Excerpt
I am so scared. Nevertheless, I continue to pray, knowing that there is a force bigger than I and I’ll be okay despite the fact that my heart is now broken because I’m left all alone in the middle of the night to die alone. I feel betrayed. The one time in my life I need someone and no one is there for me.
As I lay all alone, I feel scared. I can hear the sounds of voodoo drums from afar, over the mountains and a shivery feeling comes over me. For some reason, the sounds of voodoo drums always had a bad effect on my soul. I could feel the beats resonating in my head and sending a bad vibe to my gentle heart. So I pretend that I don’t hear them. I imagine them to be the laughter of children. Soon, all I can hear is children’s laughter and my soul starts to feel better, calmer, and joyful, just the way I love to feel.
Two small children pass by, look at me and walk away. I wish I could ask them to stay with me and hold my hand, but I have no energy to talk. Two older kids pass by. They also look at me lying on the nat and walk away. Whenever people are about to die a supernatural death, they usually lay them down on a nat outside under the moon to help free their spirits. They’re usually left to die alone so they don’t affect those around them.
Two little boys pass by. One of them decides to stop, so he could take a good look at me. The other kid pulls him away.
“Ah! She’s dying. We should get out of here,” says the kid.
As both kids leave, they drop a pencil on the ground near my hand, which I try to grab from where I lay. I observe a large white boulder lying next to me that I could use to write down all the events of the day, especially my experience with the black dog. If I could get enough energy to write, then I feel that I will survive. Writing has always been my best hope. But to my chagrin, I lack the energy to write anything at all tonight. And I realize, wow! I must really be dying, because the one thing that has always kept me alive is writing.
As I lay there, I try very hard to stay awake by keeping my mind engaged, for fear that if I fall asleep, I might not wake up again. I listen to dogs barking and people feeding corn to their chickens. I watch families eating sugar cane and women cleaning rice in something called a layo, which is a very large, shallow straw basket used to separate each grain of rice from its individual shell-casing. Gran and my auntie Nana own several layos back in Tiville. I love watching how they flip the grains into the air, while trying to remove the shell from the grains. I see a little girl passing by; she looks familiar. I motion for her to come near me. She comes and sits next to me on the bamboo mat or nat.
“Hi,” she says.
“Hi,” I respond, my voice, barely audible.
“Can we play together?” she utters.
I nod in agreement. She pulls out a doll and shows it to me.
“Do you have a doll?” she asks.
I can barely hear her words and it’s even harder to answer her. I feel as though my lips are sealed and my tongue feels very heavy inside my mouth. The little girl continues to ask me questions. I motion for her to look inside my pocket. She pulls out the small Bible. I motion for her to open it.
“Psalm 91 please,” I say weakly.