The Day I Fell Off My Island by Yvonne Bailey-Smith

Author:Yvonne Bailey-Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Myriad Editions
Published: 2021-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

I wasn’t sure whether Patricia and Clifton’s stories about fingers and toes falling off and mouths freezing shut were true or not, but I decided that, just to be on the safe side, I would start wearing the pair of mittens and the knitted red-and-black-striped scarf and matching tea cosy hat that Mrs Kelly had given me. I wanted to wear them straight away, but I knew that mother hated the fact that Mrs Kelly was always knocking on our door with various offerings, so I thought if I left it for a bit she might forget. Mrs Kelly’s sons, Frankie and Aaron, were a similar age to Clifton and Sonny, so she would sometimes give my mother clothes parcels for them. On one occasion she even gave us a huge cut of Irish beef.

‘Excess to need,’ she’d said, explaining that she had brought the meat over from County Cork in Ireland where she came from.

Mother never refused these things, but as soon she heard Mrs Kelly’s front door slam, she started cursing her. ‘That woman is just renk,’ she exclaimed, ‘she must think we are some kind of paupers that she keeps giving us her second-hand tat!’

But, no matter what she had been given, she always carefully packed away the things and, in the case of the clothes, the boys were soon dressed in Frankie or Aaron’s unwanted garments. And so, despite her huffing and puffing, Mother quickly made space in the chest freezer and slipped the beef inside. Imagine my surprise when, on the twenty-fifth of December, she served up the very same piece of beef without alluding to its origins, or to the day we weren’t celebrating.

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