We had a new kitchen fitted recently. It’s a long story but it all started several weeks ago when the cutlery drawer fell apart and neither we, nor anyone or anyone we asked, could fix it.
On a Saturday morning, Caroline told me that she’d heard of a place, "Jillings", that specialised in kitchen cabinetry (great word). She said that as she had to go into George Town anyway, she would take the broken drawer pieces with her and see if they could mend it.
At noon she returned. “Clear up a bit,” she said. “They’re coming round at two to measure up for a new kitchen.”
I seemed to meet and host most of Cayman’s skilled tradesmen over a ten-day period and very good they were too. Towards the end, Tommy was here. He and his partner, Demarco, were working away when Tommy came into the doorway of our main room and asked me to look at something in the kitchen.
Tommy is easily the tallest person that I have ever stood alongside. He is 6 feet 11 inches tall. (You have to ask, don’t you?)
Unfortunately, he is also short-sighted and when we stand next to each other to study a plan or a pattern, he has to hold it so close to his eyes that it is such a long way above my head and that means that I can’t see it at all.
Consequently, we have spent a lot of time sitting next to each other with papers we are looking at on the table in front of us. When sitting, I look him squarely in the chest.
I got out of my chair. I had been sitting in one position for over an hour and my knee had seized up and was stiff and painful. Tommy noticed and asked about it. I told him that it was arthritis.
“You should try dat fruit,” said Tommy, who speaks with such a strong Cayman accent that I find much of what he says to be incomprehensible the first time I hear it and he has to keep repeating.
“What fruit?” I asked him.
“You know. Dat fruit for arthritis.”
“No, I don’t. What’s it called?”
“Dat green fruit. You know?”
“No, I don’t know,” I said. “What’s it called?”
“I dunno.” He called out to Demarco who was mixing mastic outside.
“Dat fruit. What name it is?”
“What fruit?” shouted Demarco.
“Jammy’s fruit.”
“The white one?”
“Nah, the green one.”
“The small one?”
“Nah, the big one.”
“The one like an egg?"
“Yeah, dat fruit.”
“Oh, dat fruit. Right.”
“What name it is?”
“Dunno.”
“What you do,” said Tommy turning to me, “is take out the inside. Get all the juice and all the seeds – zillions of tiny seeds, plenty seeds – and put dem all in a pail. Then, you add a cup of urine, mash it and leave dem for four, five day. It smell bad and taste bad so add orange juice to make it taste better and then drink it all in one. Pain go in ten minutes and you good for six month. No one in North Side got arthritis.”
“Is the urine essential?” I asked.
“Oh yeah and the dark orange is best. Weak urine don’t work so good.”
“Soursap,” shouted Demarco from outside.
“Nah,” said Tommy. “Not as big as that. It’s the other one.” And then, looking at me, “Soursap helps you sleep.”
By now I had resigned myself to continuing discomfort.
“I know,” Tommy said to me. “I’ll go by Jammy tonight, see if he got some. He got trees in his yard and if he got some, I bring some tomorrow.”
“OK, thanks,” I said, “That’s nice of you.”
“If he hasn’t, I’ll go by Grandma. She make it.”
“So, she’s got trees? She’ll have some fruit?” I asked apprehensively.
“No. She take Jammy’s fruit and she always make a load and keep it in the freezer. It last for years. I’ll bring you a bottle.”
I’m still in pain.
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