Skin Folk (25 page)

“Yeah. Flowering kale. Rich people’s cabbage.”

Mr. Morris laughed. “Yes, but I bet you see it somewhere else, besides the grocery store.”

I frowned, trying to think what he meant. He went on: “You know the Dominion Bank? The big one at Bathurst and Queen?” I nodded,
still mystified. His smile got even broader. “You ever look at the plants they use to decorate the front?”

I almost spat the salad out. “Ornamental cabbage? We’re eating ornamental cabbage that you stole from the front of a building?”

His rich laugh filled the tiny room. “Not ‘ornamental cabbage,’ darlin’: ‘flowering kale.’ And I figure, I ain’t really stealin’
it; I recyclin’ it! They does pull it all up and throw it away when the weather turn cold. All that food. It does taste nice
on a Sunday morning, fry-up with a piece of saltfish and some small-leaf thyme. I does grow the herbs-them on the windowsill,
in the sun.”

Salted cod and cabbage. Flavoured with French thyme and hot pepper. My mother made that on Sunday mornings too, with big fried
flour dumplings on the side and huge mugs of cocoa. Not the cocoa powder from the tin, either; she bought the raw chocolate
in chestnut-sized lumps from the Jamaican store, and grated it into boiling water, with vanilla, cinnamon, and condensed milk.
Sitting in Mr. Morris’s living room, even with the remains of dinner on the table, I could almost smell that pure chocolate
aroma. Full of fat, too. I didn’t let my mom serve it to me anymore when I visited. I’d spent too much money on my tight little
butt.

Still, I didn’t believe what Old Man Morris was telling me. “So, you mean to say that you just… take stuff? From off the street?”

“Yes.”

“What about the chicken?”

He laughed. “Chicken? Doux-doux, you ever see chicken with four drumstick? That is a wild rabbit I catch meself and bring
home.”

“Are you crazy? Do you know what’s in wild food? What kind of diseases it might carry? Why didn’t you tell me what we were
eating?” But he was so pleased with himself, he didn’t seem to notice how upset I was.

“Nah, nah, don’t worry ’bout diseases, darlin’! I been eatin’ like this for five-six years now, and I healthy like hog. De
doctor say he never see a seventy-four-year-old man in such good shape.”

He’s seventy-four! He does look pretty damned good for such an old man. I’m still not convinced, though: “Mr. Morris, this
is nuts; you can’t just go around helping yourself to leaves off the trees, and people’s ornamental plants, and killing things
and eating them! Besides, um, how do you catch a wild rabbit, anyway?”

“Well, that is the sweet part.” He jumped up from his chair, started rummaging around in the pockets of his old tweed jacket
that was hanging in the hallway. He came back to the table, clutching a fistful of small rocks and brandishing a thick, Y-shaped
twig with a loose rubber strap attached. So that’s what he kept in those pockets—whatever it was.

“This is a slingshot. When I was a small boy back home, I was aces with one of these!” He stretched the rubber strap tight
with one hand, aimed the slingshot at one of his potted plants, and pretended to let off a shot. “
Plai!
Like so. Me and the boys-them used to practise shooting at all kind of ol’ tin can and thing, but I was the best. One time,
I catch a coral snake in me mother kitchen, and I send one boulderstone straight through it eye with me first shot!” He chuckled.
“The stone break the window, too, but me mother was only too glad that I kill the poison snake. Well, doux-doux, I does take
me slingshot down into the ravine, and sometimes I get lucky and catch something.”

I was horrified. “You mean, you used that thing to kill a rabbit? And we just ate it?”

Mr. Morris’s face finally got serious. He sat back down at the table. “You mus’ understan’, Cynthia; I is a poor man. Me and
my Rita, we work hard when we come to this country, and we manage to buy this little apartment, but when the last depression
hit we, I get lay off at the car plant. After that, I couldn’t find no work again; I was already past fifty years old, nobody
would hire me. We get by on Rita nurse work until she retire, and then hard times catch we ass. My Rita was a wonderful woman,
girl; she could take a half pound of mince beef and two potatoes and make a meal that have you feelin’ like you never taste
food before. She used to tell me, ‘Never mind, Johnny; so long as I have a little meat to put in this cook pot, we not goin’
to starve.’

“Then them find out that Rita have cancer. She only live a few months after that, getting weaker till she waste away and gone.
Lord, child, I thought my heart woulda break. I did wish to dead too. That first year after Rita pass away, I couldn’t tell
you how I get by; I don’t even remember all of it. I let the place get dirty, dirty, and I was eatin’ any ol’ kaka from the
corner store, not even self goin’ to the grocery. When I get the letter from the government, telling me that them cuttin’
off Rita pension, I didn’t know what to do. My one little pension wasn’t goin’ to support me. I put on me coat, and went outside,
headin’ for the train tracks to throw myself down, oui? Is must be God did make me walk through the park.”

“What happened?”

“I see a ol’ woman sittin’ on a bench, wearing a tear-up coat and two different one-side boots. She was feedin’ stale bread
to the pigeons, and smiling at them. That ol’ lady with she rip-up clothes could still find something to make she happy.

“I went back home, and things start to look up a little bit from then. But pride nearly make me starve before I find meself
inside the food bank to beg some bread.”

“It’s not begging, Mr. Morris,” I interrupted.

“I know, doux-doux, but in my place, I sure you woulda feel the same way. And too besides, even though I was eatin’ steady
from the food bank, I wasn’t eatin’ good, you know? You can’t live all you days on tuna fish and tin peas!”

I thought of all the tins of tuna I’d just brought him. I felt myself blushing. Two years in this body, and I still wasn’t
used to how easily blushes showed on its pale cheeks. “So, what gave you the idea to start foraging like this?”

“I was eatin’ lunch one day, cheese spread and crackers and pop. One paipsy, tasteless lunch, you see? And I start thinkin’
about how I never woulda go hungry back home as a small boy, how even if I wasn’t home to eat me mother food, it always had
some kinda fruit tree or something round the place. I start to remember Julie mango, how it sweet, and chataigne and peewah
that me mother would boil up in a big pot a’ salt water, and how my father always had he little kitchen garden, growin’ dasheen
leaf and pigeon peas and yam and thing. And I say to meself, ‘But eh-eh, Johnny, ain’t this country have plants and trees
and fruit and thing too? The squirrels-them always looking fat and happy; they mus’ be eatin’ something. And the Indian people-them-self
too; they must be did eat something else besides corn before the white people come and take over the place!’

“That same day, I find my ass in the library, and I tell them I want to find out about plants that you could eat. Them sit
me down with all kinda book and computer, and I come to find out it have plenty to eat, right here in this city, growing wild
by the roadside. Some of these books even had recipes in them, doux-doux!

“So I drag out all of Rita frying pan and cook spoon from the kitchen cupboard, and I teach meself to feed meself, yes!” He
chuckled again. “Now I does eat fresh mulberries in the summer. I does dig up chicory root to take the bitterness from my
coffee. I even make rowanberry jam. All these things all around we for free, and people still starving, oui? You have to learn
to make use of what you have.

“But I still think the slingshot was a master stroke, though. Nobody ain’t expect a ol’ black man to be hunting with a slingshot
down in the ravine!”

I was still chuckling as I left Mr. Morris’s building later that evening. He’d loaded me down with a container full of stuffed
rabbit and a bottle of crabapple preserves. I deactivated the screamer alarm on the car, and I was just about to open the
door when I felt a hand sliding down the back of my thigh.

“Yesss, stay just like that. Ain’t that pretty? We’ll get to that later. Where’s your money, sweetheart? In this purse here?”
The press of a smelly body pinned me over the hood. I tried to turn my head, to scream, but he clamped a filthy hand across
my face. I couldn’t breathe. The bottle of preserves crashed to the ground. Broken glass sprayed my calf.

“Shit! What’d you do that for? Stupid bitch!”

His hand tightened over my face. I couldn’t
breathe!
In fury and terror, I bit down hard, felt my teeth meet in the flesh of his palm. He swore, yanked his hand away, slammed
a hard fist against my ear. Things started to go black, and I almost fell. I hung on to the car door, dragged myself to my
feet, scrambled out of his reach. I didn’t dare turn away to run. I backed away, screaming, “Get away from me! Get away!”
He kept coming, and he was big and muscular, and angry. Suddenly, he jerked, yelled, slapped one hand to his shoulder. “What
the fuck…?” I could see wetness seeping through the shoulder of his grimy sweatshirt. Blood? He yelled again, clapped a hand
to his knee. This time, I had seen the missile whiz through the air to strike him. Yes! I crouched down to give Mr. Morris
a clear shot. My teeth were bared in a fighter’s grin. The mugger was still limping towards me, howling with rage. The next
stone glanced by his head, leaving a deep gash on his temple. Behind him, I heard the sound of breaking glass as the stone
crashed through the car window. He’d had enough. He ran, holding his injured leg.

Standing in the middle of the street, I looked up to Mr. Morris’s sixth-floor window. He was on the balcony, waving frantically
at me. In the dark, I could just see the Y of the slingshot in his hand. He shouted, “Go and stand in the entranceway, girl!
I comin’ down!” He disappeared inside, and I headed back towards the building. By the time I got there, I was weak-kneed and
shaky; reaction was setting in, and my head was spinning from the blow I’d taken. I didn’t think I’d ever get the taste of
that man’s flesh out of my mouth. I leaned against the inside door, waiting for Mr. Morris. It wasn’t long before he came
bustling out of the elevator, let me inside, and sat me down on the couch in the lobby, fussing the whole time.

“Jesus Christ, child! Is a good thing I decide to watch from the balcony to make sure you reach the car safe! Lawd, look at
what happen to you, eh? Just because you had the kindness to spen’ a little time with a ol’ man like me! I sorry, girl; I
sorry can’t done!”

“It’s okay, Mr. Morris; it’s not your fault. I’m all right. I’m just glad that you were watching.” I was getting a little
hysterical. “I come to rescue you with my food bank freeze-dried turkey dinner, and you end up rescuing me instead! I have
to ask you, though, Mr. Morris; how come every time you rescue a lady, you end up breaking her windows?”

That Sunday, I drove over to my parents’ place for Thanksgiving dinner. I was wearing a beret, cocked at a chic angle over
the cauliflower ear that the mugger had given me. No sense panicking my mom and dad. I had gone to the emergency hospital
on Friday night, and they’d disinfected and bandaged me. I was all right; in fact, I was so happy that two days later, I still
felt giddy. So nice to know that there wouldn’t be photos of my dead body on the covers of the tabloids that week.

As I pulled up in the car, I could see my parents through the living room window, sitting and watching television. I went
inside.

“Mom! Dad! Happy Thanksgiving!” I gave my mother a kiss, smiled at my dad.

“Cynthia, child,” he said, “I glad you reach; I could start making the gravy now.”

“Marvin, don’t be so stupidee,” my mother scolded. “You know she won’t eat no gravy; she mindin’ she figure!”

“It’s okay, Mom; it’s Thanksgiving, and I’m going to eat everything you put on my plate. If I get too fat, I’m just going
to have to start walking to work. You’ve got to work with what you’ve got, after all.” She looked surprised, but didn’t say
anything.