Nobody knows Seller's real name.
I have asked. Danny asked his mother, who asked his aunt, who said she had once known it but had lost it somewhere between a wedding and a funeral. The woman herself has never offered it. She has run the biggest food stall in County A market for twenty years, a long wooden counter under a blue tarpaulin, with four huge pots, six benches and a small black radio that plays highlife all day, and she has been called, by everyone, simply Seller.
She is a large, handsome, shining woman with a loud laugh and a strong arm and a brain that works faster than most computers. She knows every customer's name and every customer's debt. She can tell, from the way you hold your spoon, whether you will pay on time.
She is also, I am afraid, the reason I know the word exploit.
"JJ!" she shouted, as I ducked through the back door. "Don't you dare track mud on my floor!"
"I'm not wearing shoes, Seller."
"Then don't track feet!"
That is the way she is. She talks as if she is annoyed, but if you listen carefully you hear the humour underneath, like a warm brick under a cold blanket. I think she likes me. I think she likes me the way you like an old umbrella, a useful, shabby thing that you would never be seen with in public.
The kitchen at the back of her stall is small, hot and loud. It smells of palm oil, onions and sugarcane smoke. A tower of used plates leaned against one wall, taller than I was, shining with grease. Beside it lay a basin of grey water and a lump of green soap.
My heart gave a small, hungry skip.
I knew exactly what I would do. I would wash every plate, every pot, every spoon. Then Seller would lean on the counter and say, All right, JJ, come and eat, and give me whatever was left in the big blue bowl. Usually rice and a spoonful of stew. Sometimes, if I was lucky, a piece of fried fish with the bones still in.
"Seller," I called. "I'm here. May I wash your plates?"
She did not answer.
* * *
I could hear why.
The front of the stall was loud. Not the usual lunch noise, but a bigger, braver, more excited noise, full of laughing and calling and the clatter of crowded benches. Somebody was banging a spoon on a table. Somebody had started to sing.
I put my head round the curtain.
The stall was packed.
I have never seen so many people in one place at one time. They stood two deep along the counter. They sat three to a bench. They crowded at the edges, holding bowls, balancing plates, shouting their orders over the heads of others. There was a whole delegation from the post office. There were two policemen. There was a woman in a bright green dress who was feeding a baby with one hand and a plantain with the other.
"What happened?" I asked a boy beside me.
"Rumour," he said, with his mouth full. "Somebody said a big man from the city is coming to eat here. Everyone wants to be near."
"What big man?"
"I don't know. Rich, they say. Rich as a country."
I looked around. I did not see any rich men, only a great many hungry people, and Seller moving through them like a general in a good dress, ladling, shouting, counting coins with one hand and smacking a spoon out of a child's fist with the other.
I decided it was not the time to disturb her.
I returned to the kitchen. I rolled up my sleeves. I began to wash.
* * *
I want to tell you that I did it beautifully.
I did it very well. I scrubbed every plate until it shone. I rinsed every pot twice. I rubbed the bottoms of the spoons with a pinch of sand, because I once saw a woman do that, and she said it made them sparkle. I stacked the dishes by size and the cups by colour, and I arranged the knives in a neat row, and when I had finished, the kitchen looked less like a kitchen than a small, orderly museum.
I was proud of it. I do not often feel proud. It is a heavy feeling, and I am not used to carrying it, but I stood in the middle of that kitchen with my wet hands and my aching back, and I thought: That is as good as anyone could do.
I washed my hands. I tidied my hair, which made no difference. I put on the best face I owned, which was a small, polite, hopeful smile.
I went to find Seller.
* * *
She was at the counter, serving.
I will not describe the next half hour in detail, because it was not interesting, and also because it hurt. I will only say that I stood at her elbow with my best smile on and waited. I waited while she served the postmaster. I waited while she argued with a customer about change. I waited while she took a call on a very small phone and shouted at someone named Gloria, and I waited while she wrapped fourteen portions of rice for a man with a motorbike.
At last I touched her sleeve.
"Seller," I said quietly. "Please. I'm done."
She did not look at me. She was ladling stew. A man was holding out a plate.
"Seller. May I eat?"
"JJ." She spoke through her teeth, without turning her head. "Can you not see I am busy?"
"I only—"
"Go. Come back next time."
I stood there.
I want to tell you how it felt, and I find it hard, because the words are very small. It did not hurt the way my father's basket hurt. It was not a sharp feeling. It was a dull one. It was like being told, politely, by a person you trust, that you are furniture.
"Seller," I said, "I'm very late. I've nothing for—"
"Jay-Jay!" She turned. For a moment I saw her face, hot and tired and sharp, and for a moment I thought she was going to say yes. "I said go. Do you think I am here to feed every stray in the county? I have customers. Paying customers. Go and find your supper somewhere else!"
A hush fell along the counter.
I did not look around. I did not have to. I felt it on my back like a hand, the gaze of thirty strangers, soft and curious and faintly pleased, the way people look at a dog being shooed. Somewhere behind me a woman murmured, "Poor boy." Somebody else said, "Shame."
Nobody gave me a plate.
I think that is what I remember. Not the words. The quiet. Thirty people, and every one of them had bowls and spoons and full stomachs, and not one of them held out so much as a bite.
I nodded. I turned. I walked out through the kitchen, past the shining dishes, the neat row of knives, the stack of cups I had sorted by colour. I did not run. I did not look back.
At the door, I touched the doorframe lightly with two fingers, the way you touch a person's arm when you leave.
Goodbye, kitchen, I thought.
I'm sorry I was so good at you.
* * *
I made it as far as the gutter.
It was a deep, dry drain at the roadside, behind the market, in the shadow of the bus stop. Nobody goes there. The air smells of dust and rotten oranges. I sat on the edge with my feet hanging down and my head against my knees, and I let the noise of the market wash over me, and I did not cry.
I want that on record. I did not.
I counted. It is a thing I do. I counted the cracks in the concrete, the flies on the orange peel, the number of steps from the drain to the nearest tap. I counted the hours until school ended, and the hours until supper, and the hours until I could lie down in the dark and stop being a boy.
I got to two hundred and eleven before a shadow fell across me.
I did not look up. I assumed it was a dog.
"Steven," said a low, even voice above me, "is that not the wallet boy?"
I froze.
"Yes, Master," said a second voice, thin and obedient. "I believe so."
"He looks unhappy."
"He's a street boy, sir. They all look like that."
"Do they?" said the first voice. It sounded, strangely, more interested than disapproving. "I do not think they all look like that."
I raised my head.
Two men stood on the road above me, black against the glaring sky. One was tall and square, with a plain white shirt and a pair of dark glasses pushed up on his forehead. The other was young and thin and fidgety, in a worn grey shirt that hung off him like borrowed clothes.
The tall man was looking at me.
And I knew, with the same odd, certain, falling-through-a-floor feeling I'd had on the road, that this was not going to be the end of the day I had expected.