Om in the home.

Rain is beatin’ bhangra on zinc roofs, every now and then a chorus does join in with a wah, wah. In one neighbour yard, cokenut tree swooonging like Polynesian dancer. Outside me bedroom window, tall sugarcane leaves can’t compete with that slow, cokenut grace, they flingin’ up they long pointy leaves when plump raindrops plops ‘pon them.

My mother, back from a one-week stay in the US, is gyaffing on the phone. She bring bags o’ news from over there about sister, brother, aunties, cousins, chil'ren. Like hungry-dawg I tear open every piece she tell me, wrap them up again then later, I peel them open slow and savour every li’l word.

And things, she bring a few things too, that family send for me. Two cotton, beaded blouses from India, bath things, two skirts. I know these things can’t fill this space that gouge out in me when family did go away to live Abroad but, aiye, lemme tell you, I make the best of what I got. And what I got is them folks laughing on the phone with me, I got my mother filling me ears with wild family stories. And today, every bit of me is dancin’ to that wicked Om Shanti Om CD my sister send.

For a while, I can shut out bleak stuff that we news-people seem to believe is the only events bashing-up here.

I know in plenty other homes too they shuttin’ out the bleddy gloom too. Plenty folks I meet, they manage to accomplish what some of them so-called thinkers and opinionists here can’t grasp. You got to do something before something do you, some folks say.

They don’t wait for big guys to do for them. They dig they drains and farm, sell they produce; cook, sell food; blend green seasoning...thyme, shallots, basil and more, market it here and overseas. Them is the people I learnin’ from.

So when you see me movin’ to this rhythm, please don’t label me or try to fit me into political or race slots (like what some of we thinkers and opinionists here do to people here). When you see me movin’ to this riddim, I am simply livin’ and appreciatin’.

How to win and get away with it.

Governments would do well to employ a certain type of mama to negotiate with the *enemy* for them. It might be a’ unfair battle though. The *enemy* ain’t got a chance. With just a few well-chosen words, these mamas gon make the *enemy* repent, give up in no time at all. Problem done.

Trouble does only happen when these mamas produce daughters just like they selves…daughters who want to wrest sweet victory from they mamas. And to top it all, the daughters want to assert Independence. A daughter can move wayyy across the country.

But no matter how far she go, the mother gon get she.

Don’t get me wrong, it ain’t as if these mamas does order you to do anything. Is just that they know how to make honey drip from they voice; is just that certain way they ask.

If you refuse though, you gon hear the thing you dread.

“Is alright..I gon do it...don’t worry. I can do it myself.”

No university degree in the world does prepare you to deal with this. As Lis say, “Arghtlbggghh! WHY! WHO teach dem to be so??? WHO?! Show me de person. SHOW dem to me.” Lis got two universities degrees.

Now, if you, the daughter, point out this guilt trip behaviour to your mother, she gon look at you, innocence shining all over she face.

But wait.

Look in she eyes.

What you see?

Eh?

Tell me what you see?

Bold shamelessness.

And a li’l smirk.

On Friday when my mother ask me, in that special voice, to drive to the supermarket to buy the Secret Ingredient for she pepper sauce, I couldn’t refuse.

But I had to say no!

I ain’t risking me life, fighting in that 9 a.m. traffic to get one li’l bottle of Secret Ingredient. No way. Not if she can get it later when she go to the lawyer.

But I couldn’t refuse.

Not after listening to that Mighty Sparrow song the day before. A song about a wutliss…good-for-nothing…son who couldn’t pay he mother doctor bill but when she dead, he looking to buy the best coffin. When that song play on the radio last week, I weep like a gyal watching Indian movie. Ow, I gon never be like that bad son, no, no, I vow. To add to me melotrauma, the radio then play a maudlin Sundar Popo song. A mother love will never diiiiiie…

How could I refuse after all o’ this? Plus Sunday would be Mother’s Day. And yes, yes, me is the hypocrite who does say Everyday should be Mother’s Day.

Me and me big mouth.

Suddenly I get a brainwave. The corner shop! Just ten minutes walk! Maybe they have the Secret Ingredient. But suppose I walk all that way and they ain’t have it?

Another brainwave.

I gon phone the shop.

Ow me Lawd, I don’t know the number.

Another brainwave…brainwaves does come fast when I am desperate.

I phone a friend. “Friend, whaz the telephone number of the people you do business with, next door to Mrs. Seeta shop?”

Now, I call the people me friend do business with. “Hello, can you do me a li’l favour, please?” For some reason, the voice I use sound a bit familiar. I can’t imagine where I learn this sweet-talkin’, manipulative tone from.

“Y-y-yes,” the man reply, nervous. He don’t know me from Eve to Jezebel.

“Please, please, can you check out the phone number on the sign on Mrs. Seeta shop, please?”

“Okay, hold on one minute.” I think I hear a heavy sigh, but never mind, you got to block out these things to get what you want. I thank the man very graciously when he return with the number.

Mrs. Seeta the shop-owner say yes, she got the Secret Ingredient.

“Yipeeee!” I holler.

“In five pound containers,” Mrs. Seeta say.

My mother only need a few drops.

Well people, lemme tell you. The secret to winning is to let the other person think they win.

I wasn’t going to drive in no snarly traffic right away, now, this minute. And I wasn’t going to walk with no heavy five pound container in that briling, scorching sun, so hot it can bar-b-cue you, and you can have yourself for lunch.

Phone Cousin Yasmeen; yes, she shop does sell small bottles. I tramp down the road, sun so fiery, you can make leather shoes out of me now. But on the way there, I stop in at The Sour Lady shop where I try not to patronise. Praises be, they sell small bottles.

Triumphant, I bring home a li’l bottle of the Secret Ingredient.

My mother blend it into she pepper sauce, smiling in that pleased way.

Is okay, I can be magnanimous, let she think she win, I don’t mind. She don’t have to know that I win…I didn’t have to drive to the supermarket like she did ask me to.

Pili-pili hoho.

In Kenya, they got a pepper so hot, they does call it pili-pili ho ho. But my mother does use good ole Guyana peppers to make pepper sauce so fiery, it does burn out that ho ho from your mouth and make pili pili taste pale in comparison. According to me brother-in-law, my mother pepper sauce is so hot, it should be illegal. It is wanted by families in several countries, Kenya too.

Last week my mother decide she gon make pepper sauce. “I gon make pili-pili hee hee,” she tell me.

“It name pili-pili ho ho, mummy. And it is a pepper in Kenya, not the name of a pepper sauce.”

“Ahh man, whatever.”

She buy two kinda peppers on Thursday afternoon. On Friday morning, Rehana we cleaning girl don gloves, wash peppers. My mother start to blend.

Was a good day, sun shining, birds singing, domesticity humming all around, fish frying smells wafting in the air. I retire to me throne. That is the place where I does dump all me worries, solve problems, save the world. I am humming too, examining me toes, oh what cute li’l toes, haha, I wonder if I should grow me toenails so long they can cut…chak…any bandit arteries.

“G…?” my mother call in a soft, pleading voice, outside the toilet door.

Uh-oh.

When she use that voice, you’re dead, me sister would say.

“Yes?” I ask with trepidation.

“You can do me a BIG favour please?”

“I’m in the looooo, mummy.”

“When you done. You can go to the supermarket and buy some Secret Ingredient for the pepper sauce?”

Horror seize me, if I did have constipation, it woulda done right there and then. This is nine a.m. I don’t drive at nine a.m. I hate fighting traffic at nine a.m. I does wait until ten before I venture out, when traffic ease up. Imagine! My mother is willing to sacrifice me, she love-child, for pepper sauce.

I try to fight like a man going down. “Mummy, you need it now? Now, now, now? When you go to see the lawyer later, you can’t get it?”

“No,” the small voice say. “I need it now. I got to blend it in now. Awright, is okay, I gon go meself.”

As me sister would say, I dead. I ain’t got a choice now.

East Indian mothers got a skill that I hear Jewish and Italian mothers got. Chinese mothers too. They can make you do anything you don’t want to do, don’t feel like doing right now, this minute. I ain’t know if is something they develop as mothers…or if they got it in they genes. Whatever, they come armed with a set of sweet talk; harsh commands that don’t brook no arguments; tears - this one they save for dire times; guilt trips. Sometimes they fire all at once. No use fighting.

“Okay, okay, I gon go.”

But the horror of traffic still had me in its grip. I can’t give in so easy, I realise. I pelt out of the loo, towards the kitchen. With one last gasp, I say something about wasting gas.

“Well, YOU said you would go,” mother declare in a firm voice. And whirrrr went the blender.

“Ararararara,” I try to continue the argument but the blender roar more loud than me. Rehana looking on with amused smile twitching she lips. My mother got a sweet, calm look on she face, she smiling lovingly. At the pepper sauce.


(…to be continued, I run outta time and got to go do some craft-planning...place bets on who win...or rather, who get the last laff...)

Stop.

Recently, I discover a strange idea here.

It puzzle me. How can this, just doing this, help anybody? Besides, I don’t have any grand ideas of meself, that I can accomplish fantastic feats like what these women trying to do. Save the world? This mean changing people. Nah, nah, not me. In fact, sometimes, even changing me own bad habits does take tremendous effort. Too much like trying to heave a huge rock out o’ a deep hole. Me against that big stone...it does leave me flat on the ground sometimes, crying with frustration.

But the idea follow me like a child nagging to go outside and play. "Go away, I got too much to do," I scold. Got to ketch up with the news. I pick up some recent newspapers. Some protesters been in we streets again, banging empty pots and pans, quarrelling about high cost o’ living. On Friday, Rehana we cleaning girl did ask me, "G how that gon help anybody? It ain’t better they go and plant two bora?"

I put down them papers. Yeah, how making noise can help? Nobody ever hear that proverb about empty barrels...? Why people don't stop and think? If we want change, the first step towards it is to think. Because thinking...clear and clean, uncluttered by a mangle of activities, conniption and kakafony...can make you see right down to the depths of you. And as ole Ghandi did say, be the change...

Then it whop me. Oh, thaz what them women did say. "During the silence, please think about what you individually and we collectively can do..."

Today, at 1 p.m. I gon stop, stand and think. About thinking. About one o' my favourite poems, and what it saying to me as a’ individual.

Mind Without Fear

by Rabindranath Tagore

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up
into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason
has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action,
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

For Kamal.

The Conversation Tree at the t-junction by the sea-wall road been get mash-up, bruk-up in the final years; it did look like a thin, brown, shrivel-up creature waiting to draw last breath. Them asymmetrical, wind-blown leaves drop off and baldness take over. Then one day some months ago the thing dead. Dead, dead, deader dan dead, not even jumbie want to haunt there no more.

Only a dry stump been in that triangle patch of earth with wild grass shimmying-up in the wind. Buses, cars, trucks, even horse carts zoops by. I don’t know if anybody notice the demise of that ancient meeting tree. In them ole days, plenty, plenty years ago, before this li’l, shrivel-up tree, a giant tree did grow; there people use to share news and views as they wait for transportation; boys and girls use to flirt and who knows what romance did blossom.

Not long after, a letter and photo get publish in one o’ we newspapers. The photo was dramatical, Conversation Tree in dialogue with Full Moon some years ago. If you put your ear to the photo you coulda almost hear the ocean across them roads going whoosha-whashaa; if you look close you coulda see magic.

The letter wasn’t a long psychobabbling piece like plenty letters to we newspapers. Was just a few lines about the death of the tree. Yet in them spaces between them lines I read sadness for the loss of beauty. The letter writer sign, Kamal Ramkarran. I ain’t know he, but when you live in a small place you learn li’l things about them folks you share oxygen with; he is a lawyer in he late twenties, a decent chap. Maybe he letter gon influence somebody.

Tides come and tides go. One morning, a man appear at the junction, he straight, frail hair fluttering in the breeze. He could pass in a crowd of East Indian grandfathers anywhere. The bucket in he hand on a very public road make me notice he. A younger, sturdier man been digging away with a spade. They plant a tender, green limb with two young shoots. I assume they put in the new, makeshift wood fence around the plant.

Well! History, as all o’ we know, looooove to repeat itself.

In the past, every time somebody put fence or wall around the ole tree, the barricade get bang-down at nights by drunks driving fast cars.

The new wood fence get knock down.

Except this time, it happen in brazen daylight. A truck park he bahind to the tree. The truck look stuck, constipated on the grass slope. A small group o’ men giving directions to the driver.

“Mammy, stop,” I ask as we approach the scene on the East Coast Road.

“Don’t say anything, they gon cuss you,” my mother say. My mother live in fear of men here cussing me, attacking me.

“Noooo, just stop man, stop being so fearful.”

She slow down the car.

“Y’all knock down the thing,” I chide, putting on me worriedest face.

They fix-up the fence.

“See? Nothin’ to fret about,” I tell mammy.

Too hard a knock, too much rain, the new tree get poorly, look like it lost marbles, pennies and possibilities.

The man with the bucket, the spade and the gardener reappear.

The wood fence disappear.

White-painted boulders pop-up around the triangle patch of earth.

Heh. Funny how drunk people NEVER drive into big white boulders, even at nights.

Now, the tree is slender, tall, tie on to a wood stake. Frilly-frilly leaves, pale green and delicate, flutter-flutter in the sea breeze. I think is a flambouyante tree. I can’t wait for it to mature. In May-June, flambouyante trees all over the land does blaze with flame-red flowers.

Thinking of the tree, I remember a quote I did read somewhere, is from the Talmud. “Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, Grow, grow.” I hope them angels whisper to we Conversation Tree.

Facebook, how the heck…?!?

Friday afternoon, searching the net for literary agents, I read a’ interview with one.

Sister pop up on MSN chat.

“Look the lit. agent I want from the year 0,” I tell she.

I give she the link to the interview page.

She take a peek at the page, we talk about courage and doing what I must do, then we chat about other things.

Next morning, I see a’ offline MSN message from me sister. A chunk of the interview with the literary agent get pasted on to she facebook page. “Can you believe this?” she say. “You been talkin’ about he and I open face book and he there…”

Can somebody please tell me how this happen…?!?

You know it is love when…

Friday afternoon and the dry heat in the living room is bakin’ me skin, I can feel me blood boilin’ too. Annie on the phone, she telling me about them fellas at Buddy’s Nite Club, trendy East Indian boys wearing gold chain around they neck, if you don’t recognize the vanity you gon see it as a symbol of success. Boys in they late twenties, thirties, great jobs, live in good places, buffing-up they bodies at gyms. Boys who know that them is highly prized in this country where girls don’t have many options or don’t see theyselves as having many options, so a good-lookin’ husband who come with dreams of air-conditioned home, travel and beautiful babies, dinners and society parties, is the best thing evah.

One boy dance with a girl, he give she he phone number, escort she out to she car. He return, gyaff with two other girls, he hands moving in the air like fast-action animation; he dance with a girl. Now, it is late, she ready to go home, he give she he number, escort she out, make sure she get a cab. And so on and so forth the whole night, so it go with he and the chosen ones.

Annie know he, she say he is sweet and young and just havin’ fun. What a lovely game. I wonder which naïve, craving heart he gon play with next. But Annie say some o’ them fellas come right out and tell you that they married or got a girl on the side. If you choose to play with them, that is your hard-boil corn, you either try to chew and swallow, or spit and run.

I need to escape from this oven, turn me eyes to the window. “Annie, I just see this kisskadee on the electric wire, he ketch a vinvinee…”

Kisskadee, yellow-dark brown bird with the white warrior band around he head, try to swallow the whole dragonfly. It fall out from he mouth and he swoop, ketch it in mid-air. He stuffing it in, tongue and throat muscles working like machine, hauling the vinvinee in, it going down, down, into the throat. Gossamer wings shimmering, quivering outside the hard, dark beak.

“Annie, he is such a Pig…look, he mate sitting right near he while he gobble the vinvinee…look how he stuffing it, damn greedy pig…Oh look, he give she half…awww…”

“Awww, G, that is love. Is like what Lis say. She say you know is love if she share she peanut punch…”

“Peanut punch? Oh yeah, that girl love peanut punch bad, I never know that before last year. She buy boxes of it when she been here.”

“You never know? She like peanut punch baaaad, she say she gon know is love if somebody give she peanut punch and she share it.”

I agree with Annie then but later, thinking about it, I change me mind.

I love my cousin Lis and I would give she all the peanut punch in the world, and I wouldn’t want she to share it with me. I just worry that some Buddy’s Nite Club kinda boy, in another part of the world, would buy gallons of peanut punch for she, and she, besotted, would share it with he. I fear for she after the betrayal and the stealing and she divorce, I don’t care what the cold hard world say about people got to live and go through they own experiences and get hurt.

This morning, me head is foggy from heat and humidity. At breakfast I tell my mother some of what Annie and me been gyaffing about.

“Mammy, you know what I think love is? It ain’t the giving of things. A fella can buy the most expensive things for a gyal. And then he gon buy for another one. And another one. It is when he is willing to give heself to me and me alone, not share heself all over the place like cheap goods in them Regent Street stores.”

Annie say them boys is young and sweet and just want to have fun. I wonder who and who hearts they gon play draughts with this holiday weekend, jumping and gobbling.