Here is a story: I ten and at Aunty Dolly’s backdam stilt house for a party. That’s not right. Me is at a wake, only it feels like a party because everything is upside-down. 

Some pale foreigners come into the sitting room and left. Them ah keep wake and the lady still alive, keep wake until biscuit run out. They go into the bedroom, where Aunty Dolly is propped up on one stinking pillow—dust falling, mice running, all kind thing—and whisper in she ear, Surrender now. Lord, just surrender, nah? Doctor give she three weeks and she living two months now. There was a little table with biscuit and coffee and, because them foreigners was going to Cheddi Jagan International Airport later and leaving we country for good, they take the thing like she really dead. Everybody certain she going to dead. When they leave the bedroom, they shorten them step and turn them head and say, Mami. I leaving. I leaving now. Die for me, nah man? 

Me nah eat anything. I didn't feel like eating anything. There was a little table with biscuit and coffee, and I didn’t feel like eating anything. 

Aunty Dolly son fly in from London. He handsome bad. We all agree on that. He wanted to video call she best friend. Pam or Pamela. Say Pam. This Pam lives in Queens, America, and hasn’t seen Aunty Dolly since they was schoolgirls at Greenwich Park Primary. When Pam see Aunty Dolly blinking under the comforter like a dumb, she started to sob hysterically. Long time story! Long time story make me sad! She sobbed to the tune of Sue Thompson’s “Sad Movies (Make Me Cry),’ which had been a favorite of Aunty Dolly’s. She put on weight. Throwing up hand and a lot of jiggle jiggle make it worse. The noise give people headache, so the son cut the call after she chorus. 

He said, People who grow up here does bathe with a garden hose outside they house and specks of mess stick onto their batty because a garden hose is not a proper shower. He wanted to draw out Aunty Dolly with Pam just so he could strangle she soul, the rass! Then Mami said, Be good. Them is Aunty Dolly’s family, and Aunty Dolly help Mami and Dadi grow up. After her wedding, Mami move out the backdam and never see Aunty Dolly again. The last thing she do was bring Aunty Dolly a big bottle of Pepsi, and saltfish and bake all the way from King’s Bistro in Georgetown. Aunt Dolly never make it to there. Dadi passed the plastic bag over the fence and drove away faster than fast. Them driving away on one side of the fence, and Aunty Dolly sniffing the saltfish on the other, it was too sad to argue against. Me shut up me mouth. 

Mami was sitting on a plastic chair, stiffened up so bad I couldn’t tell where woman end and chair begin. Before he get sick, she’d asked Dadi if he know anyone coming from America who could bring Aunty Dolly a photograph of Pam or mail one over. But how mail does reach people who get no mailbox or proper street address written on their house? None of we had an answer. Mami never mentioned the photograph again. I sat cross-legged by her feet. Dadi took up residence with the cobwebs. He made such a show of crawling on all fours to the corner farthest from the biscuit table, nodding left and right to the crowd parting way for his perpetually homesick face. The invisible sickness had taken possession of him already. This was his way of declaring, No, my filthy hands will not defile the holy offerings to the holiest of women. Ayo eat what you want. Me want brace against this wall black with time-rot, and hug up shadow. He did so, and was forgotten about. Mami had given up on him. 

Each time the wind blow, I rattled on the uncarpeted floor. I tucked my dress under my legs and created tents by bouncing my knees up and down. Me make me own fun because only blood family was allowed into the bedroom and Mami, Dadi, and I, only called her Aunty, she wasn’t a real one. The bedroom was separated from the sitting room by a ripped shawl someone taped across the passageway. I learned from the steady stream of women flouncing in and out that sometimes she toe wiggle and sometimes she mouth open wide like a lizard. She begged for food, but the doctor ordered no eating. I have to read lip because I can’t make out them England tongue. She never smiles or make noise. You have to say she only blinks. Blink fast, too. It was hard to keep up with the blinking. Glaucoma eyes, blue. Blue eye is rare over here when it’s on skin brown like brown itself. She house was in a disgrace. 

They tried everything. Massage she breast, plait she hair, powder she cheek. People didn’t hate the lady. The indecisiveness of the situation, the ratcheting up and plummeting of expectation, is what make them fed up. They gathered at the biscuit table sighing, these women prettier than Mami, and when time come to catch plane, they pick up them suitcase, and climbed the stairs back down to Earth. Just like that. Coffee done drink out. Two tea biscuit left. The wind glided through the gaps in the wooden planks and I rattled some more. Mami stifled a yawn. 

The son turned to us and said, Goat in the bottomhouse. Goat in the bottomhouse. The yard all wilderness except for a paved square area. Is here we pull up chair around a brokedown table. Nailed to its surface was a 2024 calendar, a fishing plaque, and two clocks that couldn’t tell time. The main road where the others got on the minibus for the airport wasn’t visible, but somewhere in the darkness the village existed. This was where we nice house was. I heard the custardblock man’s bell. The chime mixed with the goat’s bleating. Unexpected music. The son looked uncertain for a moment, then he got up and grabbed Mami by she waistline and the two waltzed across the concrete dance floor.