The Mothers of Memory (The 3rd Version)

for Kai “We need to dig and jump into the land we come from; one woman after another, one dream upon the other, calling up who we are.” —Ntozake Shange “As a woman I want no country. As a woman my country is the whole world.” —Mary Daly, Pure Lust For a girl to be born in the shadow of her foremothers is no small thing for their lives are stories that together form a river and she is this continuation of their story, an undamming of their lives, to ensure that they never die, to show that the river continues to flow. And this is what Trinity reckons with now as she stands ankle deep in the crashing Caribbean ocean under the scorching sun. She beckons her great-grandmother Frances from out of the past, from out of the sea and hopefully into her soul to dwell so that she can scratch away at the myths and set her women free. First Movement Mummy! Mummy! I scream and struggle against the thin yet stong arms which seem like the roots of a tree wound about me. I don’t want to go but yet, as...