Read Online See Now Then by Jamaica Kincaid - Free Book Online Page B

phone he could see the young Heracles lying inside his little crib and his mother had been standing over him in a fit of imagining his future, remembering his future too, for the fate of a child is in the memory of the mother! The boy hero was asleep in his crib, on sheets made by Mrs. Sweet with her own hands, he could remember the nights in dark winter, when she should have been listening to his compositions of fugues and other somber tunes, she was knitting away, knitting away, weaving blankets, weaving sheets and diapers too, knitting tunics and such, and it was very disrespectful, for the creation of a thing is superior to the creation of a person, so thought Mr. Sweet to himself! That boy and his mother would become a title for a song to be sung by children, thought Mr. Sweet, and he made a mental note of that: Mrs. Sweet adoring her son and imagining her son’s greatness in the world that was to come, his triumphs, for here he is shooting the basketball in the hoop, when the hoop itself was miles away, and the golf ball into the hole when the hole itself was miles away, and hitting the baseball way out of the boundaries of the baseball park; and the baseball park itself was as big as the seventeenth largest island on the surface of the earth. Mrs. Sweet imagined her son’s future and they were very bitter images to Mr. Sweet. Seeing this scene of the adoring mother worshipping her young son, a hero to her already, as he lay sleeping in his little crib, how Mr. Sweet hated Mrs. Sweet and his hatred for the young Heracles, new to him, its reality new to him, increased; but this hatred was a new form of discomfort, so Mr. Sweet thought to himself. All the same, Mr. Sweet hated the young boy and wished that a family of snakes would appear from nowhere and devour him! But that did not become so, just then or ever. And so Mr. Sweet, sulking away, though that is too tame a word to describe his disturbance, his hatred, his confusion, thought of a number of dishes he could serve to Mrs. Sweet, if only he could cook: a soufflé of a young baby with no name; poached new baby with no name; a saddle of Heracles with lemon and thyme; she would devour them, for she loved to eat, anyone could see it in her expanding waist, the thickening of her upper arms, her eyelids, the lobes of her ears, her ankles like the feet of chairs in the drawing rooms of well-off people, meant to represent well-loved and domesticated animals; oh how Mr. Sweet hated Mrs. Sweet: she looked like something to eat, but afterwards you would hate even the thought of eating; and he could see her stout, overly well-fed body dead, in the hills of Montana or Vermont or somewhere like that, you know, where the leaves are turning gold, yellow, red because they are about to drop to the ground and become a metaphor, and metaphors are the true realm of a creator. But just then, as if she were seeing now, as clearly as she was in the present, Mrs. Sweet had a memory of her old friend Matt, who was the manageress of a grocery store that sold special cheeses and special hams and special yogurts and special everything necessary to cook a good meal from a cookbook written by Marcella Hazan or Paula Peck or Elizabeth David. And Matt, who lived with someone named Dan or Jim, Mrs. Sweet could not remember his name exactly right then, only that he spoke brilliantly about the weather, about the atmosphere, naturally, physically in which we would all live Then, and Now too. Matt gave Mrs. Sweet a number of recipes for cornbread: Edna Lewis, a cook whose family had its origins in slave society in Virginia; Nika Hazelton, whose recipe for cornbread Matt had adapted so that Mrs. Sweet had no interest in the original, for she loved Matt not in just that way she loved Mr. Sweet or the young Heracles; but her love for Matt was an exception, Mrs. Sweet loved her friend. But can love, all by itself, in isolation, be understood, or trusted even?
    But the telephone did ring and Mr. Sweet