In the early hours of the Christmas Eve, the rickety gait of a broken granddaughter stumbles along the red chapped bricks of Georgetown’s Main Street. In the chaos of the Christmas Eve mania, loneliness conducts an orchestra of her depression. Under death’s blanket, the golden beams of our dearly departed souls gleam perkily in the veins of the Red Muddah’s heart – at least that’s what Papa used to say. Perhaps he, too, is with me tonight.
Beneath the long, thick curly mane of the Red Muddah’s lungs, her golden seraphic hue lulls the silver whispers of vacant memories playing a symphony of madness, mocking my sorrow, burying my guilt with scenes of the obvious signs and symptoms of a bomb detonating itself in the silence of my own ignorance. At the altar of his dying, I kneel into the fragments of his unspoken pain, cold tears baptising my own demon of regret. He who is absolutely famished and persistently feeding on the fire of my wholeness leaves nothing but a shell in his absence.
Drinking from the chalice of my own misery, the free babble of happiness defuses from the sea of Christmas shoppers littered in the pregnant Courts hall. The radio’s echoed tunes of joy arouses the thick growth of laughter amongst the bystanders. Their ghastly display of volcanic happiness scorches the lining of my dehydrated lungs. With every breath that I take, my perforated trachea is pierced at the mere sight of their glee.
But wait, no, no; they were happy? How can they be happy? Didn’t they know a living dead life was sleeping in the burying ground of the undead? Yet they were laughing, no, rejoicing, for yet another day to contribute in this disgusting parade of unhealthy sweetness, clogging the arteries of my heart, obscuring their eyes from a weeping child garnished in her funeral ensemble.
Rising with the resolve of a maddening general, my rage zapped blue sparks of delicious wrath dancing in a whirlwind of fury, ready to pounce on the enemy held within the sea of jubilant possessed Christmas shoppers. But before the installation art of my premature serial murder, the faded golden bells of the Sacred Heart Church tolls and tolls and tolls – it echoes into the hollow of my frozen heart.
At the stroke of twelve, the Sacred Heart Church tolls the bells of Christ’s birth in dialogue with our Sister parishes worldwide. It’s a happy song that draws out the hardened sobs of worn memories. His rough palm, swollen with the fat varicose veins of Guyana’s winding rivers, grasps the small hand of an innocent child prancing merrily along the red path of Main Street, bursting with joy at the departure of the Christmas Eve pageant.
As I gawk in amazement at the golden lit trees, which reveal themselves as guardians of the Red Muddah’s pickniee, Papa gathers me into his arms, whispering into my ears, “These shining lights are the perfect reflection of the Christmas stars hanging low like jewels in the thick ringlets of a woman’s tresses. They are the souls of our deceased loved ones presented to us as gifts from Christ. This way no one will be alone on Christmas.
“Do you know the meaning of deceased, Babel?”
Shaking the thick mop of curls that I call hair, I respond, “Yes, Papa. It’s when someone dies and goes to Heaven!”
“Yes, exactly,” he states. He continues to explain, “These souls are like the shameless stars that the three wise men shadowed in their quest to meet the Child who will be called Christ, our King. So when you are lost, come under our milky way and listen to the prayers of our loved ones.”
Dark and alone, my trembling hands grasp the crumpled letter in hand: my final goodbye to Papa. Staring at the stars hanging above me in the trees, I hear his voice and know I’m not alone.
