‘So what shall me tell me missus?’ July carried on.
But the overseer just yelled out, ‘Elias, come and take this wretched box away!’
Raising himself swiftly from his seat he rushed to the door to shout, ‘I pay you to catch them and take them away. Come back here now! I demand you come back here now, boy.’
Elias soon appeared before him, grinning as only mischievous negro boys do. ‘Me find plenty more, massa. You wan’ come see?’ he said.
‘Just take that box away. Get rid of them. And do not leave them on the veranda, like last time. Take them far away. Do you understand? Kill them and take them far away.’
Elias, grabbing the box, soon noticed July’s two breasts and, for a moment, stopped to stare upon them before saying, ‘Me find plenty more roach-bug, you wan’ see? Me can show you, Miss July.’ July did not actually slap Elias’s head, nor command him with harsh words to, ‘Take it now or me bash your ears till them ring all day.’ She just gave him one look, then stamped her foot down hard—and this did say and do it all for her. Elias carried out the odious box as if walking with a tray of precious jewels across a swamp, for none must spill to scurry home, past his fuss-fuss massa.
The overseer sat down at his desk, then looking to July said, ‘I am so very sorry. Could you please repeat your mistress’s message?’
As July opened her mouth—to talk again of the heifer and the beef and the dinner—the biggest, blackest, monstrous beetle you ever did see, fell from a beam in the ceiling on to the desk, right in front of the overseer. This miscreated creature was surely the colossus of the cockroach dominion; for so immense was it that the blue and white plate that it landed upon seemed to crack under the bug’s hard shell and the little pips of orange that were scattered upon the dish bounced into the air like jumping beans.
Now. That the overseer jolted upon his seat, then stood up in fright upon seeing the creature land, is certain. That he leaped from his chair, somersaulted three times backwards away from the desk to arrive at the other side of the room with his legs wobbling beneath him like a newborn calf’s while pulling upon his hair and shrieking wild as missus gone mad, may be hard for my readers to believe, but that is how July remembers it. The white man was terrified—tears of fear soaked his face as he flapped before July, frenzied as a moth caught within a net.
July was quick to snatch this ugly bug from the plate and dash it hard on to the floor. But this well-defended creature hit the ground clattering like a propelled stone, then merely flipped itself over and commenced to walk away. July had to stamp upon it with her heel. Its shell then shattered with the snap and splatter of a rotten coconut bursting.
The overseer fixed a gaze of wonderment upon July—he was speechless. Until slowly, upon an exhaled breath, he stuttered, ‘Thank you.’ Then he began to awaken back into this life, ‘There are just so many cockroaches in this house,’ he sighed. ‘They are simply everywhere. There was one on my pillow yesterday. As I was going to bed, I pulled back my sheet to find it sitting there.’
‘But them just be bug-a-bugs,’ July replied. ‘Plenty ’pon this island, massa, them have no harm in them. Me is no feared of them.’
‘No? Well, you now know that your master is very feared of them,’ he said. ‘And you may laugh at me now all you wish. Who could blame you? You may tell everyone you meet how ridiculous the new overseer is when there are cockroaches anywhere near him. I cannot hide it now, can I?’
Then, as he sat back down upon the chair at his desk, he said, ‘Look at this! It’s made a crack in this plate.’ He handed the blue and white plate to July. Now, July knew that the cockroach did not make the crack in the plate, but as she took it from him she stared upon the pattern, for it was one she recognised. And he asked her, ‘Do you like it?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said. And, before she knew, she was telling him, ‘See upon this plate there be a tale. There be birds flying and the river has a likkle bridge