AncilI think I was more interested in hearing what Kate had to say than Juliet.
“You have to always use proper grammar when you speak no matter if you’re from Trinidad.” Kate then went on to correct Juliet’s grammatical error. “You two are writers, question mark.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t say sorry. You just didn’t know better but that’s why I’m here; to teach you.”
I could tell that Kate was really enjoying this.
“Okay,” Juliet said with a smile
“What else do you like to do other than writing?”
“I like swimming but I doesn’t,” Juliet stopped, reassessing her words. “I mean, I DON’T get to swim because of my eyes.”
“That’s a misconception. You don’t need two eyes to swim,” Kate started.
“I know but Tanty Mavis does keep telling me to stay home when everybody goes out to the beach.”
“Do you go out at all?” Kate asked.
“School.”
“Besides school?”
“No.”
“We have to change that and change that quick,” Kate said.
“Quickly,” Juliet corrected.
“What?”
“It’s … quickly.”
Kate was about to defend her choice of grammar but she stopped mid-thought and then looked at me. “Quick or Quickly?” But before I could even conceptualize a thought she said, “It doesn’t matter right now. We’ll deal with that later. What does matter is us three having a day out.”
“We three,” Juliet attempted to correct.
“I’m pretty sure it’s us three,” Kate said.
Juliet laughed.
“Anyway, on Saturday, let’s have a day out and during the week we’ll get you a new eye patch. You know the kind that is worn by pirates?”
Juliet smiled and then said, “Yes.”
“I’ll see if I can get Kyle to order one for you,” Kate said.
“Eyy Cyclops!” Timothy came up to the table and shouted.”Time for bed!!”
Juliet’s head sulked back down as she heard the insult. I noticed it, Kate noticed it and we looked at each other unsure of what to do. Standing up for Juliet was an option but I just felt like it just wasn’t my place and I’m sure Kate felt the same way because she didn’t stand up for her either. Kate just touched Juliet by her arm and said. “We’ll talk tomorrow okay?”
“Okay.” Juliet then left the table as the dining room slowly cleared out.
Kate and I cleared out with the rest after eating then made our way back to the room. The first thing Kate did when she got to the room was grab a brush and brush her hair in front of the mirror. I, on the other hand, just threw myself on the bed but I quickly regretted it after the annoying squeaky sounds ensued.
“She’s nice,” I said.
“Yeah, I like her. I like her a lot.”
“I like she too,” I said.
Kate turned to me sharply as though I had done something wrong. I obviously knew why.
“I was just trying to speak Trini,” I said.
“Hmmm,” Kate said, turning back to the mirror. “I think I’ve figured out why Trinidadians speak so weird.”
“Weirdly.”
“What?”
“I said, please enlighten me,” I lied, bypassing my previous comment.
“I mean, it could just be a deep and inherent form of colonial protest but personally, I think that it’s an artistic choice.”
“An artistic choice?”
“Yes, an artistic choice. I don’t think Trinidadians say ‘I like she” instead of ‘I like her’ because they don’t know that ‘I like her’ is the right thing to say. Based on what I heard from Juilet, I think they know very well that their grammar is bad but it’s all about the prosody. The way it sounds in relation to their accent. I think it’s also about saying as many sentences as possible within a short period of time. Basically, they just try to shorten their sentences when speaking so that they can get more said within a given time frame while at the same time, sounding good.”
“That sort of makes sense.”
“So instead of saying ‘where did she go?’ they’ll just say, ‘where she gone?’ I’ve never heard a Trinidadian say ‘where she gone’ but I assume that they will say something like that. Obviously, I’m no expert so I could be wrong.”
Recently, I found myself really unable to contribute much to Kate’s philosophical comments. She pointed it out back in the forest in front of the fire but my excuse was that my head was throbbing. However, my head was perfectly fine but I couldn’t find one thing to say. Maybe, I was distracted. I mean, a lot was happening in my life and maybe my mind was just overwhelmed. From Samantha’s diagnosis to getting beaten by Vince to leaving my mom without saying goodbye to getting stranded in a foreign country. Everything was definitely a bit too much and there was Kate, dissecting the phonology of Trinidadians.
“You okay?” Kate asked.
“Yeah I’m fine, I was just thinking about how far we’ve come from that Don Hummers workshop.” I lied at first but then I actually began to think about it.
“I know right,” Kate said, making her way over to bed.
As she came I lay down and she made her home on my chest. Gosh, she smelt good. She had that kind of “fresh out of the shower” smell.
“Who knew that when we met back then we would have found ourselves here today?” Kate said.
“But that’s the thrill of adventure; not knowing what the future holds,” I said, feeling a bit better.
“Was it worth it?” Kate asked.
“Every minute of it,” I said.
“You’re such a liar. I know that deep down inside you hate me.”
“I don’t hate you at all.”
“I know. I’m stupid for assuming that but for some reason, I feel like if you are about to hurt me. Maybe it’s because everyone who loved me in the past hurt me you know. There are just certain moments in my past that I just can’t get out of my head; moments that haunt me every single time I get too close to someone; moments of abuse, abandonment, death.” Kate paused then uttered softly, “sexual assault.”
“You were raped?” I asked.
