Another blackout.

My mother slip into the verandah, settle in the rocking chair; she don’t look out for falling stars like normal people. She does keep watch for that bright red light, hoping she gon see it again.

Is the most awesome, awwwwesome thing, she does say.

More than one time she see it, a wide, broad band of red fire with a long, narrow tail curving like a’ ‘s’, coming down slow, slow, down in the night-black sky, then it fade. She see it two times in we country village, and two or three times when we move to town. Me li’l cha-cha…me father youngest brother…spot that light once in the country village too; he been so scared he pelt down the road for home.

I should haul out me guitar, sit in the living room and strum some notes, think of all them jinns, invisible beings created with smokeless fire, they live all around we and take in the show of everything we do. Nah nah nah, that too scary, lemme join my mother in the verandah.

“Mummy, I forget to tell you earlier…guess who dead?”

“ Who?”

I tell she and my mother go on a rambling tale about the family history of the deceased woman son-in-law - which merchant and he wife come from India with three daughters, who they marry, what estates they inherit and how many sons and daughters they give birth to. I know, inside-out, the love affairs of them beautiful women descendants; I hear these stories many times over.

Mind drifting, I ketch on to the tail end of a story. “One o’ they cousins love to drink, this boy always drunk,” my mother saying. “A time, he go to visit he family in we village. This boy get so drunk that when he driving home back to town, he get lost. He turn on to a track that lead to waterside, wayyy out by the sea. People had to go look for he and find he and pull out he car from mud.”

Me laugh fly out and circle ‘round the neighbourhood, so loud it was.

“Aiye, mummy, remember that young boy who use to sell fish here, he father drink so much he fly up a cokenut tree and…”

He was a fair, slim, good-lookin’ eighteen year, hard-working and willing to gut the fish for some extra dollars. Anil, I think he name was. The first time my mother see he, she say, boy, me know you face, where you come from?

He was from a village near my mother childhood village, and my mother know Anil family.

“Me father been in a’ accident,” he say. “I does help me mother to sell the fish so we can go home early, and me mother can rest. ” He father love to do two things. Drink and drive fast fast fast. “One night, me father drink and drive so fast he fly up a cokenut tree. Then he land pon top a house.”

“On top a house? How he manage that?”

“Was a flat roof house, a shack-house. Them people come out to beat he and he run ‘way and hide in a bush.”

Somehow, the father manage to sneak back later to he car. Radio gone; battery gone, other parts gone, people gone. “He trying to buy new parts,” the young boy say.

Last night, we ain’t see the big red fire in the sky, maybe another night. It appear around the same time, my mother say, between seven thirty to eight thirty. Me and my mother gyaff...chat...some more, then the phone ring and two minutes later lights come back on. My mother come inside to doze and I snuggle down to watch America’s Got Talent.