And for the men razor blades wrapped in thin paper, orange and white, a tiny picture of two swords crossed, and also Player's cigarettes, already made and lined up in a perfect little box, which later held pins, needles, matches, or ground coriander or ginger. Thursday, Mrs. Rama cleaned the parish church with other women, and Friday was the day the house was done top to bottom, although dust would have sifted up between the floorboards and in through the front door and windows by evening of the very same day. Breakfast was tea and fried biscuits, sometimes a piece of cheese. Lunch was the same, the biscuits wrapped in brown paper, and Winston had tea sweetened with a drop of canned condensed milk when he came home. At Christmas the treat was dark fruitcake saturated with rum, pastelles wrapped in banana leaf, ginger beer, and roti with curried chicken.
Little fire stands circling the savannah signaled roasting corn.
Margaret, because she was a girl, was not allowed to go out of the house at night, and instead would listen to the BBC on her father's big Telefunken radio if he was not home, snapping it off quickly when she heard his step. She also liked to play tea party with her two dolls, pink rubber babies with eyes that opened and shut and painted-on hair like a brown cap. She was very good in school, and her mother spoke of her going to convent, becoming a nun. At that Margaret would roll her eyes upward, give Winston a conspiratorial look, and silently mouth the word never. In kite season he made kites from strips of young bamboo, thin tissue paper begged from the Syrian store owner on the corner, paste of flour and water, and string saved from his mother's packages.