I lived on a mountain. My house had thick walls made of mud which men had carried on their backs all the way from the river banks of my home country. They were whipped up hillsides, forced over rocks wet with pure river water and through gullies slimy with stinking moss. The rugs in my house had been stitched by the women of my father’s house. They cried over each stitch. I could taste their tears when I put my tongue on the rugs.
It was a good place to live.
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The third child of the third daughter fell asleep beside a lake at the edge of a forest. Although the woods were ancient, thick and dark, the third child wasn’t afraid. As soon as night came she fell asleep just as she always had.
The spirit that lived on the edge of the lake and that carried the memory of the old world within it saw the third child sleeping, and without hesitation ate her.
For weeks her belly as wide as an ocean. It ripples. Time spent checking the packed bag, cleaning the prepared room, folding clothes.
Cooking then eating a curry. Its golden flavour rich rolls around her tongue, and the spiciness brings beads to crown her head, but the ocean is calm. Boiled eggs with crumbling sunlight yolks.
Even the clock ticks slow. Count these moments
before
the clenching. Sea-sickness, a tempest.
Her chair is on its side. There is blood on the towels cleaned just this morning. Thrown to the floor in the room cleaned just this morning. The packed bag stays shut. There is ringing. She screams.
Emerging from the eye of the storm, he arrives squalling.
Up above, the sky is open blue. Down beneath, the grass is living green. Kelly watches as the smoke from his mouth curls out into the blue. Near to him, in a group to his left, a girl plays bongos. She is wearing a tan fringed jacket. She has feathers in her hair. This morning she gave Kelly a flower. Someone else is playing an acoustic guitar. Maybe it’s Dan, muting the chords with his fat fingers. Reedy voices that have been up all night and into today attempt to keep pace with the stumbling guitar.
Somewhere off to Kelly’s right, away from his people, he can hear the thunk pause thunk of a cricket bat. Spattered clapping. There are families over there. He saw them arrive, before his come-down made him lie-down. The June sun sinks – into Kelly’s face, exposed arms, feet in sandals.
A shadow touches his right leg, nearabout the ankle. Kelly looks.
They’ve always been a good-looking couple.
I said, ‘you’ve scrubbed up well,’ to Charlotte when I found her after the ceremony, in the still centre of an eddy of well-wishers.
She smiled. I felt a wash of everything run off her when she smiled, happiness, exhaustion, nervous energy. She smiled with her teeth shut together.
I’m going to present to you an option: The Life. It’s a modular option. You can choose which modules suit you, but really the idea is to build them up. You won’t appreciate it fully unless you can see the whole. That’s the idea.
