SILAS Part 2

SILAS  

By Nzinga Nzinga

Part 2

Clara continued to reminisce. "Headmaster Brown thought his wife had gone into cardiac arrest. How can I ever forget such a thing? Then Lizzie had the nerve to say that she couldn't understand why black people, especially Jamaican black women, are so petrified of lizards when in America and England white children and even black children, for that matter, make pets of newts which look like lizards. ‘Such harmless little creatures!’ she said to the poor headmaster whose blood pressure had taken a flying leap as a result of his wife’s unfortunate condition.”

Clara had felt like strangling mother and son on that occasion, but she had restrained herself to help her mother and the headmaster revive Mrs. Brown.

Touching her mother’s hand, Clara recalled. “Mama, do you remember the time Silas told Lizzie that I had slapped him when nothing could have been farther from the truth and she believed him?”

“She not only believed him, girl, she threw a fit and threatened to slap you back. That was when I stepped in and warned her that if she dared to do such a thing, she would have to slap me too and that put her in her place because as trying as Lizzie can be, I don’t think she would go as far as slapping her mother. Those two! They are unbelievable”

“Incredible is the word. Lizzie really makes that little boy twist her around his little finger. How can I forget the day Lizzie left him with us and we suffered while he had fun unlimited, yet as soon as he heard her returning to the house, he started screaming and yelling that he was hungry because we had starved him the whole day?”

“Yes, I remember it well. She grabbed him up, patted him with tears of anger streaming down her cheeks, and turning to us asked how we could be so cruel and heartless. She said that she couldn’t believe that her own flesh and blood could treat their own flesh and blood in such a wicked way. She didn’t even give us a chance to say anything in our defence. She was too busy lecturing us on the evils of child abuse. Do you remember that when she wasn’t looking in his direction how he made faces at us behind her back indicating that the victory was his? What a twosome!” Silas’ granny said with a grin.

“Mama, it was a lot of terrible things that we had to put up with when that child was here. Sometimes when I remember how Silas hid your denture for three whole days and you had to go and make that speech at Sylvia’s wedding without your front teeth and how embarrassed you were, I feel to disown my sister and her ‘one and only’”

“Aye sah. I can never ever forget that business. Even this very minute that I think about it, I want to hide my face out of shame. I wouldn’t have gone to give that speech if you didn’t force me to do it and if Sylvia hadn’t burst into tears when I tried to make some excuse or the other why I couldn’t be there. And that little devil kept acting and looking the innocent, helping us to search for it and asking me if the tooth fairy had taken away my front teeth even though I was such an old woman. And we thought he was funny! That boy! If you weren’t tidying out their room and tried to put some order in his toy box you wouldn’t have found my denture in his Lego house.” Mrs. B sighed.

“Mama, back to the question. Do you like Silas?”

“Do I like him? He’s Lizzie’s child. He’s my grandson. He’s my descendant.  He has my DNA.”

“But do you like him?”

“Shouldn’t I? I should, shouldn’t I? I am his grandmother. Grandmothers usually like their grandchildren. It is expected of us. Though I will grant that he’s a bit unusual. Not the usual run of the mill grandchild. Still, for all that, he’s my grandson.”

“Mama, the question remains. Do you like Silas?”

“Do I like him? You really want the truth, don’t you? And you won’t stop badgering me until I answer.”

“Yes, Mama. I want the truth and nothing but the truth so help you God.”

“You remind me of Marsh, a student I used to teach. He had to have the answers to his most annoying questions. No wonder he’s a lawyer today. Okay. Since you insist, let me stop beating about the bush. I don’t like Silas one bit. I feel like swearing whenever he’s around and I long for his departure. Let me tell you the raw truth since I have gone this far. I don’t like the little brat at all. He doesn’t have any respect. That child respects no one, neither God, nor man, nor animals nor plants. My poor dogs, my cats, my chickens and my garden suffer just as much as we do when he’s here." 

Getting up to stand by the open window to look at her beautiful garden in bloom, she continued. "The very thought of him coming here for the summer gives me goose pimples. We haven’t yet recovered from the havoc her precious Silas wreaked on us when he was here two years ago and here she is asking us to have him here for a whole summer without her. Anyway, with or without her makes no difference. Do you like Silas, Clara? This is a moment of truth. You have heard my truth. Let me now hear your truth.”

“No, Mama, I don’t like him. I definitely feel too uneasy and uncomfortable around Silas to like him.”

“Well, that makes two of us. It’s not the feeling a grandmother and aunt would wish to entertain for their grandson and nephew but we are being honest and that is how it is. Did Lizzie say why she’s sending him on the plane with strangers? That’s so unlike her. Why is she sending him away? Did she say?”

“She says he needs some good old-fashioned tutoring in the fundamentals and that since we are both in the teaching field, she wants us to get him well-grounded in the three ‘Rs’.”

“Really! Lizzie used to say that these are modern times, the age of modern science and technology and that what computer can’t teach is not worth worrying about. I wonder why she is retrogressing to the old-fashioned methods.”

“She laments that his school reports are way below the class average. Seems he’s clever but not academically clever.”

“Poor Silas! I don’t have any desire to spend my summer teaching such a disruptive child.”

“Me neither,” said Clara, her head in the letter. “She says here that the main reason for sending him is that she needs space, her own space to cement the bonding between her and her new doctor boyfriend.”

“I am not surprised that she has to send away Silas to get enough space to do anything. That boy encroaches on everybody’s space and even pushes you out of your own. Tell me something, Clara, since you are still young enough to understand this boyfriend business. Is that girl of mine going to use bonding cement on the doctor-man? Putting fun and joke aside though, can anybody tell me how two ordinary, down-to-earth parents like Ben and me could produce such a strange out-of-this-world creature like Lizzie?”

“The people she moves with don’t find her strange, Mama. Maybe we are the weird ones.”

“Not on your life, Clara. Anyway, be as it may, you listen to me carefully now, I want you to drive down to Mrs. Clark and ask her to allow you to make an emergency call to Lizzie. We will pay for it same time. Don’t call collect because Lizzie done told me that collect calls are not on. That’s exactly what she said. ‘Mama, collect calls are not on.’ She said they depleted her meagre resources. From Lizzie been living abroad, is only once we ever made a collect call to her and she been there fifteen years now. So then, mi love, go and call Lizzie for me and tell her to cancel all arrangements re Silas’ visit. That it just is not on. Use those words, ‘not on’."

"I will give her your message word for word." 

"I am not finished. Explain to her that we still have no electricity because we haven’t yet saved up enough money to buy the three poles the Electric Company says we are to get, so Silas would not be able to operate his video and computer and all those other electrical devices she was planning on sending out with him. Tell her that Silas would be too bored with two old-fashioned school marms who have long forgotten how to entertain 9-year-old boys at home."

"Is that it, Mama? 

"Not quite. There's more. Don’t forget to mention the malfunctioning of the twenty-year-old temperamental kerosene fridge considering that Silas can only take iced drinks. Don’t leave out anything. Tell her exactly what I tell you to tell her so that there won’t be the slightest misunderstanding. You can also remind her that we have plenty flies around the place because of the chickens and the mango season and she knows how Silas hates flies. That is all. Yes, that is all.”

“Mama, should I pass on love to her and Silas from you?”

“Of course, chile. What you take this thing for? The little family courtesies and protocols have to be observed!”

THE END
All the images were taken from the Internet and I claim no copyright.