How to Earn Seven Years of Bad Luck - Excerpt 9

It was getting dark by the time I got back home, so Mammy said I should have my dinner before I did my homework. With a watering mouth, I galloped down even the sweet aroma of the most beautiful curry ever made, a dish that no one could ever make as well as Theresa. The only thing I savoured was the one piece of meat I had on my plate. After months without meat, I couldn’t let my serving go without chewing into the bone. I then took the fragments of bones apart and licked all the brown stuff off from the inside. Marrow, Theresa said it was called. Marrow, the sweetest bit, the bit you savour and keep for last.

After dinner, Mammy went to have her cigarette in her rocking chair on the veranda, Theresa had to give Franc her bath, and I cleared the table. This was turning out to be a nice day after all; tiring, but nice. Maybe if we’re lucky Mammy would even tell us a long-time story.

As I was taking the last few dishes into the kitchen, I caught my foot in the mat, slipped, and let go of the glass I was holding.
Tick, tock, tick, tock
Rewind!
Now slow it down.
As the glass fell, my eyes saw it tumble a few times before it finally hammered the floor.
Splinters! Don’t walk! Don’t walk!
So many things went through my mind, it was as if my brain had kept a film of the last time this had happened and was playing it back - frame by clicking frame, in front of my eyes - in very small black and white pictures tinged with spots of red. The glass crashed on the wooden floor, and I felt my heart dive there with it.
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
Now speed up.
Within a fraction of a second Mammy was standing there with that familiar look on her face, wide nose flaring. She glanced at the broken glass with a look of satisfaction. This look would’ve puzzled me, except that there was too much terror racing through my blood to be anything but terrified.

Before she looked behind the front door where she kept the two-by-four, I knew what was coming.
Mammy picked up the wood and walked towards me. I didn’t actually see her move, one second she was at the door, the next, right in front of me. There was nowhere for me to run. What am I talking about, I never run – too scared. Besides, she always says that if I make her have to run after me, I’d get a lot more licks.

***

She twists my arm behind my back and my knees hit the floor. The blows come straight after in a downpour of, Thud! Thud!
My arms, they’re way too small, way too thin, but the thud, thud, they keep coming.
The pain - electricity through my bones - rockets me to my feet and I jump around on one foot. The more I jump around, the more the hits rain on, and the more she chews her lips.
Thud! Thud!
I cry in pain but not loudly, I always keep it in. She now grabs my wrist as she starts to beat my legs, all over, again and again, speeding up. I try to turn again, but this time she’s holding me so tightly that my whole arm is twisted over and above my head.
I can’t move, I can’t get away from the fire on my skin, charring me all over. I can’t get loose.
Pain. Too much pain!
It’s in this position that she hits me again, again, again. Every time the licks land on my skin, I feel - rip.
The lashes come harder and harder. I hear them in my head and I cry out inside, please stop, please stop. Oh my God please make it stop, please, please.
My knees are now giving away I can’t stand. But, Yank! She yanks my little body up by the arm and keeps beating.

“You want to break her?” Theresa demands. I think she has Franc in her arms because she very carefully puts down something which is wrapped up in a bath towel, and comes over. At this point I’m half sitting on the floor, tears streaming down my face, body fire-working into flames of red, sizzling pain.
Theresa pulls the piece of wood from Mammy’s hand, Mammy drops me and goes for her, punching her several times in the face and chest.
“Don’t you take me on!” Mammy shouts, spit flying from her mouth. “She know that she get licks when she break m’ things.”
“People don’t beat children for accidentally breaking things, and they not your things, they Esther’s things!” Theresa shouts, leaning in dangerously close to Mammy. “I hate this wood. Ah getting rid of it!” she storms out of the house.

“Clean up that glass!” Mammy shouts at me. “And you, sit down!”
It’s only at this point I notice naked Franc, with a green towel draped round her shoulders, standing in the biggest of our three chairs – the ones with steel legs - staring at us.
Taking it all in, and swallowing it down.

Rum Burns Your Tongue - Excerpt 8

There’s a lady who has a little stand outside the optician’s shop. She sells tamarind sours, plantain chips and black pudding. As I went past, the black pudding and the tamarind sour looked especially nice from the distance. My mouth sprouted water, just thinking of them together on a nice piece of grease-proof paper.
The shop I was sent to was quite near our house so I had to be quick. On the way back, rum in hand, I went to this lady and spent my dollar on a small cut of black pudding – not forgetting, a touch of tamarind sour on the very top. Since I was in such a hurry, all I had time to do was to gobble it up quickly and make sure it was all gone before I got home. Mammy couldn’t know I had the money, you see. It wasn’t until the black pudding had gone down that I realised there was something putridly wrong with it.

When I got home, as I was taking my slippers off at the door as usual, Mammy told me to get out of her house and wash my slippers downstairs.
“You mash dog dung!” She shouted, taking the rum from my hands. “How come you can’t smell that horrible smell?”
I went down and washed my slippers, but I knew that the smelly culprit was a long way from my feet.
After a while I came back up and kept my mouth tightly closed. I figured that if I could manage to keep it shut until we had the lovely curried chicken, that the hot spicy curry sauce would cover up the bad ‘dog dung’ smell coming from within my now contaminated mouth and stomach. As soon as I entered the house again, Mammy sent me straight back out.
“Ah could still smell that dung. Wot them people give them dogs to eat these days, eh? Wash yuh feet dis time,” she said, getting ready to tuck into her curry, as she poured her rum out into a small glass.

“Come Mr tally man,
Tally me banana.
Daylight come and me waan go home.”
Harry Bellafonte sang on the radio as I walked downstairs for the second time. If only I could get my toothbrush. Theresa came down to tell me that my food was getting cold and I mouthed to her that I had eaten rotten black pudding. She came in to smell my breath but as I opened my mouth, she reeled back violently. We both giggled uncontrollably, we had to both rest our hands on our knees to stop ourselves from falling down with laughter. Theresa said she was coming back, and ran upstairs. Seconds later, she came back with a bar of Zex washing soap and some toothpaste hidden in the palm of her hand.
“What’s the soap for?” I asked.
“Ah had to tell Mammy I was bringing the soap for you to wash your feet with,” she answered.
At last I was able to go up and eat my nice curry. My mouth was watering despite the taste of Colgate on my tongue. Mammy gave us all a sip of her rum, it burned my tongue a bit but it wasn’t too bad.
Everyone finished eating before me and as I sat finishing my dinner, listening to Tom Jones on the radio, I was thinking that maybe we would get a story tonight, after all . . .

“Anne!” Mammy shouted loudly, so loudly that her voice broke in the middle of my name. I knew I was in trouble even before I saw her face. I left my food and stood up in a panic. She had called my name, I must be in evil trouble this time.