Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson

Author:Caleb Azumah Nelson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove Atlantic
Published: 2023-06-30T13:23:12+00:00

28.

When we were teenagers, once a year, before my parents’ annual trip to Ghana, Pops would suggest we have a barbecue. This was always a family affair. Together, we would try to work out how many people the garden might hold, knowing Mum and Pops would always add an extra ten on top. Ray and I would rock, paper, scissors, to see who would be woken at four a.m. to accompany Pops to Billingsgate Market, where there were rows of vendors selling fish wholesale. Raymond never lost, so he’d go to the butcher’s with Mum.

I grew to love the brief quiet moments with Pops, the anticipation as we drove through the pink dawn of a London summer. We’d always detour back via McDonald’s for breakfast, and once we’d reached home, Pops would set to work immediately, cutting, chopping, blending for seasoning. He’d ask me to fetch the case housing all his CDs, all his feeling rendered in sound. At this time of the day, it was always the CD with oldies scribbled across it in permanent marker. Mum used to tease Pops about his supposed DJing days but he knew how to arrange songs, how to conjure a mood, with Marvin Gaye, Minnie Riperton, Otis Redding. By the time Bill Withers came on, Mum in his arms, I knew what love was, what it might be.

The next day, after the meat and fish had been seasoned, veg cleaned and chopped, the barbecue itself dusted and ­scrubbed – an enormity of a grill, which could easily have three people manning at one time (Mum joked it was one of his ­midlife-­crisis purchases) – after Pops had chosen what music would play, and when, the party would start. The days were often glorious, those sorts of days where the sun won’t leave, and when it does, only with real reluctance, splashing trails of coloured light across the sky. Every few hours, I would return to the grill, an empty plate in hand, content already on my face. Heaps of jollof, meats grilled so perfectly they tasted sweet. By sunset, the children had run themselves ragged, and had to be run home by whichever parent volunteered, or was begrudgingly sent for, leaving a group of adults, drunk, or well on their way, and us, those who felt grown, to continue the party. And this we did, finding ways to sneak alcohol, ways to take on the looseness we were witnessing. By this time, the soul of the sixties and seventies had become the sound of the nineties, those joyful garage cuts which encouraged movement. By the time ‘Rewind’ came on, we were already calling for the reload, asking that we might be the people we were moments before, that we might stretch our joy towards infinity, towards forever. Before the song could start up again, we were already shouting our favourite lyrics, me facing Ray, Pops embracing us both, Mum watching on, amused, moved by the part she’d had to play in all our lives.

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