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“Kadeem, I don’t have time for your games,” Ma said.
“I ain’t playing, Ma,” I was serious, as serious as the Wifi going out just before I won a game. The thing was that she spoke to me like this was one of the other times I had called her to beg her to come get me. It wasn’t. Had she even realized I hadn’t done that in months? In fact, I hadn’t spoken to her for some time now. I missed her, but after a while I saw what she was doing, not to me but for me and, after that, I didn’t miss her so much anymore; I just understood. Talks with Grandad did that, opened my mind to what I really didn’t see or maybe couldn’t see.
One night Grandad said to me, “Man naw go win no war God no sen’ ‘em to fight.”
We were sitting outside around the coal pot cracking shells off of lobsters and crabs and eating the meat. Very few mosquitoes buzzed around us. I only had to brush off a few. It was a habit now for us: beach after school, catch lobster or crab or lobster and crab, then home to cook them. Sometimes we’d catch wilks too, another type of shell fish, but whatever we caught, was gonna be dinner - mostly lobster or crab or lobster and crab. I didn’t even need that little hammer Red Lobster provided to crack the shells anymore. I learned to crack them with my bare hands and suck the meat right from the shells like Grandad. Surely, Ma wasn’t gonna like my slurping sound when she eventually heard me. But Grandad didn’t say nothing about it cause he made that same sound too.
“What that mean, Grandad?” I asked, “Why you don’t just say what you mean so I don’t have to guess all of the time?”
“Who mek you fight all dem fight you fight?” he asked in between the sounds of cracking and sucking, “dem fights in school?”
“People be trying me, Grandad,” I confessed. Just because I look small, they think I won’t do nothing. “They be trying to punk me.”
“Punk you? Wat dat mean?”
“Make me feel like I’m not a man?”
“A man?” He spat out some pieces of lobster which landed in the grass. “Is wa mek you a man?”
I had no answer. I thought about his words for a long time that night, and I couldn’t come up with an answer to save my life. Why did I get in to those fights? Why couldn’t I just walk away?
Anyway, Ma acted like this was one of those phone calls. It wasn’t. I wasn’t trying to go home, not this time. Not that I didn’t want to go back home at all, but I’d lost interest in begging her and getting nowhere. The island had already made itself my home and I was fine with that. I annoyed myself with all my asking, so I couldn’t even begin to imagine how Ma was feeling about it. Sometimes she didn’t even answer the phone when I called. Besides, things were actually going good here. I meant really, really good. I wasn’t getting in no trouble. I hadn’t been suspended, not one time. Not even close to being suspended. By now, in Orlando, I would’ve at least been in one or two fights and on my way to an expulsion meeting. It was so easy going here. No one stepped on anyone’s new J’s, probably cause we all wore the same style shoes as part of our uniform - not J’s, by the way. No one pushed anyone in the hallway if they wanted space. Plus, there wasn’t no hallway here. If someone really wanted to, they could just push a person over the railing, but it never happened. People just went about their business like nothing bothered nobody for no reason. People weren’t fake super nice here, but they weren’t not nice either. Not-nice was all right with me. Why hadn’t I noticed this before? This was my home. Here, on the island, where everything made sense. Where everything was as it should be.
“Okay,” she sighed, “Tell me what’s going on.”
I told her the same story I told Tess and her father: finding Grandad with his face down, foam coming out of his mouth, him not moving. I did not tell her that I drove Grandad to the hospital on the narrow streets of St. Kitts because I still didn’t want her to worry about my driving and why he was letting me drive without a license. That was something we would talk about later, if it ever came up. Her eyes opened wider and wider as I told her each part of the story.
“Where is Daddy now?” she asked.
“In the hospital,” I said.
“How long?”
“Just a couple of days,” I assured her.
“What’s a couple of days, Kadeem?”
“About a week, Ma,” I said.
“Is it about a week or an actual week?” she asked. “Which is it?”
“A week, Ma.”
She squeezed that section of her face just above the top of her nose and the eyelids between her eyebrows. I’ve only ever seen her do that when she was in the dean’s office with me or when she’d just come home from a long shift at the hospital, so I knew that this wasn’t good. It wasn’t good at all.
“Kadeem!” she shouted like she’d just thought about something. “Who you been staying with? What you been eating?”
“I’m fine, Ma,” I said.
“Fine?”
“I am.” I really was. I wanted to say “oh, now you wanna know,” but I didn’t cause I really was fine. Why be rude by sounding rude? I was actually doing okay, more than okay, really. I knew exactly what to do and how to do it. I knew how to wash my uniforms and hang them just right so that I wouldn’t have to iron them before wearing them to school. I walked to school every day with Tess like nothing changed. The only real difference was that Grandad wasn’t there to walk us home. That was a lonely thing that colored our walks home. That old saying, “you don’t miss something till it’s gone?” It was true with Grandad. I missed him like I missed air conditioning in my bedroom. Although Tess knew how to break off the sugar cane without cutting her hands, it still didn’t feel the same watching her. I actually missed Grandad breaking off the sugar cane and passing it my way, the sugar cane that belonged to our people.
In one of my visits to the hospital, Grandad told me where to find cash to use for my lunch. He had it well hidden too. Not that I was looking, but if I was, I would’ve never found it. I found it in the place he told me and used just what I needed, nothing more. Plus, now I had lots of help. I ate dinner with Tess’ family each night Grandad was in the hospital. The neighbors, even the neighbor that Grandad didn’t steal the golden apples from, brought over food for me to eat. I didn’t even know how they knew Grandad was in the hospital, but they acted like I knew who they were and they knew me. It was weird at first accepting help, but they wouldn’t let me say no. Each day after school, Tess’ dad took me to see Grandad. He’d say a quick hi to Grandad and then disappear for about an hour. That gave me and Grandad plenty of time to talk even more than we had during dinner time. The doctors didn’t tell me what was wrong. They kept insisting that they couldn’t cause I was a child, but Grandad did. Grandad talked with me like he knew I’d understand what was happening. He talked with me like he trusted that I’d be okay, no matter what. He said he had a mild stroke. Even though he laughed when he said it, I didn’t find it funny at all. But he was laughing again, so that was good. He even laughed when I told him about the washing machine that I found in his little house out back that was in perfect working order. I didn’t find that funny either cause he had me washing my uniform by hand each night after the beach. But he laughed, laughed so hard that he started coughing. Each night I’d visit, he’d tell me he was coming home soon, and that’s what I told Ma, that even though he had a stroke, a mild one, he was coming home soon and she didn’t have to worry.
“I’ll be there soon,” Ma said.
“Ma, we’ll be fine. Grandad will be out soon and everything will be back to normal.” I said it like I believed it cause really, I did. Things were gonna be back to normal, a new normal any way - a better normal.
———
DINNERS WITH TESS’ family were not as strange as they’d been the first few nights. One, eating dinner with my girlfriend’s family, especially with her father, was not on the top of my bucket list. Two, eating dinner with the school’s principal, headmaster, whatever he was called, would NEVER ever be on my bucket list. When I got the invite, I didn’t think there was an option for me to say no. One, I’d probably be offending Tess’ by saying no and I definitely didn’t want to upset the very first person who was nice to me for no reason. And, two, I would be offending Tess for saying no to her dad, the headmaster. Saying No wasn’t going to be good for me no matter how I said it. So, I said yes and thank you like the good young man I was becoming.
The first night was the strangest. This was the night that I met Tess’ mother. She looked like an older version of Tess. Her hair was natural too, face round, and eyes just as big and bright as Tess’. She was friendly too, asking a lot of questions, especially for someone who I’d just met.
She and I were in the kitchen when she asked, “How you liking it down here in dis hot way’da?”
“It’s ok,” I said.
“Ok?” she laughed, “nuttin okay bout dis way’da. E so hot dat mosquito a bruk off day wing dem and a use dem to fan day-self.”
“Yes, it’s hot,” I agreed, “but it’s not as hot as where we live.” Grandad lived on a hill; we felt all the breeze from the ocean up there. The only real heat was when we were in the house and the doors weren’t opened. The breeze was good, my body was also getting used to the weather here. Clothes weren’t sticking to me the way they used to when I first got here. My shirts blew in the wind just like everyone else's.
“So, how you like de school?” she asked, “it much different from ‘merica? Bet you ain’t expec’ to like it like you do. Tess, say you like it. She say you really like de band.”
“It’s ok. School isn’t really that different,” I lied, “naw, I mean, no ma’am, I didn’t really expect to like it the way I do.”
“Yeah, Mommy, you goin’ hear him when we play for Carnival.” Tess walked in the kitchen; her dad followed.
Their kitchen was much bigger than Grandad’s. Unlike Grandad’s combined living room, dining room, and kitchen separated by pieces of furniture, this kitchen was like a real kitchen: stove and sink and lots of kitchen stuff just in the kitchen. They also didn’t have a microwave. Four round vibrantly colored table mats neatly surrounded a short vase of red hibiscuses on a round table. Mrs. Headmaster started plating the food and handing it to Tess. The scent of freshly cooked food filled the air. It was definitely a different scent, different from the burnt oil aroma that filled your nostrils from a Popeye’s chicken box. Why didn’t Ma cook more?
“Sit here,” Tess guided me to one of the chairs. Even though it was a round table, I still didn’t want to just sit anywhere without permission. I could hear Grandad saying doan sit anywhere at a man’s table, le’ him tell you way to sit, or something like that but with a round table, there was no real place I could sit to do any of those things. Tess made it easy by pointing out where to sit.
“Thank you!” I said. She put one of the plates in front of me after serving her dad. She and her mom were the last to sit. An entire fish, eyes, tail, sat on my plate with black eyed peas and rice, fried plantains and this thing that Grandad called dasheen - not my favorite cause it tasted like chalky white potato. I immediately started eating. I hadn’t even noticed how hungry I’d been at the hospital, but the truth was that I hadn’t even eaten at lunch nor had I at breakfast. In fact, I hadn’t had breakfast since Grandad was in the hospital. All the food that the neighbors brought over still didn’t fix the fact that Grandad wasn’t there, so I didn’t eat breakfast, and now I was trying to fill that hole in my belly.
“A-hem,” Tess actually said, Ahem instead of clearing her throat. All eyes were glued on me, including the fish.
“I know you grand-far-da does bless he food before he eat it,” Tess’ dad said.
“Yes,” I lied. I should’ve told him that Grandad said dead things didn’t need blessing; it’s the live ones that do but instead I swallowed the food I’d already put in my mouth, lowered my head, closed my eyes, and waited for Tess’ father to bless the dead food on our plates.