SUSUMBA’SBOOKBAG June 2015
Against the Walls Tammi Browne-Bannister
My foot brushed against something on the floor. Whatever it was I couldn’t help myself and I screamed. As I scrambled over to the other side of the room, daddy screeched, hopped and scrambled over to where I was. Mummy spun round to look at us, ‘Where it is? Show me,’ she flashed the lamplight at our faces. I pointed to where I was standing before. She ambled over there and shone the light onto the hardwood floor. Next thing I saw mummy bend down to have a closer look. She ran her fingers over this thing. It looked as if she was playing around with it. I wondered if it was dead. I left her hovering over it. No way was I going to leave where I was to go anywhere to look at that wicked creature. Even daddy looked at mummy with this mortified expression mixed with disgust on his face. It seemed as if he was asking himself how she could do something like that. But, I’ve seen it many times. When a man cut style on his household (ignored a leaking sink, left the stinking trash to breathe maggots in the bin, forgot to pay the bills), a woman picked up as if he didn’t exist–it was out a necessity–so it seemed. In my mother’s eyes my father lost his value when he failed to be useful–other than for sex, I heard the next door neighbour say one day. I squirmed as mummy picked up the thing and stood slowly with it inside her hand. She threw off her long mouth in annoyance. “See yuh santapeed dey,” she pitched what she was holding at daddy’s chest. Daddy flinched as he caught the thing mummy tossed at him. Mummy released one long suck of the teeth in annoyance. “Go back to sleep. Is the fake gold chain he does wear.” I peeped through the opening of my bedroom door. The light from the kerosene lamp cast shadows on mummy’s face and it made her look angry and evil. She glared at my father and she said, ‘If you fraid jumbie, come home early, better yet, stop where you live. And if you know you does see tings when night come, don’t drink rum.’ She marched off to bed, leaving daddy with the chain in his hands. Daddy turned and twisted the herring bone chain in his hands and he guffawed loud until tears came to his eyes. One long, hard steupse came from mummy’s bedroom. I hopped into bed. I felt my body sinking into the comfort of the mattress. I heard my father’s feet dragging towards his bedroom and I smiled to myself, staring at the shadows on the ceiling from the lamplight. Outside my window there was the penny-sized twinkling of moonlight through the clouds. Grumblings came through the wall between my bedroom and my parents’ room. I heard them whispering to each other in a hard kind of whisper. Each one sucked his or her teeth at the other. The bed creaked as they shifted in vexation. “You better get up early tomorrow to clean the front room cause I ain’t breaking my back over foolishness” I heard mummy tell daddy. Every time she opened her mouth to speak daddy grunted. Daddy knew not to get on mummy’s wrong side, especially at this ungodly time. I didn’t want to know the kind of mind he was in. I didn’t want to see the side of a man where he lost his manliness,
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