Sable Monroe

Across from my grandmother’s house lived a family everyone called The Froggies.

I never learned their real last name.

That wasn’t unusual where I grew up. People got renamed all the time. One odd feature, one old story, one offhand observation, and suddenly your government name no longer mattered.

According to my grandmother, the father looked like a bullfrog.

That was enough.

He became Mr. Froggy.

His wife became Miss Froggy.

The children became The Froggies.

And somehow everyone accepted it.

Their house stood out in my memory because it was painted green. Different shades of green, if I remember correctly. Not concrete like many of the other homes. A board house. Small. One room, I think.

I don’t know if they owned it.

I only know that they lived there with what felt like twelve children, though childhood math may be exaggerating. Mostly boys. Only two girls that I remember.

Miss Froggy was almost always outside.

Washing clothes.

Cooking.

Moving.

Working.

My grandmother didn’t mix with them socially. She would greet them and speak politely enough, but there was a line.

I wasn’t allowed to play with the Froggy children.

Grandma said they were nasty.

Part of that judgment, at least from what I understood later, was because they had no indoor plumbing.

But what confused me as a child was this:

If they were so nasty…

why did their food smell so good?

To this day, I remember the smell drifting over.

Miss Froggy cooked outside sometimes and in my memory it smelled better than restaurant food.

I wanted to know what she was making.

I wanted to stand closer.

I definitely wanted to eat it.

Absolutely not.

That wasn’t happening.

But the strange thing was, even though we didn’t socialize with them, things still crossed between our houses.

Ice.

My grandmother always kept a plastic container filled with water in the freezer to make ice.

The eldest Froggy daughter would come by to ask for some.

Not borrow.

Beg.

That was the word.

“Calling beg ice.”

And Grandma would give it.

Not friendship.

Not invitation.

Charity.

At least that’s how I understand it now.

As a child, I thought that meant we were connected somehow.

Then one day I learned something else.

I was sitting on the veranda and saw some of the Froggy boys walking toward the bushes laughing and talking.

I asked where they were going.

One of them answered casually:

“Me gone doo-doo.”

And I remember staring.

Because what do you mean… going?

I slowly realized they meant outside.

That’s how I found out they didn’t have a bathroom.

Not through some adult explanation.

Not through pity.

Just a normal afternoon conversation.

I never figured out what the girls did.

The boys announced it proudly and disappeared into the bush.

The girls remained mysterious.

That memory stayed with me because it was one of the first times I realized people could live completely differently from me and still seem… normal.

The Froggies laughed.

Miss Froggy cooked.

The eldest daughter came for ice.

The children played.

Life continued.

As a child, I thought poverty would look sad.

Instead, sometimes it smelled delicious.

Whatever the Prime Minister Ate, We Ate—>