“You do de crabs, now, de barbecue, it’s a’kay,” ordered my mother as soon as she noticed me jump off the boat and land on my hands and knees on the gravel.

She was about to show Sharon and Joseph her pride and joy, a three inch high banyan tree, plucked from the famous original at the Edison Winter Home. My mother thought one day it would give her shade and liked the idea of its roots being long enough to drink from Mr. Walter’s yard instead of hers.

“Why me?” I appealed.

“B’cause already I slave all day. You, where you dis’pear all day, you?”

Sharon and Joseph could not stop themselves from smiling. Actually, Joseph had lit the barbecue, fetched the crabs and made the martinis. Sharon had brought over the potato salad, the devilled eggs and the dessert, the only sure way to have gotten any around our place, other than dried fruit. And I had set the table, which on top of my daily chores, exceeded by far hers, namely shaving her legs and painting her toenails coral pink.

“I mean, I don’t know how,” I argued, not wanting to know, either.

“Look! It so easy!” my mother hammered, “You jus’ take an’ … ”

She lifted a crab up by its weaker claw and in her impatience, broke it off while thrusting it onto its back on the red-hot grill. The six hairy legs jerked spasmodically, somewhat like an overturned beetle propels its legs against thin air.

The flames rose up around the crab. With its remaining claw, it struggled to grab onto something to pull itself away from the pain and managed to take hold of my mother’s tongs. The jointed legs agitated in a frenzy to escape when my mother squeezed the tongs this time tightly across the armoured torso, holding it securely in place over the highest flame, until the creature started to scream. I didn’t know crabs had voices. Though not loud, the cry was pathetic and shrill and sent a shiver through me.

“You see?” my mother casually asked before leaving me there with the rest of the bucket’s contents.

This one was already undergoing the transformation from life to food. Only a last leg slowly jerked its goodbye.

With the tongs, I peered into the bucket. I felt like a giant crab myself, about to pinch the next victim. The crabs’ mouths were vertical, champing nothing and spitting water like a suite of tiny panels. Their tiny eyes were propped up and leaned back and forth, begging for mercy. That was it. I grabbed hold of the plastic bucket, ran panting down to the canal and threw them back in.

“How you gettin’ ’long, Kate?” my mother inquired from the air-conditioning compressor.

The tour was coming to an end as she showed her latest aloe plant that looked like a cross between a cactus and octopus tentacle. If one broke the tip off, the extracts were said to be beneficial for healing burns. The other children had returned and were standing around me, sunburnt and mosquito bitten.