Missing Pieces
Moving, always moving. Leaving behind, always leaving something, someone, bits and pieces of me, of who I was when I caught grasshoppers for the Bush Baby. Moving and leaving and wondering.
What happened to Thomas O’Malley who would lay his huge furry body across our notebooks as we tried to do homework. Wondering how many families he called home, always knowing there would be another around the corner when ‘they’ left.
Wondering why we had to leave everything behind. Why we couldn’t take them with us, the animals.
Spatsy is still, after forty seven years, running away from his new family, a stray, wandering the dusty back roads of Ibadan. Betrayed by us, the people he called home, the people who promised to keep him, and keep him safe.
Leaving and knowing you will never come back, leaving behind a sister dead, a 24 hour life, a sister I never saw, the big sister I would never become. Packing a suitcase with my mother’s unspoken loss and pain, carrying her sadness with me through the years to come.
Losses we never spoke of, stuffed into boxes, locked in cupboards, stuffed in a garage, their shapes transformed into bills, pens, colorful plastic plates, shoes unworn, shinny jewelry… the things she bought, kept and stored to fill all the gaps, the holes, the missing pieces in the puzzle of our unspoken things, our lives.