Memory #365

I am sitting here, in a hospital room, holding my dying father’s hand. There was a time when I feared it. It could, his hands, reign terror on any of his children or, when its fingers played across the keys of the Hammond, belt out the most profound array of molasses-like notes any person would glow to.
His face is round like the moon, and sprinkled with the minutest moles across his face. His nose is round at the end, without a bridge in that space between his eyes and the tip of his nose. His eyes are small: chinky we called them and as he slept, with his hand in mine, I could not help but ponder, How did he conceive me when he could never, I think, in his wildest dreams ever conceive of me?
His snoring becomes a bit more pronounced and I rub my thumb against the skin of his hand. He flinches a bit. When was the last time someone touched him with the taste of love on her fingertips?
I try to envision my father as a little boy. “Dolly” his mother called him, because she believed, at some point in his life, that he resembled a little doll. Growing up in the armpits of Trinidad’s major city— Port of Spain (behind-the-bridge it is called) my father searched to grab sense from the heavens and translate it into a tangible form through his art. His father once roamed the small city, box-guitar in hand, his face laden with sweat. He strummed about seasons named after fruit and cocktails made of rum and coconut water.
Darlington Brown, my father, first taught himself to play the box- guitar and then guitar when he was only 10. At the age of 16 he abandoned stifling polyester uniforms in exchange for the smoke-filled bars and clubs of Port-of-Spain. Here he smoked cigarettes and drank stout because that is what the men did. Here his fingers, feminine-like, brushed gently against the strings of his guitar like the fingers across the cheek of a lover.
But then he discovered the Hammond—and a true romance was born. He became mesmerized with the it and whirl of the sound reminded him of the way in which his own thoughts seemed to sometime dance around his own mind. He continued playing and playing until he played his way, eventually out of this Island. The music echoed throughout the tropical winds and mixed with that of the sea. He played until he arrived at the sweltering streets of Brooklyn, NY. Not before meeting my mother of course.
My mother he met while he and his band performed on a radio show. They played calypso—what was left of the music handed down to them by the slaves that tilled the land and from whose line they were borne. Theirs was the translation of the pent up fires burning within them that scorched just below their skin. It fueled their fingers to play notes which screamed out to the world, in a less recognizable voice, just what really was happening within their hearts.
They wanted jobs. They wanted better homes. They wanted the flashy green suede suit they saw on Frederick Street. Forget the Sun. Forget the Sun who is sometimes so hot it renders most incapacitated until it dips into the water, sizzling and letting off steam. They wanted to be Men—men whose footsteps were heavy from all of the money weighing their pockets down. They wanted to be stars so that in the times when the moon refused to shed some light in the nights within their lady’s sleeping, worried minds, they could.
He saw my 15-year-old mother, yellow in all of her ancestor’s glory (yet too brown to the chagrin of some), and liked her, despite this yellow that threatened to rub off and scatter like pollen on his lips leaving nothing but a bitter, weak taste.
He, like so many of us, fell for her. Her being was a universal currency—her innocence threatened no one. My parents didn’t have to speak to each other. Words would have rendered their feelings mundane.
In a small wooden room in the Caribbean, with glass louvers constructed only to keep out the torrent of rain--not the heaviness of young love that splatters hard--their fates were sealed. This occurred despite the presence of those whose feet were planted firmly on the ground. Despite those who had given up notions of love the night their legs were pried open by rum-smelling words that mingled with the smell of lady-of-the-night. My father looked at her through half-shut lids and his teeth shone like the full moon, reminding her of an alternative promise-laden universe. She gave him her hand and, like a snake upon a frog he swallowed her whole, regurgitating a transformed Rose. For that is her name.
And I know, looking down at his fifty-something year-old face, that he is awaiting his mother to bend over and kiss him lovingly on his acne-scarred skin. His dark-from-joints’ lips are almost curled into a smile and I try to bend my mind to fit his, get into his head to see, what could he possibly be thinking. What elements put themselves together and construct his dreams? I can see dreams of Jimmy Smith, Bossa Nova, round, brightly-covered peppers, soused pigs’ feet patched together on a foundation of Guiness Stout. For those are the things he loved. I wish I knew.
Taking away my hands from his, I prop my face in my hands. I need to come back to myself. See maybe, where it all began.
It is important that I re-examine our story:
Our relationship started, I believe, even before I was born—I’ve heard about him and his youth. Rolling joints (and lies) to the girl at his side. Drinking stout and listening to Thelonious. Wet elbows on tables shaking from laughter. Black politics released from tight hearts escaping thick lips. I missed him then although I wasn’t even here yet. 1972 and I am born:

Romance is in the air between a baby daughter and her doting father. He holds onto me and won’t let mummy take me from his arms. She is so quiet you say. Can’t understand how a baby could be so quiet. As you’re about to lay a slim finger on a brown-from-use organ key you get up and run towards my crib. Again. She is so quiet you say again and then you pinch me. As I get older you will tell me, with your eyebrows jumping mischievously, that I have yet to remain quiet since.

As I think about our history, this invitation of mine to remember our past, I feel a sore opening up within me—it is memory. It is the remembrance of me coming home from school with the sun-rays through the window forcefully holding down the heavy dusty, green carpet. You are on the organ and you’re writing, with the smell of mango incense and marijuana in the air. Your eyes meet mine. A subtle smile dances across your face as you say something to me. I cannot remember what you said exactly, it was warm and soft—but then again how do you recapture the careful placing of a sigh, a punctuation, when the hero of your life says I love you?
Then I receive a phone call and you are in the hospital. When I walk into your room, our eyes meet and recognize affection. We cry. You can’t speak. Can’t move your left hand anymore. When you speak I nod my head and squeeze your hand as if I understand. In a way I do. It is time for you to go home and I dress you. Put on you shiny, pointy-toed shoes (you’ve always worn expensive shoes) and I zip your pants up as you look away. I walk with you to the dingy, jail-like store front where you cash you state-issued check. The clerk, perhaps tired of a no-good boyfriend/husband or wondering what dress she’s going to wear to the local bar doesn’t care that you can not sign your name, or speak for that matter. She insists that you sign your check. And you do—the signature a inky scratch against life. This was six months ago. Now you are here, in the hospital. Again.
So death returns. It is not the first time that it has encountered me, and immediately, as my eyes focus in on the face of my father, that gentle, sleeping face of his, memory laps upon the present recesses of my mind as if the dam of experience is about to give, and in this spirit, I let go of his hand.
Brooklyn, 1998