It was Miss Jewel alone who waved me off when I departed for the teacher-training college in Kingston, standing in her best blouse, her legs bowed so that the hem of her skirt nearly touched the floor. As the van collected me, crunching along the stones of the path as always, she handed me a tiny parcel.

‘A likkle spell?’ I asked.

The parcel contained one well folded pound note and two shiny shillings tied in a white handkerchief that had been stitched, unevenly, with my initials in blue and red. ‘You nah need a likkle spell, me sprigadee. De Lawd haffe tek care a yuh,’ was all she said.

Like butterflies, we new girls dazzled in our white gloves, our pastel frocks, our pretty hats. Girls from good homes from all across the island. Girls who possessed the required knowledge of long division, quadratic equations. Girls who could parse a sentence, subject, object, nominative, and name five verbs of manner. Girls who could recite the capital cities of the world and all the books of the Bible in the perfect English diction spoken by the King. We new girls were to be cultivated into teachers and only after three years of residential study would we be ready for release into the schools of Jamaica.

The hall in which we waited on that first evening was loud with the silence of fear. Fidgeting was kept to a minimum, only necessary when someone needed to straighten the hem of their garment to prevent it creasing or wipe away a tear of sweat that had developed with the heat. Only one girl coughed.

Outside this room there was great commotion – the older pupils going about their business as raucous and shrill as parrots on a branch. Until, in one instant, it stopped as if, suddenly, all the parrots had expired or taken flight. The principal was making her entrance, parting girls to her left, to her right, like Moses through the Red Sea. She was tall and broad with a top lip that carried such a profusion of dark hair that the impression she gave was of a man in an all-too-inadequate disguise. She walked with dainty yet lumbering steps – full of feminine grace that nevertheless shook the floor beneath us. And following on behind in the gap that her ample gait created were five teachers. In the shadow of this colossal woman those attendants looked as flimsy and puny as leaves blown in by the wind. The teachers mounted the stage and faced we new girls. They were all white women but their complexions ranged – as white people’s tend to do – through varying shades of pink depending on how long they had been on the island. The principal carried a seasoned ruddy glow on her cheeks while others bore the blotchy roaring-red of newcomers.

A smile should light up a face so that a person might seem friendly and kindly disposed to those they are smiling at. Unfortunately the principal, Miss Morgan, had a smile that was so unfamiliar to her face that it had an opposite effect – rather like the leer of a church gargoyle, it made her look sinister. She first smiled after the words, ‘Welcome, girls, to our teacher-training school. You have a hard yet stimulating three years of study ahead. If each of you attends to your work with diligence and courage I am sure you will get on well with us here.’ Her voice rang with a soft, gentle lilt as if soon to break into song, yet her smile made me recoil. But it was during her second grin, after the register of names had been taken by her bashful deputy, that I made the contrary vow never to do anything that would cause her to smile on me directly.

Miss Morgan was not an Englishwoman as the other teachers were, her country of origin was Wales – a corner in Britain famous for its coal, its capital city Cardiff, and for being where clouds tip excess rain before moving on to the pastures of England. While the five teachers seated themselves delicately upon the chairs provided on the stage, the principal paced stately to the piano and lowered her substantial backside on to the shaky stool. For a brief moment she paused as if in prayer – her hands splayed chord-shaped over the keys – before we new girls were ordered, by some imperceptible yet demanding movement of her eyebrow, to stand. She began to play, thumping out the chords to the hymn ‘Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise’. While thrashing and beating the instrument into a tune, her hair, which had sat as neat as if cast in resin, gradually began to give up one lock. The rogue hair shook looser with every note until the passion of her playing let it fall free over her forehead. ‘Most blessed, most glorious, the ancient of days’. With one mighty voice we new girls sang along, fired by the emotion of her performance and the vigorous quivering of the fallen lock. ‘Almighty, victorious, thy great name we praise’.

Michael was holding his closed hand out to me. This fully grown man with stubble hair piercing the skin of his chin was grinning on me as a schoolboy would. Opening his hand he revealed, resting in his palm, an ink-black scorpion, its tail erect and curled. I wanted to warn him of the danger of its murderous sting, but no words would come. I moved to strike the insect from his palm but my arm was being pulled away. Someone had my wrist clasped in their hand as tight as vine round a tree.

I had never had such a rude awakening. The cover on my bed was pulled back. I could not for a moment remember where I had laid my head to sleep. I was revealed half naked on the mattress – my nightdress rolled and twisted at my waist with the movement of my dreams. I was being pulled so hard I could do nothing but follow. My feet fumbled for solid floor as I tugged at my nightdress to hide my shame. And before I was entirely convinced I was no longer dreaming I found myself running for my life. My captor was before me still squeezing on to my wrist, she turning to look on me only to say, ‘Hurry nah.’ Other girls were running alongside us. The doors they hurtled through slammed behind them like gunshot. The slapping of our bare feet echoed on the stone floor of every long corridor we ran down, before we were funnelled to one single door where I was pushed and jostled through the hole by other girls, whose manner insisted they should get there before me. The room was so bright with sunlight that at first I could not see. But then I observed overhead shower pipes and felt wetness under my feet. My captor released my wrist now and in one deft movement pulled her nightdress over her head and stood before me as naked as Eve. She gestured for me to copy her but became exasperated, sighing and tutting as she watched me untying the buttons and bows that modesty had stitched at the neck of my nightclothes.

‘Come, hurry,’ the girl said, slapping my useless hands out of the way and fumbling at my buttons. She began to lift my nightdress but I held it tight, not wanting to be naked in front of so many strangers. She hit at my hands again. So I hit hers and for a second she stopped, startled, before hitting mine so hard I gave up the fight. And I stood, with all the other girls, exposed – clutching my elbows to me, trying to hide my breasts, between my legs, my backside, my unattractive knees. Then the water came on, pouring down on us in a rain of icy water. Every girl screamed. One deafening sound that drowned all others. Mouths open so wide I could see deep into pink throats, as girls with tendons that stood out on their necks like rope yelled with the force of beasts. And as I looked on my captor – naked, shivering, screaming, a glistening waterfall running down her black skin, past nipples that stood as erect as bullets – I detected a gleam of pure abandon on her face. So I closed my eyes, opened my mouth and let my lungs give forth the most savage ferocious cry my body had ever produced. The blessed relief of this noise cleansed like a silent prayer. I screamed until I became aware that the water was no longer flowing, the room was calm and I was gently being shaken by my captor, who was saying softly, ‘You can stop now.’