17

There is the wake. Except for one of us, whose absence still baffles me to this day, we are all there, my father and ten of his children. Chairs are placed in a semicircle a short distance from my mother’s coffin, which is raised on a dais. Against the back wall, at the opposite end of the room, is a comfortable overstuffed couch. My father stands in front of it, his shoulders caved in. He looks drained, exhausted. He takes a step forward and I think he means to sink himself into the couch. I am wrong; he totters for a second, almost losing his balance, but then he straightens up. I notice the return of the twitching around his temples, though, the fluttering I saw the day I arrived. It is barely perceptible, and at first I think nothing of it, but then the twitching increases, snaking down his arms and legs in tiny rolling waves. Soon he begins to drum his fingers against his thighs, his fingers moving faster and faster, pressing the fabric of his pant legs into his flesh. His eyes stretch open wide and a vacuous grin parts his thin lips. I nudge one of my brothers. “Go to him,” I say.

Two of my brothers approach my father, but now he is no longer standing still. He is dancing. It is a strange dance and we stare at him in astonishment. He stomps one foot on the ground and then the other, each time his body shaking rhythmically to a beat he alone hears. Inch by inch he moves forward, the dance taking him toward the front of the room where my mother lies stiff and still in her coffin. The image of scantily dressed Africans in a village ceremony dancing to the beat of tribal drums flashes across my mind. I chase the image away. This is my father, the collector of fine art, the lover of classical music, the man who quotes Shakespeare to me, the man who oversaw billions of dollars for an international oil company. But my father is dancing faster now, the grin on his face full blown into soundless laughter, his eyes darting mischievously across the room, not directed toward us, not at my mother’s still body either, but at something in the far unseen distance, something that fills him with joy.

And suddenly a curtain parts, and I know what he sees; I know what he hears. It is not the dancers he sees—hip-writhing, bare-breasted women in an ancient village ceremony—nor does he hear the thrum and boom of African drums. It is the color-splashed Carnival of his days and mine that glitters before his eyes; it is the music of the streets, the heart-pounding rhythms of the steel pan that pulsate through his ears.

On the last day of our two-day Carnival, just as the sun was beginning to set, my father would take his daughters and wife for a last lap, a jump-up with him through the city streets. How we had waited for that moment! For two days my brothers were free to follow the bands, but my sisters and I were forced to stay with our mother and the younger children on the sidewalk of the car park behind my father’s office. He would check on us from time to time, but mostly he was gone, jumping up with his friends in the Carnival bands.

Is this the memory that travels through my father’s head now, filling him with joy, with remembrances of mischief? Is he recalling those late Carnival afternoons when he slipped back to us, his face alive with the beat of the steel pan music pulsating through his ears? As darkness began to fall, he would return from the company of his friends, teasing a smile on his wife’s face, enclosing her in his wide arms, and we, his daughters, relieved to see them happy together, would press our faces against them.

How we danced and danced through the streets of our city, hands waving in the air, feet slapping against the asphalt cooled in the evening breeze, the heat of the day swept away with the descending sun, the sky a canopy of bright stars above us! Our mother was young again, in love again, her head flung back against her husband’s shoulders, her arm encircling his waist.

But now, as my father comes closer to my mother’s coffin, he slows down. He slides one foot forward and then the other, all energy seemingly drained from his legs. My brothers tighten their hold on his elbows. They have reached the edge of the dais, and the wide smile that seconds ago broke across my father’s face has disappeared completely. His lips form a tight, thin line, his chest caves in, his head lolls to one side on his neck. One of my brothers whispers something in his ear, and my father looks down on my mother’s frozen face. The dull, empty expression that was in his eyes when he first entered the room returns, but even duller now, lifeless. He does not resist when my brothers lead him away to the couch in the back of the room. He slumps down on the cushioned seat and closes his eyes. Mercifully, he falls asleep.

Jacqueline says we should pray the rosary. It was our mother’s favorite prayer. We sit on the semicircle of chairs. Jacqueline chooses the Glorious Mystery. There are five parts to this mystery: the first, the Resurrection of Christ; the second, the Ascension of Christ into heaven; the third, the Descent of the Holy Spirit; the fourth, the Assumption of Mary; the fifth, the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin. As Jacqueline calls out each section of the Glorious Mystery, it becomes clear to me why, of all the mysteries of the rosary, this was my mother’s favorite. The Assumption of Mary: not only did Christ rise from the dead, but His mother too ascended, body and soul, into heaven.

My mother loved Mary. The mother of God was a comfort to her. She had lost her mother not long after the birth of her second child. I was two; my brother was one, my mother likely pregnant again. My mother needed a mother; she turned to the mother of God.

I too needed a mother when I had my son, alone in America, without family or friends to support me, my husband itching to return to his lover. But I did not have my mother’s faith to call on the mother of Christ for comfort. Now, though, I find myself praying that Mary has not abandoned my mother. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.