Read Online If I Never Went Home by Ingrid Persaud - Free Book Online Page A

down like one of those African snails that we have in our yard. If you don’t have African snails then you lucky. They are the ugliest-est creatures in the whole wide universe, with a big fat brown body and a huge shell that can grow big as my fist. When I see them in the yard I used to stamp my foot on the shell and kill them. Nasty slimy giants. Apparently you not supposed to do that. Miss Celia see me killing one the other day and shout out that I doing it wrong because that don’t kill the eggs and each one of them disgusting snails have hundreds of eggs inside. The only way to make sure you kill off the snail and the eggs is to pour salt on it. Since then I have my own bag of salt I keep on the veranda. As soon as I wake up I go outside to check for snails. As the salt touches them they curl up, go fizzle-fizzle-fizzle and boops they dead. It’s probably a sin but I like to hear the sound of them snails dying. Fizzzz. I try to kill as many as I can before eating my cereal.
    Even if the holidays rushing by I think I will always remember this as the best Christmas ever. Mummy (who still writes the card ‘from Santa’) gave me a games console and Aunty Indra’s family added three games to go with it. Nanny bought a four-poster bedroom set and a three-piece living room set for my dolly house. They are amazing. I wish we had real furniture like that in our house. I even get a gift from Miss Celia. It was a book of children’s Bible stories and to be honest I know all the stories already but she is a poor old lady and I’m not even her family or anything.
    Every Sunday when Mummy cook lunch she makes me take some for Miss Celia. If you see how much food she does cook: rice, pigeon peas, stew chicken, macaroni pie, plantain and ground provision. Only things we don’t eat are pork and beef. Mummy say proper Indian people don’t eat pork because it dirty and they don’t eat cow because it holy. We always have enough left over for Monday and Tuesday even after giving Miss Celia food. It makes up for the other days when Mummy too tired to cook and we make do with bread and cheese or corned beef and rice. I want to learn to cook but Mummy said I’m too small to light the stove. Next year I should be old enough.
    We missed church this morning. Mummy got up late and went straight in the kitchen. Apparently the Lord will have to wait till she done cooking. We aiming for the seven o’clock service tonight and as school not opening till Wednesday it won’t interfere with bedtime. I don’t see why we can’t skip church this one Sunday. Is not like God didn’t see us plenty times over Christmas and New Year, but I best keep that thought to myself. The one thing you don’t want to see is my mother when she vex.
    So is church we heading to, never mind it started raining. We catch a maxi-taxi that take us right outside the church. Still it had enough puddles to jump over from the road to inside the church. Hardly anybody in the congregation – only some old people who look like they might drop down and dead before the service finish. The man in front of us must be at least forty he so old. During the sermon – which was the story of the good Samaritan – I count thirty people in church. But is the singing that does bring down the service. Not a single one of them old-timers could sing ‘Great is thy Faithfulness’ in tune. On top of that the rain like it want to mash up the church roof. You can’t include Mummy in the singing because she don’t sing. She does pretend she singing but you don’t hear a sound coming out her mouth. Today every hymn we sing ending up sounding like we at a funeral – as if the Bible ban happiness in church or else the Lord will strike us down.
    At least the service didn’t go over time and, since this wasn’t the usual group we worship with, Mummy had no excuse to stay behind and talk to this body and that body. As soon as I step out into the churchyard I accidentally land in a puddle