WHERE WAS I? Pt. 1.

The late-November rain bust down as if somebody did slit the sky every which way – crossways, sideways, longways. Water pound down like sledge hammers on zinc roofs. Mosquitoes, hiding since August from scorching heat, come out like bad gremlins. Yard flood to we ankle before we could say Slip-slap-slippa. We get li’l breaks from the rain for one hour, and if we lucky, half of half of a morning or afternoon.

It was during one o’ these breaks, after the mini-flood in we yard recede, that I venture out to we road. I full-up me lungs with the fresh, cool air and contemplate me fate, wondering how long I gon be housebound.

A jeep pull up, skrrrks, right in front of me, a rough, man-jeep that look as though it see plenty deserts. The driver been jaw-dropping gorgeous, light-tanned an’ lanky with dark hair. I couldn’t breathe no more.

“G’daiye possum,” he say with a smile that flash bright like lightening.

I open me mouth to answer but only a li'l eek come out.

Suddenly, before I could haul out a proper sound from me insides, a thick, black swarm o' mosquitoes, humming like a small plane, buzz down and grab the man.

“Help me,” the man holler.

“Don’t worry Hugh, I got you,” I shout as I grab onto he ankles. What a good thing handsome men don’t have smelly feet because he shoes fall off and barely miss me face..........

I pause in the telling of my story to munch on me roti and stew fish.

“Who was the man? Where them mosquites carry y’all?” my mother ask with a dry expression.

Me and she been eating early dinner at the kitchen table, that faded pink kitchen table that hear every tale conceivable. Teen boys adventures; women complaining about husbands; rice-picking tales and country-life with murders, betrayals, love and idealism; girls about boys tales and Dickens and Chekhov and Readers’ Digest tales. Me wild story, the one that I concoct weeks ago, to tell bloggers where I disappear to all this time, ain’t nothing new to this table.

“He was Hugh Jackman. One o’ them mosquitoes was Maisie the Mozzie, wife of Ozzie the Mozzie. But she is in love with Hugh Jackman and she is a jealous wretch, so she come to take he back to Oz.

“Them mosquitoes fetch we all the way over the Amazon jungle, native Indians try to shoot we down with bow and arrow, but that wouldn’t help we, if you see pirai with long, long teeth in the river, waiting for we. We go all the way across the desert and when we reach the Sydney harbour, them mosquitoes drop me, whaps, in the water and fly go ‘way with Hugh Jackman.”

"Which desert?” my mother ask in the same dry tone.

I shrug. “I dunno...some Australian desert...don’t know the name...”

"If you fly straight south from here, you wouldn’t have to go over any Australian desert, you would end up in Sydney anyway.”

"Man, the trouble with you is, you know too much.”

So where I been all this time then?

The truth is too mundane to talk about.