The Day I Discovered I Could Draw
I was about five-years-old or a little younger when I first discovered that I could draw. It was nighttime and my mother had just come home from work with a long, black notebook. I’m not sure if I asked her about the notebook and its contents, but I do remember looking at these wonderful drawings that she had made in it. There were pots and pans, cooking utensils, measuring cups, etc., along with her notes. When I asked about the drawings, she told me they were for her cooking class.
I was so mesmerized by these drawings and kept looking at the pages over and over again. I wanted to draw my mother’s drawings and searched all over the house, without luck, for clean paper. The only clean paper was in my mother’s notebook. So, I tore a page from the back and went to my favorite hiding spot under the dining table—my spaceship, my racing car, the surface of the moon—and began copying my mother’s drawings. Evening after evening, I repeated the process of taking my mother’s notebook, tearing a page out from the back, looking at her new drawings, and copying what I saw.
One evening it occurred to me, Why not put food in the pots? So, I did it. Hmmm…how about if I put the pot on a stove and draw steam coming out of it? I did that too. Soon I realized that my drawings were beginning to look better than my mother’s. I was so excited and wanted to share this magical thing, and show her what I had created, but I couldn’t. Showing her would reveal my “criminal” activity. If I showed my brother, he would probably tell her. Either way, I would likely be spanked. To avoid a spanking, I remained silent and watched this new thing develop; it was just me, those drawings, and God.
By the time I was finished with her notebook, there was one clean page left concealing my handiwork. A few days after that, she purchased my first paint set. She clearly knew what I was doing all along.
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Game of Marbles
At best, I was an average marble player. But for some reason, on this particular day, I was on fire! I was about 13 or 14 years old and won all of my classmate’s marbles in a game played in his yard after school. He became so frustrated about losing that he stormed into his house and returned a short time later, saying, “O.K., let’s play for these!”
It was a stack of Walter Foster art books. Up to that point, I hadn’t known such books existed. It was not long before I won all the books as well. I was so ecstatic that I gave my friend back all his marbles and kept the books. My drawings and paintings improved greatly as a result of studying and practicing with them.
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I was eight years old when my mother left Trinidad to start a new life in the United States. My brother and I were supposed to join her once she got on her feet. In the meantime, she left us in the care of my two aunts—Mindy and Velia (who was just a few years younger than Mindy)—and our grandmother, whom we visited on weekends. Aunt Mindy’s boyfriend, Desmond, moved into our home a few months after our mother left. They had twin daughters, who were still toddlers at the time. We lived in a three-bedroom brick house that had originally belonged to my maternal great-grandmother. After her passing—just a year before my mother left for the U.S.—the house was passed down to my grandmother.
The day my mother left is hazy in my memory—I only recall fragments. I remember the ride home from the airport: my brother and I sat in the back seat, but I can’t recall who was driving or who sat in the front. What I do remember vividly is the blur of sugar cane fields rushing past the window—endless acres of it—and the words repeating in my mind: “My mother is gone. My mother is gone. My mother is gone.” I was trying to make sense of this sudden, altered reality.
The next thing I remember is arriving home, heading straight to the bedroom, and crawling as far under the bed as I could. I curled into a fetal position, lying on a mess of shoes and other things that jabbed into my body, and began to cry. What struck me as strange was how, just a few weeks earlier, my mother had taken a short trip to Caracas. I somehow knew she’d come back then. But this time felt different—something inside me recognized the weight of it, the permanence. Everything was about to change, and not just a little. After a few minutes of crying, Aunt Mindy shouted, “Okay, that’s enough!” And I stopped.
I’m not sure exactly when the abuse began, but I do remember always feeling that my very presence stirred resentment in Mindy. There are many memories I can recall of being mistreated as a child, but two, in particular, stand out more than the rest.
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“Did you not hear me calling you?” she shouted.
I was a bit taken aback by her anger. I thought she had only called me once.
“No, I didn’t hear you calling me,” I replied.
“I have been calling you! Calling you! Go to the store for me!”
“Okay, let me get my pants,” I said, starting to move toward my room.
“No! You go just like that!” she demanded.
I’d been outside all morning getting into everything. My legs and hands were covered in dirt, and I was in my underwear (not unusual at age ten growing up in the Caribbean). But I had been within the privacy of my own yard.
“You go like that!” she repeated.
I wasn’t allowed to wash the dirt off or grab a pants, a pair of slippers. We lived on a hill. To get to the store, I had to walk out to the paved road, down to the main road, and then head to the shop.
“Go to the store like this?” My heart sank.
It was around the time when school was about to let out. Cars were driving by on the main road.
“Maybe if I run really fast, I can get there and back before the kids from school start walking by,” I thought.
So that’s what I did.
Run… stop… hide behind some bricks.
“Okay, I don’t see anyone.”
Run… stop… hide behind a parked car.
This stop-and-go strategy finally got me to the store. I waited to place my order with the shopkeeper and then anxiously positioned myself behind 50-pound bags of rice stacked at the front of the store.
And just when I thought things couldn’t get more embarrassing, the gods of humiliation doubled down.
I turned around and saw a torrent of school uniforms entering the store. The main road was now flooded with hundreds of school kids walking home. Two kids from my class—and others I didn’t know personally—were suddenly there, staring.
“Nigel?” one of them called out.
My face froze into a terrible mix of terror and the most awkward smile I could manage.
The shopkeeper finally handed me the items. I emerged from behind my rice garrison, paid for the goods, nodded a grimace of farewell, and bolted out of the store—racing past a blur of school uniforms until I made it back home.
The strange thing about that experience is, I don’t remember what happened the next day when I returned to school. I must have blocked it out.
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The next memory I have is from when I was around fourteen. It was probably about 5:30 in the evening, and my aunt had just returned home from work. Like clockwork, Desmond—her boyfriend—would feed her whispers of everything I had done or failed to do that day. “This is what Nigel did. This is what he didn’t do.” He wasn’t just her partner; he was her personal spy, roaming the house with nothing much to do, making his own hours, and earning his place in her life by making mine miserable. I had grown so used to the yelling, the insults, the daily storm of anger that I’d become numb to it.
That day, the issue was the garden hose—I hadn’t wrapped it up after using it. As she shouted, I was already outside trying to coil it, completely tuned out, lost in the routine of it all. I didn’t even realize she had followed me. When I turned around, a sudden flash of pain cracked through my skull. I grabbed my head, stunned. I didn’t cry—maybe I couldn’t. When I looked at my hand, the tips of my fingers were smeared in blood. The metal nozzle of the hose had busted my head.
The next thing I remember is Mindy sitting me at the dining table, tending to the wound, cleaning and bandaging it. Something in me broke that day. I don’t know exactly what it was, but I felt it go silent inside me. Maybe it was the part of me that still hoped my mother would come back. Or maybe it was the part that wondered if my father ever really cared. I didn’t want her to touch me—but even to express that in the smallest way would have been seen as disrespect. I’ve had time to revisit that moment and examine it closely. What I saw wasn’t just an abusive person—I saw someone struggling under the weight of a burden she didn’t want, caught between the responsibility of caring for my brother and me, and the dark influence of Desmond. This isn’t to excuse her actions; what she did was undeniably wrong. But as I reflect on that phase of my life with clearer eyes, it’s evident that something deeper—something more complex—was at play
As I mentioned before, Desmond had a stealthy presence about him, so much so that I privately dubbed him “the man behind the curtain.” It was a name I never spoke aloud, but it fit him perfectly. I could be anywhere in the yard and still feel his eyes on me. I didn’t need to look—I just knew. Beyond the window, behind the slightly parted curtain, he would be watching.
Some days, I turned it into a private game. I’d make a show of staying busy in the yard, then spin around suddenly—just in time to catch a flicker of movement as the curtain snapped back into place. He never admitted to watching, but I caught him more than once.
Desmond despised being around people. If another adult ever came to visit, he would vanish, only to reappear moments after they left—as if on cue. His movements were so secretive, so precise, he left no trace. If I were called to testify against him in court, it would be nearly impossible to explain. If the judge asked, “So, Mr. Morgan, what exactly has the defendant done to you?” I’d stumble—"Well... umm... Judge, you see..."—and the case would be dismissed for lack of evidence. That’s how good he was at staying in the shadows.
During the final four years I lived in that house, I said only two things to Desmond: “Good morning” and “Good evening.” I was told I had to. For reasons I still don’t understand, my brother never saw what I saw. He didn’t notice Desmond’s manipulations and, as a result, was spared the abuse that was regularly dealt to me.
The torment became one of Desmond’s daily highs. He lived in a world ruled by pettiness. He encouraged Mindy to hide food in their wardrobe just so my brother and I wouldn’t get more than our “share.” Though it was Mindy who delivered much of the abuse during my childhood, I’ve come to believe that it was Desmond who orchestrated it—always from behind the curtain, always just out of reach. He was a coward hiding behind the curtain.
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Home meant beatings, being told the worst things about yourself, being taunted by people who were supposed to protect you. So, I painted new realities. Looking back on it now, I believe that my art teacher knew something was wrong at home. I can still see him there, sitting at his desk reading a newspaper. Never once did he say, “OK, I have to go!” He allowed me to stay as long as I wanted so that I could use the facilities. Only when I was ready to leave did he finally pack up and go home himself.
As time went on, my after-school stays became longer and longer. My teacher, unable to outwait me, eventually began giving me the keys to the art room. He would say, “When you’re finished, just lock up.” When I grew tired of creating, I would walk the empty school grounds—moving from class to class, sitting at the teacher’s desk, drawing on the blackboards, discovering every nook and cranny of that big, empty school.
I believe it was here that my mind began to associate loneliness with safety. No one could hurt me here. It felt safe. I was about fourteen years old when this new phase of my life started.
As I got older, the abuse continued. To anyone on the outside, things may have looked normal, but on the inside I was changing. Social environments felt more and more foreign to me. I began to pull away from people and fully embraced the safety of isolation. I must have been in my late teens when I finally realized there was something very wrong with this way of living. But by then, I felt it was too late. As hard as I tried, I just could not readjust socially. Loneliness put an end to one world and gave birth to another.
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This was the last painting I completed in high school before coming to the U.S. I believe its dimensions are about 60 by 35 inches, acrylic paint on Masonite board. Once it was finished, I had to take it home. It was too large to fit in a taxi, so I carried it myself. I remember walking the 2.5 miles, struggling to keep it from blowing away as cars sped past. Somehow, I managed to make it home with it intact.
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This painting was created when I was seventeen years old. Looking back on my teenage years, I can trace the creation of this painting to the season when my depression began. I remember reaching this point of its completion and being unable to go any further. If you look closely, you will notice that the corn in the foreground and background is not completed, and some areas of the cupboard remain in the base color. Until those details were finished, I could not bring myself to sign it. Untitled and unsigned, it has hung on the wall of my childhood home since 1989.
While working on it, I distinctly remember feeling my passion for creating die with every brushstroke. The further along I got, the more labored it felt. At the time, I could not understand what was happening. My every attempt to finish what seemed like minute details inexplicably became a mountainous task. I stared at it helplessly for about two weeks. It was the last piece I worked on before I left Trinidad to move to the U.S.
