Making Callaloo in Detroit

Love in the Dollar Store

117  Making Callaloo But nobody paid attention to the tale, because the sun was traveling from East to West and the hours which grow on the right-hand of clocks must become longer out of laziness since they are those which lead most surely to death. —Alejo Carpentier, “Journey to the Seed,” translated by Jean Franco Bushwaseverywhere in the house, beginning from a crack at the side door, and it was cold outside. I never saw anything like this. Bush was hanging from the ceiling, coming up from the cracks in the wooden floors, snaking round from behind the archway leading to the kitchen. Coiled round the banister leading to upstairs. I could only imagine the bush had taken over up there, too. But the house was dark and things were thick, and I didn’t care to work my way up the stairs just then. In the same way, I didn’t feel to work my way through to the kitchen, especially since the leaves had formed such a nice thick carpet, too 118  Lolita Hernandez nice for my footprints, even though by this time I had taken off my boots and was still in the vestibule in my stocking feet. It was snowing outside, and I had one hell of a time coming to her house in all that mess. But I needed to see her. From where I stood in the vestibule just inside the front door, I could well see the side door and the vine coming into the house from under it. I suppose I could have gone outside and round the house to the side to check for sure, but I didn’t feel like putting on my boots again. I would check on the way out. Just then Tante’s soft and crackly voice said, Come let me chalk yuh foot, dahlin. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you. She see I ent move. Come in. Come in. I’ve been waiting for you. By this time my eyes still had not adjusted to the darkness, but to me as if I saw an anthurium growing up from a corner by the fireside. Then I realized it was some kind of silky silky fake thing she must have put there since the last time I was by to see her. Things change. In all my born days I don’t remember her having fake flowers or plants in her house. Then again, I don’t remember her having live ones. She was an outdoor lady for gardening. Every time I came to see her in summer she toured me through the yard to show off the roses and bleeding hearts and other bright petals and to show off tomato plants, and one year we stopped at a little spot right by the steps to her side door, the brightest spot in her yard, where she had planted a piece of dasheen, and you could see the bush growing thick and healthy right there on the northwest side of Detroit in a little piece of tough dirt. This town ent never seen anything like this, she bragged. I bet you’re right. So I realized this dark big-leaf thing that had taken over her 119  Making Callaloo house had to be the dasheen bush, and I didn’t know what to make of this. Dasheen bush doesn’t grow like vine. Still, things change. Who knows what they do these days to provisions. They does mix up things however they want. But how they could make dasheen bush come like this? Like a grapevine? Maybe Tante self did something to it. This reminds me of my friend’s philodendron. I have been to her house several times and have seen the plant climbing from the pot via a trellis then finding its way along the path she set up for it. I saw the same thing in a boutique the other day. It was one of those places that sells candles and whatnots, and the philodendron vines gave it an air of mystery, although I must admit that there were scarcely any leaves and the vine looked scraggly. It needed trimming back to thicken it up, but some people don’t want to realize that sometimes you have to make these sacrifices in order to have something better in the end. Not so in Tante’s...