Born Out of Wedlock
Here’s a sad tale of a young lass that suffered at the hands of her family, as did her little boy born out of wedlock, but the tender love of ghostly mother and child assisted by a very much alive little girl triumphed in the end.
Born Out of Wedlock
I fell in love! Oh what bliss!
At fourteen years of age but that bit of
Midnight madness left me with child
“What!” my father roared, “With some mere delivery boy?”
“Alice, you shameless hussy!” My mother intoned
Telling all the neighbors
I had gone to “visit family”
While housing me upstairs
In the servants quarters
Where those nasties took out on little me
Every resentful hate-filled feeling
Provoked by my fuming parents
And saucy naughty siblings.
I died the night my little boy was born,
But not before I saw his head of black hair,
Blue eyes, bunched up nose, just like my own!
What joy I felt but not for long
Since no one acknowledged him
Keeping the poor thing in the northwest room
On the second floor allowing a malicious maid to attend
His needs but once a day. Oh how I fretted and fumed,
A poor helpless spirit not permitted
To communicate with the living, watching him
Yanked about without a will of his own,
Poorly cleaned and fed during two long years
When he died of encephalitis, so those spiteful maids
Whispered, secretly taking him away for lonely
Buriel in the southeast corner of the property.
The years went by and our old house in Toques Place
Served many a business function
Then in the 1970’s two women, whose husbands,
Merchant seamen all were oft abroad, decided
To reside together on the ground floor
With their respective children occupying rooms above
And then one night the older boy
Crept down the stairs to tell the mother
That his little brother was crying,
She, on hearing naught sent him back to bed
But then her son came down again
Begging her to go up and see for herself
Which she did, and again heard naught.
Later that boy went down the stairs once more
To tell his Mom that he had seen
A two-year-old boy standing
In the hall, crying, crying, crying
‘He will not stop’, he said.
The mother ran up to find the little boy gone
By the time she got to the top of the stairs.
But I was there, and saw my son go to the
Northwest room on the second floor,
Tiptoeing past a young girl who slept
There with two stuffed animals by her side,
And floating up to the hat closet far above the ground,
My child cried softly to himself.
What rage he must have felt for being neglected so,
How hard it was for me, for I could not by spirit rules
Cuddle or chat with my little darling boy.
I reached out and borrowed the girl’s white dog
And stripped tiger --- I felt sure she wouldn’t mind ---
Placing them in my son’s arms to see him smile,
Pulling them tight to his little chest.
Oh what bedlam did ensue
When that girl’s siblings were blamed each day
For taking those stuffed animals and hiding
Them high in that hat closet out of reach,
And then to make things worse,
My boy, who had become quite mischievous with joy
Would wake the little girl at night
Opening and closing the squeaky cabinet doors
And one day my ghostly baby boldly
Scratched “Hi” upon her thigh
When she was in the bathroom of all places,
But she did not scold him!
Her mother would not hear of it
When told of a ghostly boy!
‘I will not listen to such fairy tales,’
She declared, so the little girl made friends
With my son, and told never a one
About her new-found playmate
On the second floor of the northwest room
Strange Little Demons
Traders often buy sacred ancestral artifacts used in African traditional rituals, which are then sold to tourists and collectors in the first world where buyers have no idea of their mysterious character. Here is a story of how ancestral tribal spirits came to life after an owner of such artifacts rented his apartment to a brother and sister.
Strange Little Demons
Mere artifacts, you might say
Collected on an African tour
For Florida’s gift shops,
Antique stores, silent speechless stuff
To please a passing eye,
Bought by me to decorate
My apartment between Charlotte
And St. George’s Street
They graced the shelves,
Desktops, windowsills and walls
Xhosa knobkibierrie sticks,
Zulu spears, shields of warrior men
Chokwe thrones for chiefs
Royal wives with ebony combs
A big oval face upon the wall
With tongue hanging out
Eyes wide open in receipt
Of holy revelation
Chokwe thinker hunkered down
With palms cupped about his ears
A thumb piano player on his stool
Ovimbundo wooden masks with resin cloth
Initiating youthful generations
Bantu ‘power figures’ endowed
By priests applying
Bristling nails, blades
Mirror shards and seed packets
To heal and cure or ward off negative forces.
Fetishes, talismans, amulets all
Imbued with nature’s power
Juju charged with the spirit of divinities
Transcending space and time
Undetectable, unseeable, untouchable
Except through carved images
Used in centuries of ancestral reincarnation
But in my hands mere things
To be bought or sold, to decorate
Stripped of history, meaning and community.
No wonder they rebelled
At this secular debasement.
Leaving these collectibles intact
I rented the apartment to a bother
And sister who came home one evening,
Went to bed but were disturbed
By sounds of bare feet on wooden floors
The sister heard them
And turning on the light
Nothing could be seen
They went back to bed, tried to sleep
But the brother was aroused again
And turned on the light as the sister
Came dashing in they saw the floor
Crowded with tiny figures
Like little trolls or gnomes
Running here and there
Energized by uncontrollable rage
A whole parallel world of beings
Long worshiped and adored
Stripped of their tribal dignity
Diminished in stature.
Recognizing well this sacrilege
The sister made little paper crosses
Taping one to each artifact
And they left in haste
Returning the next day to see
Those crosses burnt to a cinder.
‘Sacred stuff should not
Be used for secular purposes’
She said, and when they told me
What had happened I too came
To see that spirits such as these
Can never be at peace
‘Till once again they mingle
Amongst their blessed ancestry
Where living traditions flourish
