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Grandad barely stopped the van before I jumped out, ran inside and searched for Ma.
“Maaaaa!” I shouted, lengthening her name like she does mine.
Silence.
She wasn’t laying on the couch in the one room kitchen and living room. She wasn’t sitting around the small wooden table either. I walked into the room that I slept in. The bed was made, my bag neatly zipped and tucked away between the tall chest of drawers and the bed. The door to the small bathroom that separated both bedrooms was open. She wasn’t there. I hesitated before I opened Grandad’s door but I was desperate. It creaked. I peeked in because I didn’t want to just disrespect the man’s house by walking in to his private space like I had every right to. I didn’t. I tried not to do things to people that I didn’t like done to me. This was one of them - invading my private space. Ma always knocked before she came into my room except when she was mad. And she was mad a lot lately.
“Is wa you lookin’ fa?” Grandad’s voice startled me. He towered over me. My braids that were sticking up in the air, barely reached his shoulders.
“Ma,” I sulked. “She’s not here.”
“No,” Grandad said matter of factly. He walked out to the kitchen side of the big room, sat in one of the chairs and removed his shoes. Even though he wore open toed shoes, their soles were still visibly damp. His feet sweat. That had to have been where I got it from cause Ma’s feet didn’t sweat.
“Grandad?” I asked. “Where’s Ma?” I was worried and could hear the shaking in my voice just as I could feel the shaking of the words throughout my body.
“She no ya.” His voice was both deep and calm. He looked around the room as though verifying that she wasn’t there and there was no way that she could’ve been anywhere in that place he knew so well.
“Well, where is she at, Grandad?” I plead and begged for him to give me the answer I needed to hear.
“She ga-rn home, Kadeem,” as though this was the normal thing for her to do. He said this like we’d been living together forever and Ma just dropped in when she could. I wanted to scream “THIS AIN’T NORMAL.” But I didn’t.
“Home?” I plead. “But,” I couldn’t even finish my words. “I’m still here.” I choked. Just like that I felt like breaking down and crying but I wasn’t about to show that I was upset, cause I wasn’t. Ma was the only one I had. If only she had listened to me when I said this last suspension wasn’t really my fault. It wasn’t. I had to defend myself. Even she said that I had to always defend myself. Now I was being punished for doing what she told me to do. Grandad signing me up for school here wasn’t a scare tactic. It was serious. My entire body felt tight and small like I couldn’t do nothing even if I wanted to. I squeezed my fists as tight as I could to keep from screaming. I wanted to punch something so badly. Instead of letting Grandad and Ma getting me mad, I just walked away. I walked to the room that they sentenced me to and slammed the door so hard that the ceiling fan shook. That was it. I gave up.
************
HANDS ON MY SHOULDERS shook me awake. I was groggy but tried to open my eyes. If the new day had arrived, it was Saturday so no sense in me getting up. If what I thought happened last night actually happened, I definitely wasn’t going to do a thing today. I just wanted to sleep til Ma came back to scoop me up. I really did learn my lesson this time. There was nothing nobody could say to me to make me fight again. The hands shook all the sleep out of me.
“Get up!” Grandad said. “Time to go!”
Was this man insane? The rooster outside my window hadn’t even crowed yet. I opened my eyes one by one. The room was dark but I could feel Grandad’s presence looming over me. I dragged my fingers over the wall to feel for the light. He turned it on for me and backed up. It was as though he was waiting for me to get dressed so I did. Usually when Ma called me outta bed, I knew I at least had another thirty minutes or so before I had to actually move. Grandad wasn’t budging. I hauled on the clothes from the day before, t-shirt, joggers, slides, and socks. Grandad was wearing old beat-up jeans, a shirt that used to be white at some point in its life and a different broad brimmed hat from yesterday. This hat had seen better days for sure.
“I gotta brush my teeth, Grandad,” I said, hoping that that would get him up off me and gimme some space. But he didn’t budge.
“Fuh wa?” He said, “you naw go use dem,”
I rubbed my eyes and followed Grandad from the bedroom, through the kitchen and out the backdoor. The moon lit up the back yard like it was a big round lamp in the sky. Grandad removed the lock from the narrow iron gate, the one that we could walk through, the one we walked through when we first got there. It was obvious that he didn’t ever close that lock because it was open when we got here and it was open now. Grandad walked through the gate, waited for me to walk through and put the lock back on. He headed up the hill. I hadn’t realized it before but it looked like there were rows and rows of houses just like Grandad’s. They were all different colors like the red houses and green hotels on a monopoly board, except there were houses that were yellow and orange too, like they didn’t have a home owner’s association or something. Grandad sped up. Why didn’t we take one of the two vehicles that he had parked in the yard? If he wanted to go for a walk, he could’ve just told me. No way my socks and slides were going to make it. I followed Grandad as we started running out of houses to pass. There were occasional barks as Grandad strode ahead of me. How this man moved so quickly, puzzled me. He had to be at least a hundred. Maybe not really, but he was certainly a senior citizen. His legs were longer than mine, so he should move faster.
“Hold up, Grandad!” I yelled, but he didn’t hear me cause he kept going. I walked faster to try to catch up with him but as I did, he seemed to speed up each time I closed in. The leaves from the trees dragged across my skin as the path narrowed and became skinnier. The houses shrunk in size behind us. As we trekked through the dirt path I remembered a story from youth group. I hadn’t been there for a while but I remembered some the things they used to say. The story was about this man taking his son to the mountain to sacrifice him cause God asked him to. The kid didn’t even know what was happening but he laid down on the rock anyway. With the knife at the son’s throat, God sent a goat or something like that in the kid’s place. I mean, I knew Grandad wasn’t my dad, but I wasn’t about to let him sacrifice me neither. The path inclined and grew steeper. My slides barely gripped the dirt floor and I kept having to pull my pants up.
The farther and farther away we moved from the houses, the colder it got. I could never imagine it being this cold on this island, but I shivered. My legs were tired but Grandad was still moving as fast he did when we first started. I stopped to take a breath because I was winded. I bent over and heard rustling in the trees. The leaves parted and I swore a pair of eyes stared back at me.
“Grandaaaaad!” I ran. Before I knew it, the old track star in me emerged and I caught up with Grandad. “Grandad!” I panted.
“We soon reach,” Grandad said recognizing that I was almost out of breath. But he moved at the same pace. I forced myself to keep up with him cause I didn’t want to know what was in those trees.
At a flat part of the path, we no longer climbed. The narrow path widened and revealed a lusciously massive green area. The moon sat directly over the land making it as though it was its own personal ceiling lamp. The land was separated into large squares, each green part separated by a brown dirt path. Grandad walked in and immediately knelt at one of the squares. He dug his hand into the dirt and pulled out small little bushes.
“Me no bring you up ‘ere to just stand up, eh,” Grandad said gruffly and his deep voice shook me out of thoughts of my pending sacrifice. “Plenty a wuk to do.”
Without question, I joined him. We used to have a garden in my elementary school with tomatoes and pumpkins and carrots and peppers so this - gardening - I at least knew how to do or at least remembered. I did what Grandad did which was picked out the weeds, the things that didn’t look like they belonged. I cleaned the area around the peas, the carrots, the cabbage patches while a blended scent of dirt, sweat and greens filled my nostrils. I was exhausted but I kept going cause Grandad kept going. The chill I once felt disappeared through my sweat. I felt like the boys in this book I read in middle school, Holes. These bad kids were sent to camp for punishment instead of juvie and they dug holes when they were there. But I wasn’t bad. I wasn’t no real bad kid. Once in a while stuff happened. Things I couldn’t control. Ma ain’t had no right having me up here picking no weeds like a juvenile delinquent. I wasn’t that neither.
“It’s good to do you business before de sun start doing hers,” Grandad said. He got up and brushed off the dirt from his hands onto his pants, leaving the stain on top of the already dirty looking pants. Grandad had no swagger.
“Huh?” I asked.
“We not letting de sun catch us up ‘ere,” Grandad explained. But the sun wasn’t even close to coming out, I didn’t think. The moon still hung low and gave us enough light to work. I glanced about for the sun, but instead saw Grandad making his way to the bushed opening we came through, so I followed him.
It was much easier to walk down the mountain than climbing it. Dirt ruined the shine of my slides. I thought about putting them in the washer but from the looks of things Grandad didn’t have a washer. Once back to Grandad’s yard, I made for the kitchen door. I had to wash this filth off of me.
“Eh,” Grandad said to me. “We ain’t done yet, eh.” He jumped in the big van and I took my place in the passenger side that really should be the driver’s side in Orlando. I wanted to ask him if vehicles were made specially for this place with the drivers on the right side instead of the left. But I didn’t. I didn’t want to say nothing cause I was still pissed that Ma left me here, so we rode in silence.
Grandad drove through the country with ease. People slept; the road was deserted. He drove into the city, passing the big green clock that was basically in the center of town. I remembered Ma trying to give me the history of this thing. I was sure she told me how it got there and why it was so important but I also remembered not having any interest in the history of some stupid clock.
Grandad parked in the middle of two cars, something that I still couldn’t do and Ma seemed as though she was tired of trying to teach me. I mean she just left me here so she wasn’t on my list of people I could depend on anymore anyway, and that was already a very short list. Grandad crossed the street and walked over to the seashore. Unlike Grandad, I looked both ways between whizzing cars. Small boats lined the seashore and men dragged in their boats from the ocean onto the shore. The sun was slowly making its way pass the moon as it sprawled part of its round body atop of the ocean’s bed. I stood next to Grandad as he spoke with one of the fishermen. The man gave Grandad some of his fish. Fishes? They were grouped together and dangled from a hook, eyes wide opened. Grandad handed them to me like we did this all the time. Like we came to the seashore and bought fish from random people all the time. He handed fish to me all the time. And I held on to them all the time. “Grandad, I don’t want to hold these,” I protested.
“Boy, de ting Dem dead,” He explained.
“Yeah, but they stink,”
“Boy, grab de ting dem cause is dis we eating,”
I grabbed hold of them with the tips of my fingers and tried my best not to let them touch me. No such luck. The closer they got to me, the more pungent they became. Their scent overpowered the scent of the salty ocean. Their scent overpowered the fact that I hadn’t brush my teeth yet. Their scent overpowered the dirt that I was wearing from the mountain garden. Their scent was now in charge of all scents.
I followed Grandad back to the other side of the street. I held those things but with my arm extended, away from me while Grandad’s hands were completely free. By the van, he took them from me and put them in the back. I followed him into the building behind the van. It was a farmer’s market, at least what looked like a farmer’s market. We had those in Orlando, but here, they sold meat. Each person’s section was neatly set up with large opened baskets displaying brightly colored foods. Carts with bright orange carrots, green and yellow mangoes, light green cabbage, dark green avocados, yellow squash, green soursops and breadnut, golden yellowish star apples. Fresh herbs like thyme and green onions. Yellow and green plantains next to yellow and green bananas. These were all the things that Ma has dragged me to the West side to find, then called out the name of each one as though we were in a Caribbean food museum, and she was our guide. She did it every time too like I needed to hear the names of those things every time we went. I didn’t. She’d hold up the ridged fruit and say, “star apple.” Then she’d pick up the green, almost round fruit with spikes and say, “soursop.” She’d do this for every island originated fruit or vegetable in the store. By now I had to know their names. I was glad Grandad didn’t do the same thing. Grandad walked quickly into the market, briefly looked at each section then quickly moved on to another. We just came from a garden that I was sure had all this stuff. Why were we even here? Grandad stopped to talk to some of the farmers. Grandad laughed and his entire body shook. He bought at least one thing from almost every farmer’s stand so, now, we had a bunch of different vegetables and fruits, some of the same things that I just cleaned weeds from. I was glad Grandad had friends or at least people he could laugh with. He looked so at home with these people, like he really belonged here. But what about me? When would I get to go home?