BooksBarbecue
Back Salt Crystals Save as PDF
Chapters (14)
  1. Salt Crystals
  2. I. THE DAMNED CIRCUMSTANCE
  3. II. NOTEBOOK OF A RETURN
  4. III. DIVISIONS
  5. IV. LICKLE GOUGH
  6. V. BOWIE GULLY
  7. VI. THE PAPERS OF TIME
  8. VII. NORTH END
  9. VIII. SALT CRYSTALS
  10. IX. IGUANAS ON THE ROOF
  11. X. THE SOUTHWESTERN CARIBBEAN
  12. XI. CREOLES AND RAIN
  13. XII. OTTO
  14. TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

Juleen grabs my hand and pulls me towards her parked motorcycle. I’m charmed by her outburst. She asks me about the concert – how was the Jamaican singer? But I tell her I’d spent most of the time at a fair table. ‘Do you know that lady named Josephine?’ I ask. She hadn’t noticed the table, she says. Before starting the motorcycle, she adds that the rundown is in Little Gough.

IV. LICKLE GOUGH

IV. LICKLE GOUGH

I was wakened rudely by the heat, the drill, the cockerel.

I look and look at her, but stubborn Becca still stares off absently into the distance, avoiding me as I eat my peculiar breakfast: colada, a hot porridgey soup made with cinnamon and the breadfruit I collected last night in the yard of the university, in the Gough. It’s my first attempt at a breadfruit colada, and I think I officially deserve my OCCRE card now – because I succeeded in making it, period, and especially because I didn’t make it with any ordinary fruit.

I was up late. I got home after midnight, totally delirious. Between Maa Josephine’s evangelical voice and the rundown stew, I think I had visions of zombies, slaves, uprisings. The next thing I knew, I was staring at myself in the full-length mirror in my own foyer, holding a breadfruit. I brought it to the kitchen without turning on the lights, went upstairs and immediately fell into bed. A sudden nocturnal gust spared me the commotion of the fan. Closing my eyes, the last thing I heard was the banana tree’s monologue against the gate. A noise – it must have been loud – shook me out of some uncertain place, where my mother’s ghost asked about the diamond ring she’d given me.