Native Reflections

Mother bartered me to an Englishman. His tribe made televisions. In those days televisions were wooden vehicles crafted out of electric fans and the spare parts of flying saucers. Later he became an overseer of sparky factory hands. Once while waiting outside for his shift to end, I jumped from the cross-strut of a tall billboard. When he found me, my leg was broken. 'Look what your son has done now'! "Superman made me do it." My exiled Irish mother shrugged. She had entirely forgotten herself since her surrender. I liked the Hospital; African nurses coddled me with plump pink palms. It was there that I first learned to play a sick piano; ears pressed into drumming wood while the blind piano tuner (a wandering Jew), tapped its hollow bones. For days I kept an infirm Steinway under my pillow - dreamed of fret-sawing crotchets and quavers. When I returned home mother had found a priest, and again her native religion began to spook her, though she still spoke to me in a language only Superman could hear.