When Babou drop me off at Granma house, I don’t complain. This the first time I sleep on clean sheets in weeks. Plenty perks come with living with Granma. For dinner, Granma got steam sausage and rice. I don’t have to warm up no Chef Boyardee. Granma got Rich Tea cookies to dip in Milo. I ain’t eat this good since I come back to Long Island.
The floor always sweep and mop. Dishes wash. I don’t have to fight dust bunnies to get through the door or brush roaches off cups full of soda and cigarette ash. Mind you, Granma don’t let me louse all day, but at least I’s the child again. Babou say he only gone for a little while. I almost wish he don’t come back.
A little bit about Alexia Tolas
Alexia Tolas was born and raised in The Bahamas. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in English from the former College of the Bahamas in 2015 and has been slowly, but surely, building a collection of short stories since. Her writing explores the intricacies of small-island life, heavily drawing upon local mythologies and folktales in order to convey realities silenced by tradition and trauma. Her writing has been featured in literary journals including Womanspeak, Granta, and Adda.
In 2019, she won the Commonwealth Short Story Regional Award for the Caribbean. In the dormant periods between writing spells, Alexia consumes
science-fiction and fantasy novels, studies perpetually for the GRE, plays too many video games, and debates with her family and students on anything from
ecocriticism in Madam Bovary and Things Fall Apart to the management of free
will in Castlevania.