Warmoes (2) Uncle Tom's Negger Hut

-2-

Saturday 27 May, already the hottest day of the year. The sparrows fall from the trees of the heat.
Donald Trump still doesn't know if he's going to sign the Paris climate agreement.

Fortunately, it is air-cooled in the 'Delhaize'.
After slicing a loaf in the appliance, I see her standing, a little further at the cooler bar.
Her bare black arms shine in the fluorescent light.
Put the sliced bread in the bag, which, after all these years, I still can't manage effortlessly... and she's gone. Why am I sorry?
A little later we join together, at the checkout, she first. Obviously purely coincidental.
My heart skips a beat, that must be from the heat.
Her bare legs colour beautifully under her multicolored summer dress. The brown feet, at the bottom remarkably pink, stick in plastic flip-flops. Her heels without any trace of calluses, I note satisfied.

Outside, in the lead heat, she crosses the square. I leave my bike and I follow her for no reason.
Why? Why?
Am I a stalkster now? Her strikingly swinging gait intrigues me, and her wide hips seem to dance as only ignores can.
Ooh! Negroes. I can't do that anymore. “Blacks” you have to say now. Or is that no longer politically correct?
Are they now perhaps “pigmentally challenged fellow human beings”?
It is as my grandfather said: “When people started to call pee, pee, the crap has begun”.

The walk extends to the newly built neighbourhood. All streets here have names of old vegetables such as Parsnip, Crosnes and Cardoenstraat. “Forgotten vegetables, “they say. There must be a reason why they have been forgotten. In the Warmoesstraat she enters, around the back in a detached new building.
The little dog comes down to the fence. On his back legs, barking and wagging at the same time. The front evil and the back happy to see me.
I walk along the black brick façade. Next to the front door hangs a painted roof tile: “Welcome - Sabrina & Tom. The kitschy thing detonates against the modern facade. Probably taken from a previous apartment.
So Sabrina. The name tastes sweet on my tongue... & Tom, Uncle Tom's Negger's hut?

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(read the sequel: hot (3) Sabrina.