Author Spotlight: Jennifer M. Garnatz

Title: Romantically Erotic Deadly Spiritual Society
Author: Jennifer M. Garnatz
Publisher: XlibrisUS
ISBN: 9781450003001
Pages: 100
Genre: Poetry

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About the Author

I write on all themes – sex, social issues, romance, friendship, spirituality and death. My heart tells me that my purpose on earth is to help those less fortunate than myself – even if all I can afford is to give a sandwich to someone who is hungry or words of comfort to someone distraught.

I was born in Lucea, Hanover, Jamaica, West Indies, in September 1953. I grew up in Kingston, where I was raised by my single father, a businessman. He constantly placed me in boarding schools or in private homes to live.

Daddy was a widower. She must have been perfect for him. I guessed that’s why he never remarried. We were all born after his wife died of cancer – childless. He later fathered 5 children with 4 different women: My elder brother, Patrick, lived with our father and myself. Our mothers migrated to the USA and England before we were 5 years old. Daddy placed us in boarding schools. The brother and sister who followed me had the same mother, and lived with her. We saw them on vacations. Growing up, I only came home on vacations whenever my grandmother was willing to to stay in our home and chaperone us.

Daddy’s last child, a boy, born in 1966, lived with us until he was 2 years old. His mother was the only woman who had lived in daddy’s home. After they split, she migrated to the USA. He was sent to live with our grandmother in the country. After daddy’s murder in August 1973, I brought him to Kingston, placing him in a boarding school.

After winning a full scholarship to attend a catholic high school, my father was extremely happy. He naturally placed me under the care of the Sisters of Mercy nuns at the Convent of Mercy Alpha Academy High School. Even though they were strict, living there was one of the happiest times of my childhood. They were fair in their treatment (unlike in some of the private homes I lived in). The nuns also placed great emphasis on developing our minds – not only intellectually and religiously (lots of school work, lots of praying), but also culturally and socially. They allowed us to amuse ourselves during recreation periods by dancing and watching TV; by taking us on picnic excursions to the beaches; to the movies and swimming pools in the city; and, occasionally, even to dance parties at our neighbouring catholic boy’s school (only the older girls, naturally). We also did “social work” – visiting the elderly and helping them in various ways, e.g. renovating their homes; visiting homes of handicapped children.

I cried when the dormitory closed in 1969. I became a day student. Shortly afterwards, my father again boarded me with a family: sadness crept in again. They were often unkind.

June 1971, I graduated from Alpha. It meant returning home to live alone permanently, finally. Out of rebellion against my father for not allowing me to study to become a Spanish teacher, I skipped 6th Form, and the chance of going to university, by refusing to do my A’Levels. A career in writing I’d planned as a sideline during school holidays. Other career options had been to study personnel management, hotel management, or international relations to become an ambassador.

During vacations, daddy had only allowed Patrick and I to go out on public holidays (10:00 a.m. matinees/concerts). In his over-protectiveness – he was afraid of me coming in contact with “the opposite sex” – up until then I’d never had a birthday party, never been out on dates, had never even been to a school friend’s party. I tried to understand him, guessing he was protecting me from men like himself.

In a fit of anger, he had “shipped” Patrick to Canada in 1969. I never knew about it until I got home on vacation. Never got to say goodbye.

Hoping to quickly gain my independence by earning my own money (stupid of me to have thought so), I pursued a 1-yr secretarial course at The College of Arts, Science & Technology. Got the teacher at Alpha to recommend it. Being a secretary had never been on my agenda. I’d simply chosen it because it was the quickest course that would grant me financial independence and the freedom I sought to be able to go out and have fun mingling with adolescents my age. I can understand a lot of what Michael Jackson went through as a child and an adolescent. We shared a lot of the same negative experiences: the cursings, the beatings, the hurt, the lack of freedom, the loneliness.

July 1972, I began working as a legal secretary. Unfortunately, my father still remained super-strict, saying I had to wait until I was 21. Legally, in Jamaica I was already an adult at age 18; but, I was living at home so had to do as he said. He still imposed a curfew: I had to be home within an hour after work and church – just like during my school days! There went my anticipated independence! This means I had spent the past year “wasting” my time as I could have continued school another 2 years studying for my A’levels in order to go to university. But, destiny was playing an important role in my life. I did not know it then. Destiny, in form of my intuition, made me make this difficult decision, quickly choosing a profession in September 1971. 13 Months later it would become my “lifeline”.

The first 20 years of my life, therefore, I grew up with only God to “talk” to when I was home, accepting this forced solitude: “Burying” myself in reading, communicating with God, listening to music, and doing creative writing brought me a certain amount of inner peace. I’d already filled a few notebooks with song lyrics. The melodies were stored in my brain. I was writing romantic lyrics. Had to hide them from him.

I occasionally get premonitions. On this night, August 11, 1973, six weeks before my 20th birthday, I started to tremble, had the urgent need to phone my father. Picked up the phone, then nervously hung it up. Happened a few times. Shortly afterwards, the phone rang. I received a shocking phone call. The man said my father had just been shot. At first I thought it was someone playing a stupid joke, so I screamed at him: “You must be bloody joking! Who the hell are you?”. The man told me his name. He had a store opposite my father’s business. I screamed, realizing it had to be the awful truth. I slammed down the phone. My father’s Goddaughter had been visiting. I told her what he said, while in shock. I rushed out of the house, hailed a passing taxi and went to see my father. I had hoped he’d be alive and would be taken to the hospital. I had to alight at the intersection due to the crowd; so many people, police vehicles.

Forcing my way through the police and a crowd of onlookers on the street and inside the building, I identified myself and entered. He was already lying dead behind the counter. I saw his body lying on his stomach in a pool of blood and broken bottles, his hands braced to raise himself up from the ground. He died a fighter. I also saw a bullet hole in the side of his head. There was no chance to talk to him or say “goodbye”. I’ll never forget that sight. I heard he had another gunshot in his stomach. I was like frozen: I couldn’t cry. My mind was racing. I could only think of granny, his mother, and his other children – my 3 brothers and my sister.

I grew up that night, partly. God gave me the strength not to break down and cry. I shed tears. But, I did not break down. Could not afford to. There was no elder relative or friend around to take charge or to provide a shoulder for me to lean on. After 20 years of an overly-sheltered life, I was brutally thrown out into the world in a matter of seconds. I was suddenly all alone in every sense of the word that night. I had never even kissed a guy. His sudden death meant I had to face the world alone with no one to turn to. After all, apart from going to work, church, and to those 10:00 a.m. matinees on public holidays, I practically lived “under house-arrest” up until his death.

At least I had a job to go to. It would take my mind off my sorrow most days. Destiny really did me a favor back then. Had I stayed in high school to prepare for university, I’d have completed my final A’Level exams in July and would be awaiting the results. But, I would not have been able to financially support myself without a profession. His testament, when opened, stated none of us should get anything till we reached 21. I was only 19, approaching 20.

Nevertheless, as naive and immature for my age as I understandably was, I knew I had to immediately take over dealing with the police and his employees that night; that the next day I had to contact my brothers and sister, relatives, his lawyers to arrange his funeral, etc. His mother was my first priority. The very next morning I asked a friend of his to take me to the Dias, Hanover, in the country (hours away) to pick up my grandmother and bring her to Kingston. I did not want her to hear the news first on the radio. We left out at 5:00 a.m. Gave him the keys to my father’s car and accompanied him. The detective in charge was very kind to me and helped me throughout the following weeks, particularly during the court hearing after a few suspects were caught. No one was charged as witnesses were afraid to testify. I have no feelings of hatred or revenge. Wouldn’t bring him back.

God gave me the strength to return to work within two weeks to face the world without my father. The tears came sporadically weeks, months and years later, flowing with such intensity rivalled only by my brain simultaneously “shooting out” heavy poems accompanying them (“Reflections” can be heard on the video on my website www.jennifergarnatz.com; “Soliloquy I” and “Happiness” are in this book).

My feelings towards daddy can be described as love-hate.
Full of Love: because he worked extremely hard, seldom taking vacation to give us a good life. He succeeded in doing his best to give us a good education, decent places to live, lots of sound advice. He was indeed super-strict and physically abusive – we got lots of beatings – but he had otherwise been a very good father wanting only the best for all of his children. We lacked for nothing materially. He just did not have a good woman around to “soften him up”. He was just too macho and mistrustful to have married the woman we all wanted to become our stepmother. They never had children together. Out of frustration, she eventually migrated to New York. She later visited me requesting that I take her to his grave. I gladly did. That was the only time I visited it. Too painful.

A bit of Hate: I got lots of unjustified beatings up until I reached the age of 12 (he stopped only out of fear he could kill or cripple me), lots of unjustified loud-mouthed cursings up until he died, even though I was extremely obedient, (too great was my fear of him to have done anything “bad behind his back”). There were times I wished he’d beat me instead of cursing: The beatings were horrible, but they stopped after a few minutes; the cursings over the years were extremely embarrassing as they went on for days and all the neighbours could hear.

Today, more than 35 years since his death, I am still living by lots of his advices. They have opened, and are still opening, many doors for me in all the countries I’ve been to. I shall always be indebted and grateful to him for his good points.

Many poems about him have emerged from my heart. It took me 27 years to perform any of them in public, because I sometimes still break into tears when I envision that night. To this day, whenever I see a film with someone pointing a gun to a person’s head, the scene of that bullet hole in my father’s head rushes to the fore of my mind. I have to switch the TV channel or, if I am in the cinema, I look away from the screen.

December 1979, I migrated to Germany to learn the language with the intention of returning to Jamaica to work in the foreign service or in tourism. I eventually married and divorced. I am still residing in Germany, but I do go home regularly on vacation so as not to become a stranger to the land of my birth. I’ve counted my blessings. Fate has been good to me. In Hamburg, I work fulltime as a bilingual executive assistant. After my father’s death, I had to ditch my plan to return to college to study to become a Spanish teacher or one of the other professions I’d been interested in. There was no way I could have concentrated. I learnt to enjoy my freedom while simultaneously protecting myself from unwanted pregnancy or getting a bad reputation. Daddy would have been proud of me.

In 1999, I finally decided it was time to actively begin another phase of my life – my creative-writing sideline. God blessed me with a few talents. It was time to put one into action. I started participating in poetry slams and various other literary events, performing in English and German. That same year I was invited to represent Hamburg at the National Poetry Slam Team Competition in Weimar. Overseas I have performed in: NY USA ( at Bar 13, Sugar Shack, St. Nicks Pub, the Skylight Gallery and Nuyorican Poets Cafe); Chicago (at The Green Mill Lounge); Toronto, Canada (at A Different Booklist), and at various places in my native Jamaica, W.I.

In April 2001, a limited edition of my first self-published poetry book titled “romanctically erotic, deadly religious” (ISBN- 3-935483-00-7) was released in Hamburg. This is a reprint with an annex.

I love reading books written in the first person. That’s why I also write mostly in that person. Apart from poetry, I also write plays, short stories, song lyrics and compose music. Have also begun working on a children’s book and various novels. My sources of inspiration come from my vivid imagination, personal experiences, and from my observation of happenings in the world. Due to my time-consuming office job and my great desire to avoid as much stress privately as possible, I’ve never really had the time to complete my other manuscripts. But, I do intend to continue working on them at my own pace.