Terrarium March 28
“Weird growths are not unusual in the tropics,“ says Dr. Moses, examining the earth-tone fungus that has taken root on my nail-bed. He pokes at my big-toe with a probe, like a child prodding a Zandolie out of hiding with a stick. Some mold-killing goop is applied with a brush, which must be removed every other day with acetone, then reapplied. I believe I am being water-sealed. Jungle Rot is what my Uncle George used to call it during the War, but he was sleeping in the rain back then. Life finds a way, even in the dry season.
Outside the well-guarded SuperPharm, two blocks from my apartment, a blond-crested egret crouches beneath the transmission lines, which is not where he should be on a sunny afternoon. This bird is not well. He stumbles backward and falls, his giant webbed-feet outstretched like a clown sitting down. He will not let me get close enough to examine him, which, from personal experience, means that he is not yet sick enough to surrender.
The male turtle shows up at the seawall, and he too is suffering. His eyes resemble raw hamburg, either from some nasty infection or brutal attack, and I wonder if he can see anything at all. He is not feeding on the green slime as usual, just bobbing about in the wind, facing the sunset with his typical melancholy expression. My binoculars reveal bloody flesh but no sign of pupils. Maybe those big sad eyes are merely swollen shut for while. I do not want to jump into the rescue, not for a damned beautiful turtle.
At the Valley Harp Panyard, Yankee-capped Isaiah and and his classmate Kshawn have found the cupcakes before we can react, and suddenly the 8-year-olds are quite finished with their math homework. Chaim cannot even keep their attention playing Twister on the dirty slab. Instead, they race around the Panyard, crashing into steel drums, rattling the metal roof with jubilant screeches. Isaiah hits Kshawn with a flip flop, and now Kshawn tries to return the favor, chasing his friend through a train of empty pan-trolleys, hurdling over each iron slat like a steeplechase. I finally manage to settle Kshawn, albeit briefly, by having him type the first 5 letters of his name on my laptop computer—my school picture suddenly fills the screen. I inform him that we share an identity, but he thinks the coincidence is a trick.
An unshaven man outside hollers something sternly through the bars, either to or at the boys, then slowly moves on. He looks perturbed, perhaps protective of the musical instruments, or perhaps unhinged, but the boys take no notice of the stranger, as I am considered stranger still. In fact, I am likely the strangest person they have met—I give them cupcakes and talk like the TV—so they feel free to leap around the concrete rehearsal space, flinging sandals at steel pans to impress, jumping and waving, liberated. I am thankful Geronimo is not around today to complain.
After homework, I head over to Coco Ja Mini Mart for something cold, where two clerks exchange cash and groceries through rusted bars of a locked cage. When one has to carry a block of ice outside, he discovers that the key is missing. The two cannot get out, but at least I can. I wander up a street lined with walled-in cottages, and a bare-chested beggar requests money for breakfast. It is not a god-bless-you kind of request—rather, more a give-me-some-of-your-money kind. No one else is around, except for an occasional passing car. If he were holding a stick or something sharper, this might qualify as a mugging, such is the grey area of intersections on the Morne Coco Road. I make a hasty retreat on freshly laminated toes.