“The Trouble with The Dog”

by Stefan Bindley-Taylor (Trinidad & Tobago)

Sterling was an enigma to all who claimed to know him. He kept in touch with few and spoke nothing of his personal life. When he got married, he said nothing. When his wife left him, he said nothing. When he had a son, he said nothing. When he buried the son, he said nothing. He rarely showed up to places he was invited; he never failed to appear at parties, funerals, and weddings for which he had no invitation. He was perpetually running late, and he used the same excuse every time.

“Sorry, had some trouble with the dog.”

Another one of his oddities—Sterling did not own a dog and never had. No one knew how the line originated, but it had become a sort of catchphrase. Neighbors would pass his home, where he sat outside on a staircase smoking, and cry: “Eh Sterling! What happening? Any trouble with the dog today?”

He would grin and say nothing.

Perhaps the only person who really knew Sterling was his niece, Alisha, who would come down from the United States to visit him every summer of her childhood. Whenever she came, the trouble with the dog seemed to cease, for he found the time for the two of them to drive all over the island—up the sides of winding mountain roads, through the heart of thick jungle and bush, down swaths of dark, flat coastlines.

Time had eroded the frequency of their visits. Alisha became busy with summer training academies, new friends, division 1 college offers; Sterling, busy with the dog. They had not seen each other in donkey years. Until one year, she was set to return to him—as a star, nonetheless!

It was the 2031 Women’s World Cup, the first to be hosted in the Caribbean. Alisha had since become a world-class football player and—to the surprise of almost everyone—turned down an offer from the United States to instead play for her parents’ home country. The gamble paid off. Alisha was the top goal scorer of the tournament so far and the midfield maestro of the Trinidadian team, leading them all the way to the finals against none other than—the United States.

Sterling was not much of a football fan, but even he knew that what was taking place was a miracle by every stretch of the imagination. Bookies were set to lose a fortune, records were being broken by the second, and bars and public squares were packed every evening. He read the sports pages religiously in the weeks before Alisha’s arrival. With the finals a day away and Alisha set to stay with him once more, it was a scene destined for a heartwarming reunion.

When Sterling arrived to pick her up from the airport—an hour late—he found Alisha standing alone, looking irritated and slightly itchy. He got out of the car and kissed her on both cheeks before grabbing her bags.

“Sorry I’m late — had some trouble with the dog!” He spoke like a sitcom character, remembering how she had loved this bit as a child.

Alisha looked at him hard. “That dog is always giving trouble. You sure it’s not time to put him down, Uncle?”

Sterling laughed nervously.

Alisha slid into the interior of Sterling’s burgundy sedan, the same one in which he had driven her around during her summer visits. Back then, it had felt like a fortress. The windows were tinted a cool dark blue.

The smell of cologne and tobacco clung to the seats. The metal seat belt clips were always piping hot from hours in the sun (it was for this reason Sterling said he never wore seatbelts, though he always insisted she put on hers).

When she climbed into the car this time, the heat felt stifling. The smell of cologne and cigarettes made her roll down the window. Her seatbelt remained unbuckled. The two faced each other; something between them felt starchy and liable to break.

Up close, Sterling saw how much she had grown. Her ears and nose were pierced, her cheeks had flattened, and her chin elongated into a crescent. Her frame was stocky and athletic. She had a mole on her forehead and another on her neck. She no longer wore beads in her hair.

Alisha saw how her uncle had aged. His sinewy figure hinted at an athletic youth long past. His face was divotted with little strips of discoloration that resembled a chain of minor outlying islands she had seen somewhere on a map. His wispy hair had retreated from his head and advanced in thick battalions from his nose and ears.

They drove in silence through the airport roundabouts. It was just like Sterling to have read all about her success in the paper and have nothing to say in person. He offered what he could.

“You must be tired. All that traveling. You giving them hell out there!”

Alisha mumbled something, her head hanging out the window like a dog, words disappearing into the wind.

“What was that? Don’t mumble your words, child!” Sterling tried to play the clown to lighten the mode.

Alisha saw what her uncle was trying to do and softened a bit. She turned to face him. “I said, I real tired. ''

She put on the strained Trini accent she used to perform for him when she was young. Sterling laughed, relieved to see a glimmer of the child he knew. Yet he recognized it now to be merely a small part of the adult he knew nothing about.

For the rest of the drive, Alisha reclined her seat, letting the sunlight wash over her eyelids and paint fuzzy Rorschachs of reddish brown. In them, she saw the silhouettes of her teammates, who, earlier that morning, had disappeared into huge caravans that had arrived to welcome them and take them back to places where they had grown up, places where they would be welcomed as local heroes. As was their right —they were home. Where was she?

Long stretches of highway revealed new developments, shopping centers, and pristine American franchises fighting for space amongst the tall grass. All things Alisha had not seen before. But, eventually, the new gave way to the familiar. Colorful Hindu prayer flags rose from overgrown gardens of creamy blue houses with wrought iron gates. Snack shops, operating out the bottom verandahs of houses, advertised their goods with handmade signs. A group of hens roamed the street, inspecting open gutters. They were back in the Arima neighborhood of Trinidad, home of their summer escapades. Sterling’s house was hard to miss. A red clay staircase, visible from the road, rose in the front yard like an obelisk. It led to nothing. The second floor had never been completed. It was almost avant-garde.

When Alisha was young, she would climb to the top to look out at the sunrise creeping over the northern mountain range in the distance. Sterling would stand at the bottom looking at her, seeming to all the world as if there was nowhere else he’d rather be.

Other reminders of her life there: the driveway was still stained with soot from the little bags of gunpowder Sterling gave her that had popped and crackled when she threw them on the ground. The front door was caked in peeling layers of garish yellow paint, a color chosen at her request. Whenever she came to visit, Sterling slept on a sofa in the living room and gave her the small back room of the house that contained a thin mattress, a desk, and a poster of Trinidad’s first Ms. Universe—though, Sterling took this poster down when she was around.

Alisha was unmoved by these nostalgic reminders. Instead, she focused on what she had not noticed back then—the stench of open liquor and rotting fruit; the slime skittering down from the gutters and spreading itself thin on the driveway; the fat flies perched on moist crumbs in the sink.

“Sorry I didn’t have a chance to clean—”

“Trouble with the dog?” Alisha interjected, her face hard again.

“You jus’ go in the back and take a rest. I’ll deal with out here.”

Alisha did not argue. She grabbed her bags and disappeared into the backroom, shutting the door behind her. Through the thin walls, she could hear the sound of empty glass bottles clinking together in a trash bag. The tin scraping of a coconut husk broom whisked across the floor.

She knew she was being cruel, but she could not remember the last time she had been alone. Her life had been filled with rickety buses, aching joints, public toilets, and shared rooms. The team was underfunded and underpaid. The country’s sports federation had not taken the women’s team seriously, and even though it was now trying to make a show of publicly rallying around the team, the truth was that the woman had triumphed despite of it, not because of it. And the questions! The questions that never stopped coming. From the media, from the fans, from herself. How could Alisha— an American born of Trini descent, a Yankee, a word that was spat out rather than spoken— be the one to lead the team to glory? Why had she chosen to play for them, even after receiving offers from the Americans? Surely she was going to throw the game? What was she really doing here? Did she really belong? She had no answers to give, none to find. Sitting on the edge of the bed, she gripped the flimsy mattress and squeezed until her knuckles ached. She began to cry.

She pressed her palms into her eyes, plugging the well. There was no time for this, whatever it was. The final was tomorrow. If she won, she was sure things would fall into place. They had to. If she lost? A question too big, seismic, for this small room.

Alisha woke drenched with sweat. The room was dark and still. She had had a terrible dream, the details of which she could not recount. Her body was still wired and delirious.

She stumbled out of the bed into the living room. The lights were off. Sterling was sitting upright on the sofa, his fingers pressed into his eyes. A Bollywood soap opera played on the television, flaring through his glasses, which were resting on the table. He looked older without them on.

Sterling saw her and jumped. He tucked a bottle by his side beneath the blanket. “Lord, I thought you was a jumbie. What you doing up child?”

“Having some trouble with the dog.” She smiled, plopping down on the sofa next to him— a thinly veiled olive branch. Sterling accepted without hesitation.

“You hungry?”

“A little. But it’s too late to eat.”

“Don’t study that.”

Sterling went into the kitchen to microwave some leftover curry chicken. The television flickered as the microwave turned on, the actors' faces warping, squishing, then returning to normal when the sharp ding rang out.

Alisha ate slowly, forkfuls from her plate revealing the faded hibiscus illustration on the surface below.

“You know uncle, the news is saying I only play for the Trinidad team because I wouldn’t be a starter for the U.S.. But that’s bullshit. I play because this is my country too.”

“Of course! You’s a Trini just like all of we!” Sterling again used his sitcom voice.

Alisha laughed. “Sometimes I even think of moving down here.”

“Why?”

“Life here just seems so much simpler.”

Sterling grew pensive.

“I don't know. It’s not like America, you know. Besides, you know how many Trinis wish they could be up there in the States where you are?”

“Do you?”

Sterling let out a laugh that caused him to choke. “No, I good right here.”

The metal returned to Alisha’s voice. “What’s so different about me then? It’s not like I’m some foreigner.

Like you said, I’m a Trini too. What do you think you can handle here that I can’t?”

There was the child he remembered. The temper, quick to rise and spill over. It was no wonder she had grown into such a brilliant competitor. Sterling smiled.

“Well, for starters, not everyone can handle the trouble with the dog.” He meant this playfully, but Alisha was already over the edge.

“Yeah. You’re right. Not everyone can handle wasting their life away pretending to have trouble with some fucking imaginary dog just so they can sit around and drink all day.”

The smile faded from Sterling’s face. He continued to stare straight ahead. He opened his mouth and closed it again. He pulled the bottle from beneath the blanket and took a sip. He got up from the sofa and stepped outside, leaving the door open behind him.

Alisha craned her neck back to look at the ceiling. She watched a lizard crawl through the open slits to the outside. She drew a breath and ran her fingers through her hair, her face hot and flushed. Eventually, she followed Sterling into the yard, where she found him sitting at the top of the steps, staring off into the stars.

“Uncle, look, the tournament has been exhausting. I’m just working through a few things and…” She tried again. “I’m sorry for what I said. You didn’t deserve that.”

Sterling shook his head and smiled, waving her words away with a thin hand. He pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. The warm night air made their tongues slack.

“You know, I did think of moving to the States once. Just before you was born. I even talked to your daddy about coming up and staying with him.”

“Really?”

“I thought it would change things for me and the wife. I did love she plenty. But the two of we did argue like cat and dog. I figure if we moved up there, we could start a new life.”

Alisha furrowed her brow. “I never knew you were married.”

Sterling closed his eyes and pulled on his cigarette, nodding his head, the glowing ember moving like a lightning bug.

“Had a son, too. He used to spend the whole day playing on the steps, just like you.” Alisha watched her uncle swaying on the steps. Moonlight spilled in pale strokes across his hairless calves.

“But he did like to play a little too much.” Sterling paused. His eyes glittered like a tide pool, creatures in them waiting to be scooped up and held, trickled back down through cradling hands. “Or maybe we did like to fight a little too much. Too busy fighting to notice when he fall off the top of the ledge, right there.” He motioned at the flat platform behind him. “We bury him right down the road where your daddy used to go to church. We never argue again after that. We just cry and cry until it was quiet. We didn’t speak about America anymore. Then we didn’t speak at all.”

He ashed the cigarette beneath his slipper.

“After that, couldn’t get my head right. Some days I didn’t leave the house. Some days I didn’t leave the room. Quit my job at the university. Your daddy used to be sending me money just to live. ”

He paused to light another cigarette.

“And that is how the trouble with the dog did start.” He shook the bottle in his hand.

They sat together for a while in the cool darkness of the night. The air smelled faintly of smoke from a bushfire. Maestro hovered his foot a few inches off the ground, flexing his toes so that the slipper clapped against his heel. He felt he had shared too much. He knew this would be the final brick in the wall forming between them. He braced himself for the loss.

“I don’t know why I telling you all this. You mustn't bother with the troubles of old men like me. You’s a big athlete now with a bright future and—”

Suddenly, in one continuous motion, Alisha snatched the bottle from his hand, unscrewed the top, and took a long swig. “Yes, I am a big athlete.” She patted her stomach with loud, long slaps and proclaimed in her slipshod Trini accent, “But I’s a Trini too.”

Sterling was mortified, his mouth agape. Slowly, his face cracked, giving way to small wheezing noises, then laughter, until he was almost in hysterics. His voice shook the empty street. Suddenly, he wanted to weep. He snatched the bottle back from her and took a swig, throwing his head back to keep the tears at bay. When he looked down again, eyes damp, the face of the child had changed, bent, and twisted. The years collapsed and folded in on themselves. Something in the air softened. Uncle and niece appeared to each other anew, crooked, imperfect, more human than before.

They spent the rest of the night huddled in the fragrant shade of trees in the yard, smoke rising in wisps from Sterling’s mouth, drink stinging Alisha’s belly. They squabbled over tactics and what the coaches were doing wrong. They talked about politics and the fate of the nation. They gossiped about family. They told crude jokes. In the private glow of the moon, they spoke in belligerent and forceful tones, gesticulating wildly, each trying to outdo the other.

As the night sky pulled away its dangling stars, clearing space for the sun to rise, they found themselves feeling small and surprisingly docile. They climbed the steps to gaze out into the languorous hues of the imminent sunrise. At the top, they stood together, like children, quietly hoping that tomorrow would arrive late—that it too was out there somewhere, having trouble with the dog.