When Auntie Shanice asked if I wanted to go, I declined. I spent the day in downtown Georgetown. I wandered. I got my hair faded at an open-air barbershop. I absorbed the heat and the compressed cacophony of the city. I spent an hour and the equivalent of a hundred US dollars at a bookstore that had a large collection of Caribbean writers, the kind of collection that can’t be found in Canada. I returned just after dusk and sat outside, leafing through Mittelholzer, Nichols, and Walcott. The humidity softened my cigarette, and the smoke thickened in my throat.
It was too early to drink, so I read and waited for the others to return. I’d stayed back because I didn’t know Calib. I didn’t want him to feel embarrassed by his circumstances, but I was curious. When the electric gates creaked open and the car rolled into the drive, I stood and motioned for Quammie to join me on the veranda. He came up, sat back on one of the mahogany deck chairs, closed his eyes, and let out a long sigh. I balanced my cigarette on the ashtray.
“How was the visit?”
He kept his eyes closed and his head tilted back. His face was greased from the heat. I waited. Finally, he spoke without opening his eyes. “It was disturbing, actually. I don’t want to talk about it.”
He stood up and went inside. I heard some bumping around, a door closing, and he reemerged with a Banks beer. “ Mostly it was flat, brown, yellow, green. We spent a lot of time in a hot car.”
Esta historia es de la edición March 2020 de The Walrus.
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Esta historia es de la edición March 2020 de The Walrus.
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