In the corner of my mind

When I was three, we lived in a sprawling house in Santa Cruz, Trinidad, designed by my godfather, the architect, and built by a contractor and my mother’s brothers.

We had two parakeets, a yellow one named Suzy and a green, white, and black bird whose name I can no longer remember.

On a Sunday morning, madre would most likely be found in the kitchen and the Old Man – not so old then – would be in the backyard mowing the lawn at an ungodly hour (8 a.m.). At three, I was, of course, just coming into my own in learning things that disturbed my sleep would inadvertently make me grumpy.

This fine morning in question, I donned my favourite jelly sandals at madre’s insistence, the one’s I reserved only for trips to Maracas Bay and the Queen’s Park Savannah for coconut water, and wandered onto the back patio.

Suzy and her partner-in-whistly-crime were whistling their lives away. The sun was searing, and although I could see the Old Man sweating buckets, from where I stood in the cool shade, it was a beautiful day.

I stepped onto the grass and made my way past the rickety wooden ladder leaning against the side of the house. A few weeks back, my seven-year-old silly brother had tied a towel around his neck Superman-style, climbed to the roof, and jumped off in the belief that he could fly. He sank like a stone, but broke no bones. The ladder remained because the padres trusted us to not make stupid (and dangerous) mistakes twice.

The Old Man was working in the corner of the yard where the cherry tree that mysteriously never bore fruit had taken hold. He had a spade in hand. To this day I can’t remember exactly what he was doing; I was too caught up in this profound question I had at the tip of my tongue.

“Daddy…” I said, my voice lilting upward.

“Yes, sweetheart?” he replied somewhat breathlessly.

“You think if you dig deep enough you will reach hell?” I asked.

He stopped for a moment, leaning on the handle of the spade with a look of deep concentration: furrowed brows and the like. That he was not taking me seriously never entered my mind.

“Well I suppose if you go really far, you can,” he finally said. “But it’d have to be real deep.”

“Oh,” I said.

Suitably satisfied, I trod back to the safety of the kitchen and gratefully threw the jelly sandals back onto the sandy pile of driftwood and stones smoothed by the ocean waves.