Thank God, I’m home

Everything was exactly as I had left it, and yet not. The bougainvillea that had been there for years had grown high and luxuriant, trailing its beauty over half the wall and almost down to the road. “Is that my house?” I asked my friend who’d met me at the airport, the only person I’d shared the secret of my arrival with. I felt like an idiot because I knew it was mine and yet the brain, caught between what it knew and what it was presented with, fought to make sense.

It was good to be home, to stand outside the gate with my sister struggling to open the lock that could not be opened fast enough so that she could hug me, the surprise sweeter than I could have imagined even after all those months of imagining, my mother in the background trying to figure out which one of my sister’s friends had come to visit and cause such havoc at that hour of the night and then realising that it was her daughter standing before her and screaming, the neighbours looking outside windows at the mayhem that was suddenly taking place on their street.

It was good to be back in the Caribbean, the flight stopping first in St Kitts and the Trinidadians on the flight rushing to the top of the stairs to look at the green hills that flanked the runway. The sunlight poured on us like something liquid, and everywhere, on every face, smiles. The passengers on the aircraft suddenly growing animated, perhaps, like me, with the thought of soon being home. Calypsos were being sung, the singer exclaiming that he or she had forgotten the words — “So long I in the people country! But what the jail is this!?” — the backup chorus proving to be of no help.

Then off again and on to Tobago — proper home now. The plane carved an arc in the sky as it prepared to land at Crown Point, necks craned to look out windows at the stepping stone of an island that meant home to so many, even, and maybe especially, to us born and raised in Trinidad. For me Tobago means my grandmother, and August holidays staining clothes with chennette, traffic free roads and strangers striking easy conversation with you, even if you’re too young to understand.

And then to find out that the flight from Tobago to Trinidad has been delayed by an hour, a fact mentioned only after we’d asked if the flight was on time. “Well is a good thing we ask!” I exclaimed to my friend. “I really reach back home. Welcome back!” With over an hour to kill and hunger attacking there was nothing more to do than buy some Royal Castle, savouring the simple pleasure of buying fast food in a restaurant where ketchup is seen as a necessity rather than an oddity and where pepper sauce — glorious, glorious pepper sauce — has its rightful place among the condiments.

The cashier was sour, avoiding eye contact and doing everything with aggressive, exaggerated movements. The girl that served was reluctant, the salad looking miserable at the bottom of the box, the fries thrown in halfheartedly, the fish cold and lonely in a corner. Passing through Gate 1 to enter the departure lounge the metal detector beeps and I, accustomed to the strict immigration of Europe, put both hands in the air and stand with legs apart, waiting to be frisked. An officer unfurls his length from a seat and makes his way towards and then past me.

I turn around bewildered as he puts his cell phone to his ear and starts to talk while walking out the door. I look at the other officers who pay no attention to me then I slowly take up my bags.

The flight which has already been delayed by an hour leaves even later and as I sit on the plane during take-off and during the short flight I experience a slight panic. What if my time in England has ruined my country for me? What if the things I’d disliked about home I now hate and I end up being in limbo, England not my home but now unable to live in Trinidad?

And then out of the corner of my eye I see the lights of Trinidad spread like jewels on black velvet. And the plane lands and luggage is collected and I walk out into the airport that was always a pleasure to arrive at but even more so now and outside the airport are two friends smoking and another picking up friends and my family at home and the next day, Sunday,

Mother’s Day, the whole reason why I’m here, crab and callaloo and a neighbourhood curry lime and cold Stag bought just for me because, “the girl eh drink a Stag in months, get the girl ah Stag nah!” and the panic is gone. Trinidad will always be home.

Comments? Please write

suszanna@hotmail.com