by Willi Chen - Guardian
"This is all ah have. Take it —thirty-two cents."
"Dat can’t even buy channa. Is passage money ah want. And is stale bake them chirren taking to school tomorrow.
"Well, leh them stay home, where I could be near them. I never went to school. I wash car and car parts and sell bottle in my day.
"Doh be chupid. Exams coming and them chirren doing good.
"Well, sell them two common fowl in the yard, what you want me to do?"
"You go sell your neighbour fowl to send yuh chirren to school?’ Wendy asked.
Lyons looked sternly at his wife and picked up his sticks. Once more he stroked his pan into pulsing resonance. For a moment his music took him to a high level of coherence; a cogency of multi-toned passages he had longed to produce. A fleeting moment of success. He had fought to get this tonal notes right, with constant practice and had resolved to strike his left stick with the right force, at the right moment, in unison, to achieve the fluidity, the compromising vibrations, so elusively complex and dexterously difficult.
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