First week he had neither uniform nor books. His mother, having long been out of work and therefore short of money, couldn’t easily have afforded even a pencil. However, Saturday, when they caught Mr. Walter’s taxi to Marion, they did not get out at the gas station, as they had done during the previous weekdays. They carried on in the taxi to the heart of the town and got out on a corner of the busiest commercial street.
If there had been a war in the world, there were few signs of it in Marion. The narrow street was lined by tiny dark shops packed with goods. The stores had their names painted on them in large block printing, some in scrolled letters that were harder to read. J. J. RAM AND SON HARDWARE STORE, PATEL DRY GOODS, THE AMERICAN SHOE AND HANDBAG STORE, BISSEY BOOKS AND OFFICE SUPPLIES. The stores must have felt some competition from the vendors hawking just outside their doors; a store clerk stood in each doorway greeting passersby, inviting them to enter and browse. The trays perched on the vendors’ laps were bright groupings of items arranged by color and size. There were orderly rows of bicycle bells, back scratchers, sandals, embroidered handkerchiefs from China, and from the other islands, potpourris of vetiver and lavender for placing among clothing in dressers. These particular scents excited the boy and provoked a longing in him. They were the same smells he remembered from the drawers of Mrs. Sangha’s front room armoire, the scent of her linen, and of the pajamas he wore that unforgettable night passed in her house. There were playing cards, key rings, mirrors, handwritten song sheets, glass bangles, wood combs. There were spools of gift-wrapping ribbon, wood swizzle sticks, sticks of cocoa, pencils, socks, incense, windup tin toys, handmade windmills on sticks, nail clippers, and penknives. A tray of china ornaments—chickens, dogs, and horses of several different breeds—caught his attention. He pulled down on his mother’s hand. They stopped and watched. The vendor picked out a slim, shiny brown and white horse and held it, tiny in the palm of his large coarse hand. He adjusted his hand so that the sun caught the ornament’s iridescent glaze. He said, “Imported. From China. Good price. Shilling for one, shilling and a half for two. For a nice mother, I offering a little break, but for today only: two for the price of one. Pick what you like, boy.” The boy didn’t answer. His mother did: “It nice, but we don’t have no place to put it.” She pulled him along. He trailed a step behind her, thinking of the minute and perfect details of the horse’s mane and tail. He wondered how he might earn a shilling, but lately they had no time back in Raleigh, nor his mother any more need to make and sell the guava cheese, or for him to do chores for Uncle Mako that might bring him a few pennies here and there, a shilling over time. He shrugged and caught up with his mother’s pace.
The noise of traffic (a clear sign of the availability once more of car petrol) and of people chanting the attributes and prices of their goods, greeting one another, haggling (some on the verge, it would seem, of fighting), and the heat of the inland town were dizzying. Food vendors lined the street. The nutman with six different kinds of nuts, all hot and packaged in brown paper cones, sang out, “Hot nuts, nuts hot, hot-hot.” The skinny barra and channa lady was so busy serving a long line of customers (impatient in the hot sun) that she never lifted her eyes from the basins of curried channa and barra to look at the customers who were putting their money on a tray and taking their own change from the same tray. And there was the anchar man and the salt-prune man and past them, a row of baked-goods vendors all selling the same goods—currant rolls, coconut cakes, sweet bread, and more. The scent of car exhaust mixed with the smells of oil used in frying, of cardamom, vanilla, coconut, roasted peanuts, and sesame seed. A shaved-ice man was there, melted ice wetting the ground all around his bicycle that doubled as transportation and vending stall. And sitting on low benches, the Indian ladies held on their laps wood trays containing colorful Indian sweets arranged by color—pinks, yellows, blues, whites. The child eyed these goods. His mouth watered, his fingers dangled only inches away from the trays. His mother held his hand and walked swiftly to Rahim School Supplies. She followed a salesclerk to where the school’s uniform was shelved. Dolly pulled a shirt from a pile, opened it, and held it up against her son’s chest. She held a pair of the short pants up to the air. She marched her son to the cubicle that had been curtained off to make a child’s dressing room.
The boy tugged at her. “I don’t want to try them on. Why I have to try them, Mammy?”
She said, “Don’t talk back, child, put them on, let me see.”
When he had the right fit, she made a pile of two of everything, picked up the lot, and marched to the cashier. To his wide-eyed surprise, his mother had enough bills rolled up and concealed in the cleavage of her brassiere. After that transaction, she counted out the remainder of the money and announced that they were able to go to the bookstore. He thought of the little china horse and wondered if there might be enough money left to go back after, but he also felt shy to ask again after she had already turned it down. The school uniform store and the bookstore were right next to each other, and although they appeared to be different stores, there was a narrow and lopsided doorway at the back that connected one with the other. There Dolly purchased two copybooks, a pencil, a ruler, a sharpener, an eraser, a textbook for comprehension and writing, and one for sums. It was a typically hot Guanagasparian type of dry-season day, but he was sweating more than usual, frightened that she was spending all her hard-earned money on him. He couldn’t help wondering where she had been keeping so much money. As the cashier was writing up the bill, he pulled her aside and whispered in her ear.
“Mammy, you don’t have to buy everything one time. How we will eat? How we will catch taxi if you use up so much money now-now?” She, too, was sweating. With the paper on which the school had written down the child’s needs, she fanned herself. Breathless, she told him the money was extra. Mr. Persad had given her that money, on top of her regular pay, so that she could buy whatever he needed for school.
He had indeed wanted to attend school. Yet he felt confused. Before catching a taxi back to Raleigh, his mother bought a barra and channa for him. He halfheartedly took a bite of it, wrapped it back in its greasy brown paper, and held on to it until they arrived back home.