Page 71 - The Woven Tale Press Vol. IV #1

face. The white bedside cabinet, the monitor, Muma-Miller, all faded into a clinical white blur. He closed his eyes and the light grew larger. He followed it as it expanded into a bright, shining distance.
He came to. Went back. Went somewhere al- together different; saw himself floating down Roaring River, the ridiculous hospital gown spreading and floating around him – he was a water lily. He floated until he came to his bam- boo shack on a distant shore. There was a small fire outside. Somebody was inside his shack!
good. More phlegm came off his chest and he coughed and hacked.
“Poopa-Miller, you alright?”
Marisa was there, sitting on his river-reed bed, eating coolie plums from a calabash. She looked up at him and held out the bowl. “Come, Poopa, take a plum. I light the fire. I been waiting.”
He opened his eyes and saw Muma-Miller lean- ing over him.
“I not gone yet,” he told her.
She sighed and sat back on the plastic orange chair. Maybe now, he thought, would be a good time to ask God’s forgiveness, for sleeping with Aunt Rosa when Muma-Miller was at church, for cheating at dominoes. For leaving his little daughter, Marisa, in Roaring River. For not bringing her to Southall until she was too old to remember them. For letting those interfer- ing government people take her away. He al- lowed himself the luxury of a few tears. It felt
One of the men in the ward was drooling as he tried to talk. The other was sleeping and his chest was rattling. Oh well, he thought, once a man, but twice a child. He, too, was like a child, tired, restless, wanting to live. He slumped against the pillow. He was coming...going... back in the hospital...back to the bright light...
He could see his bamboo shack clearly now.
He was young and fit again, wearing his calico shirt and crocus-bag trousers, walking through the thicket of bamboo. He went inside his shack.
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