All but too quickly, sweaty men invaded our home to collect our cardboard boxes that we had filled with our belongings. I left nothing behind but a fragment of myself that is still embedded into the cracks of those concrete walls to this day. It took two trucks and an afternoon for my life to change in ways I didn’t know a life could change. I was not aware that I was leaving behind a confident and unapologetic girl and instead would trade for a deeply reflective and shy young lady. I couldn’t have known that saying goodbye to this place meant saying goodbye to an intimacy I had spent years building amongst my relatives and I. I would never again waltz over to a neighbors house for eggs or flour. I would never hear those mongrels bark in the morning and I would never see those cows again. On that summer day in 2009, I honestly felt I would be back the next day. I shut out the change that night when sleeping in my new bed felt awkward and sticky. It was as if water rushed over me and up my nose when I realized Mr. Smith’s house was now my new home and Mahogany Drive belonged to a young couple — I didn’t bother to learn their names, they were like thieves to me.
My parents tried really hard to make my sister and I feel at home, but it was hard because we had a new number, no internet connection and our TV’s were sitting in the corner of the living room. Any important race Usain Bolt ran that summer, we missed, which was against all Jamaican rules. I was faced with new luxuries I hadn’t known before — like five-minute car rides and easy access to any and everything. I felt uncomfortable with all the choices and options I had around me, it was overwhelming and thus complicated. Everything in Spanish Town seemed so much simpler and easier.
