Midnight's Song Read Free Page B

marching.
    As we passed through the
town, our crowd grew in number. We grew from a crowd of perhaps 20
to over 80 in number. People emerged from their homes and shops to
join in our mourning. For the first few minutes, we marched in
complete silence. As we neared the cemetery, I took the lead in a
traditional parting hymn.
    “ Golden streets and skies of blue. Life when earth is done and
through,” I sang.
    Soon, the crowd joined in. My people,
The People of the Sea – knew this song very well. We all neared the
site of interment, our voices raised in a chorus of passion and
grief:

    “To the realm of glowing
sun
    In place before the world
begun
    Of legends and
legacy
    Death defeated
victoriously”

    I saw Papa sitting on a
chair beside the newly dug grave, watching incurably as the men
lowered the casket into the ground. I was incredibly disturbed to
see what looked like a bottle of whiskey in his hand. Some members
of my mother’s family had already arrived and were sitting in the
second row. A minister came forward and addressed the onlookers,
now having surpassed 100 in number.
    Among the crowd there was
wailing and singing. I could feel the souls of each person in the
crowd bonded tightly with mine. It was a strange phenomenon; one
that I knew could be felt by others, too. From the center of the
crowd, a widow began singing:

    “Joy is to the child born
of fire!
    Let her be forged by
flame!
    Joyous sonnets await
her!
    A queen among
peasants
    An angel among men is
she!”

    The entire procession
joined in with her in another beautiful chorus. Next thing I knew,
I felt someone pull on the sleeve of my dress and hoist me into the
air. I was soon sitting on the shoulders of a stranger, tears in my
eyes as we all sang an ancestral victory song.

    “Victorious, she shall
conquer!
    No end can reach her
now
    The land above the sea is
hers
    The world beyond our
sky”

    It was a beautiful sound
to the ones who understood it. As we sang, I noticed Papa. He sat
comatose, awake but unaware of what was going on around him.
Someone from my mother’s family, a woman I’d later find was my aunt
Beeti, spoke in disgust.
    “Barbaric!” She remarked
about the song. “What a primitive, disrespectful, desecrating
practice!”
    The minister expressed a
look of distaste but didn’t speak a word. We all knew that he
looked down on our way of life. He still knew better than to speak.
It wasn’t his place to do so right now.
    The group disbanded after
a few songs and kindly met me with fattening dishes and casseroles
at my home. Papa had already locked himself in his room. I was
amazed at the generosity of these people – that although we were
all equally as poor, they had big enough hearts to provide us with
food that it would take nearly a week’s wages to afford.
    As grateful as I was I
still couldn’t bring myself to eat. I would later regret it – for
hard times were coming. Soon, I would sincerely wish I’d have
nourished myself when I had the chance. The moment that the food on
the counter would begin to rot would be the moment that there would
be no food for us at all. This death might have been difficult, but
the hardest times were still yet to come.

4 | A
Proposition

    It was a relatively muggy
morning when the carriage pulled up in front of our shanty for the
first time. I hadn’t seen my father come out of his room but twice
in the last three days. I didn’t know what he was doing behind the
locked door – but I couldn’t hear a sound, not even a single
whimper.
    As I looked out of
our kitchen window I could see the same 12 th caste boy lowering the old
woman’s wheel-chair from the cab. This time a younger woman exited
with her. She grabbed the hem of her dress and walked up the porch
steps, awkwardly forming a fist and tapping the side of the house
with gloved hands.
    “Hello?” She called in an amusingly
proper accent. “Is anyone there?”
    I cautiously peeked
out the mesh on the screen door. I could