Sugar Cane Crescent

1

The sun rose promptly on Sugar Cane Crescent this morning. Spreading its light to all corners of the town, waking up the sleepy residents. Funnily enough, it was called Sugar Cane Crescent, although there was nothing remotely sweet about it. A relic of the town's past as a sugarcane plantation in the days of slavery. Toiling in the cane fields, cultivating the sweet nectar, only to have none of the benefits of their hard labour, as all the product AND the profit went to the colonial 'masters' who shared none of it with its rightful heirs. 

In olden times Marxists would define capitalists as the owners of the land and the means of production. To be thought of as the means of production is laughable. Those same labourers on whose backs the means of production were based are seen today by the former 'owners' as lazy and lacking work ethic. Laughable indeed.

This culture of unjust taking has remained in Sugar Cane Crescent, even after the cane was long gone. Embedded in the soil just like the blood of so many labourers who died in pursuit of earning profit they would never see. Although now, the culture of taking revolves around a different product. Not cane this time, this time it was coke....

As the sunlight streamed into the home of the Sandys, sweet Calypso music could be heard blaring out of the alarm clock of Kelvin Sandy. Although the combination of sunlight and Calypso music that dragged Kelvin out of his slumber was loud, bright and jarring to the senses, Kelvin welcomed it. It rescued him from his recurring nightmares. For the past nineteen years, Kelvin had dreamt of his baby sister Candy. He was relieved to be pulled from his neverending pool of regret, guilt, shame and anguish. 

Kelvin quickly got out of bed and traipsed groggily to the kitchen to put on a pot of coffee. Since his sleep never proved restful, he depended on coffee to wake him up like a crackhead needed his next hit. 

He went through the motions of his morning routine. He cut coconuts to fill a bottle of coconut water to take to work. He fried plantains for his family. He fed the family dog. All the while trying not to remember the pain of losing his little sister. When Candy died, everyone told Kelvin that time would ease his pain. They said that grief doesn't last forever. 

"Time heals all wounds", they said. 

"What do THEY know", thought Kelvin, as he sat in his kitchen nineteen years later, with his head in his hands, with his grief still as fresh as it was the day he got the news in the hospital that his sister has died. 

Like clockwork, right on time, his niece Aliyah walked into the kitchen. The most prominent reminder of his loss. His sister's daughter. With a smile beaming across her face, lighting up her rosy dimpled cheeks. The spitting image of her mother. 

"Good morning Uncle Rocky!" she said, practically floating across the terrazzo floors. 

A sour expression covered his face, as his old moniker brought to mind all the horrible things that went along with that name. 

"Aliyah, how many times do I have to tell you I don't go by Rocky anymore. Just call me Uncle Kelvin." He sighed, "Living in the past is no good."

He paused, noticing the irony of lecturing his niece against living in the past while he allowed his past to torment even his dreams at night. He quietly shook his head, almost as if he was trying to shake his thoughts right out of his head. He quickly softened his expression. Remembering that none of his trauma was Aliyah's fault and that she too had suffered.

"What do you girls have planned today?" he asked Aliyah. 

"Well today is Saturday, our busiest day at the salon, so we'll be working all day basically," Aliyah answered. 

"Well just make sure that you all have a good breakfast," he replied. 

"Yeah, sure, if your daughter Sleeping Beauty ever decides to wake up from her beauty rest," chuckled Aliyah, "She always oversleeps and ends up rushing to get ready." 

Kelvin smirked, "Yeah Pinky is just like her mother, the secret to getting them out of bed is always coffee." He said, this while taking two large mugs of coffee, to his bedroom, one for himself and one for Peaches. 

Aliyah smiled to herself. She adored her Uncle Kelvin. He had taken her in as a newborn baby after her mother died in childbirth. Even though his girlfriend Peaches was heavily pregnant with her first baby at the time, her uncle did not turn his back on her. She was born with low birth weight and breathing complications, as her mother had been a heavy drug user, with crack cocaine being her drug of choice. 

Taking care of a 'crack baby' while expecting your own baby is no easy feat, and she was eternally grateful to her Uncle Kelvin and Aunt Peaches for their never-ending love. They raised her as their own. She grew stronger every day and due to the stress of dealing with a newborn baby with so many complications, her cousin Pinky was born prematurely. They both strived, despite the odds being against them and have always been inseparable. They even still shared a bedroom. 

She decided to take her uncle's advice and made coffee for her slumbering cousin, in hopes of getting her out of bed on time.