I Can be the Man of the house.

I can be the Man of the House

Greg walked proudly at the side of his friend trying to put the same
swing in his steps, it was not easy but then he was just a little bit
smaller and had to look up to Frans when he talked to him.

"Are you sure that your mother not going to make a fuss about your
going off to Holland with a strange man?" asked Frans again, he just
had to be very sure about this.
"I told you, she has so much problems on her head she going to be glad
that someone taking one of them off her hands."

Greg was a bit worried that Frans was going to change his mind about
taking hem to Holland this time as he had promised. "Any way we going
to tell her that I going to stay with aunty Mabel in Rotterdam, she not
going to make a fuss about that, because aunty Mabel is a church woman
and she strict with she own children. I already call her on the phone
and tell her that I get a job and only want a place to stay."

Frans hoped that he was right, he had already spent too much time
preparing his trip and did not want to stay hanging around too long,
and he had other things to do.

They arrived at the house, a small box like structure deep in the
shantytown. The piece of ground in front of the house was swept clean
and there were two children from about five and six years old playing
in the dirt with a few marbles. Not waiting on ceremony the two men
went into the house, Greg calling as they entered "Ma I home," A
curtain that set a part of the room out of sight was pushed aside and a
big woman appeared, when she saw that he had brought company she was a
bit annoyed but only because she was just combing her hair and she
found it annoying to receive anyone before she had tied on her head
cloth. She was always saying, "Ain't nobody want to see my ugly dada
head."

When she saw that it was Frans whom she had already met a few times she
was a bit mollified and poured hem a glass of cold water which was all
that she had in house. He accepted it with a "Thank you ma", and sat
down on one the plastic stools by the table, which was the only other
piece of furniture in the house.

Greg began at once with his story; his mother watched him without
interrupting and then sat down on the steps in front of the door. She
turned to Frans and said "He going to work for you?" "Yes," he said "I
told you that I have my own business and he and I we getting along
fine, I am also going to buy his ticket and he is going to pay me back
from his pay, a bit every month. He say that he had already called his
aunty in Rotterdam to ask if he could stay with her and it is all
right."

"When you all going to go?" she asked. She saw at once that she could
better accept what they were telling her. What could she say, he had a
job now, and here the only thing that he did was hanging around on the
strand smoking hash all day. He was just sixteen but she saw how his
life was going to turn out if he stayed here at home and she knew that
he would not have very long to live because he would have to get
involved in the drugs if he ever hoped to make a bit of money. Any one
who got involved in drugs had a very short life, but on the island
there was not a damned thing else for the boys to do.

The next week after a great send off party his mother brought him to
the airport with a taxi. She had gotten a bit of money from Frans who
told her that it was an advance on the paycheck from Greg. She was very
grateful for the money, a washwoman does not earn such a lot, and she
did have two small ones at home whose father had disappeared a few
years before just as the father from Greg had done before.

She stood close to him now not knowing if this goodbye could be
forever. She had a strange feeling about it but what could she do.
Everyone would call her a fool if she did not let him go, and he would
have slipped away anyhow if she had refused to let him go. Frans had
left the island a few days after his visit to her house. She wondered
if she really should be thankful to him for taking Greg so far away,
anyway what was done was done! Nothing left to do now but say goodbye
and hope for the best.

The days went by slowly while Ma waited for the telephone telling her
that Greg had arrived in Rotterdam. When she had not heard from hem
after two weeks she called her sister.

"What you saying, is Greg by me? I ain't see that boy since he a baby,
you know that so what you asking me. You mean that he all two weeks in
the Netherlands and he ehnt come and day hello? No I ain't see him at
all."
Ma felt as if she had been stuck by lighting, what had happened to her
son!

The announcement was not anything special in this time of unsolved
murders and assassinations in the drugs world "Today a passer-by found
the body of a young man hidden in the bushes of a vacant lot near the
docks in Rotterdam. The man was between eighteen and twenty years old
and wore a yellow shirt with long sleeves, denim trousers, and red nike
running shoes. Any one with information about the identity of the man
is asked to contact the Police in his area.

Aunty sat looking at the television when the news came on. She had just
put down the telephone with her sister on the island and suddenly she
was convinced that the body that had been found was that of her nephew.
She called her son who lived a few doors further and together they
hurried to the police station where Aunty with tears in her eyes told
her story.

In the mortuary she saw the face of her sister facing her "Oh God, oh
God what am I going to tell Selena! Greg is her first child, her
darling, and she tell me that he get a job here in Holland. What I
going to do". She sat there in the station with her son and cried while
she considered how she was going to break the news to her sister. After
a while the agent in charge of the case came to her to take a
statement.

"Did your nephew ever do this before?" he asked. "What do you mean?"
She did not understand at first what he was talking about. "He never
get himself murdered before." The agent looked at her as if she were
crazy. He said, "We have reason to believe that he had been a horse for
the drugs smugglers. In fact by the autopsy the coroner found two balls
of cocaine in his stomach. The murderers hadn't found all of it. We
think that he was murdered because they found it easier to get rid of
him. He probably was of no more use to them."

Selena felt the coldness everywhere in her body. Her nephew had been
used and then thrown away as you would throw away old rubbish or
wrapping paper. This is, she thought sadly the price we pay for being
poor.