Like a Mule Bringing Ice Cream to the Sun by Sarah Ladipo Manyika Read Free Book Online

someone’s heart is broken in some way or another, you know.
    So. Just to back-pedal back to that woman I was talking about earlier. Well, maybe her heart was broken, you know, and I shouldn’t have been so like, ‘I don’t wanna talk to you.’ You just never know. Be kind. Be kind. That’s my new motto.
    So like the other day, I found all these books just dumped onto the sidewalk. So I picked them up and I gave some to friends, who like to read, you know. But I kept one for myself cos there was one about Africa and I’ve always had this theory that Africans were the first to come to the Americas and that maybe some of my foremothers were African. So that’s why I kept the book with Africa in its title, and I like the name on the inside page. Morayo Da Silva. I don’t know how you pronounce it, but I kinda like More-RAY-oh cos it sounds like a ray of sunlight, genderless and grounded, just like my chosen name. Born Sarah, now Sage. And I’m still imagining my African ancestors coming up through Europe, across the Bering Strait, then down to the West Coast into the land of myother ancestors – the Cherokee tribe of the southeast and the Apache from the southwest. I also imagine that one day I’ll dump my crazy ass boyfriend, let him take the dog, and then I’ll go back to college and finish my degree, you know. That way I’ll make something better for myself. I’ll travel to Brazil. Maybe to Africa, cos when you think about it, really, with what I’m suffering now, my life isn’t that much better than what Africans are living through, you know. I mean my life is okay and stuff, but I’m not gonna lie to you. It’s tough out here, and sometimes when I read about Africa, I don’t see America being any better. It’s really a crying shame. A crying shame.

7
    Sunshine tells me over the phone that it’s only been three days, but it feels like it’s been longer. I wonder if she’s rounding down the number, trying to make me feel better. I just want to be back home.
    Nights are the hardest, when I hear the neighbours having nightmares and the nurses bustling in their loose cotton trousers and rubber-soled shoes. I try blocking my ears to the screams, but that doesn’t help much and I’m always startled when the pipes in my room begin to creak and wheeze. Sometimes I have nightmares of my own. I dream that someone’s attacking me, and when I scream for help, no sound comes out. I awake, suffocating and gasping for breath. They’ve given me a panic button, supposedly for things like this, but I don’t know who’ll come if I press it, so I don’t use it. I only wish they’d let me lock my door. Better still, that I were strong enough to push some heavyfurniture against it. I know I ought to be safe here but I also know that you can never be sure.
    There’s a very nice woman called Bella and I wish she worked nights. It would make me feel safer if she did, but because she doesn’t, I stay alert through the darkness. I think of all my friends in the city and others around the world who don’t know I’m here. I don’t want people visiting me in this place. It feels too depressing, which is why I’ve only told Sunshine. So I wait for the blue of night to fade into dawn, and only then, when the warm smell of maple syrup slips through the gap at the bottom of my door, do I let myself rest.
    To comfort myself and stop my mind going round and round in circles, I close my eyes and inhale deeply, summoning the smell of moin-moin and akara. ‘Or porridge might be nice,’ I whisper to myself, reimagining Goldilocks as Afrolocks, just before Bella arrives with the pancakes and their accompaniments – miniature packets of grape jelly and pats of butter so cold they sit, like hard-boiled sweets, refusing to melt on the hill of pancakes.
    ‘Mind the gap,’ I repeat, wishing for the doors to slide open.
    I think sometimes that I’m losing my memory. I’m more forgetful these days, and lying in bed all day, I