Free The Last Warner Woman by Kei Miller Page B

front of me and men would make rude talk when I pass, so I think, wasn’t that womanhood? And if none of that was, then I scared to think what else was going to happen to me tomorrow. I remember a story Mother Lazarus used to tell me:
    Once upon a time a young woman wake up with nothing inside her. Like if you did look inside her eyes you would see that no thoughts was left inside her brain, that they all had been scattered. I trying to say that when this woman wake up, she was mad as shad. But when there is nothing inside you, you become hungry for what is missing. So she get up and start to walk, and she walk, and she walk, and she walk till she walk all the way to the dungle heap. When she reach the dungle she throw herself on the ground and start to dig. She don’t have no shovel or no fork. Just her fingernails. And she dig, and she dig, filling up her fingernails with stone and pushing her own self deeper and deeper into the ground. Even the dogs and pigs did feel sorry for her and one of them ask, Lady, what is it you looking for? She never answer, but she didn’t need to, for every creature know that when woman can’t find part of herself, then it loss inside the dungle heap. So the pigs and the dogs just look on with sadness. It wasn’t no little bit of time that she was there digging neither, going deeper down into her own hole. She drink rainwater and she eat dirt. Moons did come and go, and the world did turn round, and is then at last that she finally find what she was looking for. A little pouch with her name write on it. When she open the pouch black pepper and dirt fall out, and the same time all of her thoughts come back. She had undone the evil that had been done against her. But when time she look up, she see a wall that was as tall as a year. There was no coming out of this hole. She spend all that time digging what she couldn’t escape from. Take warning, Adamine, that woman is still there today.
    Shhhhhhhhh
    That night when all the work done, and the food sitting down to cool, Mother Lazarus put on a fresh nightgown. She make me sit outside with her for a long time while she just mumble things to the sky. I know that Mother Lazarus was an old woman, but she never seemed so old to me until that night. I see that the skin under her neck was loose, and her lips was wrinkled. Finally she get up and she squeeze my hand and say, It is your turn now, Adamine. You is a woman now. It is time. And easy like that, she went to her bed.
    Shhhhhhhhh
    I find out that death comes unto us like a flattening. For if your face had lines in it before, if it did rise up in certain places, all that gone once you is dead. You face will fall like a piece of paper, flat and blank. Nobody else did cry when they wake up to see that Mother Lazarus was gone. Me alone was holding her hand and bawling my eyes out. Miss Lily wheel her way into the room and don’t even look at the body. She ongly look at me, like this was something she knew was going to happen for a long time. Happy Birthday, is what she say. You is a woman now, and you is in charge. But I never want it to be my birthday. I never want to be no woman. I never want to be in charge of nobody.
    Shhhhhhhhh
    That night I dream they was each calling out to me. Calling me, calling me every second. I dream that I could get no portion of quiet or peace. Not a minute to feel the breeze or to just sit back and watch Anansi-spider walking cross his web. Miss Lily and Maas Paul, Maas Johnny and Maas Johnson, and even Monsignor Dennis was all calling me to come quick, come quick. Come and watch us dead. Come and watch the flattening come upon us. I couldn’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes I hear my name: Adamine! Adamine! And for a week it was like this. So finally one night I jump out of bed. The air was cold. I run out into the yard and start to shout, go to hell! Go to hell! Go to hell every last one of you! They all wake up same time and come out looking so frighten. Miss