Masks from Ghana on one
wall. The glass sliders they face muffle the shore pound of the sea. The
photos on the third wall are from their frequent trips to Africa, she and her
son and her husband. A door in the fourth wall leads to the emptier parts of
the house.
Listening to Beninoise
pop music. She’d reluctantly moved back to Valencia. It’s
been long enough. Come on. Let’s go home. And she’d returned to the continent only once
since, and then only to Lusaka, a year after the accident, to attend memorial
services.
She misses getting
together with the women in their neighborhood, joking with each other about
childrearing prowess, bragging about punishment techniques, one would admit to
spanking but “open hand only” and still have to defend herself from wild threats
by the others to call child welfare. And the sign-ups for soccer, flag
football, the cost of cleats.
Digital
control. Media, phone, media, lighting,
room climate, security, the red light shows game on. The jet skis in the yard, tarped and covered
with pink and white and brown and gold blossoms and leaves.
Too many masks. And on the other wall the frames are out of
alignment, or the pictures are slipping out of the matting, or the frame is
empty and you just see the wall behind it, or there’s just a grimy dusty
outline of where a frame was, or just a nail.
Song lyrics in French and
English.
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