stylish clothing but also in the way they held hands and seemed not to have a single worry in the world. Sometimes I would play my old game and place them in a Trinidadian setting and I would imagine everyone staring and
mauvais-languing
this grandparent couple for carrying on like carefree teenagers. Me, I was just happy to bounce up a happy face every now and again, especially after the sourness in my father’s apartment.
“So where are you from?” he asked about a week after the nice-looking lady showed up. I think this was the first English statement he made to me but before I could answer, he looked at the lady and added, “Wait a minute, let me guess.” She glanced from him to me, smiling. “India?”
“No.”
“Iran?”
I shook my head and felt some of my shyness stripping off with this game of his. I was surprised that the other old-timers just continued staring at the Sunshine Girls in the newspapers. In Trinidad, they would have joined in the game even if they didn’t understand what was going on.
“Are you sure? I had a friend from Iran who looked exactly like you. Could it be Pakistan or Afghanistan?”
“Trinidad,” I told him.
“I was wrong by just a few thousand miles, dear,” he told the lady. “And I think I know why. He’s never spoken to us.Why don’t you say something for us in Trinidadianese.” The lady whispered into his ear and he asked me, “Is bashfulness a Trinidadian trait?” I didn’t tell him that over there, bashfulness was viewed as a kind of sly weakness. A cover up for some shameful secret. Or worse, a sign of pride that was an even worse vice.
Now
, the old-timers seemed interested and they stared at me as if I had crawled out from a nearby hole. One of them, a short man with a red cap and a nose that resembled a big spreading yam, snorted directly at me. “Just the opposite,” I told them. “Everybody like
bacchanal
there.” The Plummer man leaned towards the lady and they both stared at me for a good minute or two.
While I was walking back to Regent Park on that cool day in April, I wondered for the first time how all these people on the street and in the subway I was always watching, saw
me
. A couple with a pram gave me the usual one-second glance. Same with a woman who peeked up from her book, and I wondered if she had made an assessment in just one second. But how could this be? How could all of them notice my clothes and shoes and expression so quickly? Unless these things were not important. In Trinidad the glances were long and questioning; they were like the silent beginning of a conversation.
As I crossed Shuter Street I thought once more of the coffee-shop lady question about bashfulness. Once Auntie Umbrella had called me “an only child” like if it was a sickness, but our old wooden house with its concrete posts, just a half mile from the sea, was sometimes crowded with neighbours, usually women who brought along their children.We would play marbles and top and
zwill
with flattened bottle caps, and
scooch
like the game in the movie
Dodgeball
, and hide and seek between the crotons and ginger lilies in the yard. I grew up with these friends, Guevara and Pantamoolie, and the whole batch of Lopi grandchildren. As we got older, we took these games to the Mayaro High School, and to the beach, where we added
windball cricket
and football and
kite-cutting
. At the beach too, we helped the fishermen pull in their seine nets and were rewarded with shining bonito and moonshine with their scales looking like small silvery shillings, and if the day’s catch was good, a nice thick kingfish. We cut classes from school,
lackarbeech
we called it, to hang out with the old coppery fishermen, not only for the little gifts but because of all the stories they told us about getting lost at sea and bouncing up Venezuelan coastguards and spending time in prison there. They told us, between their sips of Puncheon rum straight out of the bottle, about the sharks and
mauvais-languing
this grandparent couple for carrying on like carefree teenagers. Me, I was just happy to bounce up a happy face every now and again, especially after the sourness in my father’s apartment.
“So where are you from?” he asked about a week after the nice-looking lady showed up. I think this was the first English statement he made to me but before I could answer, he looked at the lady and added, “Wait a minute, let me guess.” She glanced from him to me, smiling. “India?”
“No.”
“Iran?”
I shook my head and felt some of my shyness stripping off with this game of his. I was surprised that the other old-timers just continued staring at the Sunshine Girls in the newspapers. In Trinidad, they would have joined in the game even if they didn’t understand what was going on.
“Are you sure? I had a friend from Iran who looked exactly like you. Could it be Pakistan or Afghanistan?”
“Trinidad,” I told him.
“I was wrong by just a few thousand miles, dear,” he told the lady. “And I think I know why. He’s never spoken to us.Why don’t you say something for us in Trinidadianese.” The lady whispered into his ear and he asked me, “Is bashfulness a Trinidadian trait?” I didn’t tell him that over there, bashfulness was viewed as a kind of sly weakness. A cover up for some shameful secret. Or worse, a sign of pride that was an even worse vice.
Now
, the old-timers seemed interested and they stared at me as if I had crawled out from a nearby hole. One of them, a short man with a red cap and a nose that resembled a big spreading yam, snorted directly at me. “Just the opposite,” I told them. “Everybody like
bacchanal
there.” The Plummer man leaned towards the lady and they both stared at me for a good minute or two.
While I was walking back to Regent Park on that cool day in April, I wondered for the first time how all these people on the street and in the subway I was always watching, saw
me
. A couple with a pram gave me the usual one-second glance. Same with a woman who peeked up from her book, and I wondered if she had made an assessment in just one second. But how could this be? How could all of them notice my clothes and shoes and expression so quickly? Unless these things were not important. In Trinidad the glances were long and questioning; they were like the silent beginning of a conversation.
As I crossed Shuter Street I thought once more of the coffee-shop lady question about bashfulness. Once Auntie Umbrella had called me “an only child” like if it was a sickness, but our old wooden house with its concrete posts, just a half mile from the sea, was sometimes crowded with neighbours, usually women who brought along their children.We would play marbles and top and
zwill
with flattened bottle caps, and
scooch
like the game in the movie
Dodgeball
, and hide and seek between the crotons and ginger lilies in the yard. I grew up with these friends, Guevara and Pantamoolie, and the whole batch of Lopi grandchildren. As we got older, we took these games to the Mayaro High School, and to the beach, where we added
windball cricket
and football and
kite-cutting
. At the beach too, we helped the fishermen pull in their seine nets and were rewarded with shining bonito and moonshine with their scales looking like small silvery shillings, and if the day’s catch was good, a nice thick kingfish. We cut classes from school,
lackarbeech
we called it, to hang out with the old coppery fishermen, not only for the little gifts but because of all the stories they told us about getting lost at sea and bouncing up Venezuelan coastguards and spending time in prison there. They told us, between their sips of Puncheon rum straight out of the bottle, about the sharks and
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