Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

“Awa time yu call dis? Dis marnin me dun tell yu to be ere five turty-ate. Yu see dat? It say five farty-tree. Yu is five minute late. Ow yu goin learn keep time, girl?”

Grandma stands stiffly in front of me, head tilted to one side, bosom exploding over the top of her tightly folded arms and her head jabbing back towards the drunken-faced kitchen clock. She is wearing her Sunday Special, the purple flowered dress that rustles like foil being crushed softly around the pitted surface of a roasting breadfruit. The graying ripples of her hair are still damp from her evening shower. They shine under the glare of the yellowing strip lights. I take a few wary steps forward. Stop. She raises the sparse stubble that is her eyebrows and waits with an expectant smile.

“But Grandma, the bus ...”

“Yu is rite facety girl.” Grandma jumps in. Her top lip is curled and her nostrils flared. “Me no wat time de bus get bak. Yu been foolin aroun wid dat Tamsy Brown agen. Yu tink me no no. Juss get de hapron on, so we kyan start mekkin us dinna.”

Grandma is not fooling. The apron is swinging abruptly from her crocked index finger. Her head is straight now. Her coal dust eyes are narrowed. She concentrates on me like I’m a fly she is about to swat with that faded red and white plastic paddle from the one-pound shop in Clapham Junction. The paddle is wilted with age and covered with squashed brown stains. Flecks of black bodies are wedged in the mesh.

Grandma has this technique with flies. One sound of buzzing and she rolls silently across to the sink. She wraps her fingers around the paddle’s flexible stem. Leaning against the kitchen counter, she takes her time like she doesn’t care. Then, just as they land, BAM. No time for that last supper Miss Crawford tells us about at Religious Studies. Just dead. Dead like the fat chicken that is lying on the melamine chopping board; the one I’m to learn to cook tonight to make Grandma’s famous Calypso Chicken. The famous Calypso Chicken that Grandma was well known for when she lived near Mobay. The Chicken that all the village came to watch her cook. That all the village begged to taste. The Chicken that made all the young men fight to be the one invited to dinner. Even the one whose name Grandma always mentions with a tchah now. The Chicken that made Grandpa propose to her. The one that she taught my Ma to cook when she and Pa were courting. And that she is now going to teach me.

My friend Tamsy would laugh seeing me here, fumbling with this stupid plastic apron. My fingers are stiff. They won’t work. Kissing her teeth loudly, Grandma turns me round roughly by the shoulders and ties the strings in a double knot.

When Grandma kisses her teeth, you know she means business. It starts with Grandma pursing her mouth and sucking in her cheeks. And that’s just the basic version. When she’s annoyed, she has a deep frown clamped between her eyes. And then there’s angry, when her eyes fix on you and become larger and larger until you can’t move and all you can hear is the sound of the sea on the shingle. But to me, when Grandma kisses her teeth, it means trouble, the kind of trouble that I had better pay attention or it could get a whole lot worse.

“It’sTursday,” she is saying as she pulls my apron straight,“the day my own mudder, your great grandmudder, tart me to cook. An I was only eleven when I started. Now is yu turn. Yu ave to start learnin to be a woman and keep house.”

This cooking business started when I swung my school bag into the kitchen on that last day of the school year. The bag thudded on the floor. Grandma stopped it with her foot and one of her meaningful looks.

“Sit down,” she said, her voice slightly higher pitched than usual.

Surprised, I stopped moving.

“What?”

She pointed silently to a stool in front of her. I took the seat and smiled up at her. She smiled then and patted my shoulder telling me that she had a special treat for me. I laughed. It was then that she mentioned the “C” word, all in a rush. She said how we were going to have good times together every afternoon after school. She was stroking a sweet potato in the vegetable tray and her eyes were gleaming. Her fingers were covered with a thin film of red dust but Grandma didn’t notice. I blinked as her fingers moved to a bright yellow yam, finally coming to rest on a mound of goat meat. She held out her hand to me. On her fingers I saw the red dust mixed with wet brown stains.

During July, Grandma took to cajoling me. Every time she got that look, I said I was working on a school project. By the end of July, Grandma said no more going out, school project or not, until I learnt some respect. She got Pa to have a go at me. When that didn’t work, she stopped talking to me. She turned her head away, her shoulders all curled in. I hated Grandma like that. I wished she’d shout at me; call me any name she liked. I could take that. The silence I couldn’t. I promised wildly to clear the table after dinner, to hang the washing up. But she remained silent. The house was full of her silence. Even the boys, hardly ever at home that summer, noticed. In early August, Grandma finally offered to make the cooking lessons once instead of five times a week.

“One day?”

“One day. Tursday. Five turty-ate?”

“Huh?”

“Five turty-ate, me say.”

Finally, we agreed and the rest of the summer was mine.

I try to ignore the smell of the plastic apron as Grandma taps on the kitchen calendar. Beside today’s date, Grandma has written with red ink and capital letters. She asks me in a gruff voice what I am smiling about. I can’t tell her. She looks so proud, so happy and she’ll only get mad. Her writing looks like chicken scratchings, spiky and barely readable. Quickly, I cough and she flips the pages of the calendar. Against each Thursday she has written the name of a different dish. Next week I am to cook pigs’ trotters.

I imagine a pig in a field being chased by a mad farmer with an axe. Grandma is chasing the farmer with the fly swatter. The pig stops and raises his leg like he’s waiting for the farmer to trim his toenails in the middle of that field. Then the toes are hanging up from a butcher’s hook, maybe they lie in a jellied pink heap in Brixton market. I can’t decide which. I snigger into my sleeve. Grandma glares at me and tells me to pay attention.

Her handwritten recipe book lies in front of us. She says she has written it from memory especially for me because I have never been Home, never seen the real Jamaica. Her own mother only showed her how to cook. The recipe book is open at her entry for Calypso Chicken. I see her mouth go into purse position as she tells me to pay attention. I hear the words now as she tells me again how to cut up the chicken. First take off the two legs, then the wings, down the middle and then into smaller pieces, eight maybe ten. Grandma is waiting now. She tells me that I have seen her cut up a chicken plenty times. Now is my turn.

The knife is big and heavy. It looks like it could cut through anything. Maybe the mad farmer had a knife like this to chop off the pig’s trotters. I can hear the clock ticking. My heart drums double time as I pick up the knife and turn it slowly in my hands. Grandma tells me to get on with it; time is passing.

I stand there, double knotted into that Asda kitchen apron, knife hard in my right hand. In front of me lies the featherless chicken, his head rolling loosely on a long neck. I stare at that scrawny-chested bird with his wrinkled, pimply skin. He is ice cold, springy and very dead under my shaking fingertips. Dead flesh with eyes that are alive. I pull back and glance at Grandma, offering her the knife. Perhaps this first time, she will not expect me to actually cut up the chicken. But Grandma’s face is set; her lips jammed together, her eyes hard and her hands square on her hips. The index finger of her right hand is tapping steadily on her thigh.

“Cum on girl. Get yo bakside into de job. De dinna muss be ready fo yo fader seven sharp. Juss follo de repsie and ...”

In the middle of her instruction, Mrs Spencer bangs on the door. She calls for Grandma to come help. Her husband has fallen in the garden, and would Mrs Sangster please come check he is all right. Grandma leaves with Mrs Spencer, a spray of purple bougainvillea jerking about on her bum.

I wait till I can’t hear the slap, slap, slapping of Grandma’s footsteps on the tiled corridor before turning back to that chicken. He still looks angry, his claws tightly curled, his beak open in a snarl. A pinkish-gray tongue dangles out of the left corner. His eyes glare opaquely. I try staring back at him. His glassy stare pierces me. He sneers at me. I grip the knife hard and squeeze my eyes shut.

Coward.

My eyes jerk open. The chicken’s head is rolling to the right. His tongue slithers back into his beak, its pink tip visible through the open slit. His head is lying in my shadow but his eyes, catching the light, are no longer milky. They are direct and clear, fixed on a spot just above my head. The sneer on his face seems more pronounced as though daring me to try. He is taunting me. Laughing at me.

Coward. I hear it again. I can’t take my eyes from his chest. It lies shimmering in the shadows. Coward. Coward. Coward.

The back door clicks softly. I start and the knife slides out of my hand.

Grandma slaps her way across the kitchen muttering about that good for nothing Spencer man. She is looking pleased. She nods at me and turns on the radio, her back to mine. I turn back to the chicken. His tongue is dangling and his eyes are glassy once more. I listen to the rise and fall of the voice on the radio and remember that sneer, the taunt.

I can do it.

His eyes, glazed and malicious, are watching me closely.

Damn that chicken. I will do it. I can.

I pick up the knife and hold my breath as I lower the tip of the blade into the bird’s leg. A trickle of pink flesh bursts out from the whitened skin. I gag as a hot, sour juice shoots into my throat. I let go of the knife and it falls. The handle hits the chopping board hard and it bounces on the wooden floor. The chicken’s head drums rapidly on the board and jerks upright. His open beak aims for my right hand. I scream and keep screaming. Pa comes running. His eyes are wild. He takes one look at me, then at the chicken and then back at me. He puts his arm around me.

“Don worry chile,” he says, “it be okay. Yo granmudder will tek care of dis here fellow.”

I stop screaming at last and bury my head in his wide chest. Grandma glares at Pa.

“Awa yu tink yu is doin, interferin between me and me grandarter? Yu always spoil she. Ow me goin to get de girl to lissen and respek me if yu halways let she do wateva she want?”

Pa stands there while Grandma shouts at him. He waits while she screams. Then he pushes me gently away and straightens up, half Grandma’s size.

“Ma. Why yu mek de girl cut up de chicken. She too young. She no ready. Yu was hadvanced for yu age when yu start cooking. Pearl, she differen.”

Grandma is mad then. You can tell because she raises that fly swatting hand. Her bosom is rising and falling and she is shouting at Pa for always taking my side. She grabs the kitchen knife. Pa pats her shoulder and winks at me. I take a deep breath and my heart stops its crazy double beat.

I watch Grandma a while. She is stabbing at the chicken, tearing it to pieces. Slowly, I make myself a cup of coffee. I trickle the contents of the condensed milk can and two heaped spoons of demerara sugar into the cup. The coffee splashes on the kitchen table. I draw the cup to the edge of the table and wrap my hand around its curve. I stop, glance sideways through half-closed eyes at Grandma’s angry face and at the chicken juice bloody on her hands. Raising the cup, I take one loud sip and drop it back on the table.

“Get bak ‘ere dis minute girl and wipe up yu mess. Halways wastin good food. No respek, dat wat hit is. Pearl. Pearl.”

Grandma shouts and the blade of the knife hammers at the chopping board as I take the stairs two at a time.