr Whittaker had seen this in a hotel he kept promising to take his young mistress to, but she’d never made it past the homemade re-enactments proffered by the boy’s mother. The boy’s mother had been tasked with removing all traces of the day’s visit before Mrs Whittaker returned home from lunch with her lady friends or her Rotary Club meeting or whatever it was she used to fill her days. That was a very long time ago. Mrs Hamilton had not yet built her name; she had not established herself in the very clubs her lover’s wife had been a member of. The version of her the boy’s mother knew was not real. That had been a youthful mistake, a character discarded a long time ago as she figured out how to make the transition from Porus to Norbrook.  

‘How much you get?’ The boy’s mother had said to her one day as she waited in the living room while Mr Whittaker finished up a business call. 

‘Excuse me?’ The version of herself before she became Mrs Hamilton had already begun to speak with the constricted syllables of an Upper St Andrew housewife. 

‘How much a fe yuh salary?’ 

‘I don’t work for Mr Whittaker. We are friends.’ 

‘All a we work fe him, mi dear. You a do day’s work. Me live in. 

* 

The dean of the faculty, resplendent in red robes lined with black and a plumed black hat, rose and went to the podium. 

‘Sir, I present to you these members of our society who, having fulfilled the requirements of this university, have been admitted to the degree of Bachelor of Arts. I beg that you recognise their advancement in our society.’ 

‘Hallelujah’, the boy’s mother wailed. 

The Chancellor replied. ‘By the power vested in me, I admit these persons whose names are about to be called and those who cannot be present to the degree of Bachelor of Social Sciences, and—’ he paused, his voice then rising an octave, ‘I recognise their advancement in our society.’ 

Two large video screens flanked the stage, sharing in 4K the graduates’ jubilant struts. Some of them merely walked. Others made the most of their moment — twirling, dipping, waving to their friends and families in the audience. Two husband and wife couples crossed the stage, sending the crowd into a frenzy. Mrs Hamilton shuddered at the undignified whoops and hollers.  

The dean called the boy’s name: ‘Peter Birthright. First-Class Honours.’ The crowd cheered. The guests immediately surrounding the boy’s mother, who now felt themselves invested, now family for having witnessed the hug, for having laid hands on the boy’s mother, stood and hollered. Mr Hamilton shifted in his seat as though to rise, but Mrs Hamilton took his knees out with a sharp cut-eye. He clapped loudly as she gritted her teeth to survive the assault on her soul. 

Over the din, Mrs Hamilton heard it. A keening that came from someplace otherworldly. A howl that sounded like an animal in pain. It sounded like it came from the earth on which the mother stood, like it had been there for centuries. The boy’s mother doubled over from the weight of it. Heaving moans rocked through her. People on either side of her stood to hold her up.  

‘You did it, Mummy.’  

‘Him gone through now, Mummy.’  

‘Big up yourself, Mummy.’ For the first time that day, the boy’s mother was silent. She rocked from side to side in the arms of her new friends, the big Easter hat now held by one of the guests. She let the tears flow freely. 

Hannah’s name was called. Mr and Mrs Hamilton clapped politely. Hannah walked across the stage and collected her degree. Mrs Hamilton noted, with equal parts relief and disappointment, her lack of flare. 

‘It says UWI used to be a slave plantation.’ Mr Hamilton was still reading from the programme, as though in contention for the prize of Most Informed Guest. ‘That’s a good thing, right? From plantation to major university.’  

‘How major is it if helpers’ children go here?’ Mrs Hamilton snapped. 

‘Remind me what your mother was. The Queen of England?’ Mr Hamilton sighed loudly and threw the programme back in Mrs Hamilton’s lap. ‘Isn’t this what you always say? People must educate themselves and make a way. They shouldn’t ask for handouts.’ 

Mrs Hamilton fanned herself silently with the programme, fuming for the remaining duration of the ceremony. Why he and Hannah were so proud of UWI’s slave past was beyond her. The only thing Mrs Hamilton could stand about UWI was the chapel. She’d been to a few weddings there. and Hannah had talked about it constantly since her first year, causing Mrs Hamilton to worry that marriage to the boy was imminent. The chapel was a marvel. The UWI campus still bore many signs of its slave plantation origins — the ruins of a waterwheel, an aqueduct. But the chapel had started life on another sugar estate in Trelawny. It had been disassembled, moved and reconstructed on the Mona campus in the 1950s. Mrs Hamilton thought about that every time she saw it. How something could look so solid and unmovable, and yet you could pull it apart brick by brick, set it up in a completely different location. And people would think it belonged there. They’d never question it. 

* 

At last, it was over. Graduates flocked the stage with their parents, friends and families to take photos against the backdrop. Mr and Mrs Hamilton waited for Hannah at the foot of the stage as she took photo after photo with her friends, oblivious to her mother urging them to leave quickly. As the crowd flew out, Mrs Hamilton felt the few rows between her and the boy’s mother draw perilously close, closer still as the boy strode over to them. Hannah bounded down the steps to greet him. 

‘Hey, Hannah’, the boy said, pulling her in for a hug. ‘Congrats. We did it.’ 

‘Hello, Mrs Hamilton’, he said, nodding. ‘Mr Hamilton.’ He extended his hand for a shake. 

Mrs Hamilton stood off to the side.  

‘First-class honours’, Mr Hamilton said. ‘Hell of an accomplishment. Congratulations, Peter.’ 

‘Thanks, Mr Hamilton.’ 

The four of them stood there awkwardly, graduates and their families pushing through them. 

‘Come, come’, Peter urged. ‘Let’s all take a picture on stage.’ 

‘We really should get going’, Mrs Hamilton said as she saw the purple hat inch closer.  

‘Just one quick photo, Mum’, Hannah urged. Mr Hamilton took Mrs Hamilton’s hand and led her on stage. The purple hat was still bowed in conversation with her seatmates. 

‘Quickly’, Mrs Hamilton hissed at Hannah. The four of them stood and smiled for the cameras. The boy’s mother turned and headed toward the stage, just as the dean stepped up to congratulate him. 

The boy’s mother smiled as she slowly made her way to the stage. An usher tapped the dean on the shoulder. ‘Sir, they’re asking for a photo with you and all the First-Class Honourees and their parents.’ When Mr and Mrs Hamilton did not move, she continued. ‘If you all would please leave the stage.’ 

Mrs Hamilton’s cheeks purpled. She gritted her teeth as she watched the dean and the honourees assemble, the boy’s mother standing proudly next to the dean. Their feathered hats rivalled each other’s, the purple dress bright against the dean’s red robes. 

‘Ruby Anderson? Is that you?’ Mrs Birthright called, waving brightly at Mrs Hamilton. 

Mrs Hamilton hoisted her bag up her shoulder and began pushing her way through the crowd, praying to lose herself in the throng of bodies, wishing that she couldn’t hear the words behind her. 

‘Ruby’, Mrs Birthright trilled, her notes pinprick sharp. ‘Ruby, dear. Fetch me a bottle of water, please. It’s so hot up here.’ 

2025 Commonwealth Short Story Prize Shortlist