Life and Times of Chacopy
Sitting on the porch, with a bottle of beer in hand and two empty ones lying on the floor, Chacopy glanced across the one eighth of an acre parcel in his possession. Overgrown grass and the abundance of dandelions in the yard has been a source of intense irritation for his neighbors. The “Turf Builder” he spread last year, if anything, had enhanced the growth of the dandelions and other assorted variety of weeds. It probably was a mistake to emulate Kuttappan, the way he sowed Chama (a cousin of rice paddies) back home. Joe, across the street, has just wrapped up mowing the yard and trimming the hedges. Next door neighbor Tim is into the fourth hour of washing and waxing his “machine”, a 1983 Matador. Chacopy will have none of that; he believes that week-ends are for rest and recuperation; he needs to maintain a leisurely pace, for even the God, rested on the seventh day after a hectic sequence of creation and other management feats related to the universe. In His case, he started with light so that he can see what he is doing, then moved on to stars, debris in the heavens, various animals and eventually the man! That is a lot of work, no wonder he rested the seventh day.
The stoop sitting on the porch gives him ample opportunities to observe the fauna around the neighborhood. In addition to the crafty squirrel that relentlessly buries nuts for winter time snacking and the continuous buzzing around of the teenagers in search of a willing partner of the opposite sex. In the latter case, their casual but calculated moves that are part of the strutting rituals among these bipedal. This is undoubtedly an art instilled in their children at an early age by the parents. It is the mode of operandi (MO) of the lower middle-class community sometimes derogatorily referred to as the red-necks.
He knew that MO is extremely alien to him, this courting ritual. In his own case, it would have been an “arranged marriage”, as all his siblings had. As the word says, the family would have arranged a girl for him to marry that matches various wish list of the family including family name, dowery (the extend of the money exchanged between the parents of the individuals to be wed), the bride’s ability to work in the kitchen under the supervision of the mother-in-law, and so on and on. The desires and compatibility of the couples are of less significance, the wisdom being they will adjust eventually to the environment. Chacopy’s sudden departure to the US killed all these shenanigans giving him a free and open field and a different approach, aka one practiced by the Westerner.
But this ritual that he is observing is beyond him; he knows his own children will embrace this ritual; as distasteful as it, he has no choice but to suck it up and go with the flow. It felt like ages since he left his native serene hamlet along the shores of the Pamba River. The twenty-five-acre spread that his parents owned extended all the way to the river. Around the house there were the coconut trees along with an occasional Teak, an Angili, a couple of Jackfruit trees, and a number of mango trees. He remembered the summer holidays, during the April-May time period, the kids will all be singing “Kaate Vaa, Kaate Vaa”, urging the winds blow stronger hoping that it will shake some ripe mangos off the trees. That is a far cry from the existence he has now. He cannot believe that he left all that comfort and established a homestead off of the B&A Boulevard in Glen Burnie. What is Sky Line Drive to the Blue Ridge Mountains is what Baltimore – Annapolis Boulevard, most affectionately referred to as the B&A Blvd, is to the Anne Arundel County. It meanders through the vast wilderness of this County in particular the wild life sanctuary of Glen Burnie, home to the not-so-endangered species known as the Burnian, a homo erectus distantly related to the baluchithere (a very large prehistoric land mammal). Until Ritchie Highway came into existence in the second half of the 20th century, B&A Blvd remained the soul artery that connected the two sea-faring cities of Baltimore and Annapolis.
Even though it felt like ages, it has only been fifteen years since Chacopy called Glen Burnie his home town. This whole thing has been a blunder of gigantic proportion; an estate owner’s son coming into this part of the world and settling down with an Italian stone mason’s daughter. After growing up in a fifteen-room house on a twenty-five-acre spread, it is unbelievable that he settled for a thousand square foot house on a tenth of an acre lot! It is especially bad, now that Virginia’s parents are separated and her mom moved in with them. He tried to through as to what may have gone wrong. The only reasoning that he could arrive at was that, as a child in the middle of the line up (to be exact the sixth among eleven children), he received no attention from his parents; essentially his older siblings brought him up. That meant he seldom had face-time with his parents, older siblings made sure he took shower, brushed his teeth, went to the school on time and attended Mass on Saturdays and Sundays. Instead of the face-time with his father, couple of times a month he had the ass-time with him and the cane usually left deep scars on the back of his thighs and buttocks for days.
When Coppin State University offered him a scholarship to study criminology, Chacopy had the illusion that things are finally falling into place. He still remembers his father, with a degree of pride, bragging to his neighbors back home about Chacopy heading to America for higher studies, about the special request from higher ups in American government requesting that he be allowed to migrate. The subsequent questions and answers are beyond belief. In no time, his father became an expert on America! He would authoritatively say the happenings in the US and the implications that will result from the events. Chacopy had no clue as to what to expect at Coppin State, he was really taken back as things unraveled there. His pride and sense of accomplishment was very short lived. In spite of doing very well at Coppin, the only job he could get was at the Patuxent men’s club, the state refers to it as the Patuxent Correctional Institute but the locals call it “Super Max”, a holding place for the most violent among the criminals.
Super Max lives up to its reputation every bit. Deprived of normal human contacts, they exhibit the behavioral traits of caged pit-bulls. With extreme sexual drive and associated violence being the most compelling instincts, they spend days and nights scheming. The administrators have an implied contract with these violent criminals that they look the other way when new prisoners are assaulted on the first day as an initiation ritual. During his daily tour of the place, Chacopy could sense them salivating over him from behind bars, mentally raping him over and over, their passion further intensified by his petite look and effeminate demeanor. He was quite relieved when finally, the Motor Vehicles Administration (MVA) offered him a position in their licensing department. He thus relocated to Glen Burnie.
It was love at first sight with Virginia; oh! these white women, they know how to present their material! He still remembers her coming out of the cafeteria. She had a pink blouse on; the top two buttons were intentionally left off. He could not take his eyes off of the cleavage, looked like a valley between two mountains! He made frequent occasions to “accidently” run into her, eventually gathering enough courage to say hi. Things moved rather rapidly after that. Marriage was a small affair; she had a few people and he did not bother to invite anybody. Nobody back home knew what he was getting into, they would not have approved it anyway. The first few years were fantastic, did a lot of things together with her, travelled a lot. Things came to an abrupt end when one after another the three kids arrived in short order. The child birth took a heavy toll on her. He can’t believe how quickly Virginia ballooned into this eighth-of-a-ton bonanza. The last role reversal almost did him in; he felt the massive blubber was going to choke him to death. He still likes her but there has been less and less physical contact. He consoled himself that age reduces the appetite for frequent sexual undertaking.
He heard Vieginia calling out, “Hi honey, have you gotten ready yet?” Chacopy realized that it was getting late for the Saturday ritual, that is the day he drops Virginia and the kids off at the Price Club, a humongous whole sale food mart. One can seldom get out of that place without spending over two hundred dollars! That is the place where people pick up ten-pound jar of Beefaroni or five dozen hot-dog packets. Of course, he can relate to buying that level of quantities. Back home Ammachi used to send Pappy to Chantha on Saturdays (there the market convened only once a week) with a list of items like eight kilos of Kadala (Chick Peas) and six kilos of Cheru Payaru (small beans) and so on. Ammachi, at least, had a dozen mouths to feed. Virginia’s interest is the samplers they cook at the Price Club, she has trained the kids to feed often and feed enough on those munchies. As a rule, she does not feed the family on Saturdays. Chacopy can’t stand that place; to him the place resembles a fire-ant colony with some animal carcass on top of it. Instead of spending time at the food mart, he usually walks over to the Hub , Cap City, a place that just about carries hub caps for any cars made in America. Their motto is “If you have a wheel, I have a cap that fits it”. He enjoys talking to Joe Hubcap (yeah, he changed his last name from Smith after opening the store); a large humanoid with the belly reaching a couple of feet in front of him. His dirty brown moustache and the constant drooling from tobacco chewing are a throw back into an older time. Chacopy enjoys talking to Joe.
The honking told him that the kids can’t wait to get to their feeding trough. He had not changed yet. So he goes through the pile of clothes in the corner of the closet, quickly pulls up a pair of sweat pants, grabs hold of a hoodie (hooded sweatshirt), and briskly walks over to the driveway. Virginia had loaded herself on to the front-seat of the Impala, Mumsy and the kids are in the back seat waiting to be taken to the promised land. He ignores his wife’s comments about wearing the same outfit cleaning the garage, taking the trash out, or going for an outing. He fiddles out the key and turns the ignition. Unlike most mornings, the car enthusiastically starts; he figures that it also knows about the munchies at the store. He thought for a while what he could do for next few hours, maybe he will wander around Circuit City and look at some of the new gadgets. He looked forward to the evening; after shopping they all go to a sumptuous meal at the Coyote Café where soup dujour often relates to a road-kill in the neighborhood. Chacopy wondered, compared to his own abysmal existence, how the life and times were back home!
