See Now Then by Jamaica Kincaid Page B

the room seemed abnormal. Mrs. Sweet said, hmmmmmh! and then chewed her nails down to the quick, how to pay the enormous heating bill from Greene’s Oil and the electric-light bill from Central Vermont Public Service. For how were they to live? Mrs. Sweet asked herself and then she looked up at the heavens and from time to time a large check would fall out of the clear blue sky and it was addressed to her; and then again, from time to time, the postman would bring lots of sealed envelopes and when the envelopes were addressed to Mrs. Sweet, inevitably they held checks made payable to that Charles Laughton–like entity. Mr. Sweet would look up at the sky too and see out of its true blueness the white envelopes falling down to the earth, and all the envelopes were addressed to Mrs. Sweet; Mr. Sweet would intercept the postman just as he was about to deposit all the Sweets’ mail in their mailbox and all the envelopes were addressed to Mrs. Sweet and some of them held checks made out to Mrs. Sweet. Here, it’s all for you, Mr. Sweet would say, throwing the contents of the mail on the dining table, not caring how it landed, in what order it appeared, and to himself, he would say, “She is such a shit,” but Mrs. Sweet would never hear it, for he said it to himself, he said so many things to himself and only he, only he, heard himself say these things.
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    Heracles soon could walk in a normal way, one foot, not parallel, in front of the other, each allowing him to balance himself, and he did so with great peals of laughter and other exclamations of joy! And he went from one room to the other without inhibition, and in his joy at this he would shout, “I did it, I did it,” and this declaration of his accomplishment was a source of intrigue to Mrs. Sweet, for what did it mean, “I did it, I did it,” and the triumph of Heracles, for he broke free of the borders between the kitchen and the dining room and the living room and the doors that led to outside, where there would be a road with cars going back and forth to unknown destinations and their drivers heedless of the occasional presence of the young Heracles; this triumph of Heracles was such a mystery to Mrs. Sweet. But Mr. Sweet looked at the damage done when that small child, no more than a year old, went from room to room, in his herolike struggle, his strong body shoving the furniture out the window, tearing down the curtains and shredding them into pieces as if they were tissue paper, throwing up his half-digested vegetables all over the white couch for the fun of it: and he thought, what the hell is this! what is the matter with this kid! where the hell did he come from! For that boy, the young Heracles, could die if he was not contained in the rooms of the Shirley Jackson house, with its yard separating it from the busy street, and Mr. Sweet did not desire this: that the young Heracles be struck dead by a car driven by someone drunk or driven by a teenager as Heracles in exhilaration wandered out into the nice country road, without being noticed by his dear mother, that loving Mrs. Sweet, he had not desired at all. And so Mr. Sweet went to Ames, a department store that then sold many useful things at a price the Sweets could afford, and he bought many sets of safety guards, expandable barriers, which when placed between two doorposts blocked entry from one room to the other, and he also bought locks for the cabinets that held dangerous substances, in the kitchen, bathroom and other appropriate places, and these locks were so complicated that only an adult person could manage to unlock them. But here comes the young Heracles! For his fingers so thick and ungainly-seeming were so intelligent they knew how to unlock the cabinets that held the poisonous liquids that a child might swallow and he was so strong that when he, in a fit of running, threw himself against the child-barrier gates, they gave way, and Mr. Sweet fled from him, his child, he was the