One of my short stories, ‘Better’ was long-listed for the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival Contest 2024. ‘Better’ explores the realities of poverty and loss, as well as the innate dignity of human life.
BETTER
by
Aya Taliba Ayodike
Nogood crouched behind the berm that ran the length of Beetham Place. His stomach gnawed and writhed on itself. Still, his eyes were drawn to the display of fluorescent orange across the western sky. A larger-than-life, mellowed sun sank into the Gulf of Paria.
Billows of black smoke belched across the Beetham Highway, smothering the orange glow. The LaBasse landfill was burning. High up in the air, the corbeaux circled, downwind. The smoke thickened. Nogood choked, his eyes watered. The pain in his gut intensified. When last had he eaten?
Nogood’s real name, Kwame, meant ‘problem-solver’. Well now, he had the biggest problem of his life to solve. In all of his twelve years, his mamma had provided everything. Every night, smiling, he rubbed his full belly as he drifted into a contented sleep.
Until yesterday…..
Nogood knew what death was. When vehicles speeding up the Beetham Highway injured unwary animals, he found them groaning, then their eyes glazed, finally they went rigid on the dirt shoulder where the car or truck had pitched them.
Well, his mother had groaned then glazed. He knew rigid was coming. He gave one loud, terrified scream. One. Then he clapped his hands over his mouth. What would he do without his mamma?
The next morning, Nogood gathered up his hand-me-down clothes into the one battered suitcase. He gulped down a belly-full of water at the nearby standpipe. Then he ran away before the authorities came, choosing to try his luck running with the pack of street boys.
He ventured west, daringly close to the Central Market. Here was hope. But his footsteps froze, his heart hammered in his chest. He turned away empty-handed, chicken-hearted, back to the safety of his hiding-place, until the pain in his gut made him scramble up. He had to find something to eat.
The Beetham street boys, the ten or twelve of them, what did they eat? He wanted to be part of that pack. He did not like, no, he was already tired of being alone, looking for crumbs.
He swallowed more water from another stand-pipe, and returned to his find, an abandoned hut. The night was still young. He hunched his back against the strongest-looking post. Images from his past circled his brain.
From the time he could walk, he was full of mischief. When his first blundering, childish attempts at trickery failed, the neighbours shook their heads.
“Boy, is a pity your father get kill on the Beetham. You need someone to give you a good cut-tail or you’ll come to no good!”
The bigger boys mimicked their elders, shouting, “Nogood. Nogood. Nogood”, roughing him up. The nickname stuck.
He stretched out on the hard ground and drifted into an uneasy sleep. Hunger had him by the loins.
A roiling gut forced him up early, pushed him to go in search of the street boys. Again, he drank as much water as he could hold before running helter-skelter the length of Main Street. He found them pow-wowing under the doungs tree.
The leader faced the group. He had their attention. Bois in hand, he swayed his thin, spare body, stabbing the ground for emphasis. To Nogood he looked as tough as nails. His voice, full of menace, held Nogood spellbound.
“Do as I say if you know what good for you!”
Starboy lifted the bois high. “Anybody want to try their hand at overpowering me?”
He scanned the silent group.
“Just remember, an orphan boy don’t have time to be somebody. Fend for yourself: look for some morsel to eat, some scrap to cover your body, some hidey-hole to sleep. Nothing else!”
Nogood hesitated on the outskirts, gulping in air, trying to squeeze in courage. He could feel a stranglehold on his throat.
A whispered, “I want to join y’all,” resulted in a firm hand in the small of his back pushing him forward.
“Starboy, look Nogood want to ask you somet’ing.”
Nogood stumbled past craning necks, swivelling bodies, murmurs running through the crowd. Starboy raised his hand, the murmurs cut clean.
“I want to join the gang.”
Protests came from the crowd.
“Which gang? Not this one. Look around. Is a buncha big tough fellas here. ”
“You want in? You ent got what it takes, you lil runt!”
“You t’ink your nickname is Nogood for joke?”
Nogood turned to glare. One quelling look, then Starboy stared hard at Nogood. Starboy bent over and gave Nogood a rough slap on the cheek. Surprise as much as hurt brought the tears. And shame when he heard the laughter.
“See what I mean?” Starboy steupsed long and loud. “When you think you able to beat up somebody, come back.”
Desperate, Nogood held his ground. “I can learn from right here and now.”
He held his body more upright, his head higher. He doubled up his fists.
A voice shouted, “Lemme beat him up! He don’t know the first t’ing ‘bout fighting!”
Nogood shouted back, “But I could learn!”
Starboy looked around the group. “It’s not only fighters we need. Sometimes a good talker or actor will work too. ….”
He turned to Nogood.
“We planning a market run. One distract the vendors…A next one slip something into his pocket. Work in sync.”
Nogood saw his chance, “I can help. I’ll do it!”.
Snickers.
Defiance raised his head. “I can do it. I know what to do.”
He did a little pantomime that got him smiles all round, and a few nods.
Starboy held up his hand. “Hmm, hear what? You be the decoy.”
Nogood could already feel the food sliding down into his belly.
It was Saturday morning, the Central Market was crowded. Nogood positioned himself in front, a little distance away from the group of boys. He chose the isolated vendors, one by one. He lifted his pinched face up. He went right up to the edge of each stall and leaned over, his little voice just loud enough for them to hear. “Please, m’am, you could …” No vendor let him finish.
“Poor lil thing, look how small and puny you look. How old are you? You here by yourself? Where your mother? I bet you hungry. Here take this. It could help fill your little belly.” They focused on his observable plight.
Meanwhile, boy after boy pocketed some produce off the distracted vendor’s stall. A quick hand slid up, snatched and disappeared.
Before long, however, things went awry. One clumsy fellow tumbled the pomme-cytheres around, and one dropped from his hand. He scrambled after the rolling fruit. The alarm was raised. The boys scattered, leaving Nogood standing, mouth agape.
“Where the police? Call the police! Wretched boys!”
Nogood ducked down low, his eyes searched around. He had only moments.
The Police Station was right across the road from the Market’s main western entrance. Nogood crouched even lower and belly-flopped to a discarded wooden box lying on its side in an empty stall. He squeezed himself inside and held his breath.
Was it safe yet? He counted a slow twenty. He listened hard. When he finally poked out his head, he gasped as his eyes made four with a tall, stern-faced policeman.
“Aha, I ketch you, you lil scamp!”
The uniformed man made a grab for him, catching his sleeve. He squirmed and wriggled his way out of those grasping fingers. He took off dodging his way through the crowd. He let out a ragged breath as he raced towards the market exit. One glance back and he could see the policeman still on his tail. He was scared silly. He had to find someplace to hide.
The Market’s northern wall came into view. He rounded the bend at top speed, crashing into an off-loaded transport truck. The engine was revving up, the tarpaulin was lying crumpled in the empty tray. He jumped in, slipped under the cover, and felt the truck moving. Heading east, away from the Market. When he felt it pick up speed, he risked a peep out. No policeman in sight. The truck was already bowling along the Beetham Highway. Time to complete his escape. He dived off the tray, rolling onto the dirt shoulder on the outside of the berm. But he was still out in the open, he still did not feel safe. Picking himself up, he raced along the shoulder, looking left and right for a secure hiding-place. The gas-station was too open. The youth facility was always guarded. The high bank of dirt coming into view on his right gave him the idea. The perfect hiding place. The entrance was coming up. All he had to do was cross the Highway. He dodged across both east and west-bound lanes in a blare of horns, narrowly escaping the speeding cars, the shouted curses, the hands raised in angry horror.
He did not stop until he was deep inside the LaBasse. No possibility of pursuit. A triumphant smile flashed. The boys had escaped without helping him, but he had succeeded. This was the last place anyone would look for anybody. Nogood gulped in deep, steadying breaths. The foetid air made him grimace.
He looked around. This was the LaBasse, the Dump, the Beetham landfill. Large empty dump trucks lined the sides of a neat pattern of dirt roads. Mounds of trash made hills of garbage, dwarfing him.
Every morning the older boys accompanied the men of Beetham Place across the Highway. He had always been afraid to follow the salvagers into this taboo place. Now here he was good and proper. The bottom line though was that he had come away from the caper safe, but empty-handed, empty-bellied. Nogood’s shoulders sagged, his head drooped low.
Raucous squawking forced his eyes skywards. The corbeaux were circling, soot-black wings outspread, gliding on the wind. The human salvagers were being replaced by animal scavengers. Now they coasted down, feathers closing with each flap, in a sure-footed landing. The birds picked their way through the debris, heads up, pace measured.
One bird in particular, larger than the rest, moved closer and closer to him. The hairs on the back of his neck began to lift. He stared, round-eyed, at the corbeau, fixed on its bulbous eyes. This was the death bird, the carrion-crow, the warrior scavenger. He had heard more than enough about them in bedside tales. Was this bird trying to frighten him off?
A silent cry: “Go away! Vamoose! Don’t come near me!”
Nogood crouched nearer to the ground. The bird still advanced. He lifted his hands in some sweeping movements, and shouted this time, “Marche! Marche! Scram!”
The bird pressed closer.
What did he want? The bird held his its head high, turning from right eye to left and back. Nogood absorbed the mix of colours and textures of that turning head. Translucent white beak, dark brown nostrils, red rouge flowing up to marron mascara encircling a jet-black, glowing eye. King Cobo. Unexpected, beautiful.
The hairs at the back of Nogood’s neck calmed down. He folded his arms and sat back. The corbeau transfixed him with an intense stare. Mesmerised, he perceived himself in the mirror of King Cobo’s eye.
He walked tall and straight, through a familiar landscape. Yet somehow it was brighter, more dazzling. A slice-through showed the trash underground. It mulched upward into rich green vegetation, under a blaze of blue sky. In a flash, he saw his mother transitioning into a higher existence, a better world. Inside his head, like rumbling thunder, thoughts exploded, about nature and balance and cycles of life. Nogood understood the message conveyed by this conjunction of bird, land and human. He imagined a better self. Inside the eye of the corbeau, in that dazzling panoramic world, he was no longer a no-good, he was better than that.
The corbeau gave a deliberate blink, cutting off the vision. Nogood rubbed his eyes, looked around, returned to the debris and rubbish. The bird minced away. Nogood sat immobile, his brain on rewind. His thoughts swirled. Was he going crazy? No, it could not be his imagination. He understood the cycle: life, death; new life. After a while he shook his limbs loose and headed back to the outside world.
After the Market fiasco, would the boys still let him join? Worst of all, he still had not eaten. He shook his head to clear his swirling thoughts and drifted into a half-sleep.
The next day brought a different kind of excitement. Waiting at the doungs tree, the boys received Starboy’s order. “Time to celebrate. In an hour we head into town.”
Nogood’s was wide-eyed at the brightness of Port-of-Spain. The capital city. Reflecting glass walls and inviting fast-food outlets. An incredible display of bright shining pictures of a great variety of foods. He reached up to seize them, they looked so real. In the very centre of downtown, people lined the entire length of the B-L Promenade. Everyone was laughing and talking, and most of all, eating.
Across from the B-L Promenade, the boys crowded into a semi-circular alcove in a fast food place. Two boys went off to order the food. Nogood wondered where it all came from. Starboy explained. Everyone listened with only half an ear. Nogood’s belly burned with anticipation.
“Between your takings,” he pointed at Nogood, “and my salvage work yesterday we have enough for this treat.”
Nogood’s voice squeaked in surprise. “My takings?”
“While everyone focused on you, the other boys came away with a lot. Got a good bit of money in exchange.”
Starboy looked around. “I know y’all may be feeling a little bad about leaving Nogood behind. But anything else and some of you mighta end up in jail. He still manage to escape on his own.”
He turned his attention to Nogood. “Where did you disappear to?”
“The LaBasse. I couldn’t let the police catch me. I didn’t mean to let y’all down.”
Starboy clapped him on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry. You did good. We know it wasn’t your fault, it was AWKWARD here. He lucky we let him come today at all!”
Awkward ducked his head.
The two boys returned, arms laden, and distributed the food. Everyone had a packed box. They plumped one down in front of Nogood. Starboy’s voice halted reaching hands.
“Hold it!”
“Oh no! No more talk!” The protests rang out. “Food first!”
Starboy laughed and backed off. "Okay, okay, till later then. I done!”
Nogood opened his box and admired its contents. Delicious accra and saheena jostled potato wedges, barbecued pork and two pieces of fried chicken. A feast fit for a king. Long sought after. His stomach gurgled. He glanced around, but no one was paying him any attention. He lifted up the golden brown chicken leg and took a long, slow bite, savouring it. Life was good, was back to normal.
Bellies full, they stepped out into the afternoon sunshine. They walked east, in a line, like kings of the Promenade, turning heads and raising eyebrows. Nogood was still rubbing his stomach and smiling as the food settled in his belly. Moreover, the boys had treated him like one of them. Everyone gave him a wedge or two. ‘Awkward’ made amends with an extra piece of chicken. They teased him, saying, “From Nogood to Somegood now, huh?”
Nogood recalled the vision. He had always been Nogood to everyone. But now, he was somebody.
He felt the scrutiny and looked up. Their eyes made four. Again. Oh no, not again. In slow-motion sequence, Nogood watched his tall, stern-faced opponent rise up, drag handcuffs out of a side pocket and advance. Nogood imagined the cold hard steel vice gripping his wrists. He catapulted backwards, out of lawful reach, and landed his best acrobatic flip, steady on his feet. No one was going to catch him now.
In the LaBasse, he threw off the fear that had fuelled his headlong flight out of Port-of-Spain. He greeted his now-familiar hiding-place with a half-smile.
The sun sank in another display of orange glory. Kwame sat atop a hillock. A golden light crept over him. Once again, his eyes turned westwards. No smoke yet to obscure the beauty, to confuse his vision. He had reclaimed his rightful name.
He heard before he saw the dump truck in the distance. He looked beyond it at a body on the ground. Asleep? Knocked out? A weekend drinker who had escaped the cars as he zigzagged over the Highway and stumbled into a drunken stupor?
He saw the fatal path of the dump truck. He did not hesitate. But he was too small to make that deadweight budge. There was no one else around. He was puny but swift. He raced in front of the truck, yelling and screaming. He leapt up and down. Did the driver not hear him? Would the driver not see him? He saw the driver register shock, and horror, just as the weight of the truck hit him. He closed his eyes to the sound of screeching brakes.
From out of nowhere, the boys gathered around him. Starboy was on his knees beside Nogood, holding him up. ‘Awkward’ was holding his hand. He smiled at both of them, then at the circle of boys. This time they had every reason to feel proud. They had not abandoned him.
The truck driver was standing to one side, staring, wordless, from the sleeping man on the ground to the dying boy blocking his way.
“How did you find me?”
“Where else? We all know this is the first place you’ll hide.”
“Did the truck stop in time?”
“Yes, you saved that man’s life. You did good, Nogood.”
Kwame looked westward and caught a last glimpse of the disappearing sun. The corbeaux circled overhead. The obscuring smoke billowed from the burning LaBasse. With his dying breath, the boy whispered, “My name is … Kwame.”
The End
GLOSSARY of Trinidadian English terms
accra – a delicacy made from fried saltfish and flour
aloo pie – a potato pie
bois – the sticks used in stick-fighting
bouff – a harsh scolding
bush tea – local herb tea
corbeaux – vultures, pronounced locally ‘cobo’
doubles – an Indian delicacy
doungs – a hardy tree with an abundance of sharp thorns and fleshy, juicy fruit
grip – a cardboard suitcase or travelling bag
hops-bread – small cheap bun
Kwame – his birthpaper name, after a Trinidadian black achiever, Kwame Toure.
LaBasse – a landfill just outside Port of Spain
marche – go away, used to chase animals
Midnight Robber – a Carnival character // the Grim Reaper
pomme-cythere – a local fruit, also called golden apple
robber-talk – the bombastic, arrogant speech of the Midnight Robber
saheena – an Indian delicacy from fried dasheen bush and flour
steupsed – a colloquialism, louder and more forceful than just sucking one’s teeth
vamoose – go away