My mother had a knack for writing things down. Quotes. Thoughts. Phrases. Words. Figures. She wrote her memories. Penned her grouses. Recorded by writing the wrongs people had done her, in the same way she put the dreams she had on paper when she awoke. She put her aspirations up on the walls to see. And be reminded.
Most of her writings are gone.
I do not know if any of her poetry exists anymore. Whatever I find, I hold dear.
I am a writer because of her.
There ought to be something that lives past our eulogy. A recipe book with a red blotch where a mother spilled food colouring four generations before. Dust falling out when it is opened, except the dust is flour. Grease marks by an aunt who always flipped back and forth between the pages, and turned the chicken she was frying with bare hands. A story tied to a a doodle an uncle made on one of the page corners, that is retold everytime someone sees it. A recipe that is easy to find because the page is its own bookmark, having been torn by accident, and taped back together, leaving it to stick out just a bit from all the rest. Little side notes added when someone found an easier way to do a step, or rearrange, or warn someone yet to see, or hold, or use the book, of a mistake to ensure they avoid. A blank page that was somehow skipped, but now serves as a silent metaphor for all the cooks who have written and updated and used its recipes, but are now gone.
There is no such book to speak of in my family. Even though between my maternal and paternal sides, we are either cooks, storytellers, or both.
My mother’s mother, grandma, was a storyteller. Even in her last days, she was still telling me stories. Or at least, one story. A story hard to listen, unbelievable, but undeniably telltale of the changes she was experiencing. It is one of the few portions of stories I will remember her telling me, and my cousins at large, in her lifetime. I can only remember the fact that she told us stories. That she was cunning. That we were thinking too hard. At her funeral, this is my central point. That she was a serious woman who loved to laugh, and was great at stories, and riddles. That though I cannot remember the stories and riddle themselves, I do remember one…..
One night, us children are gathered by my grandmother in the low lamp light; “Riddle mi dis, riddle mi dat, guess mi dis one, or p’raps not.” We are laughing at her stories, and the answers to her riddles, thinking how the wording is so clever for the final answers.
“Mother send boy fi doctor, doctor reach before boy?” A coconut, the doctor; the boy, the person who climbs the tree to pick it, letting it fall to the ground. After many laughs like these, her manner shifts, like the light flickering on her face. And she is serious. “Fun an joke aside,” she says. Like a warning. Like a caution. She asks sternly, “Unnuh hear mi?” We nod in agreement, unsure of what is to come. Eventually she asks, if a house has a roof at the top, and a floor at the bottom, what will be at the sides. Obviously walls, granma. No. We guess but no one gets it. She admonishes us, for not paying attention, being smart, being sharp. For not listening. Then she says, “Mi tell unnuh put fun and joke ah side.” She laughs now. Giving up the ruse which was needed for this closing riddle.
The people inside the church laugh, just as we did that night. Just like we laughed many other times. I’m glad I could do that. For the people. For granma.
I wish I remembered her stories and riddles. I wish that my mother had gotten her to write the book. That they both got to do a book. That us three all got to do that book together. Maybe it would include the story where I can only remember granma almost singing, “Mi nuh slip, mi nuh slide, suh ah weh him deh?” My memory remembers it in pieces that I cannot trust to even be accurate. Something about a stagecoach driver. A cardboard box. A man who disappears. Maybe it is all make believe.
Just like the man who, in granma’s final days, is living inside her belly. She tells me this in a whisper of confidence. She does not want her daughter to hear. My aunt cannot be trusted. None of her children can be trusted. Maybe she would have trusted my mother, but she gone before her. There is a man that they have put to live inside her belly to keep tabs on her.
She wants him out. She wants to stay somewhere else. Not here. Not with them. She wants me to help her escape them, and the man in her belly.
I wish I could. I wish I could take her away. And the dementia too. I wish I could have her tell me the stories so I could tell her lineage. And write them down so others could enjoy in this world that I have become a part of.
My son will not know about the man who, despite no slip, no slide, lost track of the other he was carrying along the way. But more importantly, except for the stories I will tell him, he will not know his grandmother, like I knew mine. But I will try.
Not yet three, he loves the kitchen. Wants to help. Best I can, we let him. Maybe that’s our family’s story. The bond of a parent and child cooking together. Like I did with my mother. Laughing as the flames dance below the pot. Maybe when we can’t remember, we ought to focus on making new memories, which honour the ones we have lost, the best way we know how.
Sylvia Wynter's Dream 
Leave a comment