Page 68 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. IV #1

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The phlegm was on Poopa-Miller’s chest, in his throat. He hacked up the little he could; spat it on the side of the pillow; hoped it would dry before the nurse came. A smoke of jackass-rope would bring the rest up from his lungs, but no one had the sense to bring any. As if it mattered what he did to his body now! He asked for rum and what did they give him? Blood.
on foolish feelings. But hell-fire! This was dif- ferent – wasn’t it? He looked at her, sitting in the chair beside his bed.
There was a snap-snap of joints, as he tried to sit up. His body was hungry for moisture; those sources in his body were dried-up, like an is- land starved of rain.
He thought of the things he had achieved in
his eighty-three years: buying the house on Lady Margaret Road – what a come-up from his bamboo shack. Even so, he liked to think the old shack was still there, by Roaring River. He had built it to last, cutting part-ripe bamboo that would never rot – it hardened with age. He tied the frame with China wis; plastered with earth and wood ashes; smoothed it with guinea grass and a tenderness of hand that he had never shown any woman.
There were three others in the ward: two with- ered white men and a balding Asian lady who was propped up with all her shaking strength in an ugly chair. The men were on their backs, staring with moon-frosted eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Muma-Miller asked.
Poopa-Miller decided to stir them up. “I dream me Mother last night,” he said. “She come, ask- ing me why I been away so long, so-so long.” One of the men moaned and turned on his side, his blanket shifted, exposing the gaping hospi- tal gown.
He realized he had been grunting. He could
not tell her that he wanted to die back in his bamboo shack, not after all the sacrifices they had made to come to England. And, judging by his colour, he was not sure he would make it back to Lady Margaret Road, let alone to Roar- ing River. The African nurse who had shaved him that morning held a mirror up to his face: “Here now, Mr. Miller, see how much better you look after the transfusion.”
Muma-Miller cleared her throat and patted her lap with a show of tenderness that she had not yet offered him. He had always turned his back
But he saw that his once brown-red face was now the dull-bronze colour of cane trash. When he came to England in the sixties his skin had turned purple-black from the cold. Reverse tanning. He wondered what colour he would be when he was dead. Cho! He needed to get back
Jacqueline crooks