“Please Take One”

by Portia Subran (Trinidad & Tobago)

“To the tiny twin islands of Trinidad and Tobago comes the biggest supermarket in the Caribbean.”

Lloyd looked at the word tiny for a long time—a word used to describe his entire world. During his seventy years on Earth, he had neither crossed oceans nor skies to break boundaries into other soil. He’d never felt anything about this before, but felt a sting after reading the advertisement in the newspapers—printed in leaf-green with bold white font.

He could remember a time, before this land was the home of the Caribbean’s biggest supermarket, it was just acres and acres of coconut owned by the DeVerteuil family.
This was before the highway cut Chaguanas into the East and the West. No grueling traffic to cross from one side to the other. He could walk freely through the trees—coconut, mango and citrus. Now, in his mind, the highway split Chaguanas into the Old and New, the West and East respectively. Over the years, the Lange estates had disappeared to the East—coconut, mango, and sugar cane flattened followed by the elevation of residential areas, with large mansions he had only seen in Federation Park. The Lion House, once a palace amongst barracks, where children once amassed with cupped palms to receive prasad with sliced almonds and diced maraschino cherries from the Capildeos, was now a haven for collapsed drunks kicked out of Club Mumbai. The Woodford Lodge Grounds was no longer the centre of the community. No more cricket matches. No more May Festivals where men fought each other on their ascent to the greasy pole.

The abandoned sugar factory had been decapitated of its galvanize and stripped clean, leaving nothing but a decimated and rusted steel skeleton. And so ended the heyday of Old Chaguanas.

On the other side of the highway, Rodney Road spat out restaurant after restaurant, desperate to become a hastened replica of the Avenue in town. Bars popped up one by one—not your grandfather’s rum-shop in Old Chaguanas—there were no concrete chairs and tables outside, but women perched on bar stools wide mouths lapping at megaritas, men in ties with office after-work banter. As New Chaguanas pushed grand neighbourhoods and giant supermarkets out of the bones of rotting fruit and burnt sugar, Old Chaguanas was slowly buried underground.

On Monday morning, Lloyd left his room in Old Chaguanas and started walking East, crossing the highway via the overpass. He walked slowly as the cars zoomed next to him, the exhaust choking him, the strong gusts they left behind threatening to blow him over the railing and into the highway below.

Peering up at the giant sign, MoneyClub, the supermarket reminded Lloyd of the abandoned sugar cane factory—but here, the steel bones were painted green. As soon as the automatic doors pulled open, Lloyd recoiled in terror, but quickly regained his stance. A heavy, cold blast of air pushed him down the wide aisles.

MoneyClub was meant to be a members-only supermarket—it was the first Lloyd had ever heard of such a thing. But for its opening month, they allowed free entry to the public. Lloyd was in awe of the sheer number of items on display. There could not really be so many things people needed. Everything he had every desired could be found in the parlour, just a stone’s throw away from his room on Taitt Street.

He stopped and stared at everything, passing his hands over the plastic gallon containers of bleach, and smooth flasks of hand lotion and hand sanitizer. He was astonished by the diversity and quantity. They weren’t selling one dishwashing liquid, you had to purchase five at a time. An entire case of Bush’s baked beans, four giant boxes of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. There were tubs of Jif’s peanut butter, gallons of Motts Apple Juice, giant bottles of Prego pasta sauce hog tied together in twos. Little green crates of strawberries, kiwis, blueberries, blackberries, hairy gooseberries, priced astronomically. Even the rotisserie chicken, you had to buy whole and oven-red.

He walked between mountains of Charmin toilet paper and Purina dog chow, soaring up as high as the coconut trees that used to grow there. At the end of the aisle, there was a young woman at a small table covered in white and green table cloth—no older than her mid-twenties. She stood behind the table, wore a white apron, a hair net and in a gloved hand held a square biscuit in a pair of tongues. There was a tower of napkins stacked slightly lopsided on the table next to a pile of the biscuits, a green and black box described them as imported shortcake cookies from Ireland. To the front of the table was a green paper sign, laminated to make it last. In bold white letters, the sign said, “Please Take One.” Lloyd noticed that no one was taking any—the young woman was handing them out to passersby.

Some of them were unsure what to do, slowly, suspiciously they began to walk towards her when called, and with smiling faces ate the biscuit. Lloyd found it suspect too at first, but seeing their satisfied faces, he slowed his walk as he approached her, waiting for her call. But her eyes never met his.

He lingered in earshot, giving a tall glass bottle of olive oil his indiscriminate attention. He took the bottle off the shelf and read the ingredients aloud, in a volume just enough to ensure that the young woman would recall that he was still there. But there was no acknowledgement, verbal or otherwise.

Lloyd wondered if he smelled—perhaps Old Chaguanas carried a kind of dirty musk. Or was it the yellowing buttons of his shirt jack? The rotting wear of his aged leather slippers? She called out to the other shoppers, “Would you like to have a sample?”

Lloyd returned the olive oil to its right place back and the shelf, as at $150.00 for 300ml, it was destined to find a new home with another shopper. He paced through each aisle, no longer looking at the items, instead scanning each white laminated place card stuck onto the metal shelves. He eventually stopped walking at $19.95, lifted a pack of copy paper off the shelf and proceeded to the cashier. They didn’t use bags in the MoneyClub. Customers could use a cardboard box—which Lloyd thought was a jest at first.

Lloyd walked over the flyover with the ream of copying paper tucked under his arm, struggling to keep it from slipping down his arm and into the road, he grasped it with his other hand too. His leather slippers dragged over the concrete pavement. No free hand to shield his face, he kept his eyes squinted to stop the highway-risen from blinding him.

***

Lloyd thought himself to be health conscious. Took daily walks for his physical fitness. And for his mental fitness, he waited until the family below him was finished with the newspapers so he could work on the crosswords and sudokus. The free samples at the MoneyClub was just another puzzle to be worked out. Trial and error. Each attempt meant something had to be exchanged, just like in a crossword, exchange an E for an I and see which fit.

Lloyd tried once a week at the MoneyClub puzzle and each attempt cost him $19.95 and the labour of toting back home a ream of printing paper. One ream was bought on the day he noticed his pants had a long gash on the side. Another ream was purchased the day he forgot his worn out cap on. The fourth was the hottest day of the month—when his shirt stuck to his skin with grey stains in the pits.

Each time, the young woman’s eyes fluttered over him and unto the children and the young mothers with sunglasses propped up over fluffed-up fringes. Lloyd wondered if the girl did not want to make offerings to men until the day she called over a gaggle of them wearing blue off-shore overalls.

Lloyd took a walk to the parlour, farther up from Taitt Street, past the Lion House. Lloyd entered, ducking his head under the wire where the daily newspapers hung from clothespins. On the counter were large dusty, fingerprinted jars filled with blood-red tomato balls, sugar-crusted tamarind ball, and squished green paw-paw balls. Behind the grid of chicken-wire, Lloyd could make out the owner, Cokes, sitting atop a wooden stool, legs crossed reading a newspaper. Some things didn’t change at least.

He raised an eye up at Lloyd, “Aye man, how you do? What for you?’

“Let me get an ox-blood there.”

“Black or red?”

Lloyd mediated for a moment on the question. “Red.”

He slipped the circular can into his pocket and walked back to his room. He pulled out a shoe box and produced his only pair of fine dress shoes. He couldn’t remember the occasion for purchasing them—it had been so long ago. He praised God when they had emerged from the box devoid of any dry-rot. He ripped an old T-shirt into pieces and wadded them up into his hand. Then dabbed the wad into the open can of polish and began to work on the shoes in a circular motion. The shoes brightened with every swipe, and when he was satisfied, he propped them near the open window for them to dry. As he did, his eyes fell upon the pile of reams, each one wrapped in glossy pink paper and knew today was the last day he would be giving them this sale.

***

Lloyd emerged from his room at eight o’clock on that Monday morning dressed to the nines. Polished leather shoes, a brand new cream-coloured shirt jack. Ironed . He’d applied a dab of petroleum jelly to his newly trimmed hair and with a fine-tooth comb, had managed to rake back every stray hair into a very slick semi-pompadour. His grey dress pants tapered down into a straight fit right below his ankles. Peeking from between the shoes and pants-socks. He stroked his face, clean shaven. His hands and legs creamed. He popped open an umbrella and made his way down the Caroni Savannah Road in Old Chaguanas. Sitting in front of Bummy’s Rum Shop were graying men staring into the road waiting for Bummy to unlock the heavy metal doors. He waved energetically to the men.

Jaundiced eyes blinking in the sun, one of them called to him, “Looking good Lloyd, going to court or what?”

“Nah man, just hadda do some errands.”

Lloyd spotted Ms. Alice sweeping in front of her bakery with a cocoyea broom, and stopped to chat, her back bent low.

“How things, like you going to see a lady friend, how you looking so nice so?”

Lloyd laughed at the notion, reassured her there was no lady friend, but thought to himself that there was some business he had to take care of concerning a certain young woman. Shielded by the umbrella, his shirt remained fresh and clean of roadside dust. The jelly kept his hair slick in place and his red leather shoes transported him to the former coconut estate where the MoneyClub stood like a monolith in a pasture. The automatic doors flew open and Lloyd immediately marched down the aisles, to the lane with the olive oil bottles. The young woman was there.

He started mulling around her. But she immediately averted her attention to a young family cruising their giant trolley in front of her. She excitedly called them over and they shyly approached, a little boy held his shortcake biscuit triumphantly. Lloyd wasn’t giving up yet. He circled the huge supermarket and grabbed the ream of paper. The young woman would know now he was a real shopper and shuffled slowly before her, halfway swinging the ream.

She looked away and busied herself with the people behind him.

No, he thought. This time it had to be it, had to be the final piece in this puzzle. It had to be the shoes, it was the only thing he hadn’t changed the other times. Lloyd stood in front of her for a moment before dragging his feet towards the cashier. He lined up, looking down at his shoes, red leather, polished so fine he could see his old gray face reflected in it. Suddenly, he turned on his heel, and stamped his way back towards the aisles, dumped the ream of paper on the olive oil shelf, and walked right up to the young woman. He on one side of the table, and she on the other. She fiddled with the signage on the shelf behind her.

“Morning, Miss.”

He waited and he repeated a little louder. “Morning, Miss!”

Her gaze reluctantly met his.

He continued, “I see you have a sign here, it mark that I could take one. But every time I come here, you ain’t give me a single one. So I taking five.”

He grabbed up the silicone-tipped tongs, and helped himself to more than five biscuits and placed them in the mint-green paper napkins. The girl watched helplessly as a line formed behind him and everyone began heeding the instruction to take, but very few just took the one.

Lloyd marched out the store, the sun reflected like fire off his heavily polished red leather shoes, the petroleum jelly glimmered in his white hair. He held his umbrella like a refined cane over the crook of his arms and munched the buttery biscuits, making his way back to the West and back to the Old World.