May death lead us home

Responding to Pickney by Michael Jenkins

Pickney, 2021 (Film still)

Michael Jenkins’s short film Pickney is a haunting yet uplifting story about the unifying power of grief and the complexities of mixed-race identity. It follows teenager Leon, a mixed-race Bristolian with few ties to his Caribbean heritage outside of a close relationship with his nan, Pam, the mother of his estranged father, David. Visited in his dreams by a mysterious looking figure whose aesthetic mirrors that of an Obeah man (a practitioner of Caribbean Black magic), Leon wakes up confused and unable to shake the ominous feeling inspired by the man’s words, “Pam is coming home.”

The omen is realised when Leon rushes to her home and learns of his nan’s death from an estranged family member. As the family prepares for the nine night, Leon is sent away, left alone to hold the pain and the grief of being the last person informed of her passing. Feeling rejected, Leon must be convinced by the mysterious figure, who is now appearing in his daydreams, that his grandmother needs him at the nine night for her spirit to cross over peacefully. 

He returns to the house with trepidation, fearful that his family will close the door in his face once again. Throughout the film we see glimpses of Leon’s attempts to affirm his Blackness; the language he uses around his friends, the posters adorning his bedroom wall and the style and mannerisms he tries on, frustrated by their imperfect fit. He wears his dad’s wooden beads around his wrist, a cherished gift from his nan, but even those beads with all their spiritual symbolism and hereditary significance, seem only to remind him of his illegitimacy. It is clear when Leon considers returning the beads, that his sense of being an imposter, of not quite fitting in amongst those around him, is a burden he’s carried his whole life.

Watching Leon grapple with his identity, I’m reminded of the chaos of my own teenage years. I considered the people and things that grounded me in that turbulent time, how they did so quietly, and how deafening their absence would’ve been if they had ever been taken away. I kept returning to the idea of a matriarch, represented through Leon’s nan and the aunty who eventually welcomes him into the nine night. I was raised far away from my own grandparents who lived and died in Sierra Leone. But through our matriarch, my mother, her cooking which anchored us to our culture, and her fast-tongued Krio which trained my ears to the language of my foremothers, I remained close to them always. Even during the times when I wanted nothing more than to reject my foreignness, my culture, this part of my identity, it and she were always there.

As young people figuring out who we are, we often turn to the labels given to us by others to help define ourselves. To his friends, Leon is ‘lightey’, to his extended family he’s ‘David’s Pickney’. Both labels carry weight but it’s the latter that carries a sense of belonging to something, to someone, that he so desperately craves. The title of ‘David’s Pickney’ is the key that eventually grants him entry to his nan’s home, and the nine night. Once inside, he’s privy to the reverence of the death ritual observed by Caribbean people, whose ancestors carried the tradition of an extended wake across oceans, when they were uprooted from Africa by slave traders.

Reggae music plays as Leon piles his plate with rice, chicken and his favourite, fried plantain. He looks over photos of his grandmother and the altar set up for her adorned with candles, a bottle of overproof rum and table salt, and while it’s clear that he doesn’t quite understand all that’s going on, we see him relax in the comfort brought by the company of others who miss his nan as much as he does.

The mysterious figure returns for a final time. With Pam beside him, he hums the tune he’s been singing since he first came to Leon, and this time Leon has the confidence to sing along. He translates the Patois lyrics to English but nonetheless, the rhythmic chant flows from him effortlessly, inspiring the other mourners to sing along. To the backdrop of their harmonies, Pam says her final goodbyes before fading to the spirit world, satisfied that David’s pickney has a home in the family she’s left behind.