My Magic Papa

No.372 in 'A Story a Day for a Year - and then some!'

MY MAGIC PAPA

Mama says he was tall, and thin as a rake, and his hair held oily curls and coils like a fistful of black snakes. And his skin was almost white, like the colour of men and women we watch on the American tv channels – watching but never understanding a word they say. And his words, mama tells me, was a little the same, except there was music in them and she reckons he was able to charm all the fruit from the trees with his voice.

And mama says he could pull pennies out of the air, so many that if he was here we never need be poor. And he could fly off the ground just by outstretching his arms and holding his breath; and he could see through walls with the sharp blue of his eyes, and he could hear lizards talking and flies talking, too, the actual words.

And he came one day and left the next, and mama says she was a girl back then, and I can’t think how that could be. Mama, once small and thin and her diddies like lemons that fill only the hand? So mama brings out a picture she has, and all the colour has leaked out of the picture so it is just in black and white and grey. In the picture is a girl who looks like me, all white teeth and wide eyes and her hair tied up in ribbons. And mama expects me to believe she is the girl in the picture.

‘It was a beautiful day and he came sitting on a machine that roared his arrival. And all the girls of the village came out to meet him and some of the boys, too.’

And mama was the girl that took the man’s eye and she smiles when she tells me that and maybe it is the same smile she gifted to the man for it is a silver smile and Zander, seeing that smile, calls across the street and what he calls I can’t repeat for it is rude what he would do with my smiling mama.

And the man called his machine to silence and he asked mama if there was fruit and water and bread that he could buy with his pulled-out-of-the-air pennies, and mama took him home to grandma. I do not know if any of what mama says next is true for grandma sleeps in the ground by the church and she don’t never say a word more, not unless grass-whispers is grandma talking. And mama says the man came to her in her bed when it was breathless dark and he kissed her.

I ask mama how she knows it was the man that kissed her if it was dark, and she says he smelled of grease and smoke, and he tasted of mint, and he kissed like no man in the village ever kissed. Kissing like the men on the tv kiss, she says, and there was American music playing and she says he brought it with him like they do on the tv.

The man she is talking of is my papa. That’s what mama says. They made me together in that one dark mint-kiss night. I don’t know how that is possible, how a baby could be made so quickly, but mama swears on The Book and so there is no room to doubt what she says.

And some mornings I climb up out of the village and go stand by the road. I look north and south, which is all the directions the road has, and I look for a man on a machine that roars, a man who smells of grease and smoke and his hair is dark as black snakes. And every one that stops, I ask him if he can pull pennies out of thin air and if he can fly easier than a bird. And I ask him if he could maybe be my papa.

And some mornings mama comes to the road, too, and we sit on a rock, our ears sharp as pins, listening for far off roaring, and close to lizards chatter noiselessly in the sun-warming dirt, but as hard as ever I listen I never can hear what they say.