You may be wondering:  If he took Bernard, then why is he packing to leave?  Well, a bad dream woke me up and I couldn’t go back to sleep. I have been lying on my back all night listening to the night sounds, looking at the light bulb in the middle of the ceiling. Thinking. I do not want to be lost like Pa Edward. People don’t know who he is; even he doesn’t remember who he really is.

I said the name Bernard over and over and over while I was on my bed, but it tasted like pepper soup with no meat or fish. I would have to go against my own people.  In the dream my Papa’s pa and Mama’s ma came to my room in the Cooper’s house and asked me “why?” again and again in Grebo. “Deh-nee?…Deh-nee?”  Then, the two of them started singing the Grebo burial song, but instead of “we’ll be back again” as in the song, they sang “we’re gone forever.” They turned their backs to me and started to walk away, still singing: “we’re gone forever.” I jumped from sleep up when they joined hands and flew out over the rough sea. Gone

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Doeba Bropleh

(February 26, 1968–October 14, 2011) was born and raised in Liberia.  He attended college in the United States, earning a BA and MA, and made his home in Sacramento.  Along with promoting Liberian culture and setting up scholarships and libraries for Liberian students and many other charitable organizations, Doeba was an accomplished photographer and writer.  Milvia Street is honored to have published many of Doeba’s short stories in the 2009 and 2010 issues, of which “Deh-Nee” is one.  As in most of his fiction, this story focuses on the lives and struggles of native Liberians maintaining and renewing the cultures.   Doeba was an exceptional student at Berkeley City College, with a generous spirit, keen and incisive and compassionate intelligence and a radiating smile that inspired all around him.  His writings also appear on-line at Sea Breeze, Journal of Contemporary Liberian Writings and Pambazuka News.in Liberia, has published in Milvia Street, Sea Breeze, Journal of Contemporary Liberian Writings ( www.liberiaseabreeze.com) and Pambazuka News (www.pambazuka.org). Doeba also enjoys photography.  His photos have been exhibited and featured in the magazine Liberia Travel and Life.

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