I sat at my desk at night, writing to Joe. Since I couldn’t find him, I needed to communicate my feelings to him through another way.
“Hello Joe. Where are you? In heaven or in hell?
I don’t know but I hope this message meets you well.
I wonder if you died or ran for cover, somewhere far away
Are you gone forever or will you come back again?
We need to talk, you and I, Joe and Ariana
Please come back and explain all you told me the other day
Do you know about Anita?
If you were here when she was slaughtered, what would do or say?
Are you safe or you’re on an endless race?
Are you stuck in the woods or in a close in terrace?
Please return because you haven’t answered my questions
I hate these rules and I shouldn’t be bound by these laws
I wanted to ask someone about your whereabouts but I live in fear
You have to return or my heart will have more tears
–Clumsyline–
It was more like a poem but I didn’t even mean to give it end rhymes. I just wrote right out of my mind. There was a superstition I believed. If you had a message to send to someone distant or in heaven, fly it in a kite and send it far away, watch it until you can’t see it anymore. Then, it is safe and your message will reach the person. It was silly but I believed in it. I had tried it once, when I was four. That time, mom’s mother–My granny was very ill and so, mom had gone to her place on a visit. She didn’t take me with her because it was a long journey. Five hours on water, she told me. She didn’t want me to be sea-sick, so I stayed with Mike until she returned. But mom didn’t return until six days later. That was the longest we had been apart.
She had told me that she’d be back in three days, but she took three more days, but not without calling to hear my voice. I also spoke with Granny.
You must have realized I didn’t talk about any granny when I started my story. That is because I only saw her once. Maybe twice. Nothing special. I liked her because she was very beautiful and kind. But she never visited and mom never took me to visit her. I think she was there when I was christened, and then the other time I saw her when when I was three, at a function in town. She had travelled down all the way from Ohio, just for the function. It was the wedding ceremony of her sister’s daughter. Her stepsister. That was the last time I saw her. She rarely called too. I didn’t know why. It seemed to me that she was unhappy with my mom.
Like I said earlier in my story, a lot of things were confusing to me when I was a kid. But I was soon to unravel most of the mysteries as I grew older in age and wisdom.
So, on the third night after mom departed to Ohio, I began to get worried. The day was starting to darken and I hadn’t got her calls. Cameron even complained about it. I heard him say she wasn’t taking his calls too. I was scared. I thought mom’s ship had sunk, or she lost her way, or she was attacked and someone took her phone. I have always been worried for my mom. So, that night, I stood at the edge of the sea,(or was it a large ocean?) some metres away from the estate where we lived. That was where her ship was going to stop. I knew it. I stood there until the sun rested, and everywhere was dark. I sat on the soil and called her name in the night but every ship that came by didn’t have her in it. Cameron did come to meet me there in the cold, and asked me to go inside the house.
“What are you doing here?” He asked. “Go inside”
“No I don’t want to” i told him. It wasn’t like he cared. I didn’t know why he did that. After persuading me to no avail, he left me alone out in the cold and went back all the way home, without me.
My book was in my pyjamas’ pockets,, and my pen too. A small phone was there too. The one she gave me before she left. ” I want to speak with you directly. Keep this phone safe, don’t let Cameron see it” she warned me. My hair danced in the wind as breeze blew on my body softly. I hugged myself and waited for mom. Cameron didn’t come back to check on me. I waited and waited for her call but nothing was forthcoming, then it dawned on me that mom would not be returning that day. I didn’t have airtime on the phone, so I ran back inside the house to plead with Cameron to buy me some, or at least let me use his phone.
He was angry. He refused to yield to my requests. He tried to sieze the phone from me but I ran out of his house and back to the edge of the sea. That was when I remembered the superstition I believed in-If you had a message to send to someone distant or in heaven, fly it in a kite and send it far away, watch it until you can’t see it anymore. Then, it is safe and your message will reach the person.
So I wrote a letter to mom, fixed it in a kite, said some prayers of hope and flew the kite. The wind blew it away since it was too light. It went far away, over the sea and landed in the middle of it. Then I turned towards home.
Immediately I got into my room, her call came in. I was so happy to hear her voice. She told me good and bad news–She was safe and would be returning in three days, and the bad news? Granny was dead.
That was the first time I’d use the kite superstition. I was going to try it again for Joe. So I fixed that letter I wrote, rolled it into a pipe and fixed it in the middle of the kite. I made the kites myself, I cut cardboard and nylons and feathers to shape them, and light skipping ropes for the handle.
When it was fixed, I went outside , said some prayers and threw it up. It came back to me, but then I tried it again and it flew, far far away and landed somewhere I could not really figure. A big smile played on my lips.
I wondered if it fell in some magician’s magic pot and he collected it, read it and decided to honour a little girl’s wish. Maybe that was how it happened, because the next day, on our front porch, early that Saturday morning was Joe.