The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears

by Dinaw Mengestu

  Beneath the letterhead is a date, May 3. The letter must have been left on my door sometime during the previous night while Joseph, Kenneth, and I were staring shyly at naked women.

  Dear Mr. Stephanos:

  This letter is to inform you that you have thirty days to vacate the property at 1150 P Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20008.

  There are no treacherous demands or insinuating threats. The words become simple black characters against a page. Each character forms a word as discrete from the next as two strangers in a room. The letter is almost a page long, and mentions, in brief detail, my long history of overdue rent payments, going back ten years to a time when a few late months meant nothing in a neighborhood where each cleared check was cause enough for celebration and wonder. The tide has turned since then, and I have failed to keep pace. I could ask how this happened, but I know that I have no right to be surprised or angry. It’s May and I have yet to pay the rent for February, March, or April. I have let the store go; the aisles are once again burdened with sagging shelves, and somewhere in the back of the refrigerator cartons of milk are solidifying. It wasn’t supposed to have been like this. There was supposed to have been a string of good months. I had seen moving trucks with gilded mirrors and plush couches. There were construction workers who came to my store for lunch every day. I had a brand-new deli counter. I was supposed to have done so much by now. I was to have expanded my store into something bigger, grander, like a lunch counter, a grocery store, or a restaurant that people would take pride in. A place that I could truthfully write letters home about. I have learned to be a modest man, and never to exceed my means, but even poor men are allowed dreams from time to time. Who can blame me for this? No one can. I deserved it all.

  I take a stand at the counter, on the opposite side of the register, and run my hand over the dusty white Formica top. Every story has an ending, and this letter, I realize, is going to be the shape of mine.

  “This is no longer my store.”

  When I need to convince myself of something, I say it out loud. This has been a habit of mine since childhood, something that I have always needed to do to align my thoughts with reality.

  I shorten the phrase to make it more declarative before I say it again.

  “This is not my store. This is not my counter, and that is not my register.”

  What I want is to pick up each and every item in the store, run my hand along the walls and even the floor, over every piece of tile and packaged good, and repeat my negation of it.

  I read the letter two, and then three times, and a few more times after that for good measure. It’s printed out on a nice piece of letterhead that has type in two different colors. I call Kenneth at work to tell him what’s happening. He answers on the first ring. I read him the opening sentence, and then ramble on about inflated rents, slow months, and lines of credit still owed. I try to sound indignant, or at least angry, but I know that instead my voice comes across as lost, perhaps even childish. Kenneth is silent for a long time before he says anything.

  “Isn’t this what you wanted?” he finally asks.

  “I never said that.”

  “No. That’s true. You never said, ‘I want to open and close my store whenever I want, lose all my customers, and then be forced out of business.’ But that doesn’t mean you didn’t want it.”

  “I didn’t want it.”

  “Then why haven’t you done something, Stephanos?”

  His voice is full of pity when he says that last line. I know if he had thought saying it would have done any good, he would have encouraged me with all the pep and enthusiasm of a high school football coach. As it is, his disappointment is greater than mine.

  “I will. You’re right. I’ll figure something out.”

  “I don’t have that kind of money, but—”

  I know what he wants to say next, but I won’t let him.

  “Joseph Kony,” I say.

  “What?”

  “Joseph Kony.”

  A few seconds of silence passes before he says anything else. In that time, I twirl the phone cord around my index finger so tightly I can see the blood swelling at the tip.

  “Uganda. The Lord’s Resistance Army. The L.R.A.,” he says.

  “Easy enough,” I tell him.

  “He likes to mutilate children. Chops off their ears and lips and nose. He says he can speak to angels.”

  “Very precise.”

  “I’m an engineer. Plus we did this before.”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “We did it backwards. We began with the L.R.A. It was one of Joseph’s.”

  Before he can say anything else, I tell him I’ll see him Tuesday, and hang up the phone. I don’t know why I didn’t call Joseph first. Joseph, with his half-drunk glasses of wine and tattered University of Michigan sweatshirt, would have understood.

  Rather than immediately open the store, I take the stool that Naomi used to sit on and place it in front of the door. I climb on top and look out, taking stock of all I see. There are water stains on the ceiling. In the back corner, the paint is once again slowly peeling toward the door. I count twenty-three pieces of tile that need to be replaced. The shelves on the right-hand wall need to be replaced. There are eggs rotting in the back of the refrigerator. Expired packages of bread are crowded together in the second aisle. A thick layer of dust hangs over the paper towels, toilet paper, and diapers that sit on the top shelf. On the left-hand wall sits a stack of school supplies: notebooks, crayons, folders, looseleaf paper, pens and pencils and scissors that I can’t even remember ordering, much less selling. A quarter of one aisle is reserved for beauty supplies—hair gel, relaxer kits, shower caps—that I got conned into buying by Mrs. Davis’s nephew. There’s a rotating rack of old comic books near the door. Calendars from 1993, 1994, and 1996 are still hanging on the wall behind the counter. The cash register is cracked along the side. The bulletproof windowpanes I had put in four months ago are barely thick enough to stop a kid with a decent arm and a rock in his hand. I still sell Bubble Tape bubble gum, and as far I know, I’m the only store in the neighborhood to do so. I remember that there’s a case of Tab soda in the basement. I love the things that are timeless: detergent, paper products, toys, Hostess cupcakes, scissors, rolls of tape, Wite-Out, hair gel, soap, nightcaps, anything made of plastic—the things that endure and survive.

  It’s almost eleven by the time I finally open the store and let in the first customers of the day, a pair of tourists: husband and wife, white, thin, and well dressed, with hair graying elegantly from the front to the back. They’re on a self-guided walking tour of D.C., the kind that involves enormous fold-up maps, fanny packs, and little Did You Know quizzes with check boxes on the side. They wander through the store for a few minutes, finally settling on two cans of soda and a pack of cinnamon gum. The man puts one hand on the counter and leans back.

  “There are some beautiful old houses around here,” he says. He speaks with an assured, confident authority that I envy. I agree. I tell him that a president’s uncle or cousin used to live in one of them, along with some senators and congressmen from a different era.

  “Did you know,” I ask him, “that this was once one of the most desirable neighborhoods in the city? You had to have connections to live here, money, power. It was that sort of place.”

  He’s impressed, as if somehow this information confirmed something not only about the neighborhood, but himself as well. I ramble on and tell them what I know about General Logan.

  “General John A. Logan,” I tell them, “was a Civil War hero. He fought at Bull Run and Vicksburg,” all information that can be found on Logan’s pedestal.

  “Perhaps his greatest achievement in the war,” I add, “was that he saved Raleigh, North Carolina, from being burned to the ground.” This I have only recently learned. It has since become my favorite historical fact regarding General Logan.

  “He was a great man,” I add, as if somehow it isn’t enough to m
erely recount Logan’s virtues, or to simply point toward the statue in the center of the circle. What I want is for him to be a hero to us all.

  The man touches the brim of his hat as he leaves. His wife smiles and nods. I watch them as they walk out of the store into the bright, sunny spring morning still touched by an occasional cool breeze. The city is bursting. The old, wide, boulevard-like roads and L’Enfant’s once practical, now useless circles are growing heavy with the weight of spring and summer. Tree branches and bushes droop with fat white buds while hordes of weeds break through the dead grass. The couple cross the street and head toward the circle. They are not holding hands, but they are walking so close to each other that a part of their shoulders or arms is always touching. Their steps are perfectly in sync: after all their years together, they now have the same walk. I come out from behind the counter and stand in front of my store so I can watch them enter the circle and pause in front of General Logan’s statue. The man pulls a book out of his fanny pack and steps up to the short metal fence that was recently put up to protect the grass around the base. They both crane their heads up so they can stare into the raised hoof of Logan’s horse, suspended in midair, waiting to land triumphantly on whoever stands in its path.

  A few moments later they unfold their map and look around at the street signs. The husband points west to P Street, which, along with Rhode Island Avenue, Vermont Avenue, and 13th Street, hits the circle like the spoke of a bicycle wheel. Of all the streets that meet the circle, P is by far my favorite. As it heads west toward Dupont and Georgetown, it only grows prettier and wider, with the houses increasingly grand and luxurious, as if each step forward were a step toward paradise. Men with matching dogs walk along P Street. Half a mile away are sidewalk cafés and restaurants, three used-book stores, wine shops, flower shops, and cheese shops. And the farther up P you move, the better life gets. From Dupont the street proceeds to Georgetown, where the road narrows and the sidewalks become a quaint uneven brick bordered by nineteenth-century colonial mansions bearing Ionic columns. The trees form a canopy over the cobblestone road, still lined with the metal tracks of the trolley cars that stopped running decades ago.

  The wife nods her head, rubs her hand across her husband’s back, and they begin to walk away from General Logan and his horse. As soon as I see them leaving the circle, I cross the street and begin to follow from a safe distance. Soon, without thinking about it, I’m across the street and jogging lightly to keep up with the couple, who are now just a few steps away from P Street. I cut through the circle to catch up with them, and when I hit General Logan’s statue, I finally pause for a second and look back at my store. I can see it clearly from here, everything from the sagging right gutter to the streaks of blue paint along the side to the metal bars over the windows shining in the sun. How is it that in all these years, I’ve never seen my store look quite like this? I can imagine it wanting to be spared the burden of having to survive another year. The door is unlocked. The sign is flipped to “Open” and the cash register, with its contents totaling $3.28, is ajar. I wonder if this is what it feels like to walk out on your wife and children. If this is what it feels like to leave a car on the side of the highway and never come back for it. What is the proper equation, the perfect simile or metaphor? I’m an immigrant. I should know this. I’ve done it before.

  I follow the couple to P Street, turning back toward my store one last time to give it a wave good-bye. I swing right onto P only half a block behind them. They have a slow, leisurely pace to their walk, perfect for the day, which is bright and growing warmer. With each new step we take, the world feels lighter and lighter.

  The G2 bus grinds its way to a stop in front of us. A group of older black women get off and cross the street to catch the bus back in the opposite direction. They shake their heads, lost. I imagine them doing this all day and night, traveling back and forth to the edge of the known world only to return, in the end, to the broken neighborhood they had just left. At 14th Street the narrow seclusion of P intersects with the wide-open thoroughfare that runs almost the entire length of the city. Just a few months ago there was a liquor store and a Chinese carryout restaurant on the corner, Yum’s Chinese and Chicken. It was the first place I ate at alone in D.C. I walked in early in the evening and ordered a beef and broccoli that I ate while standing on the corner. I was nineteen, and had been in America for less than forty-eight hours. I remember being asked for spare change every few minutes by the same man, the red neon glare from the 7-Eleven across the street, and the roaming bands of kids who swaggered by. The food tasted like a sweet soy sauce that, whenever I’ve come across it again, instantly brings me back to that corner and night.

  We cross 14th and watch as the neighborhood grows nicer. Skinny new trees have been planted along the sidewalk. Yum’s, or “Yu s,” as the sign now reads, is gone, and so is the liquor store. They have obediently made way for newer and better things, whatever they may eventually be. I can’t say that I particularly liked either of them, but that’s beside the point. Now that they are gone I can begin to miss them with a sentimental fondness I could have never mustered otherwise. Newspapers cover the windows of both storefronts, along with a sign that vaguely reads “Coming Soon.”

  There are town homes being built on the left and a two-story organic grocery store being built on the right. Before all of this there was an abandoned lot with an eight-foot barbed-wire fence and a three-foot hole in the center, a grocery store that sold wilted vegetables and grade-D meat, an auto repair shop, and a black-owned bookstore called Madame X. On a warm night, you could buy a blowjob or any number of drugs there, depending on your mood. You could walk by and catch the disinterested stare of a woman leaning against the fence out of the corner of your eye and see men slumped on the ground, their heads lolling obliviously to the side. In the morning and after school, children scoured the weed-filled grounds looking for money that might have fallen out of someone’s pocket. What they found they used to buy candy and chips from my store. At Madame X, the black empowerment books gathered dust, the occasional scent of weed wafted out the door, and on Thursday nights you could sit in on an open-mike reading and share in the plate of yam patties passed around the room. The rotting meat at the grocery store next door was discounted further at the end of every week and sold with new expiration dates. Occasionally someone complained and threatened a boycott, and for a week or month the aisles were marginally but noticeably cleaner, the meat a little fresher. Stolen cars were driven into the auto repair shop at night and came out in the morning with new coats of paint and fresh license plates. Had you known this stretch of P Street back then, you would have agreed that it was a hell of a block.

  By 15th Street the trees are fully grown. Massive elms and oaks shade the gray-and-white four-story row houses. On opposite sides of the corner sit two hulking gray temples. The wife stops at the corner and pulls out her guidebook. She shakes her head and points north. They march on one block farther until they reach the corner of 16th and P. You can see the White House from here. The street unfurls from its gate like a massive concrete carpet rolling straight for several blocks before dipping into a tunnel and rising up once again. I used to think that there was some great metaphor in this. I used to walk to this very corner after I closed the store so I could watch the cars, buses, and people head toward the White House as if that alone was their final destination. A slow day or bad week didn’t matter as much then, not as long as I could believe, however foolishly, that just a stone’s throw away was a higher power that I could appeal to. I imagined all of those people clamoring to get into the Oval Office, where the president sat waiting to hear their complaints and woes, their solutions and ideas. A great Santa Claus and father for adults.

  I watch the couple as they pause at the corner and the husband points south to the White House. I can hear him saying, “That is where our president lives.” For some, it’s still enough to walk up to the metal gates and south lawn and gaze into the halls of
greatness.

  Spring is riding high on 17th. The sidewalks are crowded with outdoor seating. The men are holding hands and kissing each other gently on the lips. The bolder ones are already wearing tank tops and black spandex shorts. There’s a scent to the air here that you can’t find anywhere else in the city. A mixture of fresh sweat, blooming flowers, and coffee. I want to take the couple gently by the hand and lead them down the street to Samuel’s café, where we could sit under the green awning on a busy corner and watch the crowd. This, I would tell them, is all I want out of life, to sit here on these plastic lawn chairs and watch the parade of skinny and muscular men, old and young, as they flirt and fight with each other. Joseph loves it here as well. He says it reminds him of France, with the cafés, the air, and the pretty boys with nothing to do. According to him, “It’s the only civilized place in the city.” I caught him here once, standing drunk against a light post, his hands tucked deep into his pockets, a scarf flung around his neck. It was early in the evening, before the sun had set, and he was watching the procession with a distant, nostalgic look spread over his face. This was as close as he was going to get to that better life, the one that had him stomping through the streets of Paris with the perfect French phrase waiting on the tip of his tongue. I didn’t say anything to him. I just watched him from across the street as he nodded his head, stamped his feet to a song blaring from a moving car.

  Dupont Circle is only a few blocks ahead. I can see from here that the white marble fountain in the center has been turned on. A fine mist spread by the breeze is spraying the people sitting on its edge. Admiral du Pont would have been proud to have this scene named in his honor. The office buildings are clearing out for lunch. People are taking their food outside, picnicking on the fresh grass that surrounds the outer perimeter of the circle. Almost everyone is dressed casually. Some people are lying on the grass with a book suspended in front of them. No harm can happen here. The man and woman join hands as they cross the street and enter the circle. I’ve begun to think of the couple as old friends whom I’m admiring from a distance. I can see their children, slightly estranged but still loving, and their home, a split-level ranch in the suburbs of some midsize city: St. Louis, Kansas City, or Tulsa. The wife has a habit of lifting her arms too high as she walks, as if at any moment she’s ready to break into a sprint. Occasionally her husband catches her by the elbow and settles her arm into place. I wonder what this means. I picture early-morning power walks in matching Nike track suits, frequent visits to the doctor that always end in disappointing news, blood pressure medication, a daily aspirin and glass of red wine. “Breathe,” he tells her.