Etiquette
This is Jamaica, we don't do that here.
Some years ago, I went to Devon House for ice cream with my mummy and cousin. Feeling that cool sweet cream on your tongue is made better only by being outside on a warm evening, catching the breeze. We sat next to each other on one of the few benches dotting the lawn.
For years, the government, who owns the property, didn’t allow the public to really congregate or picnic on the lawn. Since relocating the ice cream shop to a larger area, they’ve now allowed people to gather and have also provided some seating. Devon House is one of few well-maintained public green spaces in the Kingston area, and thanks to the ice cream shop, the only one open in the night.
I sat engrossed in the ice cream and conversation. I pulled my right foot up on the smooth concrete bench and rested my chin on my knee. Seemingly out of nowhere, a lanky man in a security officer’s uniform came over to tell me I’m not allowed to “have up” my foot like that.
- Why not?
-That’s the rule.
- I don’t see this rule posted anywhere. Is there a rulebook you have with this rule?
- Miss, you cannot put up foot on the bench.
I either returned my foot to the ground only to bring it back to the bench when he walked away, or I kept it on the bench until he tired and left. I don’t remember how I disobeyed, but I remember telling him that he should feel free to report me to his manager or whomever. We finished our ice cream shortly thereafter. I left incredulous.
I brought up the incident to Mummy a few days ago as I sat at the dinner table with my right knee pulled up under my chin.
-Honestly, I don’t think it’s a real rule. What’s the point? I asked her.
She looked at me with an expression that asked, “When do our rules have to make sense for them to be rules?” But she also confessed that she would have been slightly disgusted if she saw a stranger’s bare foot on the bench. I laughed in disbelief. How does having my foot on the bench have any material impact on the bench or anything else? It certainly doesn’t affect the cleanliness: the bench is outdoors. Between bird droppings and the bottoms of little shoes that stand next to seated adults, the benches on the lawn certainly see their share of “dirt.” Mummy didn’t understand why I so pressed about it. This is Jamaica, she reminded me, we don’t do that here.
This is Jamaica, she reminded me, we don’t do that here.
What is it about feet that makes us so uptight? Admittedly, we have poor associations with feet: we named a whole fruit ‘tinking (stinking) toe for its pungent smell and vague resemblance to a toe; being called a “dry foot bwoy/gyal” is fighting words, and as Tony Matterhorn immortalized, you cannot be a hot girl with nice pedicure but have “heel back weh full up a crack and full up a sot.” Outside of a pool or beach, being puplicly barefoot in Jamaica means you’re either poor, mad, or Mutabaruka.
“Whatever you think about it, we don’t consider it good etiquette,” Mummy continued.
Ah, etiquette, that nebulous standard of behaviour built solely on the basis of bourgeois sensibilities.
Jamaicans are obsessed with proper behaviour and appearances in all the ways except the ways that matter. Women can’t wear sleeveless garments in parliament but rarely are parliamentarians disciplined for their bad behavior in those same halls. Teachers and administrators at my all-girls’ high school could punish us for not wearing the correct color dress slip and underwear (our all-white cotton uniforms revealed color fairly well.) Most of the codes of etiquette have to do with women. For example, if a woman and man are having a brawling argument, onlookers might say they’re both are acting like butus, but only the woman would be called a sketel.
He must have thought it so strange seeing this presumedly middle-class, good-looking woman with her foot up in public. In a dress no less. This isn’t how women behave, not women like me, and importantly, not in a place like this.
And with the social etiquette contract, the security guard is empowered to scold me for having my foot on the bench, but who scolds him for flirting with me on the job? This last part didn’t happen, but it could have. It wouldn’t be the first time a uniformed man has tried to look me in the course of duty (“You don’t want a police friend?” the officer asked me during a traffic stop). It’s the tax I pay for being a young woman in Jamaica.
No part of me believes that the guard would have approached a group of men to scold one of them about having their foot on the bench. I imagine if I were with my dad instead, the guard would have told him to tell me to take my foot down and if my father refused, would have smiled, and walked away. But a group of women? Dem can tek talking to.