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The market not so far even with a belly aching it not so far. Some days the water heavy, but that is so. Soon I bring back cotton from the market near Arusha for the child my daughter carry in her belly. Carrying a child not so hard as carrying the water. Soon her waters break. If it a girl, I teach her how to carry, then where to sell the water. When I old bones too old to carry my daughters with strong backs will carry to the market, to the market near Arusha.
On the doorstep, with an armful of milk bottles, rinsed clean for the morning, I see the doctor out: Dr Dalton who wears a suit that doesn’t fit, the black frames of his glasses hide his eyes, he’s not a handsome man. I ask “ When is she going to get better? ” He doesn’t lie and I thank him, still holding the bottles.
I watch my father for signs, as if checking for the rash of a disease, but his suit is buttoned-black, the careful knot in his tie, you could see a face in his shoes . We drink whisky out of glasses too good to use and eat thin slices of ham on-the-bone in our front room with her sister Rosie who’s the spit . Out come the photos, the holiday at Butlins, my mother in a halter-neck and pencil skirt shoulders bare, hair blown back . Then I see too much of him wanting her to walk in and say Put the glasses away we’re saving them for best.
Jack Davis in overalls, wearing a cap after his day job as a brickie, repairs secondhand bikes, to earn extra to pay the mortgage on the house he painted green, white and yellow, at the time of ads in corner shops, ‘Rooms to let, no blacks no irish’. In the box room of number sixteen, spare wheels hang from six inch nails, the floor a shingle of nuts and bolts, the smell of three-in-one oil heavy as khaki. Hands fretted from wire wool he polishes aluminium rims to silver, removes links from the chain until it fits. His memory full of the sea, fine tunes into each wave as if it were the one that broke when he left a country where there are no words for yes and no. Sue-Sue Lambert shopping in Dunlaoghaire meets one of the Davises and asks, “ Is Jack not after coming home? ”
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