Sylvia Wynter's Dream

by jessiemayers | Class Blog 5 | Setting is more than a place, it’s sensory

Félicité Ville Castries

The gutter guppies were true freedom fighters. I liked to watch them swim – I still do – in the grey, stagnant water in the gutters that ran through Castries.

Picture from r/whatsit displaying small fish in a gutter

These sludge-filled veins ran through the city, distributing the heavy smell of rot and mud. But the guppies always seemed to find a way out of the black, moss-stained walls into the bigger gutter – the Castries River – under Bridge Street.

People moved about, walking with purpose on their way to get whatever they came to Castries for. They always walked fast, entering stores and darting across the tiny roads, the left side always lined with cars parked on the faded double yellow lines.

The traffic policeman, who decided to do his job today, passed and gifted the windshield wipers little yellow tickets, which they hugged tightly, their top halves waving languidly in the occasional breeze. 

A stitch burned my side. I clung to my mother’s hand as we entered the one-hundredth store for the day. This one was filled with shoes. I like the smell of leather and new. I watched the store clerk wrap and box my new school shoes. The crinkle-cracking of paper tingling my scalp and spine. 

Soon, we were out walking again. I knew my pinky toe had a juicy corn, and my thigh skin prickled from the heat under my jeans. For whatever reason, we passed through George V Park. I saw the polished grey bust for Charles Eugène Gabriel de La Croix, Marquis de Castries, staring dramatically into the distance. He was the white man they named Castries after, and we had the same middle name.

I liked to hear people talking, especially when they spoke kwéyòl in the smooth way that my granny did; words were lyrics lilting off their tongue but rooted in the stressed syllables that travelled from their bellies.

Two men guffawed as they walked past me while I waited for my mother, who was ordering two hotdogs from the hotdog man. They had both mawon-ed work and were happy to be off the clock early today.

To mawon is to be in a state of marronage, which always seemed to make people happy. Maybe that’s why the neg mawon, the black brigands, had re-baptised the city, Félicité Ville. But that was short-lived, and the city was re-rebaptised, Castries. 

I want to think the pigeons were like neg mawons. Flocks would sit on the black electric lines, their claws like clothes pegs keeping their speckled bodies in place. I barely heard their cooing over the angrily honking man who thought the lady driving the Mazda in front should drive faster.

The pigeons were above the hustle of Castries. They covered the concrete sidewalks with coats of white, black speckled shit as if trying to reclaim the city, to paint it in their image.

I avoid walking under the electric lines. I watch people dodge the droppings. I wonder if they knew that Castries City grinds the old town, Félicité Ville, into the dark gutter sludge.