Aligzander
Caribbean storytelling. I looked long into the dark night. I could almost see those windows – those elongated window panes that I used to press myself against as I watched my Leah teach her heart out. I used to sit at the same spot during lunch time, as the cool midday breeze licked at my eyelids. I ate lunch with my wife, my darling Leah at this same spot. She was the cook that my mother would have loved, had Mama lived during Leah’s life time.
I drank again from my other bottle but this time, it was water. I had bent down near to the edge of the other side of the bed and retrieved it from its hiding place. I counted out loud: one, two, three, four, right up to twelve. This was the number of footsteps that Leah took before she slowed her pace to come close to where my office was located. Now, I long to hear those footsteps. No, I am lying to myself. I could not undo her wrongs. I hated those footsteps now. I groaned and my grandson was at the door again. I yelled at him to leave me alone and then apologized.
“Stop thinking about her GrandPa. Let it go. Let it go, she ain’t never gonna come back. She is not my grandmother anyway.”
I knew he too was hurt by all of this madness. Leah, lovely Leah, my Leah was gone for good. I could hardly believe the boy but it was true. I have to let this go, otherwise I will drink myself to an early grave.
Leah was still alive and well. She was somewhere out there. I am not sure, but the last I heard was that she had a secretary that was a robust young man. I wondered where her gardener had gone. She disposed of men in a way that meant she was never alone. I lived with my Leah in my head each and every day.
Photo courtesy www.huffingtonpost.com
Her memory was the silent whisperer in my night journeys. A scrawl, ever so faintly on the edge of a page; or that flutter of the leaves playing hide and seek with the rain. When I said I loved her, I did not lie. She was not too impressed. She had said, simply and sweetly, “we’ll see.”
I woke up to the reality of who she really was, when, for some unexplained reason she said she was going to ‘spend time with her sisters in another island. Bandora was nearby but I wanted to ask her why the sudden interest in spending time away from me on that island of all places! Another time she had said that she was going to a camp. A church camp that held such great promises of spiritual revival. I found out later through a slip of her tongue that she did not go. I had asked her for an explanation to which she had feigned sleep. The matter was not discussed thereafter.
It is one thing for a woman to curse you to your face and to say that you are no good. It is another thing for her lover to call your home and ask for her. At first it was surprise, rage, anger and then the feelings of being betrayed. I drink again from that other bottle. I held my hand, my left hand out before my eyes. Either my hands were red or my eyes betrayed me. It was these very hands that held her when we made love; as she cried with glorious passion. I may have grasped the bottle with my other hand and I was seeing blood. I had cut myself. It was that issue of blood that made me realise the depth of my wife’s betrayal but that was for another time.
“Papa, get up, is time fuh go mountain”? I wondered who taught that boy the English language!
