EXCERPT 16 - Santa's Brawl

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We had been waiting for hours in the warm, dusty street.

The thought of seeing Santa for the first time in my life, filled me (and all the other children in the queue) with giddy pleasure.

It was just about midday and it was beginning to get really hot. Santa came out of his hut to have a cigarette, but some of the parents in the line started shouting at him about not showing a good example to kids and all that.

“What you want from me?” Santa asked. “It hot in that place and this suit’s killing me in this heat, mon.”
“You bad Santa, you really bad, me daughter think you’s this great, good person and look at yourself,” one man told him.
Lots of people started to join in. The woman behind us was telling her daughter (who was wearing a 10th ‘Happy Birthday’ badge) in a real panicky voice, that this is not the ‘real’ Santa who comes through the window they leave open for him every Christmas Eve night.


At six, I wasn’t really bothered, I was never told that Santa came through the window. He never brought me anything, so I guess there was no need to make him up for me.
Santa suddenly lashed out at the guy standing next to him, who was pointing a finger in his face.

“Doan you point in my face, you moron,” Santa said, as he cuffed the guy on his jaw with a really heavy hand. The man didn’t take this lightly, he grabbed Santa’s beard and pulled. It became unstuck, held on now only by the stretchy elastic around Santa’s head, oddly the guy looked surprised at this, but recovered enough to shopping-bag whack Santa on the back. (Santa was bent over you see, he was trying not to lose his beard, so he sort of went with the pull).

Little children were screaming and some babies started crying and dribbling. Me, I just stood there feeling guilty. Could it have been my fault? When bad things happen at home it’s always my fault. But surely, this couldn’t be, could it?

Santa had somehow managed to hold on to his cigarette until now, he chucked it down and gave a good shake of his fist at everyone. He then gave us all a good cursing, pulled his red trousers up and went back into his hut. Some people went away, but we stayed, and a good thing too, since this was my only ever Santa visit and Christmas present ever.

We eventually got to the top of the line, Esther paid at the door and I went in and got my present. It was a pack of colouring pencils. Some of them did get taken away when I went back out to school and took them to do drawing, which made me weep all the way home.

I didn’t have colouring pencils at all, and they were probably the only ones I had while I was in primary school. Pencils are very expensive, you see.
That was a long time ago though, the pencils have been gone for ages.

All Access Granted

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What’s it with girls, eh?

My daughters have found a way to gain free entry to their brother’s room – with his consent!

He is forever locking his door in their faces. Moreover, if he is in his room, he requires them to write a note requesting entry and slip it under the door. Still, he doesn’t always allow them to come in, for fear of them ‘girling it up,’ and throws a big strop if the girls decide that they’re going to barge in anyway.

This has been going on for a long time, until the sugar and spicers came up with a cunning plan. This is how it all unfolded:

The girls locked themselves in the bedroom they shared, and folded a piece of paper to make it look like a card. The older one sent in the younger one (she is the one with the angelic, innocent face) to Gabo, to ask for his autograph. Feeling that his sisters had finally come around to realising his true importance at last, Gabo puffed out his chest and signed it with unreserved glee.

A few minutes later, little angelic-looking came back and batted her eyelashes at her brother again.

Knock, knock.

‘What do you want this time?’ Gabs asked. ‘Go away.’
‘Please sign an autograph for me,’ she asked.
‘Wot? Another one?’
‘Yeah, Dan wants one now.’
‘Weely?’ (really)
‘Uh huh.’
Paper change hands and my little boy signed his second ever autograph.
‘Thanks.’

Meanwhile, Dan, the older girl, is locked in the bedroom making badges. Cut in a circular shape, the two pieces of paper, had already been coloured in a fine-point, gold marker, complete with a string attached for hanging it around their necks.

After the preparations were made, the saintly girls then carefully cut out the two autographs their brother had signed in good faith, (on a different piece of paper) and glued them in the spaces for the signature. This is what the finished product looked like.


V.I.P ENTRANCE
BACKSTAGE PASS
TO
GABO’S ROOM
APPROVED BY GABO...
Signed
...................

ALL ACCESS GRANTED.

Don’t ask me how they knew what to write. My freelance reporter’s pass is still secured in my purse. Even if they had gotten hold of it, it’s just a cheap card, and certainly does not guarantee me unlimited access – to anywhere.

Bottom line, the deed is done. The girls have both got signed passes to their brother’s room on their spanking new gold badges.

Gabo? He’s still insisting that he didn’t sign the badges. Well, of course he didn’t, but does that change anything?

If you are a wife, or you’ve got one, you’ll know that it certainly does not.

Excerpt 16 - You Can Get 25 Children In One Car

I now live almost at the end of the village of Stanleytown. There is the long Main Road I told you about, which goes all the way into the town called New Amsterdam, thus named a long, long time ago by Dutch settlers. This was at the time when they were bullying the natives. That of course, was before the British came and chased them out so that they could bully us instead. The British must’ve been a lot better at bullying than the Dutch, I think.

The passenger hire cars that I’ll be taking to school through New Amsterdam, are mainly Morris Oxfords. What you’ve got to do, is to flag them down when you spot them coming from a distance.

I’m told that there is never any danger of them not stopping to pick you up, because no matter how many people they’ve already got mortared in the back seat, your fare is still attractive enough for the drivers to cannon you into the pile. They can get as many as 25 children in one Morris Oxford and this is the non-exaggeratistic truth. Some of the hire cars go specifically to B.H.S because it is the school in the remotest bit of the town.

This morning, on my way to school in the back seat of the old, rusting, used-to-be-black Morris Oxford, I had one girl sitting on my lap.
When the car chugged to a stop on the side of the narrow main road, there were already about 10 of us folded up together on the torn leather seats.
“You going to BHS?” the girl who’d flagged the driver down, asked.
“Yeah mon, jump in the back,” the driver said. He was big and gruff, and already smelling of tonight’s drinks and sweat.

We shifted down, but there was nowhere else to go.
The driver checked his gear stick which had disappeared under the legs of the boy sitting next to him in the front, eased himself out of the black, iron, rusting turtle of a car, and inspected the scarce empty air in the back seat, for a place to slip the girl in.

“You. Lean back,” he said to me.
I pressed my back to the leather.
“Go back a bit, no,” he told the girl sitting on my lap.
She leaned back and the side of my face made one with her back.

“Jump in,” he signalled to the girl in the street, taking her back pack and disappearing around the back of the car.
By the time he had slammed the car boot door, the new arrival had one foot firmly placed on mine.
After some ouching (on my part) and crouching, she’d managed to crumple herself in half and sit on the lap of the girl who’s back I was now cushioning with the side of my face.

I didn’t know who was worse off, me the very bottom, the cheese pressed in the middle, or the folded, scrunched up girl at the top, trying her very best not to sit down too hard (and how does one do that?)

The driver eventually slammed the door, but it couldn’t shut. Someone’s hip is usually in the way, in these situations (I’ve been in cars like these before – but with adults in them).

“One of you got to hold the door, mon. I can’t get it to shut,” he gave up after three or four tries.

The girl on my lap volunteered, but when the engine vomited to life, the car jumped forward, her hand slipped, and the door sprung open suddenly. The only reason the girl on the top of the pile did not fall out, was because of my help.

Well, I say my help – but that only applies if the process of ‘help’ can be described as; someone stepping on both your feet with all their weight, forcing you to jump up with pain, which results in them being caught between the back of the driver’s seat and the children sitting behind them, making it impossible to fall out of a moving car.

This would’ve been scary, except for the fact that, this wasn’t the first time someone had threatened to fall out of a moving car which was too packed to have its door shut.

In the afternoon, Sita and I had to do it all over again, the opposite way around. We flagged down a Morris Oxford, which took us from school to High Bridge, (near the burial ground) the street that marks the end of Stanleytown and the beginning of New Amsterdam. She lives just a stone’s throw from here, so we walked to her street together, and then I hurried home the rest of the way.

Excerpt 15 - Do Crabs Like Human Meat?

The rainy season was still batting in its innings. This season offered the perfect opportunity for the truanting boys from our school to get away and go swimming in the overflowing trenches on the Back Dam Road. This morning Terrance and Charlie got caned on their bottoms in front of the whole class. Mr Williams is not like the other teachers, he said that his “policy was too beat it out, only if he can’t speak it out.”

After the caning, he wiped the sweat from his top lip with the back of his hand and said, “Let this be a lesson to everyone in this class, if you take part in dangerous sports like swimming in the Back Dam trenches, that (and here he pointed at the two boys who were still making hissing sounds with their teeth and rubbing their bottoms with the palms of their hands) is what you’re asking for.”

The boys had a very organised way of getting out of school to go swimming. They planned it all the day before, when one of the gang was told to bring a blob of Vaseline wrapped up in a bit of old newspaper.
Sometimes in the midst of classes Mr Williams would say, “Alright! Everyone down tools, time for spot-checking and convicts-caking.”
I know that the last two words meant that he was going to seize their stuff and bin them, but I doan know why he called it ‘convicts-caking.’ It made me think of our old land lady and her convict son.
When Mr Williams found bits of stowed-away Vaseline in the boys’ bags he made a big deal out of holding them as high above the bin as he could, then dropping them with a dull ‘thud’ into the black galvanised rubbish bucket.

I know you’re probably wondering what the Vaseline was for in the first place. Well it is like this; the trenches are totally muddy, you see, and going for a swim in them, meant that when you finally surface, you’d be as grey as… as a… what’s the greyest thing you can think of? Well, as grey as that thing. As you dry off in the heat, you become greyer and greyer and soon everyone and their neighbour knows you went swimming (including your parents when you get home in the afternoon). So to find a way round this grey, dead giveaway, the boys took off all their clothes, for the trench-bath. Once the swim was over, they got dressed again, and rubbed the Vaseline on the bits of exposed skin like their legs under their shorts, arms, faces, and so on. Since Mr Williams began to convicts-cake their Vaseline, they had to change tactics, and found that spit worked just as well, if not better than the Vaseline.
After that magical discovery, they spat on their skin, in nice little splotches then rubbed it all in. ‘Pah,’ rub in; ‘pah,’ rub in.
A grey spot there, not to worry -
‘Pah,’ rub in; ‘pah,’ rub in.
Now you would hardly see the grey at all. The reason I am telling you all this is because something really shocking happened at my school today…

“…For the power and the glory
Forever and ever,
Amen.” We all said for the second time today.
“Hands up, in, out, down, sit down,” Mr Williams said as we went through the motions.
“Yes sir,” we all replied as we took our seats. There was a sort of rumble in the classroom as we took our seats on the scrubbed wooden benches. The kisskadees were singing outside in the hot, damp air, “Kiss, kiss, kiss-ka-dee” went their song. One of them landed on the window sill for a moment, saw 40 eyes staring at its wet, brown and yellow feathers and quickly flew away.
“Them kiss-ka-dees is good bird meat,” my uncle Christopher had said to me once, when I was very little.
“But they so small, how you get any meat from them under the feathers?” I had asked him.
“Ahh…” he had said, but never answered my question until some time later when he had managed to catch a blue-sakie (another tiny bird) and roasted it on a spit.
“See?” He had said, when he gave me a piece of the leg meat to taste. “They got meat mon. Ah tell you they got meat.”


Usually, Mr Williams would take the afternoon register straight away but he didn’t today. He told us that Errol, who was absent from school yesterday, didn’t get home at all last night. Mr Williams said that he was going to call each of us one by one, and that we should not be afraid to tell him if we knew anything about Errol, and why he disappeared.
Mr Williams was the only grown up I wasn’t afraid of.
He was really nice, and is a photographer as well. He’s the person who took my photograph for the Common Entrance Exam form we all had to fill in. I had to go to his house after school one day, he made Jan bring me to their front room, she helped set up the stuff, and then he took my picture - just like that.
He lives in Stanleytown as well, and has a powerful motorbike. He brings Jan and Geff on it everyday to school, Jan sits in the middle and Geff on the end, so they both have to hold on for dear life.
The only thing I knew about Errol was that he lived in Stanleytown and liked to run away from school to swim. I really couldn’t help at all.

* * *

“That’s the way, uh huh, uh huh
I like it, uh huh, uh huh”

KC and the Sunshine Band were rocking away on the radio when I walked in today,

“…That’s the way uh huh, uh huh
I like it uh huh, uh huh.”

Mammy was whistling as she was packing to move. I had to go and get some Bristols from Grimmond’s bar, then some ice from the Persauds from down the street. Gruff! Grrruff!
Theresa was cooking Mammy’s vegetables.
“They not really vegetables,” Theresa had said to me some time back.
“Is things like bora, ochra, and pumpkin that are vegetables. Cassavas, eddoes, sweet potatoes and plantains are actually called ground provisions.”
Whatever they were, they gave Mammy a lot of satisfaction because she ate them all the time. Theresa had to boil them in a large pot every two days, Mammy would then dip into this store, all week long. As long as she had money, she had her store of ‘vegetables’.

I was really curious to find out what pleasure Mammy obviously got from these provisions, so one day I slurped up a large serving spoon of the water they were boiled in, when she was out of the kitchen. I was surprised to find - and this was only when it was half way down – that all it tasted of was salt. I gulped and wretched a bit, but by then it was too late to bring anything up.
Mammy always says that she wishes that Shop Lady would sell ‘vegetables’ and not just groceries, so that she can get them on credit when we run out of money.

“Ah bought a cane today,” Mammy announced to the room, while we were having dinner.
“Why?” Theresa asked, but I knew that she already knew why.
Mammy put another spoonful of the boulanger and eddoes into her mouth, the tip of her nose pointed downwards into the spoon, as if it was set to sniff the world around her with a permanent dislike. The wide sides flared out dangerously and I wondered for a moment if she’d ever inhaled food instead of swallowing it.
“For that one, na. From now on when she tempt me, she gon be in for a good caning,” Mammy answered.

Theresa did one of her sighs, and I felt my stomach turn over, then knot. That was the end of my dinner. My stomach had made up its mind that it was going to take no more food.
“The cane better for beating she than the wood anyway, because it stings for a long time. Woods only hurt, and then they cool off. Not canes. Ah been watching them at the market for a long time, and hoping for enough money to afford one for ages. They say that if you know how to hit with it, it can really make a person dance.”

Mammy got up, took the cane out from behind the front door, and proudly showed it to us. She whacked the air with it and it made a horrible swishing sound. This is the same type of thing they use in school. The boys get whacked two lashes on their bottoms and the girls, one in each hand. I don’t know what it feels like, but I know it hurts like hell. That’s why Mr Williams doan give more than two licks.


Inside my belly, I knew that Mammy was going to give me more than two licks. For the first time since I was about seven, my stomach felt just like it did when I used to vomit everyday after breakfast. Whenever I brought up any food, more was brought out and put on my plate. The more I tried to keep down the vomit, the more nervous I became.
My chest drummed, my throat locked and my stomach turned itself upside down. Nothing I did, would allow any more of the food inside my mouth, to go pass my neck.
Mammy took up her place standing behind my chair at breakfast time.
Wood in hand.
“Chew faster. I got things to do!”

I tried passing the heavy, flowery bakes from one side of my mouth to the other, but this only made it worse because it got all splattery and yucky.
My throat made this sound, then the food splashed out of me and unto the floor.
Then we started all over again…
Sometimes I ‘ate’ and vomited twice before I went to school; every morning of every day. Every morning of every day, yes, every morning of every day.
Mammy said that I was stubborn, but that’s one thing I know she’s not right about.
What’s strange is that as I get bigger, I find more and more things she’s not right about. She thinks I am really ugly, but my friends think I am nice. They think my long neck and stupid cheeks aren’t so bad. Could it be that I am not stupid either? Please God, please make it so that I’m not stupid.

Three days later, Errol was found. Not good news though, he was found floating in the Back Dam trench naked, with lots of his soft bits like his ears and stuff eaten off by crabs. What was worse was that two boys from the other fourth year went swimming with him. The three of them were trying to see who could make the biggest splash, it was Errol’s turn to plunge in, he made a giant splash, only, he didn’t come up again. When the two other boys realised that he wasn’t going to, they jumped out of the water, got dressed and went back to school. They kept quiet when their teacher asked if anyone knew anything, because they were scared.

We were told that Errol dived in right on top of a big boulder, hidden by the muddy water in the trench. They told us that he was knocked unconscious when his head hit the boulder, which is why he couldn’t swim back up. At his funeral, (held at his parents’ bottom house) his Mummy passed his baby sister over his coffin. Marla said this was so his spirit could always take care of her.

Errol’s two friends, the boys who went swimming with him, held on to each other and wept loudly. There were other friends from his class, looking on and wiping their eyes. Old people with black head ties wailed, hanging on to the side of the dark brown, wooden coffin. People were stamping loudly upstairs in the house, dust fell unto us downstairs and unto the lapel of Errol’s brand new suit.

His face looked grey, as grey as the greyest thing you’ve ever seen. His nose and ears and parts of his cheeks looked almost plastic. I wondered for a moment if they were plastic. Did they fix them to cover up where the crabs had eaten him?

The Case of the Tiny Vampires

So, my girls unfortunately caught lice towards the end of the school term last month. The next day found me at the chemist purchasing the best treatment I could find, to rid them of the nasty pests insanely feeding on their blood within the warmth of their scalps.

Now, I’ve always been very careful with this kind of thing. I spray their hair every morning with a mixture of essential tea tree oil, a blob of hair conditioner and water. I then painstakingly comb out the hair in sections every day before sending them out to school. This preventative method has worked magnificently for years, and just when I thought I could relax with this routine… it happened!

I treated them that very afternoon, washed and combed and washed and combed. Seven days later I treated again, just like the chemist said. I even did my son’s hair, just in case. A few days later I pronounced them clean and warned them not to place their heads too near to certain children who I suspected may have been the source of the infestation. I mean, what kind of parent allows their kids run around with creepy crawlies in their heads, infecting innocent children whose parents are so diligent with their health.

Alas, this was not to be the end.

I caught sight of my little one scratching a few days later and dared to check her head. I was just about to brush her hair into a pony tail and tell her to stop scratching when, Lo and behold! She had some honey-coloured suckers rummaging around in her scalp, drinking her blood. They were exactly the colour of her hair and, if not for the fact that she’d recently been treated for lice, I probably would not have continued searching, therefore, would not have found them.

When I called my son over and combed through his hair, four brown ones got caught up inside the comb. I was horrified! What was happening to my children? I reasoned that one of them must be catching it from a certain friend and infecting the other two. Surely, they can’t all have friends with exactly the same problem.

So I got another bottle of very expensive lice treatment and went through the motions again. This time I was fuming as I paid up – again, for something I had fought so hard to prevent. At least by now it was the second to last day of school and I could breath a sigh of relief.
But could I?

Two weeks of the holidays went by and it came time for the kids to prepare to go to Bible camp. The day before camp, once we had packed, I got ready to braid the girls’ hair (to give them a couple of days off without having to worry about their hair while they were away). As I nonchalantly (for old time sake) combed through my little one’s hair with the nit comb, I came across – you guessed it!

Needless to say, I fretted through yet another intense treatment (all three kids) while I re-played the last two weeks in my mind for some kind of common factor (outside school) which could be responsible for the new onslaught of the tiny vampires in their heads.

I worked out that there were only 4 people who could’ve been responsible for the new infection, my husband, my sister, the kids’ grandmother, or me. Out of these four people there was only one with a history of having had lice before.

Later that night, I braided the girls’ hair, gelled my son’s hair the way he liked it, and walked upstairs to my bedroom armed with the spray top bottle - which held the tea tree oil mixture, and a nit comb.

* * *

When I was little, I had the reddest hair in my village. It stood out in big, wild, red curls all over my head. When I caught lice, they were as red as fire ants, so by the time they were discovered, I’d had them for a long period of time. Being from a very poor family, the only way my aunt knew how to get rid of them was by soaking my entire head with Kerosene oil.

Kerosene oil was also what we used to cook with, it’s an extremely flammable fuel like petrol, and just as unpredictable. The day my aunt poured the kerosene in my scalp, the tiny suckers came running out from every direction. I even found them lying dead on my pillow weeks after this bizarre and extremely dangerous ‘treatment’ (one which I would never, ever recommend, as kerosene gets in your ears and even in your throat through the fumes).

I tried to figure out what the chances were of me having caught these nasty bugs from the kids in my adulthood, and concluded that they were very high indeed. My husband and I share reading bedtime stories to the kids. On my four nights, I sit on my bed, close to the two youngest ones (my 10 year old thinks she is too old to be read to, so she goes off and reads her own books) we hold our heads together, one on either side of me.
I read with one arm wrapped around one of them, and the other hand kept free for turning the pages. When we get to end of the book, we would say our prayers, then decide whether we would play ‘biteys’ or ‘tickles.’

‘Biteys’ is a game I made up for two reasons: One, so that I could keep abreast with the kids’ physical and mental strength; and two, for them to realise, develop and use these strengths. My psychology studies taught me that this is vital for their development.

As a little girl, I was confronted every day and unfortunately only realised my mental capacity through having to deal with being abused. I wanted to create a way for my kids to be able to gauge theirs, by doing something that was taxing in a pleasurable way. Now the way we play this game is: They have got to prevent me from placing my teeth (it goes without saying, of course, that I never bite them) on their left leg – hence the term ‘biteys.’ If I manage to place my teeth on that leg, using only my hands and head, then they have to consider themselves bitten. They’re allowed to use their entire body to prevent me from coming close. The only rules are that they never leave the bed, never scratch my face, or pull my hair.

At the end of this highly hilarious and exhausting game we usually end up in a pile of bodies in the middle of the bed, often with heads touching (and this is why I’ve told you all this). My two oldest have become so strong now that I almost have to cheat (which I sometimes do) to get them.

The second game is like the first, but it involves tickling. The only rule is that every one has a safe word - the only word to use if you want to stop, or become uncomfortable. Like the first game, heads make lasting contact.


Back to my predicament; the first few comb-through yielded nothing, but by the sixth one, I saw something, not red this time, but dark - just as dark as my hair had now become.
Oh!
My!
Goodness!
I’d caught the monsters!

I figured out later, as I sat in the bathroom after saturating my head with the overpriced lice treatment, that the kids had most likely given the nasty beasts to me straight after they’d caught them the first time. Therefore, there was a very large possibility that the person re-infecting them was not the child (whose careless and anti-social parent I would like to strangle), but me, the person who was trying so hard to prevent them from getting the lice in the first place.

The moral of this story is, if your child is unfortunate enough to be friends with the children of uncaring parents who let their offspring run amok infecting people with lice, treat not only your kids, but yourself too.

I’ve had to learn that the hard and embarrassing way.

Excerpt 14 - Here Come The Dogs

“I have two announcements children,” Mr Williams our teacher, announced, “One of them, very sad.”

He waited in his usual way that gave us the impression that he felt like shouting, but wasn’t going to utter a word until we were all very quiet, and that if we weren’t, there would be serious reckoning after.

A sort of hush settled, but there was a slight bit of giggling coming from the boys in the back benches. I could hear Ravi behind me drawing his pencil for the hundredth and seventy nought time, through the line on the bench between himself and Leroy. We all did that, but some of us used chalk. We had long wooden benches with matching desks. Each person shared their bench with someone else, usually someone they didn’t care for very much. The teachers tried to trick us into not chattering too much by making us sit far away from our friends, but that didn’t matter to us too much. What with all the paper we could pass around the class and all that. I think we spend more time writing them notes to our friends across the room, than we would spend talking if they were sitting next to us.

“Firstly, I am glad you all made it through the storm. Mr Williams continued, “I have never seen a storm like that all my life, so it was something very rare in this country. You may never see one like it again.”

One hand in his pocket, the other on his beard, Mr Williams was getting ready for one of his speeches. Though he sometimes looked up to the galvanised, zinc sheets in the ceiling, he managed to keep his eyes on all of us, all at the same time.
“Apparently,” he continued, “It was extremely small by comparison to what happens elsewhere in the world, so we are very lucky.”
“Secondly,” he said, leaving his beard alone and pressing his thumb and forefinger into his eye sockets, “We’ve lost one of the boys in the other year four. Most of you know him as Slinky.”

We did know Slinky. He was our age, and was one of the boys who used to put little mirrors on their shoes then sneak up behind you and put their foot beside yours so that they could see the colour of your underwear from under your skirt. They would then sing; “Blue, blue, (insert name) loves you (if you were wearing blue). If you’re wearing red, they sang, “Red you peed your bed.” White means you’re a blight. The worse one was; “Pink, you stink.”

Slinky was also the one of the boys who had a lot of fun rubbing out our hopscotch when we drew them in the dust. He was really popular in school, so when we stood on one side with a little stone we’d found in the school yard, drawing the little square boxes; he would get belly laughs from the crowd as he used his foot to rub out the lines on the other side. The quicker we drew, the faster he erased. Marleen, Marla and I would skip around drawing them lines, but it would only take a skip and a quick succession dragging steps for him to erase them all.

“You will, I am sure, find out the details later,” Mr Williams was saying, “But it’s not very good at all. I don’t want you to be shocked, but I should say that Slinky was beaten to death by someone… Again, don’t be alarmed or scared, this is all very unusual,” he said, showing us both his palms in a sort of push - push motion, his head cocked slightly sideways. “We were all knocked for six at how someone could beat another person to death.”

Actually sir, I’m sure it could happen very easily if someone is very big and very angry and the other person is very little and scared.

“…It is alleged,” Mr Williams continued, “This means that it’s not been proven yet - that Slinky climbed up the man’s guava tree, swung unto his window sill, and into his bedroom. He was caught as he tried to climb back out, and in his hurry he fell out of the window. The man then ran outside, untied his dogs and then proceeded to beat Slinky. No one knows what really happened but apparently when he was found, he had bite marks on him as well.”

I glanced at The Honourable Comrade Leader’s picture on the wall, to see if he was taking all this in, but he had that usual “I’m watching you” stare. It always felt uncomfortable to look directly into his eyes. The grown-ups think that he knows everything, so they lower their voices every time they say something bad about him, (which is a lot, I can tell you) even in their own homes. They dared not say anything ratty about him to anyone but family or close friends, because of all the stories and legends of his spies. I think that maybe he’s somehow managed to work out a way to make himself see stuff through the pictures that hang in all the public buildings and schools. How else could he know people’s secret dislike of him?

“The man who allegedly killed Slinky is now in the lock ups,” Mr Williams continued. “I don’t want you all to worry but I am sure it will be all over the news later on. If anyone has any questions or wants to talk, I am here always. You all have some time to now work quietly, remember you have your end of term tests soon. And also, don’t forget the deadline to pay for your final tour is today. Lyken, are you sure you don’t want to go?”
“Yes sir,” I answered.
“This trip is for the whole class, you all worked really hard in your Common Entrance Exams.”
“I know sir.”
“Everyone else is going, this is your last chance.”I put my head down and didn’t answer him. He won’t understand. I am not allowed to go on trips and things. Mammy said she didn’t have the money nor the time. I couldn’t tell him that. I was too embarrassed, so I closed my eyes, bit down on my back teeth and waited for him to just go away.

* *

Two days later the newspaper printed the story about Slinky. Mammy heard about the incident from Edwards (she was one of the teachers at Mammy’s old school, before she transferred to the one in the scheme near to where we used to live). She was nice, but I didn’t know her first name. Mammy always called her Edwards. She was one of those grown-ups who you never saw on their feet, because she always travelled around on her bicycle. I think her legs must feel very strange when they’re asked to walk around her house.

Mammy bought the papers and made me read Slinky’s story to her. The reporters and police didn’t really seem to know exactly what had happened, but the papers said that the “suspect allegedly accused Slinky of repeatedly climbing into his house and stealing his possessions”. It said that the man was so annoyed that he decided to catch Slinky and scare him. When he caught him that day, he set his dogs on him to trap him, then he hit him. The papers said that he must’ve hit him several times and really hard because he had lots of broken bones.
Poor Slinky, I thought, but I didn’t say nothin’.

***

“My Gosh,” said my friend Marla, “You seen that?” She was talking about Slinky in his coffin. We all went to the funeral along with lots of other people from the village.
“Did you see? He had cotton wool in his nose,” I said.
“I hear the funeral home had to fill up bits of his head and face with cotton wool, coz he had holes everywhere from the beating.” Marla said.
“Poor Slinky,” we moaned together.
We saw his mother cling to three of her daughters and weep for her only son. Somebody in the crowd fainted, then animal- like moaning, and shrill weeping filled our heads. The cries made the little hairs on my arms stand out straight. It was all so awful and confusing that it made us feel like helpless sacks of air.

Somebody said that Slinky’s dad wanted to kill this man who had taken his son away, but I don’t think he got his wish because the beater died by his own hands before he could even get to him.

Excerpt 13 - A Rare Glimpse of Victory!

That afternoon I went back to see Mr Charles to see if he had any good news for me.


“Mr Charles said that me father won’t help,” I said when I returned home. Then I tried to block out the flies buzzing inside and around my head, everything that Mammy was saying. My brain couldn’t take in anything anymore. My head hurt and spun. I felt like I would faint but I didn’t.
Maybe I should.
Please make it stop.


Friday:
The last working day before I start High School on Monday, with no school uniform. Theresa woke up with a brilliant idea today. She asked Mammy if she could spare the old blue skirt she used to wear to work. Theresa said that she would take the skirt apart and then cut it, pleat it, and make it into a skirt for my new uniform. She said she learned enough sewing to make a pleated skirt, and that she should have enough material left over to make my tie. The shade was lighter than what I should have, and the cloth was old and worn, but at least it was blue. She said that although I needed a white shirt, I could wear my old cream shirt from primary school for the time being. Mammy thought it was a good idea, I thought so too, but was still feeling raw about yesterday and everything else.

“Instead of sewing it with yuh hand, I could send she to Barry’s wife in the scheme to ask if you could use her sewing machine,” Mammy said, flicking her thumb in my direction. ‘She’ ‘You,’ and ‘That One’ had always been Mammy’s names for me, there was no question that she meant me.
Theresa said that that would be even better, and that we had to do something now, we couldn’t wait any longer for my mother to show up.

I went up to the scheme to Mr Barry’s wife, with a note that Mammy had dictated for me to write, asking if we could come tomorrow to sew my skirt.
She said, “Of course, why not?”
I took my time walking back home, I knew this could be bad, but it was nice being out of the house after 8 weeks of ‘school holidays’ being locked up indoors and feeling watched all the time. I felt good and free even if it was just a walk back home past the smelly Back Dam trench. I looked for the cat but I didn’t see him, maybe someone took him in like Theresa had said.
When I got close to the house, I noticed Mammy’s head pop out of the window, I saw her face and knew straight away that I was in big trouble. When I walked through the door, she said to me, “Go take off yuh clothes, you getting licks.”

***

My heart is pounding and my head is real tight. I am chewing on my finger nails to keep from fainting. I walk into the bedroom and I start to take off my clothes. When Mammy wants to do a nasty beating, she makes me take off all my clothes. I don’t know why, since the licks are really painful even with my clothes on. I take my tee shirt partly off, but I leave it hanging round my neck to cover my chest because I have a tiny little booby. Just the one so far, and I don’t want nobody to see it.

Mammy comes into the room with the stick and she’s screaming at me. I’m still wearing my clothes. She rips the tee shirt off me, so hard it bruises my face, and I’m left standing there with my little, tiny booby exposed. I start to cry but it’s more from my shame than from fright. I want to cover up my body, so I put my arm on my chest, partly shielding the sharp ribs which are barely covered by my stretched, tanned coloured skin. She hits my arm with the wood and commands me to take the rest off. She stands there and waits. I am crying as I take my shorts off but I don’t want to lose my underwear too. It’s the lone piece of the precious rags which once covered up my cowering frame. I’m growing up you see, and don’t want anyone to look at me.
I break down.
I can’t take my underwear off.
I can’t.
But by then I’m crying too much to do any thing else. She gets really angry, she doesn’t like to wait.
Mammy never waits, not for anyone.
Now she can’t wait for me to undress anymore so she starts to beat me all over, the only place on my body that escape without licks is my head.
In all the riot and pain, I keep holding on to the thought that keeping my underpants on means that I’ve achieved my only, precious, towering moment of victory.

I feel like a chewed up, spat out cherry. I know I’m bleeding somewhere but I can’t look now, the licks are too bad.
Much, much too bad.
She sees the blood too, some of it spills on wall and she glances at it. I think she’ll stop, I know she can’t bear to have any stain on her bedroom wall. I cry, but I can’t scream coz I’ll get more licks if I do, and because I am ashamed of the children next door hearing. She stops and now she is dragging me by my hair into the kitchen, the pain of each strand etching her fury into my scalp through to my brain. She imprisons me by the hair, while she takes down the jar of salt from the shelf next to the kitchen window.
Oh No!
Blood rushes fast to my head and I feel my throbbing belly suddenly knot inside me, protecting itself, coz it knows what she’s doing.

I wriggle to get away but she’s very strong and very powerful - stronger and more powerful when she is angry. She opens the jar with her mouth and pours salt into my cut, which I then realise, was on my leg. Five million grains of salt feel like ten million angry bees, stinging! Stinging!
Stinging!
I could hear her grind her teeth as she rubs the salt in.
I scream.
Once.
“Next time,” she hollers, releasing me, “I’ll pepper you parts!”
But did she know I’d won?
Did she?
Did she!

As I limp away, arm protecting the growth on my chest, I see her pick up some salt and throw it over her shoulder. It brings quarrels into the house, you see, if you don’t throw a little bit of salt over your shoulder when you spill it. I am beginning to not believe that one. Nor the one about when the inside of your hand itches, you get good luck. Or the one about when your eyes twitch, you see someone you haven’t seen in a while. Or the one about…
“Wipe up that blood in me bedroom and clean up this salt!” She shouts after me, heading for her cigarette chair. I am thinking; I don’t know why I got the licks today but it must be coz I took a long time to get home. That’s the only thing I did wrong. I must not do that again. I must not be like the cat!