My Jack Side

Chapter One

    The walls of this hut are missing where the occupants before my grans installed a tap (and other drainage components like the dishwasher that's really just a hollow pan), where the fridge has leaned against long enough to form holes printed in rust, and where nails have sunk in (and have repeatedly failed) to hoist quartz clocks now stapled to green curtains, revealing the bamboo that forms the skeleton of this house.

    This house that should belong to the ruins of some communal war, that should long be buried under decades of urban renewal and a cute turn-of-the-millennium flat with plastic flowers in its bathrooms, underneath choring couples and center tables and foundations cast in gravel and periwinkle, at peace, not this torturously bent to serve modern life.

    Upon my arrival, I spent minutes just processing.

    My Pops did most of the unpacking, bless his Methodist heart,— bringing my stuff in for me, convinced I'll be spending a number of months here. He wasn't wrong. He carted in cartons of textbooks— a Bible surely among them (ew)–, noodles, a mop and a set of stainless steel buckets, a can of insecticide and an alarm clock my mom had specially bought and made a parting rendition of (“When it rings by six on the hour, that's morning, Jerry. Time for breakfast. Expect Solo to come and see if that fridge can be fixed, okay? So you needn't cook every day”, whereafter I restrained an eye roll. I actually have a job cooking potatoes, and that's daily).

    The memory is so fresh, sometimes it feels like I'm reliving that day, almost like if my mom is visible through the door net again, sitting outside in my Pops' Ford as he offloads the boot, my mom stifling sobs and dabbing at her tears or glasses. Could have been either. She seemed undecided which.

    Inside, I ran a touch of everything, mostly picking up dust, and soot as my hands trailed the lantern chase and watching the walls crumble like chalk under my fingernails.

    All now mine, I thought to myself, half-beaming. Make an accomplished teenagers list, World, before I age a year further and am teenager no more.

    My Dad patted my cheeks— goodbye or good luck— and they drove back to town.

    I spent the first evenings recapturing the terror that I was trespassing in a vacated anthill, something my brother, Divine and I once did, only this time there is no brother (dead) and the anthill is a crumbling hut held up by its bamboo skeleton, with curtains catching the sunset through dusty window louvers.

    Today, like all the days I'm ticking off till I'm too old to keep up and die, I awake to an alarm. My hands wake before my eyes, working to shut off the blaring song my alarm gets into when 6:00.

    I had set Wizkid up for the job, because I honestly cannot stand his new sound. Here, my mornings are marked by the clock coming alive bearing red pause icons on the dial screen and a lot of Wizkid on the speaker.

    I reach for the power button and somehow knock the lantern off the side table with my elbow. My clock also slips away, crashing to the floor, shutting Wizkid up right in the middle of his outcry of “Joro, never leave meeeeeee”.

    I curse as I shuffle out of bed, and a thought pops into my head. “That's the hundredth alarm clock to meet its young end, Jerry. You should know by now that you ruin everything you touch. But shall we celebrate the hour? It is leftovers time!”

    I have no idea where that thought came from. Could be a trick of my groggy mind. Or my head trying to regurgitate poetry I've read. Although soon— by the end of this day— I might consider it differently; a trick of my newfound Jack demons.

    I chuck chin-chin droppings and shards of glass and ceramic and sand (this place just never runs out of sand) into the dustbin in the kitchen and settle down to breakfast with all the curtains and louvers thrown open.