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.