in 1989 after the price of rice and flour soared to the high heavens
and food became a luxury was, when hunger strikes
and you can’t afford groceries you shut the curtains.
I was indoctrinated by mum to never show the world your desperation.
Hide your suffering at home like unreachable dust lodging under your bed
and always face the world with a brave face.
David must have been sick to pit of his stomach with fear
confronting the giant, Goliath.
But spectators never saw him crumbling inside.
Mum was reciting scripture
as her desperate hands were cupped in fervent prayer
after we had drawn the blinds to keep out prying neighbours.
Curtains were a total solar eclipse obscuring the view of the world.
Then we could live in pretence, eating air,
feigning as if we were at a traditional feast.
Mother never bothered about manmade obstacles
such as those in charge of the country
or the open metal vents and wooden shutters
because air drifted in through our gritted teeth
into our famished stomachs.
Beggars in God’s presence-
my siblings and I asked him to fill our gaping mouths.
Mum’s God didn’t understand our language
meaning he never did break bread to feed us
but gave food in abundance to his servants next door.
I saw them binning rotten fruits, stale fish,
congealed palm oil, heads of misshapen corn.
Mum said their cup running over was a reward
for coming from England to spread the gospel of the Lord to us.
Mum’s God wasn’t partial;
our invite to the Passover got lost in the post
or a naughty cherubim tore it up in a tantrum.
Her God would provide for us because we had a strong faith
that was why we ate air and waited.
While mum fasted, my plump sister had flesh to spare.
She gulped down cups of chlorinated tap water,
belching out the wind at metres per second,
that had filled her rumbling stomach,
emitting four-smelling gases which permeated our home
with the aroma of hunger, want, desperation.
If air was odourless and tasteless, why did poverty smell foul
unlike the fragrant roses, yellow bells, hibiscuses, and bougainvillea
lining the footpath leading up to the missionary’s house next door?
The Lord’s chosen people.
They fed rich meat to pet animals,
barricading their wealth in a compound ringfenced
with a wire mesh and a beware of the dog sign,
so could not even steal their leftovers.
Mother taught us to wait for our blessings,
posed, salivating as the whiff of their dinner entered our nostrils
in the breeze coming in through windows.
I have closed the curtains ever since
to conceal the stark reality behind a shield.
I have kept the blinds drawn in the darkest hour of my life
even with help trying to peep in though the gaps.
How to eat a birthday cake
In January, mum sliced her eightieth birthday cake
into twelve unequal pieces of spongy indulgence
saving the chunkiest parts in cling film;
one piece per month, refrigerated away as secret stashes
with a post-it note stuck on the fridge, the reminder
to tuck in several months later.
A belated treat for winter months, to keep her,
“warm like an indulgent sip of brandy”
to flavour her taste buds with the lingering aftertaste
of leftover sugar when all of her youthful candles have melted.
Birthday slices are, “ scooped up wax to redecorate a frozen cake
and rejuvenate her Spring months.”
She’ll sink her incisors deep,
cutting through the layers of eight decades
to the biscuit base, crunching over years of crumbs
lubricated with the mature saliva of a woman
who’s lived to tell juicy stories over cake
of days she “braved challenges, taking them on the chin
like big girls do only to fall flat on a tin of obstacles”
and visualize them as pretty sprinkles.
I close my eyes and dream of floating over flames triumphantly
like she did when she blew out her first sparkly birthday candle,
imagining scoffing December’s slice - fingers crossed
daring to make a wish, not to celebrate more birthdays
but like mum to ravish borrowed time on earth
munching a cake long past its best before date
but still relish its stale ingredients.
Bridgette James has been featured in several online and print publications in the UK. A collections she edited in 2022, What the Seashell Said to Me is available in the National Poetry Library. She was longlisted for the Aurora National Prize for writing in 2022.
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