Untitled
Max B. Cooper
The Gutters Heave with Memories
Yi and I walk out to the side of the road, where the gutter swells with water rushing down the hill. As always, I try to hear the rain speak. When I was younger, the rainwater whispered its stories to me, but today there is only the usual silence.
‘Pick a leaf for you, and one for me,’ I say to my granddaughter.
I watch as she scrambles along the path looking for the right leaves. Her excitement reminds me of when my husband, Mochou, first courted me. I would make him race leaves down rivers with me, and I always won.
Yi presents me with two curved green leaves and asks, ‘What now, grandmother? What now?’
I take her hand and lead her up the hill as far as my legs can take me.
‘Now we race. Will you put my leaf in the water for me, please?’
Yi nods and sets the pair of leaves down in the gutter water. They whizz away in a rush, and Yi laughs in delight. She runs on her short legs down the hill, following the leaves on their haphazard journey.
Once I catch up to her, she says, ‘Grandmother, grandmother! Can you hear the water?’
I lean my head toward the gutter.
‘No, what is the water saying?’
‘It says it knows you. The water remembers you.’
She watches in silence as a tear works its way down my wrinkled cheek.
Jayden soon joins Yi in the leaf racing game. He is young too, and eager not to miss out on anything. Mochou and I watch them from the porch, and he holds my old hand while smoking a thick cigar.
The familiar smell of tobacco is comforting as we watch them run up and down that hill. The showers of water come and go, and the children will be soaking wet by the end. As Mochou and I were, after long hours spent chasing each other through the fields near our village.
A light sprinkle falls on our house, and the children joyously dance in it. I take Mochou out into the rain, limping with his help. We dance in the rain, and the children shriek with delight. It takes me back to my wedding. My Mochou lifting me into the air, giddy and breathless. He set me down and kissed me until we were both breathless.
Now, I can feel my husband's wrinkled hand clutching mine with all his strength. How quickly the moments pass. Just last week, Yi had clung to my pinkie with her pudgy little hand for the first time. So small.
I look out toward the road and see water streaking across it in thin rivers. The gutter is being overrun while we play with the grandchildren in the rain. They sing silly songs loudly, and I can just manage to hear the murmuring of the falling raindrops.
Hello there, little girl, you have grown!
The Peach Tree Blooms in Death
The smell of rotting peaches fills my nose as I stand in front of the peach tree. Maa chucks peaches into a plastic bag, much like Papa did before. Maa and the house seem to be the same. Only I have changed. I am empty.
‘Priya, you must help! This mess is unbearable, yes?’
Maa wrinkles her nose as she picks up a foul peach.
‘Okay, Maa. I just… ’
This is his place, his tree. It smells like Papa in a way. The peaches make a grisly noise as they fall down Maa’s bag and onto the floor. She walks to me and gives me a long, squeezing hug, and I know, I know she misses him too. So much.
He used to do this for her. She despised the tree and would yell at him to get out, to go, to clean up the fallen peaches, or else there would be no dinner for him. He would wink at me and would spend the afternoon lugging around a bag filled with rancid peaches.
In a way, Papa is the peach tree, and Maa was the soil he grew from.
The smell of peaches fills my old room, and I cannot sleep—too many memories. Papa wanders through many of them. Combined with the sounds of peaches slapping against the stone ground, I stay awake. Lying still in bed, staring at nothing.
Finally, I get up and walk to the courtyard. Papa. He is here. Picking up squished peaches and stuffing them into a bag.
‘Little one!’
‘Papa, how are you here?’
He winks mischievously at me and shrugs.
‘Look. I found one for you,’ his voice sounds almost far away.
I take the peach he offers me. Not rotten or bruised. Papa smiles at me as I bite into it. The peach bursts sweet and sharp, and for a moment, it tastes like his presence.
‘Thank you, Papa.’
‘It is nothing for my favourite peach!’
We spend the night there under the old peach tree, and I pretend not to notice that I can’t feel his hands. Papa tells me stories. All the ones I loved when I was truly his little daughter. I still love them now. He begins with stories of his childhood and then the trip across the cold, blue sea to this new country. But he even tells me about the first time he tried a peach, this strange new fruit he had never seen before.
‘I had never tasted something finer, even your Maa liked peaches then. I bought the seeds for this tree that day.’
Eventually, we watch the peach tree above us in contentment. Through its thick limbs, I can see the stars flickering. All too soon, they begin to fade as the sun rises. I turn to my Papa. His wrinkles are on full display as he smiles at me with tender love. He kisses my forehead and then hugs me goodbye.
The peach tree sags with an unknown weight; somehow, it knows he is gone. Peach juice covers my hands, so I don’t rub my tears away. I let them fall onto Papa’s dying peach fruits.
The Crane Overlooks the Desert
The ocean water curls around my toes. A gull shrieks in victory, a hot chip clutched in its beak. My little brother, Oyibo, plays in the sand. Making tall structures only for waves to come and knock the buildings down.
Mama is further back, soaking in the sun, with a cold drink in her hand. We had eaten fish and chips earlier, just like the other beachgoers. I’d never thought there could be so much food near sand. A seagull stomping along the beach reminds me of a different bird and a different, finer sand. A harsher sun that burnt us with no respite.
I can remember the desert.
The smell of sweat, the worry; it made the air thick, and then the sun boiled it until it clogged my nose shut. It was hard to breathe, even more so to swallow. Dry throat. Dry eyes. Dry skin. The desert was eating us slow.
There was a cyclical boredom to it, even. For days, there would only be sand. The only movement was the wind picking up small flecks of it. Distributing them in neat lines until it seemed like no one had ever walked there at all.
My little brother was gleeful the first few days.
‘Look, Abidemi! I am the first boy on Mars!’
He did not understand the walk. Sometimes he would ask when we were going back home, and Mama would tell him soon. I knew she was lying, but Oyibo didn’t. He was only five and dreamed of flying spaceships, just as he does now.
In the desert, the only thing I ever saw flying was a black crane bird. It almost skated across the sky. I imagined it was watching over us. I named it Ominira, for hope and freedom from the desert.
I prayed each night to the crane that it would fly us away, like Oyibo’s spaceships. Somehow, Ominira would carry us all across the desert sands, but it never happened.
The broken dreams and my blistered feet all contributed to my difficulty falling asleep. In the morning, we would walk more kilometres. Drink little and eat less. I thought we would die.
In the distance, a seagull flaps lazily above waves. For a moment, I thought it was Ominira. Birds are seemingly everywhere. They intermix in my eyes, a black crane, a scrappy seagull. I can almost imagine Ominira flying out across the blue sea, reaching for that freedom I wished so hard for.
Now I have it.
A wave crashes into my chest, and I gasp for air. Go under. I can’t breathe. There's a moment of weightlessness under the waves. For a second, I am flying. Like the crane, I imagine. I come up and swallow air, desperate.
Looking back to the beach, I can see Oyibo running after a seagull, flapping his arms in imitation of its wings. Mama chases after him, and my brother squeals in excited fear. It’s the first time he has laughed in years. He doesn’t ask when we’ll go home anymore.
For a second, I can see Ominira flying out across the sea, away from land. Leaving me to my new home, where I don’t have to drown in dreams to go to sleep. It fades from view.
I take a deep breath. Let it out, and then another.
We’re free now, Ominira and I, free to fly.
Max Brady Cooper lives and works on the unceded lands of the Gadigal and Wallumedegal peoples. He is a writer and poet published in three(!) online student journals. He often contemplates life from various perspectives in his work, and he can juggle.
