Jamie Grant: ‘Black Medicine’

Black Medicine

The morning after her hundredth birthday party
my mother perches on a chair in her room
at the nursing home, and talks as she always

has, without interruption. When the Nigerian
male nurse comes to the door to offer her lunch,
she sends him away. Her recollection

takes her back to the nineteen twenties
while outside the building midsummer
heat shimmers over a green expanse

where voices are calling and figures dressed
in white stand still and then move. To take in
that grassy vista one has to enter a code

into a keypad at the door—my mother’s home
resembles a prison where the innocent are held
against their will, or at least from where some

would escape if they were able, for old age
itself is a prison. She can remember being alive
in simpler days, and the details of a voyage

around the world to meet her father’s father,
an Irish doctor in Portrush. His practice
was well known in the town, where he would offer

his patients a choice: The Black Medicine
or…