TIME WAITS FOR NO MAN

 

 TIME WAITS FOR NO MAN

 

“Let’s go,” their mother called urgently.

 It was time for ten year old Theresa and eight year old Johnson to leave for school, but they ignored their mother who took a loud, deep breath. They ignored that as well.

 “I said let’s go,” she yelled.

 “Matt’s gone!” Johnson yelled back as he turned toward the porch to go in search of the hamster.

 “Remember that time waits on no man,” I cut in.

 I have been trying to drill into them a respect for time. My mother had taught me that time did its own thing. There was some satisfaction in the fact that it ignored the rich as well as the poor.

 I had taught them that nobody could boss around time. Everybody, even their teachers, had to respect time. They resisted the teaching. The yearning to do what they wanted whenever they wanted to do it, was still strong. Lessons from the adult world seemed wrong and out of place.

 The reality was that Matt, their beloved hamster, was not in his cage. He was not on the porch. He was not in the play area among the palm trees. He was not by the lake. He was not under the rock where the other hamster hid whenever it escaped. How could anyone entertain the thought of himk leaving for school when Matt was probably gone the way of the other six hamsters – never to return.

 Johnson was the one to see about Matt last night. When his mother began to fret about their carelessness, he tried to defend himself by saying that he was the ONLY one doing ALL the work, taking care of the hamsters.

 His sister’s guilty smile appeased him and he tried to recall the events. He had changed the water, put some food in the sugar plastic cannister that Matt treasured as his nest. We called it his bin. Johnson had closed the lid of the cage. Everybody could take a look. He did not like being blsmed.

 The cage was indeed the way it should be, but Matt was not in it. I knew that Johnson was suggesting that somebody had stolen Matt. I nodded. I had to bear in mind that he was reading the Hardy Boys series, but I acknowledged that theft was a possibility.

 Matt was quite popular with the neighborhood kids because he was fat and cuddly looking. He had never been taken because he liked to bite hands that had an unfamiliar touch. Some of the other hamsters had disappeared only to reappear. They repeated the pattern until they were finally gone leaving Matt the king of the porch. The other baby hamster could not match Matt’s size. When they were viewed together, Matt looked like a guinea pig.

 “Let’s GO!!” their mother shrieked.

 It was five minutes past the time they usually left for school if they wanted to be early.

 I could hear Mam’s voice saying “Time waits for no man.”

 She hated tardiness. Slow, aimless movements irritated her. “Stop moving like a ship going to China,” she would shout at me.

 I had tried to speed it up, but Johnson decided to go back to the porch to have another look.

 “I am leaving right now,” his mother shouted. She was at the door.

 “Don’t you care about Matt?” Johnson shouted back.

 “This is about getting to school on time.” His mother was firm.

 He hesitated. School had never seemed so unimportant.

 “It is TIME that doesn’t care about Matt,” I said.

 He thought about that for a few moments. Lately, he had been in conflict with time and had yet to claim a decisive victory. Whenever he tried to stay up and finish a game on his playstation, he could not wake up in the morning to go to school. He hurried to get ready only to yell, “Just in time.”

 He came up with the idea of bathing before going to bed instead of in the morning, but time still won. He crawled out of bed grumpy and tired. He was almost late for a test.

 “Matt is lost but you still have to be in school,” I said.

 Scowling, he did not respond. He was thinking.

 

“You may not go to school, but school will go on, with or without you.”

As I spoke, I could hear Mam’s soft voice saying, “Life goes on, with or without us. We cannot stop time and we cannot hurry it up. We just have to fit in the best way we could.”

 As if speaking with Mam’s approval, I continued. “The students and teacher may miss you at school, but they won’t sit and wait for you. Time does not wait for the poor or for the rich. It does not wait for the sad ones or the happy ones.”

 After he left for school, I went outside. I thought about Matt. Whenever he was allowed to explore the porch, he always returned to the bin. When the children took him to the palm trees and released him, he always made it back to the porch with the children racing behind him and cheering. To them he was so clever.  When Matt had decided to explore around the house and we did not know where he was, the stench of his bin brought him out from under the couch.

 With that in mind, I cleaned up the cage. I fixed the bin with fresh paper and food then I tilted the cage so that Matt could enter.

 Johnson noticed what I had done as soon as he get home from school.

 “You made a trap?”

I nodded, pleased to see the glee on his face. Wanting to keep him happy I added. “He is probably sleeping right now” I said.

He nodded and said, “They are nocturnal.”

“Big hug,” he said, turning to face me with outstretched arms.

I gave his slight frame a tight hug.

“You are the best auntie.”

“You are my best eight year old nephew,” I replied, hoping that he connected to the thought that although time may not care about anyone or anything, but people do.

REMEMBERING MAM

Mam was the village money lender. She did not charge any interest. At her funeral were those who still had to pay back – some after many years. I felt compelled to remind them of this in the eulogy – not in a subtle and malicious effort to collect, but to show that I understood why so many had made the effort to come to pay their respect. I wanted them to know that I understood why she did not mind being awaken in the early hours of the morning before the cocks crowed, donkeys brayed and dogs barked – reminders that it was time for morning prayers.
Like her, I heard the small sleepy voices of the children who were sent on this begging errand before the crack of dawn. The doors and shutters of the small wooden house were still closed, but they never kept out the rattling force of the wind gusting in from the Atlantic ocean and making us reluctant to leave the warmth of worn blankets that quickly got pulled over our heads. The voices also came in without resistance.
“Good morning, Miss A. Mama said if you can lend her a dollar.”
They never identified themselves or their mothers, but my mother knew each voice and made an instant link to the mothers. There were no rejections. There were no forms to sign. There were no belittling remarks to the children about overdue accounts. Times, she would say, were hard.
The bed creaked as she got up without hesitation to lend a helping hand. She searched in the dark for the cotton head-tie that could never fit right on her long, thick head of hair she inherited from her African and Portuguese parents. She clapped it on her head and tried to succeed in fastening it, if not in straightening it. I was sure that the children could hear the reassuring sounds of her feet moving in shuffling haste on the wooden floor. In their minds they could see her grabbing the money bag from under the pillow. She never had to look or ask for it because we never touched it without her permission. The money bag was a piece of fabric, usually cotton, shaped into little sack, not more than about 8 inches long, stitched together with a drawstring opening. It was never stuffed to the brim, but it was never empty either.
She went to the back door that faced the ocean. The wind greeted her as if dancing with a playmate. She staggered a bit, but regained her balance. Off went the head-tie, but the attempt to undo the long thick plaits were futile. The long cotton nightgown billowed to fatten her slight frame. Never one to be fat, but always admiring those who had meat on their bones, she laughed enjoying the fantasy of having her wish fleetingly granted by a pesky friend.
The supplicants spoke up. She attended to those who needed a dollar or more to head the to shops in the neighboring village where the bought bread, butter, evaporated milk or other breakfast and lunch items. She nodded in agreement to the requests of parents who wanted her to buy shoes, ribbons, buttons or fabric from the bigger stores in the small capital city – known as the town. She never bothered to write it down in the stained, dogeared notebook she scribbled in. They sent no money. Perhaps she knew that they could never repay it all. She always honored their requests. I was always amazed that she knew their shoe size. Later on, after her return from the town, she would organize the pick ups and share a joke with grateful mothers. After that she would sit on the back step facing the Atlantic ocean to shell the bowl of green pigeon peas somebody had brought for our supper. She threw a few to the roosters, hens and chicks who had gathered around. She had already fed the pigs so she could sit and listen to their grunts as they feasted on the treat of over-ripe mangoes somebody else had left in the back yard. She would enjoy the breeze that fanned her face to dry the sweat and lessen the heat of the mid-afternoon sun. Life, she would say, was not easy, but it was worth it to be alive.