Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Boy, the Girls, the Dog, and I Was There

2021; Wiley; Volume: 109; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/tyr.2021.0084

1467-9736

Canisia Lubrin,

Themes in Literature Analysis

The Boy, the Girls, the Dog, and I Was There Canisia Lubrin (bio) art. 37.-Masters shall be required, in cases of theft or other wrongs caused by their slaves, on top of corporally punishing their slaves, to pay reparations for the harm in their own name, unless they would rather give up the slave to the person to whom the harm was done; they shall be required to choose which one in three days, counting from the day of the sentencing, and otherwise they will be stripped of it. —king louis xv, 1723, Code Noir both whistle and bark You could say nothing about those three days to turn them into anything unusual. They left us these three sonographs: the boy, the girls, the dog. Still, they float past my life every time the cane fields mature to a sallow red, every time my ear becomes too sensitive [End Page 149] for the ordinary sounds of the day: a whistle, a bark, a chirp, a rail cart rolling, or the sound of someone dying down the road. The boy, the girls, the dog—and I was there for the three days of fast history that lets me find you now with a story, even if I will fail you as the chronicler you might deserve. I take it as record of my own sealed life that Anslem was there for those three days. Anslem knew many things I cannot tell you. He might be a more suitable storyteller, though there is also much about Anslem that escapes himself—stylish, sometimes starchy, and broken through where no one who sits outside him could witness—as though he had been falling through his own life since it began. And you couldn't catch him, you couldn't ever begin to know where to stand so you could catch him, or catch up, as he neared the ground with the force of anybody just moving about their business of entering another room in the same world as you. Anslem with his black beret like an eclipsed sun impaled to the back of his head. You couldn't believe Anslem, stylish, as though handmade from a dark and transparent fabric, had made plans to give the dog to his son just before Ma Rein, the shop lady, arrived. She was nearing ninety years and proud of her glass cabinets that helped the sun illuminate her shop. She said she'd caught Anslem's two prepubescent girls stealing from the shop, and now, what was she supposed to admit about herself at her advanced age? She who had loved the girls, and the boy, since the day they were born? She who had raised Anslem since his people died while he was still a child. the dog The dog was called Reptile. Reptile loved to sunbathe in the shade of the avocado tree outside Ma Rein's shop. Reptile was Ma Rein's dog only because Anslem, who brought the dog home one day, a mere pup, one week old, said nothing to Ma Rein when he dropped the dog off in the yard, still in her cardboard box, in a patch of strong sunlight. He waved his hand at Ma Rein. Ma Rein was in her expected place, looking out to him from her shop window. From that window she had a clear view overlooking the ackee [End Page 150] tree and the avocado tree. Ma Rein waved back to him and nodded and then Anslem stood, pulling his shoulders up with a resolution of deep satisfaction—maybe about the dog, maybe about himself— and then he left. Closer to noon. Ma Rein had had a slow morning. Not the way history can be slow but in the manner of old limbs after too many hours behind a bar. Only two of the village children had come in: one to buy a pound of flour for thirty-five cents and another for a half-pound of sugar for fifteen cents. She loved using her old scale with the iron weights. She loved the movement it made from left to right, like a seesaw; really, she loved that it reminded her of her mother...