Sylvia Wynter's Dream

Challenge the conventional wisdom that remembering is always superior, and make a compelling case for why forgetting can be a source of liberation and renewal, as it applies to your specific discussion of amnesia.

Leila was in the rocking chair by my cousin’s room. She was grumbling about her brother Frank and the house he built. Frank was long dead and the house he had built was the one she was rocking in but she was dead set that Frank would bring back her money. It was one of those days where she sat in the chair all day and didn’t even move to use the bathroom.

We brought her food in the morning. My aunt struggled to peel oranges with the small knife, its bigger twin was missing, and Leila took one look at the orange and decided not to eat it. There were more important things than eating.

It sat beside her as she spent her day serving sermons on the wickedness of men and the cold-heartedness of family, her own brother Frank, teef ar money and gone go buil’ big house.

The memory was the thing that gave her strength through the day and kept her going. It was the place in time that she was frozen, the hurt she’d never overcome. She didn’t eat breakfast or lunch that day but she decided to eat dinner.

In the hours of the night when we were all in the living room watching one of those late night movies she said, Unnu carry som’n fi eat, mi hungry.

After that she finally went to the bathroom. She didn’t want anyone to help. She slowly rose and hobbled away to her bedroom.

We are all heading to bed with the start of the midnight news. My cousin was leading the way to her room and and there was Leila blocking the passage.

There was the knife that we couldn’t find earlier.

“Mi money Frank, my money, you think you can tek my money and build house and mi wouldn’t know?”

She couldn’t remember who we were or what day it was, but she could remember that a hundred years ago Frank had “stole her money”. If only she could forget.