The New Adages

Prologue

There were times when I thought poverty was an incredible blessing; I had a story to tell but what did the rich kids have? I had experiences to share, did the rich, saving the short experiments with the wrong expensive elements that might have ended in a sarcastic error, have any? I don't know, funny that I would never know, because I am poor. We are poor. We could've made money and reserved a top drawer name, but we didn't. I am simply going to pin it on bad luck and cats, though that won't explain much of who I am.

The Sunday morning preacher said so, mama quotes, "God has a plan and we, patience."

Jesus!

One of the million dumb mysteries of old people's procedure of thinking I shall never understand.

So I argued, "Is that so? Are you politely implying that God is, in fact, responsible for all the wrongs of this world? Is he doing this to us?"

She blinked. I knew I had hit a spot, though not a dent deep for she then barked the customary comeback of a devotee, "People have the right to choose, and so if they choose the wrong you don't get to blame God for it."

Hell no, I didn't blame God for it. Only someone who believed in God could blame him.

MARCH 0060

I was 11, young and naïve, not to mention third degree stupid. Mama had send me down to the bazaar to sell the eggs for a loaf of brown bread. I handed the black cook the basket of eggs and wait by the steps leading to the front door of the kitchen from where I could see people, smell food. The terribly aching smell of good food, different food, food for which you paid big but got little. I took a deep drag and stood there in a trance, feeling the smell of baked beans fill my nostrils and blood, before I threw them up via the same path.

White bread smells goodlier than brown, but we can't afford white. I had never eaten white bread, either. Though, not mathematically speaking, I have touched it once. Three years back: when mama took me to her work abode and the rich lady who owns it had some freshly out of the hearth bread made out for dinner. 'Out of hunger not but of greed' (quote) I tried to snitch a bug piece of the bread, well that's all, my intents were purely holy. Ha, did anyone seem interested to know that, I don't think so!

Those were 55 seconds of pretence death, to heaven and back to reality. The bread, boy was it not the downiest my calloused hands have felt. I thought I was wading them through the clouds which was what distracted me for almost a minute before the rich witch caught me off-guard and made a fundamental issue.

Moral of the story - God don't want the poor touching/ thinking of white bread ever again!!

So there I was all disappointed and broke to the very core of no return, longing for some white bread but knowing all too well it was only 'greed and not hunger'. I prayed the cook return sooner, and though God does not abide to our habitual, meaningful prayers, he does this to this one.

I grab the paper bag from his fingers and dash out as far away from the cook-house as possible.

Putting the misery of temptation behind me I walk back home, fingers crossed that I don't meet familiar faces so I could reach home sooner and push some bread into the void in my tummy.

Even so I did meet a face, not a familiar one, an unfamiliar one moreover. He was a boy, a year or two maybe older, his head bent over his knees, squat near a coniferous by the dusty road. I hover beside him, something about him hinders me from moving forward, like he's calling out to me. Something very, very peculiar.

I walk up to him, on my hurting toes, feline silent, prowling. When I reach him, subtly as possible, without waking the perhaps sleeping boy, I slide my second three fingers through the golden ornament on his neck and with my other hand holding the pocket knife from my harems, flick it across the accessory. It won't budge. I try harder. And a little harder then, which sets a motion across his body. He lifts his face and looks up at me with wet eyes, red nose and a trembling mouth.

"Fuck!" he scored over the silent air and groped the ground to move himself away from me. "What do you want???"

He prised it off his neck and threw it across, towards me. "This?" he bellows pointing at the delicate looking gold necklace at my feet. "Go away! Take it and go away. Go the hell away."

For hardly a second I stare into his whelming eyes, frightened of his screaming torn voice, tears bolting down. And then I don't care. I grabbed the gold off the ground and ran back to the cook-house and bought myself the biggest loaf of white bread and head home via another route.