Dada 129

She wore a jacket and her hair was back and she carried earrings in the same silver that studded her suit. She levelled her eyes and same precise manner as she had when she told me I would come to a bad end. I remember Shabela who just laughed as though he fancied her. I realised with a start, all the times I had seen her before my arrest and that each time she had given me a warning, at the hut, the restaurant, then the street. She was staring at me with a purposeful look that brought back all those things that I don’t like to talk about. She was very intent with her gaze; maybe she was missing her TV programmes. I could imagine an open magazine alongside her at the café’, a pencil in her mouth; a gatherer of stories from the labyrinth she said controlled us; stories and spiteful whispers, a bit like my Ma with her pursed lips and everything that went before me, severe, unforgiving, and silent except when she spat her barbed comments. ‘I am your mother’s older sister ’ she said