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Back No Sweetness Here: and Other Stories Save as PDF
Chapters (15)
  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Dedication
  4. Everything Counts
  5. For Whom Things Did Not Change
  6. In the Cutting of a Drink
  7. The Message
  8. Certain Winds from the South
  9. No Sweetness Here
  10. A Gift from Somewhere
  11. Two Sisters
  12. The Late Bud
  13. Something to Talk About on the Way to the Funeral
  14. Other Versions
  15. Afterword

I got to thinking of what a woman her age would be wanting in a subway car that time of night. I don’t know why but immediately I remembered the other one who had been in the Merrows’ kitchen while they ate and I ate. Then I started getting confused. I can swear the woman knew I was trying not to stare. She most probably knew too that I was thinking about her. Anyway, I don’t know what made me. But I drew out my wallet. I had received money from my scholarship. So I took some dollar bills, crumpled them in my hand and jumped like one goaded with a firebrand.

‘Eh . . . eh . . . I come from Africa and you remind me of my mother. Please would you take this from me?’

And all the time, I was trying hard not to stare.

‘Sit down,’ she said.

I’m not sure I really heard these words above the din. But I know she patted the space by her. The train was pulling up at a station.

‘You say you come from Africa?’ she said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘What are you doing here, son?’ she asked.

‘A student,’ I replied shortly.

‘Son, keep them dollars. I sure know you need them more than I do,’ she said. Of course, she was Mother. And so there was no need to see. But now I could openly look at her beautiful face. I got out at the stop. She waved to me and smiled. I stood there on the platform until the engine had wheezed and raged out of sight. I looked at the money which was still in my hand. I felt like opening them out; I did. There was one ten-dollar bill and two single ones. Twelve dollars. Then it occurred to me that that was as near to four pounds as you could get. It was not a constriction in the throat. Rather, the dazed feeling I had had that Sunday afternoon on the high road to town came back. And as I stumbled through the exit, and up the stairs, I heard myself mutter, ‘O Mother.’

Afterword

AFTERWORD

Telling Stories and Transforming Postcolonial Society

Ketu H. Katrak

Storytelling, History, Kinship

I come from a people who told stories. . . . My mother ‘talks’ stories and sings songs. . . . [She] is definitely a direct antecedent. Having my daughter Kinna has also influenced my writing. . . . My mother has been a tower of strength (Interview with Aidoo; James 1990, 19–20).