Coffee and sugar

The boy tipped his hand slightly and his eyes drifted from an ash white tile just beyond his right foot to a piece of space just outside the reach of his left arm where the glass of cachaça sat idly in mid-air, having so naturally and unsubtly just slid off the rickety old metal tray like water off a duck’s back and crashed against the floor, smashing into a hundred thousand pieces and waking the old man from his momentary slumber.

“Are you retarded? What the hell is wrong with you boy? You just dropped a full drink. Have you any dignity, any bloody respect?

And in the house of god? What the fuck is wrong with you?” yelled The Bishop, slapping his fist across the table as if he were laying his firm hand across a cattle’s rump, ushering it to move its insolent arse along the path of his righteous choosing.

“I’m sorry daddy. I’ll clean it up, you’re right, I need to focus.

I’m sorry. I promise I’ll be better from now on” said Joao, putting the tray down on the table in front of his bullish father and hurrying to the floor to sweep the shards of glass into a small pile with the thick of his palm, trying to be swift yet gentle so as not to cut his hand.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s all I ever hear. I’m sorry daddy; I promise I’ll be better. You’re the reason this church is always so empty. You cursed the farm and now you curse my church. How about actually using that thing inside your head for once? It’s called a brain. Figure out how to turn the thing on and use it. You know I wonder what I did to anger Jesus for him to grace me with you.

You don’t see your mother here picking up that glass do you? No, of course not. I do everything for this family and still this is what I get, a lack of respect from my own son. I know exactly how Jesus felt with Judas and…” said The Bishop, trailing off into lexical slur before his heavy eyes and drunken breath undid his temper and lowered his head upon his outstretched hands; his face nudging the chilled bottle of cachaça like a cat’s head, rubbing itself exhilaratingly against the tender loving touch of its owner’s amorous caress.

“Silly, silly, silly” said Joao as he continued to clean up the glass from the floor.

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