James Hackett

“Is it you?”- Cassie

On a lonely, melancholy and lazy Friday evening the splish- splash of puddles and irrefutable presence of rain hit the city of Port of Spain. Torrential rains came down off of galvanize rooftops with the ping pong of steel, and streamed down windowpanes, bringing everything to a sluggish pitch.

The car skidded to a halt and she checked the mirror, adjusting her lip gloss with one deft swish of finger. She gave herself a quick once over in the mirror before blowing it a playful kiss. Her keys jingled in left hand as she climbed the steps of her grandmother’s home in Woodbrook.
She expected to hear comment over the tightness and shortness of her skirt but as the front door eased open and she found Grandmama asleep in front of the television, her defences flagged down.

As usual she made a bee line for the kitchen to see what was on the menu.

This was when she realized everything was not as it should be. A fire roared under a pot that was now singed black. She guessed it had to be left unattended for the better part of an hour.

It had been Evelena’s habit to stop by her grandmother’s house every Friday afternoon after work, and she was mostly thankful not to pull up and find her dispatched and the house in cinders. She was admittedly not the domestic type, dropping the pot awkwardly and one handed into a sink of cold water, then pitching backward as it sizzled.

She lamented that maybe if she had just learnt to cook, or took an interest in what Grandmama had called “Woman’s work” she would at long last be marriage material. Instead just like every Friday night, she would be every bit the eligible bachelorette. She would fit herself into another tight ensemble and shimmy into the club and hope not to spend at least this night alone.

What exactly did the one look like anyway?

She had an image of the perfect man but why did all the good men have to be taken?

She leaned back, exhausted in the armchair two sizes too big for her and studied the aging features of her grandmother. Even this woman, a woman who had done little in way of education and had done few things of much consequence to the world, and she had a viable story to tell. She had had a whirlwind love affair once. She had been in love once. Sure, she had suffered a loss Evo could not comprehend when her grandfather passed on some years before. Nonetheless, Evo found herself envying the details of closeness.

She yearned to be loved.

Soon her fantasy depressed her.

She kissed her grandmother’s cheek and without shelter from the rain, headed to her car.

TO BE CONTINUED…