Aline Phiri, the beautiful young Malawian girl recalls how her father exploited her voice and drank himself to a grave. This is the beginning of her story, The Lollipop Garden has plenty to offer. Review it, be honest,be true, take a moment to enjoy it.xoxox!
Chapter 1
Her father had been the strongest character in her life, strong and stern both in times when he needed to be for himself and times he needed to be for others. Once people perish all their good qualities come out and even the individuals that hated them the most all have something nice to say. But Aline had few nice things to say about him. He was her father and she knew he'd brought his death upon himself.
Money is evil, it's always been, it changes even the men with the most adamant kindness. Her money had damaged her father, taking him to early an grave. Money she'd made from singing on those heavily-lighted stages to audiences unknown. The voice within her so beautiful, so tranquil yet it was used to make a devil of a man and a slave of a girl.
As the coffin lowered she was suddenly overcome by shock, surprise that spread an expression across her face transforming her features, slightly dropping her jaw as though she’d seen his spirit arise, up out of the flesh, rising above the blue-gum coffin and out of the shallow grave. It was as if she was watching his elongated angelic figure dance around the mourners then ascend swiftly into the noon sky.
Of course she hadn’t seen his spirit and if she did she probably wouldn’t recognize it, her father always seem a soulless man. It was a thought that brought on her shock, a thought both cold and painfully true, an incriminating thought . She looked at the mourners, a gathering of black-coated dull brown figures some relations she’d never met and friends she never knew her father had, they too probably had shared this thought. Of course they had, those teary eyes and bowed heads, some shaking frequently as the ceremony progressed. No one, not her, not the mourners, perhaps not even her mother had thought her father would die first. She knew it by the way their eyes opened wide whenever her mother went out into a string coughs or complained of a fever, they all thought she would die first and the way others glared at her was as though she was already a corpse.
Whether his life was a happy one or not, whether he truly ever loved anything, whether he had dreams or aspirations, all these answers were sadly in that harshly made box with him and there they would lie rotting with their owner.
The funeral service was a long one starting off with a crowded wake in their small house. Bodies swarming the hot space, women with their clothes around their waists and black scarves on their heads sang hymns in the candlelit room day in and out. Mary sat beside her mother, both facing the coffin that was raised on long white table. Her aunt Livinia had her thick-skinned arms wrapped around her mother and let her disappeared in her large bosom. And from the cave of you could often hear muzzled cries, and see the trickle of tears fall on her big lap.
Women brought food in frequently, large portions of Nsima and Beans, and loudly forced Mary to eat. “You need the strength.” They said. But what for? Mary wondered, during the whole process she did not cry and when night came though surrounded by bodies she slept a sound sleep with the verses pouring in her ears. She wasn’t using any strength.
She wondered why she couldn’t cry, yes the man wasn’t always a good father but he was her father. It took her back to the beginning, back to where she started to hate him.
Chapter 2
The memories poured into her mind, flooding her brain with little snippets of the past. Little but detailed snippets of it all. She let them take over, she leaned back in her black-outfit watching the mourners leave the house and letting herself recall it all.
It'd been about three years since she saw her father but she didn't forget him, not in the slightest. And after the funeral had ended and the crying had gone down a notch she retreated to a different time, her childhood.
“Mary come here.” Her father had said one sunny morning. His voice unusually calm, soft, sweet. Like a reflex she threw her empty schoolbag by the door and joined him on the front stair. Slowly she settled herself beside him, their eyes linked and the soft voice continued. “Look my hands.” With that he rose up the skeletal black hands, his palms to the sun. the child’s brown eyes widened as she looked intensely at the hand as though they were foreign, new. Slowly the objects turned and formed a small canoe as palm touched palm.
“These hands my child do many things. These are the hands that will feed you, clothe you, keep this roof under your head. They will work to make sure you are alive. They will be the hands to hold you when you cry, pat you on the back when you do good, hold your hand when you are weak, but do not think, not even for a little bit that these hands won’t slap you across the face when you have done wrong.” He said. That was the first and last time he’d ever uttered those words, it wasn’t a phrase he used often, it wasn’t something once said by someone else you’d automatically think “That was something father would say.”
But that was long ago, she was seven years old yet the memory stuck to her obstinately often appearing when she lapsed into a spell of deep thought. Those words were said at a much kinder time when he wasn’t overcome by greed and dipsomania, when a light of humanity flickered within him. He meant them, but he never kept them.
A week after, he’d lashed out at her for coming home late from the football field. Without hesitation he picked himself a cane, a long slim stick, the most painful of canes and thoroughly whipped her. Stick on skin and tears on a tiny cheek. From that day on she’d been afraid to get home late, always first to leave the field no matter how fun the game of catch was.
