Once upon a time, a real long time ago, one of my two marvellous mothers, the much older one, used to scare the living daylights, dying night-dimmers and all bodily discharges out of me and my friends, often at the same time, by telling us what she would generically and euphemistically term, ‘jumbie stories.”
For a puny, perpetually sick child with a far too vivid imagination, such terrible tales were never a good idea. Yet, I and every other stupidly spiel-smitten simpleton, near and far, would invariably mob and beg the consummate Ms. Nora to torture us some more. Almost every night. Late. For hours.
With no television around, and none in sight, for decades, even remotely, in the poor south Georgetown backstreets I and my varied pals haunted – and the batteries forever low on the radio, on yet another grim blackout night, books few and nigh impossible to read – she would tease us mercilessly, “Allyuh sure?” adding, “Nobody gun pee their bed tonight?”