The Other Side of Paradise: A Memoir by Staceyann Chin Page A

had bought the bed I had been sleeping on in that house.
    “What you mean by that? Who live there now?”
    “Boy, you really don’t know anything, eh?” He takes a deep breath. “Okay, I don’t know who live there now, but I know is not our house. Grandma move us here because she retire from the police station job. She never have no money to pay rent. So we had to come.”
    “But, Delano, how you sure is not our house? Grandma could be renting it to them now, you know!” He doesn’t respond. “I don’t care what you say. It is our house, with the little blue and white folding tray and the little green veranda. It is our house in Lottery!”
    I kick the dirt and wipe the tears from my face.
    “Shut up, nuh, Stacey. Just shut up! You think because you say something it just go so all of a sudden? You must learn fi take things as them is. Is so it go. We have to behave or else they will put us out. Is just so it go.” He is crying too. Delano almost never cries. Not even when he is getting a beating with Uncle Harold’s police belt.
    “But Shane and Samantha help kill the chicken too. They not going to put them out,” I argue.
    “Jesus! Me have to tell you everything? People can’t put out them own children. But we don’t belong to them, only to Grandma, and not evenfor real. She is only our grandmother. She only have us because nobody never want us when we mother run gone lef us. Them can put us out, but them cannot put out them own children.”
    “But, Delano, you can go live with your father.”
    “Yes, but where you and Grandma going to live? You don’t even have no father. And even if somebody take in Grandma, nobody will take you in. Nobody but Grandma want you.”
    That hurts, but because he is crying so hard, I don’t say anything. “Don’t worry, Delano, nobody going to find out. None of us going say anything.” I am not so sure about Samantha, but I cross my fingers and say a prayer.
    Delano looks at me like I am the biggest idiot in the world. He turns away and covers his face with his hands and sobs. I watch Shane lift the limp carcass high above his head and toss it into the gully. The feathered missile looks like it is flying as it hurtles toward its final home. Shane’s bright blue Gator sneakers kick dust over the wet spot on the ground.
    I hate him. And Samantha. I hate their new sneakers and their new schoolbags bought for them right from the store.
     
    O ne Sunday morning in July, Aunt June muses aloud that she hasn’t seen the peel-neck fowl in a few days. Uncle Harold wrinkles his brows and says, “Mrs. Jennings, I have been telling you for months now that we need to set some poison. A rat or mongoose must have taken that fowl right from the coop.”
    “Harold, I am tired of telling you that if I set poison for the mongoose the fowls will eat it too. The children just have to make sure that each fowl is accounted for before they close the coop at night.”
    Uncle Harold turns to us at the table and says, “I hope you are taking note of what you just heard. We cannot afford to lose livestock to these rodents. Just make sure every latch is closed before each of you go to bed at night.”
    “Yes, Daddy.”
    “Yes, Uncle Harold.”
    The second week of July a letter arrives from Auntie Ella. She wants Grandma to take us to Kingston for the summer. I am excited to meet mymother’s sister. Auntie Ella is Grandma’s youngest child. And Grandma says Auntie Ella was very close to Mummy before she left for Canada.
    Aunt June doesn’t look pleased about Kingston. She bangs the pots around and says we have to make sure to take both our math workbooks and our next-year reading books with us. “I will not be held responsible for your regression when you both come back from a month in Kingston with nothing between your ears but God’s free air!”
    The evening before we leave, Grandma packs our bags. Aunt June tells her that she can use a tin of corned beef to make sandwiches to take for