Sunday's Child

BOOK BLURB



In an abusive home, in poverty, in a crisis-torn South American country, only a child’s faith, determination, and one young woman can help keep Ann’s dreams alive.





'Sunday’s Child' is a true story set in Guyana, a former British colony. It describes the harrowing life Ann lives with her abusive grandmother, through the curtain of the political and cultural climate of the economically stricken country. All through a child’s eyes.









Ann doesn’t care that she lives in poverty. After all, she spends the best hours of her life in the food lines. Anything is better than the horrendous abuse she suffers at home.





Daily blackouts, political brainwashing and murders rage through her country. But not even her hunger pains match her constant fear, not of the crime and poverty around her, but of life in her own home. Each day, her existence spirals downward, certain to annihilate her hopes and dreams of what her life could become.





Sunday’s Child is not only about pain, but about laughter, mental breakdowns, evictions, loyalty, and above all, love. For it is love that ultimately triumphs in the wretched arena of torture, corruption and abandonment.





Darkness can become light. I know. I am Ann.



AUTHOR'S NOTE



To give Sunday’s Child the gift of dialogue, I condensed the things the people around me said over the years. I then used their personalities, the way they spoke, and the tones they used to give them words to ‘speak’ in my story. This is very much like the way you relate the things your mother used to say to other people. You can remember the manner in which she used her hands to speak, the phrases she revisited, and even her tone of voice.



I tried to recreate, to the best of my human ability, the speech patterns and the words for the people included in Sunday’s Child.







CHAPTER 1



JONESTOWN, GUYANA, AND THE CHASE



My usual shortcut through the building site for the new school seemed like a good idea, on account of it being so late and all. The evening sunlight glowed orange, signalling that dusk was crouching round the corner.



Piles of rubbish and concrete were scattered everywhere, but the men weren’t working anymore – something about shortage of materials or other. Even the grass had packed up and left the parched ground, leaving the entire site something of a mountain of brown and grey mess.



I mustn’t get home late, but with after-school lessons every day, I don’t know how I could help that. At least I only have one more year at primary school, after which . . .



A noise behind me snapped me out of my thoughts. It was coupled with panting – loud panting – and heavy, running footsteps on the hot, hard concrete.



The familiar, large hands of fear grabbed hold of my insides and squeezed them like play dough. It took me just one tiny instant to look behind me, but before I did I knew – I just knew I was in trouble.



When my head finally creaked around, the man’s eyes were dead set only on me.



That dreaded, unforgettable, dirty red cap!



Those blood shot eyes.



The mad stare.



I and all the other girls my age had seen him a hundred times before, slinking around the village.



Looking at us.



Looking for us.



Oh no!



My heart spilled over itself for one breathless moment. I took a hesitant intake of hot air before my whole body bulleted forward.



‘Please God, don’t let him catch me. Please don’t let him catch me.’



The pounding footsteps grew louder. I didn’t want to, but I had to take another glance – just a little one – over my shoulder. He was not alone! There was now a second man.



I sprawled on the ground when my knees buckled under me, and as I clawed the crisp grass to try to scramble up, I took another look back but I still couldn’t get up for crippling fear. I started to crawl away. Getting up was no good. I couldn’t use my dead legs anymore.



Dirty Red Cap, who was closer to me, turned, looking back when the second man yanked his belt off with a mighty swish. The bald man behind him raised his hand above his head and swung his belt as Dirty Red Cap straightened his body and picked up his speed.



Swoosh!



Dirty Red Cap stopped and grasped his whipped arm. His eyebrows shot up, as his mouth began to form an ‘o.’ Snarling, he barely ducked the second blow then darted back and ran away in the direction he came from.



He would live to fight another day,



And wait to catch me another way.



The other man looked in my direction then walked towards me, but the only message showing up in bright letters behind my eyes was, I should really go back to get my school bag.



“Child!” he shouted. “Yuh alright?”



“Yeah, Mister,” I whispered.



“Do you know who that is,” he asked, while picking up my old, green hand-bag-turned school sac.



“Yes, Mister.”



“He’s always hanging round here,” he said as he handed me my bag. “They can’t lock him up because he’s proved insane. Doan walk through here anymore. It not safe at all. I doan want to think what couldda happened to yuh if I wasn’t ‘round here. Brush yuhself off and tell your parents what happened when you get home. What’s yuh name, eh?”



“Ann.”



“You shaking real bad, Ann. Look, I’ll hold your bag and walk you out of the site, right?”



“Thanks, Mister.”



“Make sure you tell your parents when you get home,” he said again.



I had a feeling that if he had been looking at me when he said this instead of buckling his belt around the tyre in his belly, he would’ve seen through the emptiness in my words when I said, “Yes, Mister, I will.”



A minute later I was boring through the hole in the fence and walking away in the dry dust, legs still porridge-like. I was already making notes in my head of the details I would leave out when I did my nightly letters entitled, ‘Dear Aunty or Mister,’ to no one and everyone.



In the two minutes it took me to walk to the house I wished I didn’t live in, I tried to work out where the bald man had come from and why he was there. He had to have been an angel. Maybe even children who get themselves attacked have angels to save them.



I was really sure of this, just like I was sure that I had to stand under the house until I stopped shaking. Today, Red Cap was not the only bolt that penetrated through to the insides of my senses. At least it was lighter on my chest than the message I was carrying which hung like a sandbag from my stomach. This bag had started to fill up at lunchtime over at Aunty Meena’s house with something I heard on the radio.



***



“Breaking news of what appears to be a mass suicide in Jonestown. Reports that over 900 members of a sect known as ‘The People’s Temple’ are said to have lined up to be served what they knew to be a deadly mix of poisonous Kool-aid. Early reports suggest that this sect was led by the American, Jim Jones, who may or may not be dead along with his followers.



“The aftermath of this totally horrific incident was witnessed by one of our reporters who said that groups of people, who appeared to be members of families were found dead, still huddled together with their babies and children in little bundles. This is the most shocking…”



“Did you hear that, Ann,” Aunty Meena asked, turning up the radio. “Can yuh believe that? How on earth can yuh get people to line up to take poison? That can’t be right.” Aunty Meena’s small, youthful face creased in thought, her eyes stared, but not at anything in particular.



“Is Jonestown in Guyana, Aunty,” I asked.



“Seems so, child,” she whispered, putting her finger to her lips as if she was about to kiss it. “Never heard of it before.”



I waited in silence, and eventually when the man on the radio said, “More coming up in our next news bulletin,” I asked, “Who’s Jim Jones, Aunty?”



“Some American, it seems,” Aunty Meena said, swiping her sentence away with a flick of her wrist. “The Comrade Leader invited all these people here and we only know about it when there’s trouble.” She had that look on her face and that shrug in her shoulder which said there was yet another thing she couldn’t do anything about.



“Anyway,” she continued, calling out to her daughters, “if you children finish yuh lunch, clean up and get back to school. Rafza and Tasleema, make sure you go to the toilet before you go.”



The even breathing I was allowed in Aunty Meena’s house was always squeezed out of my chest when it was time to leave. One nod – even half a nod – was all it would take from her, and I would stay. There would be no broken skin, no swollen face and no aching joints anymore. I could help her look after baby Nafeeza and do the washing.



But I knew that ‘She’ would never allow that.



“Bye, Mammy,” Tasleema and Rafza said five minutes later. “See you after school.”



“Bye kids,” Aunty Meena answered, then turned to me. “Ann, see that they cross the road properly.”



“I am seven,” Rafza exclaimed, pulling out stray hairs from the end of her long pony tail. “I know how to…”



“I know, I know, Rafza,” Aunty replied, as she stood in the doorway. “But Ann is the oldest, right?” A light wind touched her forehead and she shook her head and lifted her chin as if she was looking up to heaven and asking it to do it again.



“Last one downstairs is a big fat rat,” shouted Tas, as we all raced down the stairs.



“Oh, Ann,” Aunty Meena shouted after us. “When you get home this afternoon, tell yuh grandmother that I got to talk to her about something.”



I stopped in mid-step. My foot suddenly froze, not quite remembering what to do next. Heaven did it again for Aunty and breathed another burst of the November wind – strong and steady, but hot as usual.



I haven’t done anything! I checked, I checked all my movements, every minute of my movements. Why does she want to see Mammy? I know I didn’t do nothing.



Oh God, no, not . . .



“Oh, nothing ‘bout you, child. My fault, I shoudda said that first. You gone really pale. It’s . . . It’s about me and Uncle Nizam and the girls. You all right?”



“Yes, Aunty Meena,” I answered, breathing a big sigh of relief as my heart briskly made up for the beats it had missed.



“I’ll tell her,” I said, showing her all of my teeth, hoping the flash of whites made a good enough smile. “Bye.”



I followed the girls down the stairs.



We skipped to school hand in hand, the three of us – best friends – and decided that tomorrow at lunch time we would eat quickly so that we could go under the house to play hopscotch on the hot concrete.



Rafza said that we could all take three posts each, of the nine that held up their house, to use as scoreboards. Then we could count them up at the end of the year.



We walked out of Stanleytown where Raf and Tas lived, past the tiny houses perched on four posts which were scattered across grass on either side of the thin, tarred road. Five minutes later we had entered Islington, where the tar suddenly ran out. The road was hurriedly dressed with Bauxite waste from the nearby plant where many of my classmates’ parents worked. The fly-away red dust caked on the bottom of our shoes when it rained. A few children from our school came drizzling out from Singh’s corner shop at the top of the village. Their freshly bought ice lollies were already dribbling wet exclamation points onto their green school uniforms.



“Run up, y’all,” I said, hitching my school bag onto my shoulder. “I hear the bell.” It took us a minute to get through the village and into Overwinning, to the wide, sandy, flat stretch of land on which our wooden school was built.



“I won’t see y’all this afternoon,” I said breathlessly as we stomped across the wooden bridge at the school gates. “I got Common Entrance lessons, awright?”



The two girls skipped away together, and in the bright midday sunlight reflected off the peeling white paint on the front of the school building, they looked paler than usual.



As I turned away from them and walked up the long, creaking stairs into my classroom, Mr. Williams was getting the class ready for the afternoon by making us stretch before saying the Lord’s Prayer.



“Hands up, down, in, out, clasp your hands and close your . . .” I quickly scuffled into my space next to Jan, his daughter, closed my eyes and chorused with the others:



“…Who art in heaven,



Hallowed be Thy name,



Thy Kingdom come,



Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.



Give us this day our daily bread



And forgive us our trespasses



As we forgive those who trespass against us.



And lead us not into temptation.



But deliver us from evil,



For Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory



Forever and forever Amen.”



“Hands up, down, in, out, sit down,” Mr. Williams said again.



“Yes, Sir,” we all sang after we had followed his directions.



“Now, I want to talk to you all today about your upcoming Common Entrance Exams, especially to those of you who are in this class for the first time . . .”



Mr. Williams had a dense black beard, which itched with excitement whenever he was breaking into one of his ‘very important’ speeches.



“. . . As Liddle, my own son Geff, and others will tell you, this will be your hardest class in primary school. I know most of you are only eleven but unfortunately, what you do in these exams and the grade of high school you attend will follow you throughout your lives. This is why some of us teachers have come together to give you free extra lessons after school.”



Scratch, scratch went his long, dark fingers. He had placed the other hand in his trouser pocket, and as he spoke he not only managed to look at all of us at the same time, but at the light blue, galvanised zinc ceiling which covered the high roof of our little school and every other building I’d ever been into.



“I will speak to you in groups so when I call your names come up to my desk. The rest of you do your revisions quietly. The first group is: Lyken, Ricardo Singh, Sanjay Singh, Geff and Jan and McAlman . . .”





***



Hiding under the house to calm the thoughts of why Red Cap wanted to catch me didn’t work as planned. I’ll have lots to write in my letters to no one and everyone, but scary things are mostly kept in my heart. ‘Dear Aunty or Mister’ it would say...’



“What you doin’ down there?”



At the sound of her voice, the breath I was about to take shot up through my shoulders and into the air.



“Bring yuhself upstairs,” my grandmother shouted in my direction from the front bedroom window. “You know how long ah been looking out for yuh?”



The tight crease in her forehead pointed accusingly at me as always. “Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!” it cried, still pointing.



“Yes, Mammy,” I answered, running up the stairs. The thoughts of Red Cap were already held captive somewhere else in my mind, a trailer saved for later re-plays.



“Ah run outta cigarettes. Go next door to Grimmond Bar and buy two Bristols for me.”



“Yes, Mammy,” I said again, swallowing dry air and getting ready to deliver the sandbag message. “Aunty Meena said she got to see you, she . . .”



“What you gone and do now? Eh?” My grandmother put her hands on her hips. That crease was never going to let me go. “You lucky I get Meena, a stranger, to cook yuh lunch every day, and this is how you repay me?”



“No, she said it’s about her and Uncle Nizam,” I answered quickly, but quietly under my breath, like, just in case . . .



“Don’t you answer me back, just go and get me cigarettes. Ah can’t see Meena this week, ah got to go to court again. The landlady want us out!”



I hoped the side stable door was open so I wouldn’t have to go inside the bar today. I closed my eyes and wished hard: Please be open, please be open. Please be open.



But as I already knew, I’d used up my portion of good luck for today. I kept my eyes focused on the concrete floor as I walked inside. I didn’t want to step into one of the beer-ish, pee-ish looking puddles again in my bare feet. Hardworking flies and their children zipped from table to table. They reminded me of the cockroaches that came out in our kitchen at nights. The smell of rum hit my nostrils, but the piles of cigarette butts on the floor and in the ashtrays on the sticky counter proved that my sniffer had gone a bit wonky. Stale cigarette smoke couldn’t smell of rum. But in a bar which transformed into a loud disco three nights a week, maybe anything is possible.



I hoped none of the drunkies were in as I made my way around to the main entrance at the front of the bar.



“What you want, girlie,” the day barman wanted to know.



“Two Bristols please, Mister,” I answered, trying to hold in my breath to block out the stench of last night’s activities.



“Two packs, or two singles as usual?”



“Two singles, thanks.”



With that ritual done, it was time to go back home to face my fate. The beating stick that Mammy kept behind the front door had found me only yesterday, so maybe I was safe for now. But the landlady’s news and Aunty Meena’s message were enough to put Mammy in a spitting bad mood.





CHAPTER 2



THE DEAD BODY



“Ann, you hungry,” my aunt Theresa asked after I got home for the second time that afternoon and walked into the kitchen. “You must be. What you have fuh lunch today?”



“Eggplant and chicken with rice,” I answered.



“Sounds nice. You had lessons again, ah see.” She blew her nose on the little rag cloth she kept in the band of her skirt, her smooth, black, marble-like skin almost mirroring the light from the open back door. A whisper of air sailed into the tiny kitchen and I could almost hear the leaves on the guava tree in the back yard wriggle in delight.



“Hmm,” was all I managed to say.



“They should really excuse you sometimes. You wouldn’t even be going to that school if we were living here when yuh started Prep A. None of the other children live all the way out here.”



“I feel very tired walking all that way,” I said, hoping for some of her sympathy – my dose of love for the day.



“I would too. Is nearly two miles.”



“I miss picking you up from sewing class and walking home together. When yuh going back?”



“I can’t really go back now I got Franc to look after,” Theresa answered. She sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her hand, then on the side of her faded skirt. “Maybe when she goes to nursery school I can, but even then I’d have to go to a different class because the teacher’s going to live overseas soon.”



“You used to have fun laughing and talking with the other girls at the class.”



“Yes,” she said, smiling a sad kind of smile. “I cooked bora and rice today. Do you…?”



“Theresa!” Mammy’s voice shot from the bedroom, almost shooting – I imagined – a straight line of cigarette smoke through the thin kitchen wall. “Franc woke up! Mek a bottle!”



“What she say,” Theresa asked me.



“You got to make a bottle for Franc.”



“Awright,” Theresa shouted back. The look hadn’t left her eyes, and as I stood and watched the back of my mother’s young sister’s head, I could see emeralds of perspiration running down her neck. Mammy’s always said that Theresa had good skin. Good skin and a sweaty head, but what else could you expect from someone who was always working, scrubbing, and cooking?



***



“The reason I called you today,” began Aunty Meena, “is because I…um, we got something important to say to you.”



Aunty Meena has always been a quiet speaker. Even when she was telling her children off, I had to listen hard to hear what she was saying. I didn’t know if it was because she was a Muslim. Her family was the only Muslim people I knew, so I couldn’t really know for sure if I had no one else to measure her with.



“Umm…we moving back to Georgetown for a while, then moving out of the country for good. This country’s getting from bad to worse with all them murders and robberies and stuff, and we getting out now, um…we really sad, and the children, too.”



I didn’t want to hear this, so I stared at her face instead, at her dark eyes (though not as dark as Rafza’s) and tiny nose. I studied the way she played with the hair on her arms while she talked with Mammy. I wished I had that much hair on my arms.



“They really like playing with Ann.” Aunty Meena said running her fingers through her short, dark hair. “They been friends ever since we moved in here when you guys were living in the mechanic’s house opposite. They’ll miss her – and all of you – we all will.”



I could almost see Mammy’s brain wheels going round and round, with bitter brain juice dripping from every side. Her head was turned towards Aunty Meena, but her eyes were staring inwards. I’d seen that look before. It was the same look she’d have when she’d tell Theresa, through her bubbles of smoke, about how God’s punishing her by “dropping that one on me hands.”



“By the way, we going to Georgetown on business next week and the kids are staying with our relatives in Overwinning.”



Turning to me, Aunty Meena said, “Ann, you know where that is, don’t you? It’s the house right opposite the school with the combine harvester parked in the yard.”



I nodded. She nodded. I looked at my lap and decided that I didn’t hear any of it. I searched around inside my head for a conversation. Any conversation, even one I could join which was already half way through.



Nothing.



“Don’t worry,” Aunty Meena continued, turning back to Mammy. “I arranged for them to do lunch for Ann as well.”



No one said nothing – or is that ‘anything?’ No one said anything or nothing for a long time. Then we walked home.



In silence, with Mammy’s eye-look intact.



* * *



Dear Aunty or Mister,



Yes, you. You, right there, reading my story. I hope you don’t mind me calling you this. In my village, children have to respect grown-ups at all times and this also means calling men ‘Uncle’ or ‘Mister’ and women ‘Aunty.’ I haven’t got many big words, coz I’m only ten years old, but I will try to describe this the best I can.



Three straight roads run through the village of Stanleytown and the town of New Amsterdam. They are the Back Dam Road, where the scheme was cut out of the woods; the Main Road, where you find most of the shops; and Water Street which runs alongside the Berbice River. These three streets all meet up like two knots, one at Berbice High School (or B.H.S.) which is at the end of the town called New Amsterdam. The other knot is at the end of the village of Stanleytown. The Main Road, however, goes on past the knots through several villages. Now, lots of little streets run crossway through these three roads like plaids on a skirt.



These streets in Stanleytown are numbered from thirty-nine, where the burial ground is, to sixty where the village ends and Islington begins with Mr. Singh’s corner shop. Beyond Islington is Overwinning. This is where our Primary school is. Beyond the burial ground on the opposite side of Stanleytown is a little town called New Amsterdam. I live on the very edge of this town with my grandmother Martha (who calls herself Elizabeth, because when you say Martha in a Guyanese accent, it sounds like ‘Mahta,’ which is too common) my nineteen-year-old Aunt Theresa, whose real name is Mayleen (she is the one who saves me), and my baby sister Francoise. Well, she has a French name coz she was born in French Guyane, you see, but her name’s too hard to say, so we call her Franc.



My mother…(I’ll have to tell you later. I gotta hide this book because Mammy’s coming this way. Oh, and I’ll tell you about Dirty Red Cap and Jonestown as well).



Best wishes xxx



* * *



“We late now girls,” I said, breathing heavily. “We gotta run.”



We were panting as we left Stanleytown, the village in which Raf and Tas lived. We were on our way to school on the day after we got the bad news about them leaving.



“Ann, look,” Rafza shouted. “Look at all them people. What they looking at?”



“Let’s go see,” said Tasleema. “Quick!”



So we went over to the river wall, a concrete structure that runs alongside the muddy Berbice River.



“It’s a dead body,” someone at the edge of the crowd whispered to someone else.



“The police coming,” another voice said. “But it’s just after lunch time so they sure to be a while yet.”



“Probably takin’ an after-lunch smoke and a nap,” said the first person, and the crowd burst out laughing.



“Or arrestin’ someone for smuggling in wheat flour,” another voice shouted.



“Hey, that ain’t so funny,” came the answer.



Rafza, Tasleema and I managed to get through the legs of the adults still making various jokes about the police. Peeping over the wall, we saw what looked like a massive, stuffed, scarecrow-like dummy, face down in the river. Someone said that it was a woman “coz only drowned women floated face down.”



Somebody else said it was surely the other way round, that it was “actually and positively women who floated face up.”



We didn’t know, but we understood that whatever that floating thing was, if we had seen it without the crowd, we would’ve surely thought it was a bag of laundry.



“The body had to be in there for at least three days.”



“Why yuh say that, mon?”



“Well, can’t you see how swollen it is?”



“It stink bad, no.”



“It can’t come up to float unless it’s been there for three days.”



“Ah see.”



A very loud woman said, “De woman must have killed sheself.”



“Yuh can’t know that.”



“Well, she is Indian, ain’t she? Look at the long, black hair.”



“Yes, them Indian women kill themselves a lot ‘round here.”



We couldn’t drag ourselves away even though we knew we were late for school. My eyes stapled themselves on the little four-eyed fish which were busy feasting on the dead person’s already smelly flesh. Nibbling, picking, napping like thieves, back and forth, twice again.



A nip there, swim away, swallow, another nip, same place. My stomach turned over as I watched their little eyes, the top two on the crowd, the bottom two on their lunch.



“Wot you doing here, girlies,” a woman suddenly said behind us, and shooed us away.



“Off you go, or yu’all will get nightmares.”



When I got into class Mr. Williams was lecturing about the exams again.



“Our school really has to increase its number of good grades. We haven’t had many passes for Berbice High School in recent years and we must change that. I don’t have to tell you that it’s the best secondary school in the whole county of Berbice. Some people who live far away have their kids stay with relatives here just so they can go to that school. I know it’s not easy to obtain the marks for B.H.S., kids, but I have faith in you.”



Mr. Williams used his eyes like the four-eyed fish I had just seen, looking at everyone, everywhere, while he scratched his beard – something I had grown to find very comforting and safe, maybe because that was the one thing I was always sure of happening, or maybe, just because it was.



“I know that some of you have the potential to do it,” he continued. “Remember those of you who are not twelve yet, that you may have two chances to do it. My own son Geff had two chances last year. He didn’t do it the first time and now he is trying again. Same for Liddle and the Adams twins, so do not let nervousness get to any of you…”



What’s going to happen when we have to move again? If the landlady wants us out, where will we go? Mammy said that her son and son-in-law are convicts and that they go in and out of jail. What if they come back and shout at us again? I could probably sneak out and go to the police station in town, only it’s so far away, the bad men could do something terrible to Franc and Theresa before I get back with the police.



“Time for your break, kids,” said Mr. Williams later on, drawing me back into the real world.



Everyone rushed outside to play in the sand and heat. As usual, I went over to where the girls were playing Chinese Skipping to watch. Of course, I wasn’t allowed to play. Why would they want me to? I wasn’t that good at it really, so it shocked me when I heard a voice asking, “You want a game?”



“Me,” I asked in surprise.



“Yes, you,” she asked again, pointing at me. “Want a game or not?”



I recognised her as one of the twin sisters in my year. So far, I’d only spent two months in my present class so I didn’t know her first name, but her last name was certainly Adams.



“Come,” she ordered.



I was already wobbling as I made the first jump, and it didn’t surprise anyone, including myself, when I toppled and sprawled in my second.



“You see,” Volda Europe shouted in her fourth gear voice. “She got two left feet. Stupid! Doan let her play again!”



“Stop it, Volda,” the Adams girl said with a knit in her brow. “She’s never played before.”



“Yeah. And you see why we don’t let her play in our games,” she continued.



The group laughed. I knew she was right. Even Mammy knew I was awkward and stupid. Even I wouldn’t have let me play, if I were them.



I turned away while the group laughed.



“Come back, fire ant. Come back and sting me, nuh. Sting me nuh, fire ant. Come back and sting me!” Volda screamed with laughter, wriggling her hips in time to the ‘beat’ of her stupid little song.



I hurried away towards the classrooms wishing I could poke a finger into all the staring eyes plastered onto my back. Shaking my shoulders made it feel a little better, as I imagined I was able to shrug some of the eyeballs off.



I wished I could go back and sting her. What’s the point of looking like a giant red ant, from the tip of my neat, perfect toes to the end of my frizzy, springy hair, if I wasn’t given any sting? My hair was red-ish, orange-ish, and boinged out from the plaits. My body stood long, straight and thin with skinny, red-honey coloured arms and legs sticking out from either end. And I walked funny, sort of like an ant who was scared that its next step would be under some giant, grindy boots.



I heard running footsteps behind me and whirled around. That Red Cap thing happened weeks ago but running footsteps behind me were now equally as frightening as seeing a ghost. Well, I supposed that it was. I’d never seen a ghost. Didn’t think so, anyway.



That sound made my heart swell up like a water balloon, getting ready to pop, pop, whoosh!



“Hi, my name is Marleen…”



“Adams,” we said together.



“Never mind those girls, ‘specially Volda. She is mean to everybody. She teases me and my sister because we talk funny.” She stopped and looked at me intently, probably looking to see if I was crying again like I did the other day when I tripped over and tore my uniform as I fell. Only I didn’t cry because of the fall, you see. When you get used to pain, you don’t cry every time you get hurt. Besides, I wasn’t supposed to shed tears because I’d get more licks if I did.



I cried about the uniform thing coz I was meant to keep it clean so I could wear it all week. I was crying the tears I wasn’t allowed to cry later on, when I did get home that afternoon.



“I see you went up with the bright group the other day,” Marleen said in her sing-song voice. “What did Sir say to you?”



“Just stuff about high school, you know,” I said, wiping my eyes quickly, now I had the chance. “Which high school did you put on your ‘First Choice’ list?”



“Marla, that’s my sister, and I are down for B.E.I. or B.H.S. Last year we passed for Tutorial, but our aunt said we should try again. What about you?”



“Same one...I mean B.H.S., but I’m only ten so I got two chances to do it,” I told her, looking across to her train lines of corn rows and wishing I could get my crazy, fire-ant-coloured curls into such artistic patterns.



“So how come you only ten and writing Common Entrance,” Marla asked frowning. “You supposed to be eleven.”



She said ‘En-rance’ and ‘wri-ing’ almost as if she was jumping across a bridge right in the middle of her words.



“They let me skip one of the infant classes,” I answered.



“Really,” Marlene said in her hiccupping, musical way again. “Your mam must be proud.”



“Um, ah doan know. Maybe.”



That afternoon, after lessons Marla, Marleen and I walked home. We planned that we would all try our very best to go to B.H.S. because we would be too embarrassed – just like the rest of our class – to wear the green uniform of the Community High or the khaki of the Tutorial Academy. Blue, we said. Blue was definitely the colour for us.



“You live at Fifty-four Stanleytown, right,” Marla asked.



“No, but I used to,” I answered.



“One day we missed school coz we went out with our aunt, and we saw you at lunch time, coming out of Fifty-four with two Indian girls.”



“I have lunch at their house.”



“How come,” asked Marleen.



“Yeah,” Marla said, “how come?”



I looked from one to the other and started to see little differences in their twin faces. Marla’s little nose flared when she asked a question, and while she waited for the answer, it was almost as if she bored inside your soul with her large dark-copper eyes.



“We used to live in a house opposite theirs and we became friends. We moved about a couple a years ago to the scheme.”



“You mean you have to pass the burial ground every day to go home,” Marleen asked excitedly. “You not ‘ared?” She missed out ‘sc’ in scared.



“Yeah,” I said smiling. “I try to run pass real quick.”



“Ever see funerals going in,” Marla asked even more loudly, her little nose twitching. “You know if you cut through a funeral and not wait until they all pass by, you’ll die,” she said, whispering the ‘die’ bit.



“No you don’t, silly,” her sister told her. “It’s just bad luck.”



“Bet you never walk through the burial ground, eh,” Marleen asked again.



“You mad? Never!”



We came to Forty-eight Stanleytown and they showed me their house, which you could see from the Main Road, hiding behind a huge tamarind tree. It was a large, unpainted, wooden house built on posts. I’d never even been inside a house that grand before. Even with the paint all washed away from years of rain and baking humid heat, it was the handsomest house any friend of mine had ever lived in.



They told me that they had a Chinese Skipping rope, which I could borrow some time to learn to skip at home. I lied and said yes, but couldn’t really. I wasn’t allowed to take home anything that belongs to anyone else. Besides, I wasn’t allowed to go outside to play. I would get too dirty, and get up to all sorts of nonsense if I wasn’t watched with a close eye.



When I got home, Mammy said that she had to go to ‘Shop Lady’ to get some goods on credit.



“Shop Lady, she knows the whole village on account that she’s at her shop in the market every day, six days a week. Maybe, she’d know someone who got an empty house to rent. Ah can’t understand,” Mammy fretted, “how it’s getting so hard to find a vacant house when so many people escaping the country every day.”



I ran quickly to get her Bristols from the bar, and to fetch her slippers from the kitchen. I didn’t even care that Grimmond’s side stable-door was shut. Mammy was going out and I didn’t have to go with her. That was enough for me to be brave about going inside the bar and walking past the men drinking at the tables, who always tried to talk to me.



“Reds,” they would say, and then smile as if I had a big, fat, terrible secret written across my forehead.





CHAPTER 3



THE PRISONERS’ BREAK-IN







“Theresa, why does Mammy call ‘Shop Lady’ by that name,” I asked after dinner. Outside the crickets were singing their usual evening worship-song to the approaching sunset.



“Well, ah think Mammy believes that she’ll make people less important if she don’t call them by they given name,” Theresa answered, her dark eyes deep in concentration. “She only uses the names of people she likes, that’s why she refers to most people by some made up name or the other.”



“But Shop Lady gives us food from her shop that we don’t pay for right away,” I said. “Aren’t we meant to like her?”



“I suppose. But when Esther comes back she always pays her off, and then buys loads of food stuff only from her shop.”



“Is Shop Lady rich,” I asked.



“Wot you say?”



“Is Shop Lady rich?” I repeated, making sure that Theresa could see my lips move.



“Ah doan know, but maybe…ah think so. She owns the house Meena and Nizam and the girls live in, the shop, and a larger house in Canjie where she lives now.”



“I remember her old husband before he died,” I said. “I used to watch him through our window from across the street when they lived in Aunty Meena’s house – well – his house. Rafza told me that they saw him once.”



“But they don’t know him,” Theresa answered. She tried to crease up her forehead like Mammy does – although Mammy didn’t have to try – but her forehead remained tight, except for one thick eyebrow which went up into a sort of ‘comma’ shape. “He died before they moved in.”



“Yeah, but she said that the house is haunted, and that’s why Shop Lady moved out and went to live in her other house.”



“That’s the story, but no one knows for sure,” Theresa answered, but she was clearly not thinking about old-men ghosts anymore. “Look, Ann, ah really got to clean up this kitchen before Mammy come back. Go watch yuh sister ‘til I ready to give her a bath, no.”



Theresa played ‘pat-a-cake’ on the back of my neck and steered me out of the kitchen. Her palms rested on the flesh of my neck for a tick. The insides of her hands were Velcro-like. I’d heard the grown-ups say ‘cool hands, warm heart’ or something like that, but they should have made up one for Theresa that said ‘rough hands, smooth girl.’ Or maybe something like, ‘strong arms, tender girl.’ Yeah, Theresa should have had something made up for her.



“All right,” I said, looking over my shoulder, straining my neck to look up into those deep, dark eyes. “When…um…you have your own house like Shop Lady, can um…can…I live with you?”



Theresa looked me in the eyes and said, “When I dream of me own house, I always dream of you there.”



She saves me.



* * *



Dear Aunty or Mister,



I promised to come back and talk to you, and here I am. You see, we live in a house – like all the other houses – that had been built on posts (some people call them stilts), so to come into our front door, you have to first walk up the long stairs, go past our veranda (where Mammy keeps her rocking chair), then open the door on your left. We have back steps as well, with another little veranda sticking out at the top like an odd plunging board.



Having a ‘bottom house’ means that if you are allowed to play outside, you could play under the house where it’s cool without having to run around in the blazing heat all the time. My friends play hopscotch, cricket, football and even dollies at their bottom house. I don’t though. You see, my father left me with my mother, who’s called Esther, when I was a baby, and then my mother left me with her mother when I was three, and since then they’ve both left me.



I only see my mum once in a while, and haven’t been visited by my father for years. The last time I saw him I was seven years old. He gave me twenty dollars then, but I had to give it to Mammy to help buy food. The last time I saw my mother I was nine, when she brought my sister, who was two weeks’ old, from French Guyane.



My aunt Theresa, my mother’s sister, who was then eighteen, became my sister’s carer.



My mum works in a bar in this French principality, and she brings some of her money for us when she comes back to Guyana. I remember well the morning she last came. It was the day I woke up from a very strange dream. In this dream, my mum was outside the house and I was looking out the window when she arrived. She smiled up at me and the morning sunlight flicked off her teeth. Then she beckoned me downstairs to help her bring in the carload of baggage she had saved up to bring over for us.



I had just finished telling Mammy about this dream when we heard a car horn outside our house. When I found myself looking out the window – and this is real life now – my mother was standing in exactly the same place with the sun in her face (but not bouncing off her teeth, because that would’ve been way too freaky).



Mammy and I and Theresa rushed downstairs to meet her. Of course, by this time we had been surviving on very little food for weeks, so we were really excited. That’s when I saw that my mother was holding this soft, peachy, tiny baby in her arms. She introduced my sister and said that her name was Francoise. Later she told us that a French nurse at the hospital where she had given birth had given her that name. When they came upstairs, I was able to inspect the new baby. She was very pink and soft and had no hair. Mind you, I‘d never seen a baby with no hair before, but my mother said that a lot of white and mixed race babies were born without hair. Francoise was so cute and smooth, and best of all, she was my very own little baby sister. It was nice to have her.



My mother had also brought a record player. She said it was so small because it was portable. She said this meant that you could carry it around with you. You had to put six big batteries into it to make it play. But that’s not all. She also brought some records to play on it. There was one with a very handsome man on the cover. He had piercing eyes and black hair that was high in the front, but sort of tapered off at the back, he also had these long, amazing sideburns. My mother said he was a king. I think she said that his country was called Rockandroll. I don’t quite know how to spell that (even though I’m a very good speller and all that), but then again, I’d never heard of that place before.



When I heard the king’s record, his voice sounded like it was coming from another person, in a kind of ‘ver-trillion quest’ (I think that’s what you call them) act. His voice was mighty, wide and deep, but the picture of him looked so smooth and soft. Mammy said she liked Jim Reeves and Tom Jones best, but Theresa said that the handsome king one sounded better to her because she could hear some of his ‘grrrs.’ There was one called ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ that Theresa said she could actually hear.



Best wishes xxx



* * *



After Mammy came back from Shop Lady, we went to bed that hot night as usual, Theresa and Franc in the back bedroom so Franc doesn’t disturb Mammy when she wakes up for her porridge in the night, and me and Mammy in her bed in the front room.



Mammy would say that she couldn’t open the windows to let air in because they opened out onto the veranda. She’d say all a thief would have to do to rob or kill her was to step inside from the veranda, onto the window sill, and then into the front bedroom.



Maybe she was right about this, because she was right about everything. Maybe this was how she knew that I looked out the windows when I couldn’t remember doing it myself. Theresa would say I should refuse to put my hands on the beating chair when Mammy found the curtains weren’t the way she’d left them, but I was too scared to do that. Maybe tomorrow when I’d wake up, Esther would arrive and I could have a break until she’d leave again. I was glad that even though Mammy slept right beside me, and I could feel her breath, she couldn’t hear me when I talked in my mind to myself.



I was safe there.



Sleep,



Silent sleep . . .



* * *



Loud, crashing, splintering sound, then broken glass on my face!



Oh Gawd! What’s happening to us?



Franc was crying. Mammy was screaming, “Get up! Get up!”



I was still half asleep. Theresa was shaking my kite-like, little frame. “Ann! Ann! They breakin’ in! Run!”



Franc started to scream. She was in spasms. I knew her mouth was open, but I couldn’t hear anything but a hissing “whoop.” I waited for the next burst of scream. It came, and with it I was lifted out of my bed and rushed out of the room. The last thing I saw in the shadow of the street lamp as I was dragged from the bedroom was a dark boot stepping through the now-broken window pane, into the bedroom, and onto the bed. The owner of the boot was holding a cutlass in his hand. Mammy won’t like that. No shoes allowed in the house!



* * *

“Ah think he went back out,” Theresa whispered, grasping the baby as we all stood trembling together in the safety of living room. “He only want to scare us” she said, pulling the bedroom door shut.



“It’s the two of them,” Mammy shouted-whispered. “Derek wid him!”



I knew who Derek was straight off. He was our landlady’s crazy-hair son who’d run away from the prison. I supposed that the other one was his sister’s mad, criminal husband. Mammy always said, “Them’s dangerous people to get mixed-up with.”



One time Theresa had asked her, “Why you say that?”



Mammy had a very long answer to that. I can’t remember all that she said, but one thing that stood out in my mind was when she explained that the landlady was a dark spirits’ worker, and that people went to her when they wanted to put bad, Obeah spells on someone.



“Ann, you go out the back door and call fuh help,” Mammy instructed me, jerking me back into the terror before us.



“No, doan send her out,” Theresa pleaded. “They still in front there shouting. One of them can easily run under the house and find her on the back steps.”



“No,” Mammy said. “They won’t hurt a child. Go, shout for help. Mr. Barry will come.”



“But yuh said that Derek is a murderer. She can’t…I’ll…I’ll go,” Theresa told her.



“You make the baby keep quiet,” Mammy shouted, and this was no whisper-shout either. “Go,” she said, and she and I crept through the dark kitchen to the back door.



She shoved me out.



Then I heard the bolt click.



* * *



I was screaming before I could hear my own voice. I was wailing and crying, spewing like a volcano – a lava of tears running down my face.



“Help! Help! Somebody please help us!” The louder I screamed the harder I wept. My body wanted to do this so much. My voice was breaking, but it was not because of the shouting. I was crying so hard I could barely say ‘Elp.’ I was exposed and only had moments before the two men walked under the house and came to deal with me.



I almost imagined footsteps getting nearer and nearer, closing in on me. I thought of all the things they could do to me, and I saw my half-grown body chopped up into tiny pieces with the cutlass the person who stepped into the bedroom was holding. A bizarre voice in my head shouted louder than I ever could, ‘But would that be so bad?’



I was shivering in the hot night air, feeling the not so foreign hand of fear take hold of my heart and squeeze and squeeze. I knew my heart was going to spurge its contents all over the hand in seconds. That’ll teach it.



I looked for the men through my tears, while I reasoned with that voice, ‘But see, I am only little.’



‘Is that why I catch yuh thinking of dying?’



‘I don’t want to die, please, I don’t want to die. I’m really only little.’



Heavy tears were streaming down my face when I heard him. He was blowing his whistle through the curtain of the night. It had to be Mr. Barry! By the time he reached our house still dressed in his pyjamas, he had most of the street behind him.



* * *



The two men had run away, leaving us with a bedroom full of glass and a lifetime’s worth of fear.



We survived the night of terror with the mad men from the prison. We each packed a little plastic bag. Theresa packed two, one for herself and another bigger one for the baby. We slept the rest of the night in Mr. Barry and his wife Shirley’s living room. I couldn’t go to school the next day because the police wanted to question everyone who lived in the house, bright and early in the morning.



“So we start from the top and tell me what happened,” said the big puffy policeman. I thought of him chasing after criminals and wondered how hard he would wheeze after five minutes of hard running.



Mammy began, and told them how the landlady’s son and son-in-law smashed our window with their cutlasses, but the police wanted to know how we were so sure it was them. Of course Mammy saw them clearly and they didn’t hide who they were either.



“So what did they say to you,” the big one asked again.



“They shouted down the house and cursed us about our so and sos, and then said we’d better move soon or else.”



“Or else,” he asked again.



“Or else they will do worse than break a window,” Mammy answered.



“Did they enter the house at any time,” the smaller policeman asked. His voice was a lot bigger than I thought it would be. Even Theresa heard him.



“One of them stepped into the bedroom window from the veranda,” Theresa answered, “but ah think he must ‘av stepped right back out because he never come through the bedroom door, and into the living room where we were. Ah think their voices were coming from outside most of the time they were here, even when Ann was outside.”



“Who’s Ann,” Big Puffy said, and my heart leaped into the wall of my bony chest which barely held it inside my body.



“Me niece here,” she said, pointing at me.



‘Please don’t ask me, please don’t ask me, I not allowed to talk when grown-ups speaking. Besides I don’t know nothing.’ I screamed in my stupid head like I always did, too afraid to say anything out loud.



“What were you doing outside, child? You obviously saw their cutlasses, you…”



“Well,” Mammy cut in. “She rushed out shouting for help, and then Mr. Barry come ‘round and they run away.”



“Mr. Barry? Oh, the P.N.C. Neighbourhood Watch chap from up the street,” he answered his own question.



“So,” the little, loud-voice policeman said, turning to Mammy, “at which point did you call the police?”



“We doan have a phone, you see,” Mammy answered. “Mr. Barry went back home when he was sure they were gone and called you.”



“I think we have enough to charge these men with aggravated assault with a dangerous weapon, breaking and entering, and disturbing the peace,” the bigger policeman said. “Maybe more. Just one more thing. Do you know why they want you to move?”



“They doing it for their mother,” Mammy said. “They just come out of jail and she send them.” A tiny ball of spit appeared on her bottom lip, and when she said ‘them,’ it transferred onto the upper lip.



“She got someone else she want to rent the house to, and she want me out. I pay her rent, and when she tek me to court, the magistrate said she got no grounds for throwing me out, that she got to wait until I find somewhere else to live. She threatened to get me out in the court yard.” Her ball of spit – which I named ‘blit’ – rested finally on her top lip.



“As the magistrate said, she can’t throw you out.”



“But ah can’t stay here now, can I? And she know that, she show me what they can do. I got a young lady daughter, and if anything happen, you know how fast gossip will travel ‘round this place about what shame happen to me.”



“We are very sorry,” said the bigger policeman. “We will do what we can. Do you have anywhere to stay?”



“No, but Mr. Barry say that we can sleep in his living room until the end o’ the week.”



“Then what,” he continued.



She shrugged, dejected like. Even I could see that she knew this was far from the end. I found I wasn’t scared. I had buried worse than this inside the soft bits of my own body. After all, I didn’t even get beaten today.



“Strange,” said the smaller policeman, “how people will destroy their own property.”



Was I Mammy’s property?