By She had a bottle of Scotch. She started to speak, hiding the bottle, then stopped. You pretended to not notice the bottle. She was staring at the tie-dye that’s taped to your wall, as if suddenly transfixed by the sample. It was a new means of seeing her, your own gaze unnoticed, staring straight at her face whereas she gazed previous, by way of yours. She appeared younger without make-up and drained.
The pool sensible blue in the late-morning light. Uncle started the Shakespeare Reading Group last winter, with the dust like fantastic sugar on the grass, in the air. Auntie thinks it’s ridiculous – ‘Houseboys studying Shakespeare?
You turned and bumped into the home. He dropped the tray of chin-chin, the sweets scattering throughout the floor. Tears sprung to your eyes. You lingered behind Auntie, glancing at your reflections in the mirrors. You, shorter, in your shorts.
(And you couldn’t for the lifetime of you see how you’d missed it. Comfort appears nothing like Auntie.) Their eyes in your face, completely different shapes, the same raymond weaver live video pleading. Auntie turned to Comfort and pointed at her sneakers. The chale-watas looked weird on Comfort’s delicate ft.
’ Francis referred to as out like a football announcer. Comfort slapped at a mosquito. Yaw made his announcement on the end of the hour with his hand on his packet as if the play had been a Bible. ‘From this present day forth my name will be Iago.’ Uncle requested why. ‘He is strongest,’ Yaw said.
Theatre dancers dancing silently in cleaning soap. Ruby sucked her teeth, repeated ‘Fine’, and left the washroom. She returned a second later with a clean fitted sheet. You took this, folded neatly and smelling of Fa cleaning soap.
‘I frighten you,’ he says, sad, surprised. Comfort appeared up, at you. ‘Do you not converse English? Get dressed, Mother said. There’s a celebration tonight.’ But she didn’t sound indignant and simply stood there, started crying. ‘Thank you,’ she mouthed to you.
As he tells it, Uncle ushered you proudly into the eating room for breakfast. You don’t keep in mind any of these particulars. You wouldn’t look up out of your plate, as Francis tells it; you just sat there, mute, mango on fork tines.
The sound she made reminded you of material sloshing in buckets, as rhythmic and practical, almost senseless, and wet. Uncle whimpered bizarrely, just like the canines before beatings. For whatever reason, you stood there transfixed by the books. Auntie and Uncle take their breakfast on the veranda or within the eating room with linen and china and silver. Comfort and you have at all times eaten within the kitchen, the small one, on the rickety wooden table like this. The association dates back to the morning you arrived after the short Virgin flight from Nigeria.
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