I finally started reading Buxton Spice. And I had the guilty pleasure of a laugh at the shenanigans of the young girls in the story. In one incident, they cornered one of the neighborhood madmen, and encouraged him to "get off" using a piano as a receptive woman. Shameful behavior many would say, but I'm willing to bet that some of you would find it funny. (It is.)
Any way, it mek me remember a certain village mad man I once knew....
"ONION"
He appears and disappears like a quick hot sun melting into pitch-dark night. No one really knows where he lives. During the day, he stands apart from others--the morning shoppers, the day workers, the uniformed, the white-collared, the sweat-dripping laborers, the near-death's door, red-eyed whiskey drinkers. He stands firmly, ageless, dark, granite, lightly dusted with baby powder as if to ever so slightly dim the shine. His usual spot is a wooden bar stool at the lunch counter of the village's goods store. From his perch he could see all who enter the store, and he makes certain they are welcomed with a broad, white smile:
“Morning son. Morning uncle. Lil girl yuh mami comb yuh hair nice today!”
Unlike most who see him, only she recognizes time is important to him. Every morning at six he attempts to walk to the Capital city, Georgetown to a job he doesn’t have. He turns and heads back to the village when he is about halfway to the city. One can hear him reasoning, “Half and half mek whole.” So when he returns to the village he has completed his journey. Four hours of his day are spent in labor this way. Four hours each day he marks his time in the earth .
At noon, when the sun lowers itself and hovers right over the tiny South American country threatening to change a man’s skin from brown straight to blue, he sits in the store in his shaded spot and reads the same yellowed newspaper every day. At six in the evening, the owner of the goods store gives him the leftovers from the lunch menu, and after quickly devouring his meal, he retires for the day.
She alone notices that every day, never actually looking down at the paper but at some point beyond it, he reads the news in flawless English, his tone dipping and accelerating depending on the type of story. He speaks solemnly of milk-white Guyanese sons and daughters of sugar pirates from Portugal. He weeps about new grooms leaving their young brides to go and study in England and Canada. He whispers conspiringly of well-dressed Dutchmen atop black horses seen only at night. And he laughs about some Brit who was knighted for discovering that rain turns into powdered milk in the Caribbean .
They call him “Onion” because they say one good whiff of him would “mek yuh eye water.” And they discard him that way.
Today in the goods store, she waits patiently for the moment when he’ll look at his imaginary audience for reaction to his news. It’s a quick almost elusive moment, but it comes and she grabs it.
“Mr. Onion, how old are you?”
He looks right at her, and she is mortified and delighted. His eyes are watery, white lined with red, but his pupils are surprisingly steady, pin point:
“Little gurl,” he bellows, as he tightens his lips to force out a borrowed version of British sounds, “I’m shore yuh know bettah dan to ask a gentleman such a rude question!”
Quiet and not so quiet laughter ensues in the store. Feeling smaller than her ten years, she chants the familiar rhyme in an even smaller voice:
'Ten shades a mid-a-night
Onion stinking left and right'
She runs out of the store leaving behind her package of groceries and doesn’t realize this until she is almost home. Her mother is going to kill her . . .
© 2008 c.d.valere signifyinguyana.typepad.com
