Vignettes from a memorable childhood
An American soldier gives food to hungry kids, a gesture similar to the one in this essay. from America about John and Annie and their dog Spot, who also seemed to speak in English. He barked “arf-arf” and not “bowwow” the way the local askals, dogs on the streets, did it.
And so every week for the next ten months, the Americans in white came with their free milk, to make sure we would grow up as tall and healthy and cheerful as they were.
2. Ice Drop
Mama always bought my
or snacks. She did not want me to buy junk food and soft drinks. Bad for the teeth, my mother with the whitest teeth would say.
Always, when the bell rang for recess, I would go to her classroom, Grade VI Section 1, housed in a building hemmed in by starapple trees turning their leaves of translucent green in the sunlight. The leaves were green on top, brown below: their twin colors never ceased to amaze me.
I would cross the field, the wooden building looming into view. Then I would climb the concrete steps – one, two, three, four – and stop before the door just as my Mama was about to dismiss her class. I would walk into the classroom just as her students were leaving. Some of the girls would pinch my cheeks; the boys would mess up my hair. I wondered why people bigger than me and twice my height would do that, and then I would smirk.
and uniform smeared with chalk marks. That was how I always remembered her: wiping chalks that somehow had managed to whiten her sky-blue uniform. After this, she would hand me my snacks: boiled peanuts, or colored rice cakes topped with grated coconut, or fried plantains wrapped in sweetened rolls, everything except junk food. That, and orange juice in a tall blue Tupperware glass. Gratefully, I would wolf down the food, smile at her, then rush down glittering with sunlight.
Since she prepared my snacks - tavos per day. But in those days, the following: a large rectangle of chicharon, supposedly pork skin - ing and that old reliable MSG.
Five centavos could also buy you a bar of Chocnut, crumbly chocolate that stuck to your gums, or a try in the game of in the school canteen. The game involved choosing a number, after which the storekeeper would peel away the layer of paper covering the numbers on a board. Whatever was attached to the number – a marbles, ten rubber bands or a plastic duck, a car or a robot made of tin and painted with the gaudiest colors – would be your prize.
But one day I felt healthy enough from all of my mother’s food, so when the canteen was