It was what he said about the children that made Adeline so upset she barely heard anything he said after that. What did they ever do to him? They were just little girls. 

The big one was just going on eight, and the little one just six. She’d had the older one since she was two years old, when her parents moved to England to work for a few years to make money for a business back in St. Kitts. Then after the baby came, they brought her back too so they could continue to seek their fortune in England. 

The little one was a chubby English baby who opened her eyes when Adeline reached for her and laughed out loud: a five-month-old chuckle that won Adeline’s heart forever. ‘England too cold for such a sweet likkle English BorBo.’ Adeline had laughed as she pressed the bundle close to her chest. She turned her back to the father and mother at the gate and walked toward the house, where she sat down mindlessly on the rickety steps, her eyes fixed upon the baby in the crook of her right arm as she cooed at her. The child responded with her musical chuckle and reached up to pull at the strands of grey hair falling out of Adeline’s pink and white floral head tie. 

‘Yes, you happy now you in de nice St. Kitts sun, nuh. You goin’ stay right here wid Momma Adeline. You don’ have to go back to no cold England. You staying right here wid me; Girl, you stayin’ right here with me.’ At this the child chuckled even louder and twisted her little body so much that she would have sprung to the ground had not the strong arms of the woman kept her snugly in place. Adeline laughed out loud herself and tried to throw back her head, but the child fastened her little fist around a lock of Adeline’s hair, so she could just gingerly raise her head. 

‘Oh, Girl, you strong like a lion cub. What dey feedin’ you, eh? What are dey feedin’ you?’ This time she said the words slowly as she held the baby with both hands and placed her on her lap so they could face each other. The baby bounced of her own volition. Adeline laughed again. ‘Girl, you got spirit!’ She looked toward the two at the gate as if she were just remembering that they existed. ‘This one got spirit,’ she said to them. ‘What you all feedin’ her?’ 

She nuzzled her face in the baby’s stomach and would have gone back to her discourse, but the father, standing awkwardly at the gate, said, ‘Well, no greeting for us?  We come all the way from England too.’ 

‘Cha,’ Adeline scoffed and gave a long strupes of her teeth. Then she added with a smile, ‘I know what ar you look like a’ready.’ She looked back to the baby, ‘But you, likkle English rose, I seein’ for de first time.’ She continued to talk to the baby who seemed to be enjoying herself. The parents at the gate had to wait while Adeline and baby communed as if they knew each other in some other life. After a few minutes, the baby began to throw up. The mother, who was standing even further back than her husband, pulled out a towel and quickly crossed the yard to her child to catch the last of the vomit and wipe her mouth. 

‘I should have told you; she ate not too long ago. I burped her, but the shaking up making her throw up.’ 

Adeline tensed slightly but settled the baby on her right leg, encircling her with her right arm. ‘Ok, sweet English rose, Le’s take it easy now, eh.’ 

‘She’ll be okay,’ the mother said quickly. She pulled from her bag an eight-ounce bottle which had about three ounces of formula left in it. ‘She could have this in a little while.’ The baby, seeing the bottle, reached eagerly for it. Adeline put out her hand for the bottle. As she did so, she asked the child’s name.  

‘Carmella,’ the mother said softly as she passed the bottle. 

‘We gave her the grandmother’s name,’ the father said. He had walked over to the step and was standing on the other side of Adeline and the baby. 

‘You mother name wasn’t Carmella!’ Adeline answered a little too hotly. 

‘No, that was my mother’s name,’ the mother said softly. ‘She died when I was a baby.’ 

‘And you give the child her name! You not ‘fraid she come back to take her?’

‘We don’t believe in that foolishness,’ said the father sternly. ‘No jumbie could come back for anybody. When you dead, you dead!’ Adeline gave him a hard long look and sucked her teeth again. She put the nipple to the baby’s mouth while the mother tucked a bib around the neck. 

‘We thinking of a short pet name for her. I like what you called her—  English Rose,’ the mother said. 

‘You not calling my child ‘English Rose! She not English! She just born in England,’ said the father irritably. 

‘I mean we could just call her Rose,’ said the mother almost pleadingly.

‘Ok,’ the father said begrudgingly, ‘but . . .’ 

‘Yes, Rose . . . that’s a nice pet name for a likkle English Rose. Ain’t that right, Rose?’ Adeline cooed. 

The mother stretched her neck to look inside the house. ‘I guess Pearlene having her afternoon nap?’ 

‘Yes, I bathed her and put her to sleep a little. That way she could be fresh when ar you come.’ After a while, Adeline added, ‘You can go in to see her.’ She drew down on the step to make room for the mother to pass by. The woman paused for a minute and looked at her husband, who nodded. Then she walked gingerly up the stairs to wake and greet the daughter she had not seen for the last two years. 

That was the memory that washed upon Adeline as she sat on her doorstep five years later, on that morning after the ultimatum had been delivered to her. It was now 1960, and the parents were still in England fighting life, as they said,  in England’s snow and factories and still planning to return with enough money to open a grocery shop. But life had gone on like the sea with its ebbs and flows, except in the last two years or so when Adeline let Tarman, the giver of the ultimatum, enter her yard. 

Tarman had only come into her kitchen after a long time. He had lived many years as a bachelor, even though, the neighbours said, he’d had a good woman when he was young, who eventually left him and went to Puerto Rico and never came back. They said she had to run from him because he used to beat her, and one day she took her three children to her mother in Nevis and then disappeared. It took years for Tarman to find out where she went, but not so long to find out where his children were. However, they stayed with their grandmother until their mother had gone to America from Puerto Rico and was able to get her American papers. By the time she got her children, they were teenagers, but they were able to go to college in America, and Tarman would show photos of them in graduation gowns and hats. None of them were ever seen again in St. Kitts. 

Tarman had come to Adeline one bright Friday afternoon while she was down the alley where she went to supplement her income by selling peanuts. She had parched the raw peanuts in hot sand on the fire and parcelled them out with a small black pepper can, selling each parcel for five cents. Sometimes, she made sugar cakes with grated coconut or bought colourful sweeties by the bags and sold them singly to passersby. She had seen Tarman walk up the road to where she sat and had noticed that he lingered too long when he stopped to buy some peanuts. He then walked away, but later, when all her customers had left, he returned to tell her he would like to have a word with her. He called her ‘Mistress’ even though he must have known that she had never married. His mission that day was to ask Adeline if she would be disposed to board him, meaning that each day he would come by for a cooked meal. 

He would pay her every Friday when he got his pay from the sugar factory where he worked as a mechanic. Adeline teased him, asking him why he didn’t just get married, to which he replied that he couldn’t trouble himself with these young girls today, and it would cost him much more than it would just to pay someone to cook his meals, and he’d have none of the headaches to boot. He was willing to pay Adeline that very day to begin the next week. It would be for five weekdays and Sundays, so she wouldn’t have to start till this coming Sunday since on Saturdays he would see about his own meals. 

This was something Adeline had done before, as part of the myriad jobs she had done over the years to be independent, something she always boasted about. She didn’t like this particular assignment since it meant that she would be tied to a pot every blessed day. She told Tarman this, but then told him she would think about it for a week. While she was thinking, it occurred to her that it would be an unexpected income that would tide her over the times that she waited for the children’s money to come each quarter from England. She and the children could use the money for extras. 

For the first year, Tarman stayed only in the kitchen, but after that he started to stay longer and longer after his afternoon meal. It seemed that he stayed later and later and would still be there after the girls had gone to bed. After some time, Adeline found herself in a romantic relationship with a man, something she had vowed more than ten years ago she’d never do again. Not after the last man she’d lived with had gone off and found himself a young girl, a mere teenager, with whom he started having children—the very same children she was now looking after in his absence. 

Yet, despite her initial protests, Tarman, who’d been given his name for his smooth black complexion, had oozed his way into Adeline’s bed—after she had made him put up a thick partition with a door to separate her sleeping space from that of the girls. He had kept his own house, which Adeline never visited and didn’t pay much mind as to who did. It had been good enough for him to come some but not all nights to change up the tune of her life a little. Now it was three years, and the girls were getting bigger. 

Tarman always treated the children well. He never got close to them to take them out anywhere, not that Adeline would let him, but he always laughed and played silly games with them under Adeline’s watchful eyes. Every Friday, when he came to pay his board, he would give the girls each their two-pence-ha’penny for the week. This did not go unnoticed by Adeline. Sometimes, she thought he was a decent man despite his rough edges. At other times, she figured he was paying for all the times he’d never given his own children a penny. So that night when he started calling up her children’s names in his mouth, Adeline was very frustrated and felt betrayed. She’d asked him ‘What Pearline and Rose got to do with you plans, Mister?’ 

‘Come now. Adeline, you could part with dem. Dey not you flesh and blood,’ he reasoned. 

Adeline got vexed and raised herself to sit up on her bed where she had been lying beside him. She listened to make sure she could hear the girls’ soft breath coming out in two different tones. Still, she kept her voice low. ‘I ask what de hell dey got to do with you!’ 

‘They gettin’ big now.’ Tarman did not heed the warning in Adeline’s hiss. ‘They have people they could go to live with until dey mother and father come for dem. Then we could get a life together.’ 

‘Dose children dear to me. If their father and mother come, dey will get dem, but I ain’t givin’ them up for nobody to advantage dem. I’s girls they be!’ 

‘You sure you just ain’t want to give dem up because you still in love with their father?’ Tarman ventured. There was now no turning back for him. Adeline knew that he knew, like all the people in Newtown, the story behind the children she cared for. Many tongues had flapped through the years, so he must have heard the story, but since he had  never mentioned it, neither had she. But that was before last night. 

‘Alfred,’ she said calling him by his Christian name in a fierce whisper. ‘I never thought you would throw neager story in my face. If you want to know something ‘bout me, ask me.’ 

‘Adeline, I just want to know. Yes, I hear things. I is a man. I have to know whether you still carryin’ ‘round some other man in you heart.’ 

‘What’s in me heart is mine, Alfred Waterson! You hear me ask you what in you’ heart?’ 

‘You don’t have to ask, Adeline. You know what in me heart. But we can’t get married unless you give up dem chil’ren. Dis is time for you and me to relax and enjoy life, not raisin’ somebody else chil’ren who have a young mother. You goin’ past fifty now. Why you still wantin’ to hurt you’ head wid chil’ren?’ 

Adeline got up slowly from where she was sitting. She opened the door to the girls’ room and looked in on them. There seemed to be no change in their breathing. But she knew that you can’t always be sure children are not listening to big people talk. She closed their door and then opened the door to the outside. ‘Alfred, Ah t’ink you should leave now. We can talk ‘bout dis another time.’ 

Tarman paused for a bit; then he rose from the bed. He passed Adeline by the door and stood to face her from the bottom step which evened out the difference in their heights. He looked her dead in her eyes. ‘I don’ really need to talk about dis again. I done tell you how I see t’ings. You have to decide whether it gon’ be dem or me. You can take all the time you need to make up you mind. But mine done make up a’ready. I too old to have chil’ren in me life.’ With that he walked down the newly refurbished concrete steps and through the gate. Adeline watched him put his hand over the gate to replace the hook, and she waited until she no longer heard his footsteps down the alley. Then she slowly closed the door. She knelt by her bed for a long time and then went to sleep. 

The next day—today—when Adeline heard the factory horn blow for two o’clock, she realised she had not done much for the day, and it was nearly over. The children would return home from school in another hour, and she had yet to cook for their evening meal. She had spent most of her day with a deep vexation in her heart and a gnawing disappointment in her chest. She, Adeline, should have known by now how man is. That Alfred was a selfish bastard. No different from the rest. 

Whenever a thought in his defence tried to rise, she tried even harder to tamp it down. It’s only fair what he’s asking. Why should he want to raise somebody else’s children at his age, when he didn’t even raise his own! Why should she? But she had a reason. Those girls were the jewels of her middle age. ‘Dey de only people in me heart,’ she heard herself say defiantly. 

Adeline had not been able to raise her own daughter. The family of the father, in whose house she worked as a young woman, had kept the child even though she, Adeline, had to leave. That daughter who now lived in America sent her money every month. She did not need to marry for support. Nor wait for a cheque from England which did not include payment for looking after children. 

There was something about the girls that comforted her and brought her joy even though at times she wanted to tell their parents to come get them when they got out of order. But she knew she couldn’t let them go and hoped that fate would be kind and let her die before that day came when they would have to leave. All these thoughts entered Adeline’s head as she hurried to cook rice with the saltfish she had been soaking overnight. 

She quickly fired up the coal pot and put the water on for the rice. She had already picked the rice of non-rice particles, such as twigs, peas and little rocks, that invariably got in on the way from Guyana to the Islands, when she decided she would not be needing that much today. She poured a handful of the rice back into the bag and washed what was left in the bowl. With a large enamel cup, she scooped out some of the boiling water and dumped the rice into the pot. After she put in the onions and red butter, she stripped the saltfish and put it into the thickening red rice. She then pulled out some of the smouldering coals to lower the fire under the pot, letting the rice simmer as it absorbed the fish and sauce. By the time the four o’clock horn blew and the girls sauntered in from school, the rice lay steaming and colourful in the pot. 

That afternoon, after they had eaten, Adeline instructed the girls to wash the dishes quickly and scrub the pot. They turned down the plates on the drying board, and the pot was turned over so that it irreverently exposed its sooty bottom. If the girls suspected anything, they did not ask any questions of Mom, as they called her, who was unusually silent and grouchy. They had hardly finished the washing up when they heard Tarman coming up the alley. He was whistling as he put his hand over the gate and unhooked it. 

He stopped short as he entered because he saw Adeline and the girls sitting on the step, looking at him. He looked furtively at the corner of the yard where the coal pot was sitting on a makeshift table, its embers dying slowly in the flue hole. Then his eyes panned the dish board and rested upon the turned-down cooking pot. In silence, he took all of it in. Then he shook his head and said, ‘Adeline, girl, you wicked!’ He walked out of the yard as Adeline hummed a doleful hymn. 

Adeline went to the Saturday market the next morning to buy a ten-pound bag of raw peanuts to parch and sell for the rest of the month. 

2024 Commonwealth Short Story Prize Shortlist: Issue 2