Providence

What came home from Karimo, where one fish, costing more than my mother had in hand, kept her beside it until another woman’s counting stopped where hers had; where, together, they bought what neither could take home whole; where the knife went through the spine and sent one body toward two homes, came home half, entered my mouth, entered my mind, uncut. The knife remained behind. What entered her mouth, if anything, does not return. Childhood, unable to leave her hungry, mistook would for had, then fed me one more portion: My mother had eaten. Years later, at the grave of the woman my mother’s chicken-change pay had fed, her children, my father among them, claimed their mother had not been fed well, then put mine on her knees, made her crawl around the grave, asking pardon of the woman she had fed. Afterward, to her mouth, its asking done, they gave nothing. Bread gone green; what mould had eaten first, she ate after mould. Now in memory, the fish is always there, but without its wound: one plate, no knife, my mouth. Of my mother’s hunger, I remember eating.