The old neighbourhood has not stood well the ravages of time passing through the hands of careless tenants and owners who have died and left their children to fight amongst themselves as paint peels and walls collapse.
The families are all gone and the houses are full of people whose trees fall into neighbours’ yards with no apology nor retrieval – broken branches of indifference.

There are holes in the streets into which blind men disappear and children can no longer run to the shops barefoot, without telling their mothers that they have found twenty cents in the tuft of grass that stops the gate from closing tightly shut.
Do you remember that day? The hot tar, the long grass of the small field we cut across and the dust that clung to our feet as we threw that silver coin on the counter and called out for nigger balls – half a cent each – cheap sweets, dirty on our tongues.

The grass now swallows the black iron grill from where I used to swing and call you out to play. Strangers bask in the sun on your verandah on Sundays and don’t call out “Good morning” as I walk by.
Where did your mother go while I was away? That day I came to see you and you had gone to your aunt’s home in Highfields, we talked for hours – me, legs kicking from a low branch in your guava tree while she snipped and tugged at weeds in her bed of magnolias. She said I was really her friend, not yours, and I was pleased.
Why did your father walk out after all those years, without a word?

The spirit that once was the neighbourhood now resides in the one place that stands untouched by the slow death of all we knew.
Here my mother still kneels and praises God for all she has lost and found. I still hear my aunt’s voice above all the others in the choir, at the front, even though she now sings from Heaven.
There are those here who seek deliverance from the tortures of familial spirits, those who search for peace and guidance, and me. We were here the last time I saw you – the throbbing of the beating drums in my heart, the spattering rhythm of the shaking gourds and the ululation as everyone stood up to sing.