After Stella gone over to the Ancestors, the world turn inside out. Calla still holding the spirit of the place, is true, but Stella was the rock, the ground we all stood firm on. When Stella was in one of her moods, she turned cold, gave you the silent treatment. Was better than the wrath and fury one, but I yearn to see her standing, her hands on her hips, giving me the look that say, ‘What you think you doing, boy?’ Sometimes at twilight, when daytime slipping away to make room for night, I think I see her stirring the cooking pot, bending low. Her face coppery, alight from the fire. But then I look again and is only a shadow inside shadows, a mirror of me wounded heart.

Is a good thing is only I alone that saw the hanging. That Sammy and Eliza was not there. Not there to see them mother hanging from a rope. A rope that choke the life out of her. See her neck break. Her eyes snap open when she pass water. Watch as it flood down her legs onto the wooden platform. And every time I think bout it, see the picture of it in me mind, me stomach start heaving and I have to rush behind some bush to vomit, and it keep going till it leave me insides raw and empty.

Grieving for Stella cause a deep pain in me heart, make it thump and skip a beat. A grief that cover a hidden rage that growl and bite at me, nipping at my insides. A coward’s rage, a coward’s love that have no answers. What I going do? Run away, or just rampage and kill every backra in sight? Nothing going come of it. It will not bring her back. And the snake that used to wrap itself round Stella heart begin to wrap itself round mine, waiting for the day when I decide to act. To break the slavery of silence. Before then, is time to look out for what is left of me little family.

I shut up me hut, move in with Eliza. She still cry herself to sleep every night. And when she dream, toss, turn, she don’t even know it, but she reach out into the darkness calling ‘Mama, Mama’. I get up, wrap me arms around her, rock her like she a baby. Get Calla to mix up a drink she make special, to ease the pain of them dreams. And gradually, as each day go by, she seem to get a little better. No longer pulling out bits of her hair like she pulling out weeds.