#275words

“Barry Pulankoli’s boy is the one that stutters.” That’s the teachers’ go-to phrase. Many find solace in using the condition as  the  identifier.  To some,  the label provides a  sense of hope that perhaps one day, Modern Science can cure the poor child and liberate his coiled tongue to exalt a system that he should be forever indebted to.  Sure beats calling him the very black one. No, not that one the very black one...from Africa.  

Barry Pulankoli’s boy’s first day of preschool was terrible.  That is why Barry now sits in the waiting room, having to leave work early, on behalf of his son.

In front of the administration, Barry awkwardly smiles that safe new immigrant smile where lips retreat eagerly to expose black vulnerable gums pleading for mercy.  He has perfected the smile, although he hates it so.  But for his boy, he will smile till they feel smug and validated. Just keep cool and smile.

“Your son had a horrible episode in class, yesterday.”

“Yes.”

“Surely, you can foresee the challenges Max will have in this fast-paced learning environment..don’t you?”

Yes. He is burning up again.

“Yes?” She retorts igniting the chain reaction.

As he jolts from his chair, his thin frame absorbs all light from the room. Darkness surrounds his now orange body.

“My boy Max, follows his Mother and is learning the Holawi. He is what you people call a time traveller. Call him that and do not call me back to this environment again for I  can no longer channel the patience of his mother.”

In Ayiti’s  Cité Klere-Klere is where you and your sisters will find les Mango Nwa.  Literally  black-flesh mangoes growing downwards past the crumbling slabs of cement, past the shears of blood-stained glass, past what your father`s ancestors used to call soil (soul?)  and blossoming by some dark miracle in the buried skulls of the Dessous-Nu. You will know them by their roots. At the surface, these same finger-like roots claw at the sediment heavy fog and rigidly gesture profanities to the sun-killers of past days.

When you reach Cité Klere-Klere or whatever is left of it,  take a moment.  Stand there in the debris and touch the cold skeleton army of lamp posts that once made the city the heart of the Caribbean.  Taste the steel, press your tongue against its frame till your saliva is saturated by its grime.  What does it taste like?  Foreign aid?   Innovation?  Salvation? Old shit, perhaps.

Make sure, great-grandmother, that you cry deep astro black tears…and when the moment of mourning is fleeting and the surface still damp , you grab your sisters and start digging. You dig like you  truly are the first and last line of defense for The Rebirth.

That night, I promise, you will understand why I sent you forward to the Cité.  Why I asked that you bring your sisters.  Why I asked that together you harvest every last mango nwa in Cité Klere-klere and throw them deep into the acrid cesspool that is zone C3 of the Sans-Poisson Sea.  That would put the odds in our favour.

If you were to ask tomorrow’s farmers, they would all agree that  the White Ahaw is no myth but a very real entity.  They would say it comes in the form of a thick cloud, sagging with unwanted remorse only to burst one time on  dry black soil until the seeds dead of overdose.

Ask  the indoor field workers and they would all profess, that the White Ahaw is not a thing of legend, but a breathing and living mess.  They would say that it is like the frenzied pangs of torrential winds, forcefully licking through window panes and  door panels. Pure licks on any type of structure, on any type of history as it bawl-out  ‘Progress! Progress!’

Ask the Mystic Man Dem on Fielding Avenue and they will all attest, that to them the White Ahaw is no new-age theory but an ancient bona fide danger.  It is like bad inside-outside smoke, the kind that clings to your lungs  and muffles your voice, hiding the road to your own terms.

But see you now, looking for the White Ahaw..have you not been warned? Do you believe that you can invoke this creature and expect not to be scorned? You cannot eat its meat nor will it  work your land and it will grin as it teef  resources from your hand, what business do you have feeding this beast, child?  For the sake of tomorrow`s farmers, of the inside fieldworkers, of the mystic  man dem who will always watch over your children, kill it and leave it there on the side of the road to rot in a pool of its own self-righteous promises.

They didn’t tell her this like so, but everybody know that she get fired cuz her backsee stick out hard-hard in them cheap uniform pants.  Hear the joke; yuh think a fast food franchise that make nuff money off of dealing fat and sugar to people would have simple common sense to acquire staff uniforms  with a little more waist, a litte more hips for the thickly-inclined? They can’t afford it? More like they don’t want to afford it! So she now have to hold her breath tight to squeeze-up in dem two piece of ting they call leg pants. And every morning she praying to Jesus that they put her on cash and not on clean-up.

You know what rotund does mean? She get fired because of that type of backsee...round and rotund. Suggestive, they say.  In trut, I find it to be quite regular, but I work fries and ain’t get promoted to consultant just yet..

So...

Backsee big and bad. But not too-too bad cuz assistant manager keep calling her into the back office.  Dropping sweet lines left and right. Lines of a promising future in the service industry.  Telling she to stand tall and all typa mess like reach for the top as he recline nice in the manager’s leather chair.  Nasty snake. No wonder she scratch up he face like that. Good for him.

So they fire she.  One time.