On talks of exotic things

All children love exotic things and Shadrach first saw Sarah when he was a child.

It was an afternoon-turning-evening in the middle of the first midterm. This description is necessary in depicting the sheer ordinariness of the period that Shadrach first saw Sarah for he thought she was the most exotic thing he had ever seen.

Closing time at Shadrach’s school was 3pm, but his parents could only afford to pick him up by 5pm. There was not enough time to be earlier and not enough money to secure Shadrach a spot on the school bus. Shadrach met Sarah while he was waiting for his parents to pick him up from school.

Her father was a widower who lost his wife in an accident. He trusted no one but himself to safely convey his daughter to their home. The school bus was not an option. Sarah would have left school an hour earlier, but on the day she met Shadrach, her father was late.

Shadrach watched the sun hide behind a grey cloud in a way that made the cloud seem bordered by a gold line. Golden sun rays dropped effetely behind the cloud, spreading out like an elaborate headdress; like the feathered ones that he saw at the back of his favorite notebook. The one that had pretty carnival pictures all over it.

Thirteen children were standing, sitting or playing in the many open spaces at school as those two waited for their parents to show up. The school was a fairly new establishment and some of the classes had no shutters. The windows were bare and sometimes, tall children like Shadrach sat on them.

The beautiful cloud Shadrach watched soon started to move and so did his gaze till it was level with Sarah who came into view at just about the same time.

As a grown man, Shadrach would come to understand that there were things that could not be accounted for. He could not state why he found her exotic, but it so happened that if he ever said the word, exotic, what he really wanted to say was “a quality of being like Sarah”. He did not outgrow his love for Sarah, so he did not outgrow his love for exotic things.

As the cloud moved from it’s position, where Shadrach watched it, Sarah came into view, smiled at him and waved.

“Hi Shadrach.”

The air around him changed, but unlike most of his peers when they had such an experience, words did not fail him, his motions were not awkward and he did not feel a need to make a joke about her hair, her clothes or anything about her. He did not feel a need to scare her with a dead grasshopper or display any boyish shenanigans.

He simply smiled, waved right back and beckoned, “Hey! Sarah, come sit!”

Sarah joined him on the empty window.

She smelled like Cabin biscuits.

On continued exposure to her person, Shadrach became a man of very few choices till he developed a preference for only things that moved him like Sarah did.

Not many things moved him and this was a problem.

When they were sixteen, Sarah came into view again.

It was an ordinary morning. Shadrach was waiting for his boss. He was apprenticing as a sales boy in a pharmacy store. He wanted to become a pharmacist and his parents told him to apprentice for a bit. It gave them the opportunity to gather his fees.

All he did was expense the drugs that had been prescribed, but he soon found himself able to name drugs, and even group them. He knew which drugs were used for pain, for hypertension and which drugs were used for infections.

Shadrach welcomed Sarah and asked her to sit. He watched her watch the motions of life around them. Drinking in her features, loving them and basking in them.

“I think I am going to do A-levels.” Sarah said.

His parents could not afford A-level programs, there would be no A-levels for Shadrach.

“Is that what your daddy said?” Shadrach asked.

“He hasn’t said it yet.”

“So how do you know?”

Sarah shrugged. “It just seems like it.”

“Okay.”

Shadrach soon heard the unmistakable honk of his boss’s car and Sarah had to leave. She promised to keep in touch and as he got sucked into his work at the store, it began to occur to him just how different he was from Sarah.

When he was younger, it was easier to ignore his threadbare uniform against her fresh one, his rubber pair of scandals against her hard leather shoes, he could ignore the fact that his parents could not even afford a bike-man to pick him up on their behalf whereas Sarah’s father drove a model of a salon car that was not very old.

They were getting older and it was getting harder to ignore.

There was nothing ordinary about the couple of weeks that Shadrach’s love for Sarah matured and asserted itself. Shadrach was finally studying to be a Pharmacist. They had started clinicals and he easily aced school. The store-boy work had paid off. His parents had each gotten windfalls that made them wealthier and he had a robust allowance.

It was robust enough to consistently secure time with Sarah in fancy places for weeks.

They were at that point in life where they could describe themselves with a single word. His choice word then was indecisive while Sarah’s was perfectionist. Only the best was good for Sarah and nothing else.

“I know you like me a lot, Shadrach. I think we should date.” Sarah said.

Shadrach chuckled, “Am I that obvious?”

“You actually are.”

“You think the time is right?” Shadrach asked.

“It seems like it is.” Sarah said.

She attended a private university in the north, he attended a public university in the south. He’d have preferred that they each waited till they were done with school, seeing as it was very unlikely that they became interested in other people while they were away from each other.

But like clockwork, he gave his answer.

“Okay.”

The next time Sarah would come into his view, his love for exotic things would take a brutal shot.

“My father said we cannot be together.”

He had found the perfect spot for their date that night. He scheduled thirty minutes each day for finding the perfect spot for date night with Sarah. Week in, week out, he never missed. Sarah always declared that the spot was perfect. He rode the wave of her approval through the week until he found the next perfect spot for another date night.

The conversation that ensued that night yielded nothing. Sarah’s father was sponsoring her relocation to another country, where her dream job and a man of her father’s choosing waited. Sarah thought it a perfect arrangement.

In the horrid motions of that conversation, Shadrach took a refresher course in all the things that made him so different from Sarah.

He had parents who trusted that he had a mind of his own. They loved him, but he was his own person. Sarah was her father’s pride and joy and the sharp end of her mother’s love. The one that broke away when her soul was yanked from this world by a motor accident. Her father was her sole idea of perfection and Shadrach simply couldn’t compete.

Sarah left Shadrach sitting in the outdoor dining place surrounded by lamps made out of coconut shells and artificial candles.

For the first time in a long time, Shadrach did not know what to do. He sat at the diner until a wave of exhaustion descended on him. He needed to sleep. He made sure his car was in good hands and then, he ordered a ride to take him to his exotic home.

Everything in his house sickened him. The portraits of Sarah made bone-curling sadness flow through him. He lived like a ghost until he lost his job. His manager said his lackluster attitude was costing them money. Shadrach could not blame him. He did sales for a living.

On the day he lost his job, he had a craving for hot street food. If Sarah told him that, he would have gone to his socials to ask “Where can I get the best street food on the Island? Preferably ones that incorporate exotic spices.”

He did not want the best street food. He just wanted street food. Everyone in the buka he found did a poor job at hiding their wonder at his presence there. Men who wore the quality of his wristwatch, shoes and belt simply did not patronize such places.

He jumped on a public bus. He wanted to go home. After riding for a while, he decided to walk the rest of the distance. A lone flower growing on a shrub caught his attention. It was white and all its petals dipped into a gold middle from which two white stalks grew. It drew him in like exotic things usually did. He plucked it and he held on to it for the rest of his walk, holding it gingerly so that he would not crush it.

When he got home, his mother was waiting for him outside the door.

He held the flower out to her.

“I brought you a flower.” He said as he tried to smile.

His mother pulled him into an embrace and he poured out his grief in a series of sobs that shook his shoulders and made him hold on to her like he used to when he was a young boy who did not want to resume at kindergarten.

It started to occur to him that maybe Sarah was not the sole originator of his love for exotic things.

That maybe it was this woman who birthed him, who always smelled like baby oil with her quiet beauty and caramel skin. That maybe it was the unconditional acceptance that he felt at home that was the exotic thing.

He was locked in his mother’s embrace for a long time, the exotic flower he had plucked on the way home all but crushed and forgotten in its warmth.