The clumsily rolled joint smoulders in the heavy pink ashtray my mother brought back from Rome. Maybe Rebecca thought her reticence was actually her finest testimony, proof of her mettle, in case her granddaughters ever needed it. Maybe, on that trip, she’d decided to set off with her little ones, to leave Jeremiah – stripped of her dowry, but protected by her pride. As the day dies down, the mosquitos seek my veins; it means all night creatures will be emerging soon. Then I look at my young great-great-grandmother, dazzled by the flash. Her lips are pressed tight together, tighter than before. I feel like she could lurch towards me at any moment, like a wild wave, and I’ll open my arms to her, like all the waves that have swept over me in the past few weeks.

V. BOWIE GULLY

V. BOWIE GULLY

It’s just after seven. The mood of the day is starting to coalesce over the houses, hot, no clouds, faint breeze. The pale purple sky will slowly darken into its vivid midday blue. Nothing on the docket for today. From the balcony, I look out towards the house across the street, its façade so similar and so different, covered in metal bars, like a city building.

The little white cubes of the complex have just started deflecting the first amongst infinite rays of sunlight; to cut the breeze, as always. I’ve fantasised about simply scooping up my own house-cube and swivelling it forty-five degrees to the left, so that the doors and windows can let out the bad dreams, as the native saying goes, with the help of the wind and the headlong sun. The electrical appliances I don’t yet have would last even less, the mirrors would blotch more quickly with those green stains, my books would mildew faster. Would the salt eat away at us faster, too? Who knows. In any case, this has always been a lost cause, I think. I feel more Caribbean than ever, less from the city than ever, that horrible, horrible city.