I reached the crest of my hill just as she came down the one on the opposite side. We almost collided in the middle of the four-way intersection known simply as “Junction.”
“What are you doing here?” My mother’s question was deceptively calm. I stammered in confusion, trying in vain to hide my guilty hands behind my back. The question was largely rhetorical. I didn’t understand it yet, but our “collision” at the intersection was the result of her carefully constructed planning and timing.
My sister and I had planned our foray into crime with the blissful childish unawareness of the “long arm” of parental perception, wisdom, and shrewdness. Tired of being what seemed to us the only “broke” kids at recess, we had decided to help ourselves to some money that happened to be just lying around—in Mummy’s handbag.
Our twenty-five cents heist would open the door to the world of the recess rich—tins of condensed milk, rock cakes[i] and mauby[ii] from Ms. Rose’s shop, and sweeties (candy), lots of sweeties. We didn’t, and probably couldn’t articulate it, but a certain underlying sense of indignant deprivation suggested that it was the style of recess to which we were entitled.
The plan seemed perfect. I would get an early start for school and make my way to Mrs. Morgan’s shop as it was only a slight detour away from the walk to school. In our nervous excitement, we never stopped to consider the suspicious nature of our sudden departure from routine.
It was customary for all three of us to walk together as far as our school fifteen minutes from home. Mum would then continue the additional forty-five-minute trek to her job as a teacher in a neighboring village.
It is laughable now to think how far it was from our minds that our mother would wonder why I suddenly lit out from home that morning, instead of waiting for her and my sister. But now, nothing in the moment of reckoning suggested laughter.
As she advanced towards me, my hands continued to close tightly around the now sticky mix of paradise plums[iii], peanut logs[iv], and all the other “fruit” from our tree of rebellion. Not for a moment did she avert her eyes as she repeated the question, “What are you doing here?” And then quickly added another, “What’s that in your hands?”
No wit or reason could I muster to withstand the penetrating gaze. “Sweeties,” I blurted out, casting around desperately for a glimpse of my sister. She was nowhere in sight.
“Where did you get the money to buy sweeties?” was the obvious next question. My brain, locked in permanent vacancy, offered me its only pathetic reply, “A girl gave it to me.” The gaze never shifted. “Oh really!” What girl?” I was running out of fig leaves. “I don’t know her name,” I heard myself stammer.
“Very well,” she said, “you can show me the girl.” My mother grabbed me by the hand, sweeties and all, and marched me resolutely towards the school.
I was past the tipping point of terror when I finally spied my sister peering over the hilly mound of dirt that served as a shortcut into our school yard. Unaware of the wretched unraveling of “Project Recess,” she had been waiting for me with the utmost anticipation.
As my gaze met hers, anticipation gave way to panic as she grasped the significance of Mum’s unrelenting hold on my wrist. And finally every string of my nervous system gave way and my fevered brain shattered into a million pieces. And with its last dying gasp escaped the words, “There’s the girl!”
Epilogue:
Our mother postponed discipline till late afternoon, as she had to continue her long walk to school. It wasn’t pretty. But even if she had not disciplined us (fat chance!), the pangs of conscience, the weight of duplicity and the stresses of the tangled web of lies were in themselves powerful reinforcers of the life lesson, “Thou Shalt Not Steal.”
In all honesty, the longing to have goodies at recess never went away, but never again were we tempted to steal to make it possible. For us, the thought of stealing would forever curdle the dreams of condensed milk, crumble the longing for rock cakes, sour the hankering for mauby. And rob the plum of paradise.
[i] Rock cakes are a type of scone. [ii] A bitter-sweet drink made from the bark of a tree. Reminiscent of root beer. [iii] Caribbean hard candy. [iv] Caribbean peanut-flavored hard candy in the shape of peanuts. Similar in shape to US circus peanuts, but unlike circus peanuts, peanut logs are hard and brittle.
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