A Suitcase Tale Set in Jamaica

[Victoria Brooks]

It’s the end of the line.

She’s left me.

And to top that she’s locked me in her bedroom closet.

I love her, as much as someone like me can, and I’m used to it so – don’t think I’m hurt. It’s just that I’m bored and,
I suppose, angry that she hasn’t traveled lately and that means I haven’t gone
along and because of that I’ve not had any adventures at all.

You would think she would be more sensitive to my feelings and at least take me out for a walk. I do a lot for her, you know. For instance, I carry everything she puts inside of me no matter what it is.

I roll up to the closet door on my rubber wheels, la da de da.

The door is a big heavy wood thing but that is nothing to me.

I’m going to jimmy it with my special device, open it with my own key.

Also the key to me.

A suitcase that travels like me always has a lock.

(About that: I’d accompanied her to the Spy Store on a trip off island. While she was out checking the meter I seduced the owner’s lusting for me leather briefcase with my dazzling silver zipper smile and that is how I conned the silly satchel into giving me this device that opens all simple locks. And that is what I am doing now. Hah ha!)

It also means I can open myself up and see what’s inside me, anytime.

Now I am outside after almost breaking my neck on the black wood stairs that lead out to our yard in Negril.

Fantastic. I sniff and the nostrils in my lock catch the scent of the sea wind she calls Dr Jamaica. I careen around the yard, round
and round I go, like a carousel. I’m a happy case. I am no longer a locked up
luggage, an in-bond bag.

I zip around the corner of the white verandah on my extra hardy inline skate wheels and pass under a tumbling torrent of red and pink bougainvillea to the cliff side. Oh, that cliff is rough and black. Like some of the inhabitants of her island. Behind that is the beautiful blue sea slipping and slopping its turquoise at the cliffs.

I gaze upward with my handle eye. I see floating colors. I must be hallucinating; or more likely my mistress slipped me a mickey to keep me quiet in the closet.

Yes, there really are a thousand velvet triangles floating like wavelets in the air. Oh, look, they are sun yellow and green as a grasshopper and white like the pristine flowers she loves.

Yahoo, I chase them. I jump up opening my maw. I devour one and it is velvet. I know, as she’d packed a dress that felt like that on a trip. I chase more. Up and over the cliffs I fly, my maw snapping closed on each triangle of velvet. I feel them flutter in my stomach, I am in heaven.

What’s happened? The velvet triangles in the sky are gone and I seem to have taken a wrong turn and fallen into the sea. I can’t swim. Oh God, my skin is wet and my nylon insides might fill with water. I am drowning…

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My dear readers, my hungry -for-travel suitcase was polishing his handles again, spitting on them and rubbing at them and causing me grief. I

can’t concentrate. He is driving me out of my own house with his spitting
noises. The guttural hoarking is disgusting.

So forced to get away and leave my work for awhile I told him I was going out and locked him in the bedroom closet. I do this for his own good and so he doesn’t make trouble.

What a laborious luggage he is.

I’m actually going no farther than the gate. The vegetable man who comes in his truck has tooted his horn.

The Jamaican fruit is wonderful and I purchase a mango big as a kid’s football. It is aptly called Fatboy.

I am not gone long and when I return what a catastrophic caterwauling I hear. I run to the sea. It is my poor beloved suitcase.

He is floating in the water.

Has someone stolen him and deep-sixed him?

Is he so despondent that we have not traveled that he deep-sixed
himself?

I drag the sodden suitcase out of the water and back onto the cliffs.

Poor thing. His zipper is soaked and I’m worried he will rust. I open my case to see if he has taken in water. Thank goodness he is dry.

But what now?

A cloud of delicate color escapes; diaphanous yellows, creamy whites and soft greens.

Is it is my suitcase’s soul?

No, of all things, he is filled with butterflies. They fly out making a
velvety rainbow. In summer, during our rainy time, butterflies breed in the
limestone cliffs that skirt the sea by the house. It is butterfly season.

I take my capricious case by the handle, and think yes, I must make arrangements: I see that my hungry for travel case is ready for a nervous breakdown he is in such dire need of travel.

And so, dear readers, on to my story titled “Nowhere “a short tale about my own close escape.

Victoria Brooks

http://www.greatestescapes.com