Suck teeth lite

Back in 2015, French schools banned what they called “le tchip”, or “teeth-sucking” in class, considering it to be highly rude, offensive, and disrespectful. At that time, the move drew attention to a practice described as being derived from African and Afro-Caribbean culture.

Though, together with “cut-eye”, “steupsing” (my preferred spelling and I am sticking with it) is common throughout our region and we shared the rap for it in France, we actually have West Africa to blame/credit for its genesis.

“Steupsing” is eloquently described in a 2002 academic paper by Esther Figueroa and Peter L. Patrick as the expressive output of a “velaric ingressive airstream involving closure at two points in the mouth: against the velum (using the back of the tongue), and farther forward.”

John and Angela Rickford (1999) described both “cut-eye” and “suck teeth” as “Africanisms” now common in the “New World.”

My mother, like so many other Caribbean parents, was capable of simultaneously delivering the two admonitions to great effect. Her version seemed to rely on gratuitously moist inner cheeks, pursed lips, and impressive lung capacity. She also had a particularly dangerous “cut-eye.”

During my recent assignment in Sierra Leone, I witnessed my mother’s deep version of the “steups” a few times, though it appeared more common to encounter the “suck teeth lite” version, given the hustle and bustle of life in Freetown.

I told my friend there, acclaimed businesswoman Hannah Rolanda Max-Macarthy, that in the Caribbean we call it everything from “suck teeth”, “kiss teeth” (Jamaica), to “steupsing”, “stupesing", and “choopsing” – an act intended to express disgust, disapproval, or mere annoyance, depending on intensity in delivery.

What do you call it there, Hannah? “Suck tit.” If you’ve heard Krio being spoken, you can see how “tit” (and not “teeth”) flows smoothly. But I am NOT going to use that expression in this town.

I also consulted with Nigerian colleague/social activist, Cynthia Mbamalu (find her on Instagram, you won’t regret it), and she was surprised that “steupsing”, intended to achieve the identical impacts as in her country, was so prevalent in the Caribbean.

“Sometimes, when my mom wants to let you know you just messed things up, she drags the steups...sometimes it feels like 10 seconds long, mixed with different rhythms,” she said.

I boasted that my own mother had been capable of changing keys and probably held the record for the longest “steups” since it was five of us and she was an equal opportunity steupser.

Cynthia’s Igbo people rather elaborately call it “ima osu” – clearly not as onomatopoeic as the Trini “steups”, and even “streups” (which captures the moist sound that strengthens the impact of a proper “steups”).

My theory is that to be effective, “steupsing” should result from air sucked through extravagantly pursed lips (baby kiss style) between tightly clenched front teeth and resonate from the flapping of relaxed inner cheeks and jaw teeth generated by that air.

Habitual experts can test the limits of natural teeth, implants, and dental fillings – such is the vacuum created by intense delivery.

There are recent examples of public steupsing by important people. The French would probably be impressed at the injection of a measure of gentility in the course of an obnoxious act. “What is the question?” “Gun” … quick front teeth steups and walk away. This is “suck teeth lite” if ever there were to be such a category.

I have actually heard “suck teeth lite” more than once in polite company. Cocktails at such and such business function: “This is how they want people to vote for them? Steups!”

Ordinary folk, unlikely to be recorded or publicly quoted, draw deeply from today’s warm atmosphere, do the duck lips, and ensure the fresh air is diverted to the corners of our mouths likely to yield the loudest, most moist sound. Hence “streups”.

But, oh no, “suck teeth lite” seems to intentionally convey unfamiliarity with the passion of a true “steups.”

We all do it, don’t we? Last week, after clearing out my bank account to pay the mechanic, the left front wheel of my car encountered a new pothole along Abercromby Street in St Joseph - now normalised as apparently permanent pothole territory.

True, I should not have been having a doubles while driving but I was hungry. When the metal twisting ‘bang’ came, the quick substitute to cussing (few people have ever heard me cuss) was a deep “streups” that helped lodge a semi-consumed channa near where oxygen is supposed to enter my lungs.

“It good for you,” you say. Cue the elusive Facebook “steups” emoji.

 

Death Announcements

Uncle Vin would lay the Trinidad Guardian down on the dining table, open the then broadsheet wide, and turn the pages slowly having read what seemed like every single word. There would be room for little else on that table. Eventually, he’d reach the Death Announcements and there would often be a polite scrum – Grandpa, Grandma, Uncle Kello - to witness possibly familiar names or faces.

It was a process that demanded silence, broken only by “Did you see So and So died?” or “Isn’t that So and So’s father/mother/brother/sister?” I often kept a safe but listening distance.

Years later, at Radio 610, the newsroom compiled the Obituaries, so I ran but could not hide. I protested timidly at the imposition and met death there much more regularly than in our newscasts.

Then one day, in the Guardian, I saw a picture of someone I was sure I knew. It was him. Short guy who attended holiday camp and played some decent cricket. I wrote a poem about it. I kept looking, rather morbidly, for familiar names as the years passed.

It was possible at that time, I think, to measure growth and maturity through the attention paid to news of inevitable death. Today, so many of us scroll or turn to ‘that’ page as soon as we clear the news and op-eds.

With social media now appearing to hover over almost everywhere death can now find us, newspaper pages serve mainly to verify and to validate and to inscribe permanently what we have already found out.

It was this way I received four quick jabs to the head, neck, chest, and stomach over the past week, just days before the 28^th anniversary of my mother’s sudden and still unbelievable death on August 31, 1995. Back then, Elizabeth Solomon and I were working on a project when everything happened, and I remember her kindness and comfort.

Last Sunday I read three simple words from Elizabeth. Three words, as if to elude stern grammarian eyes. “Fair winds Daddy.” A sailor child to a sailor dad.

“Fair winds and following seas”, would probably have been how Denis would have preferred the sentence more completely flowed. For those kinds of reasons, whenever we spoke, I kept my sentences short and allowed him to do most of the talking - including the cussing. He never suffered fools lightly, and you did not want to cross combative paths with him.

He once wrote that while he was opposed to the death penalty, should anyone harm any of the children or grandchildren, he would hasten the perpetrator’s passing with bare hands.

I scrolled again on Sunday and saw that Denyse Plummer had also delivered her final note. No personal stories there, except the embedded memory of her remarkable journey as one of the most important musical voices of our time. Then too, the toilet paper she took and spun as artful yarn around our hearts.

And Grenfell Kissoon, focused and committed. When he smiled there appeared childlike mischief, but for the most part there was a stony steadfastness the world of media typically demands. In his case, post 1990, there was a persistent memory of survival. Current testimonies confirm an important role in local media in all its corporate, professional, and inter-personal manifestations.

Roydon Salick’s ‘Mayaro Gold: The Fiction of Michael Anthony’ was also only recently launched by Ian Randle Publishers.

Our other giant, Prof. Kenneth Ramchand, wrote of the publication: “(it) understands well enough the combined force of the fictions and the social, cultural, and historical works in which Anthony builds a unique history of Trinidadian cultures and historic moments. It invites new readers to take a serious look at Michael Anthony as an educator who makes it exciting to find out who we are.”

To some of the rest of us who met him and benefitted from Michael Anthony’s wisdom, generosity and charm, Ramchand’s reflections on the book (and since then), are difficult to match in eloquence and emotional impact.

Back in the 70s at QRC, Derrick Poon Young once practised his martial arts on me by delivering four quickfire punches to head, neck, chest, and stomach. The blows hurt rather badly. Over the last few days, both the QRC experience and Uncle Vin have come to mind.