With all this snow, with the sun not there, with the cold and dreariness, this place doesn’t look like my America, doesn’t even look real. It’s like we are in a terrible story, like we’re in the crazy parts of the Bible, there where God is busy punishing people for their sins and is making them miserable with all the weather. The sky, for example, has stayed white all this time I have been here, which tells you that something is not right. Even the stones know that a sky is supposed to be blue, like our sky back home, which is blue, so blue you can spray Clorox on it and wipe it with a paper towel and it wouldn’t even come off.
And another thing: you won’t see them from where I am standing but there are tokoloshes too in that snow. At night I dream they come out of it and they say, Hey, do you want to make a snowman? How are you doing? Where are you from? Then they say, Do you like High School Musical or That’s So Raven? They say, Do you want McDonald’s or Burger King? They say, Do you like Justin Bieber? I shout at the tokoloshes to go away.
Uncle Kojo looks at Aunt Fostalina walking in one place and folds his arms across his chest and says, You know, me, I actually don’t understand why you are doing all this. What are you doing to yourself, Fostalina, really-exactly-what? Kick. And punch. And kick. And punch. Look at you, bones bones bones. All bones. And for what? They are not even African, those women you are doing like, shouldn’t that actually tell you something? Three-four-five-six, and kick. And punch. That there is actually nothing African about a woman with no thighs, no hips, no belly, no behind. Squat. Bend your knees. Squat. Bend your knees. Squat.
He says, Uncle Kojo, he says, And last time I sent family pictures to my mother, she actually cried, Ah ah ah, my son, oh, please please please feed your wife and don’t nah bring her here looking like this, you will embarrass us. That’s what she said, my mother. Squat, bend your knees. Squat. Bend your knees. Squat. Bend your knees. Move to the left now, two jabs. And uppercut. One more time.
When Uncle Kojo comes from work all he does is sit in front of the TV. Aunt Fostalina says, When are you going to do something with the kids, Kojo? You are never home, and when you are, you just park in front of that damn TV and watch that damn football. Can’t you take them to the movies or the mall or something? But I think she is only saying it just so she can have the TV to herself so she can watch her walking women. Uncle Kojo doesn’t seem to bother about listening to her; he only says, Touchdown! And then speaks in his language that nobody understands. He is not from our country, that’s why we don’t understand his language or he ours; he is from Ghana. TK doesn’t understand his father’s language either because he is not from Ghana, his mother is American and he was born here.
Uncle Kojo says to TK, You, just how many times do I actually need to tell you to pull up your trousers, eh? If you will let them drop like that, why not just get rid of them? Why not just go around in your underwear? Why not actually just lose all your clothes and run about naked, eh? Now you want to be like these raggedy boys standing around corners and smoking things and talking profanity because they are too stupid to realize how easy they have it? That’s who you want to be, eh? TK mutters and pulls his trousers up and then goes to his room, where he spends hours and hours.
Once I went up there to see what he was doing and I found him just sitting on his bed with that thing on his lap and tobedzing and tobedzing and tobedzing, bullets and bombs raining on the screen. I said, What are you doing, and he said, Can’t you see I’m playing a game? and I said, What kind of game do you play by yourself? and he said, Get the fuck out. I will not be friends with TK; he shuts himself up there like he lives in his own country by himself. He also doesn’t even speak my language and says I talk funny.
If I were at home I know I would not be standing around because something called snow was preventing me from going outside to live life. Maybe me and Sbho and Bastard and Chipo and Godknows and Stina would be out in Budapest, stealing guavas. Or we would be playing Find bin Laden or country-game or Andy-over. But then we wouldn’t be having enough food, which is why I will stand being in America dealing with the snow; there is food to eat here, all types and types of food. There are times, though, that no matter how much food I eat, I find the food does nothing for me, like I am hungry for my country and nothing is going to fix that.
I have been watching that black car across the road trying to move but it cannot; the snow sneaked down last night and has bewitched the car’s poor wheels. The car manages to move only a little, just a little bit and then stalls, like a dung beetle struggling uphill with a big ball of cow dung. Now whoever is inside that car is stuck in the cold snow.
When the snow falls it doesn’t even make a sound. That’s why I am watching it—because it is just so sneaky. You can wake up to find even more heaps and heaps of it without you ever hearing it. How does something so big it shrouds everything come down just like that and you don’t even hear it coming? No sound—a crash, slam, bam, clatter, something, anything, so that this snow can carry a proper story. Right now I know what it is trying to do: it is waiting for me to come out so it can cover me too, but I will not be going out of that door. Aunt Fostalina says we are snowed in and will not be going out of the house anytime soon. I say I am staying in this house because I know what this snow is trying to do.
If it wasn’t for that the houses here have heat in them, I think we’d all be killed by now. Killed by this snow and the cold it comes with; it’s not the normal cold that you could just complain about and then move on to other things. No. This cold is not like that. It’s the cold to stop life, to cut you open and blaze your bones. Nobody told me of this cold when I was coming here. Had it been that somebody had taken me aside and explained the cold and its story properly, I just don’t know what I would have done, if I would really have gotten in that plane to come.
Aunt Fostalina’s cousin Prince arrived yesterday from our country but he will be moving on to live with his brother in this place called Texas in two weeks. Right now he is sleeping because he is tired from sitting in the plane too long. Prince has burn scars on his arms and back where they burned him. He is young but now he looks aged, older than Uncle Kojo, looks maybe like Mdawini back home, who has six children. His face is hard and terrible and the light in his eyes is gone, like the snow maybe sneaked in there and put it out.
When Aunt Fostalina finishes walking she asks, You think I’m losing weight? Who is fatter, me or Aunt Da? Who is fatter, me or your mother? Then she sits on that big ball and then she sleeps on it. Then she lifts those metals and says, I will be going on a fruit diet. Then she gets up and starts walking again, her arms swinging front to back, front to back. Aunt Fostalina is thin and very soon she will begin to look like Father’s bones, drowning there on the bed and just waiting to die.
Uncle Kojo comes home from work and says to Aunt Fostalina, You know, me, I actually don’t understand why there is never any hot food in this house, Fostalina. Aunt Fostalina looks up from squeezing an orange and says, No food in this house, Kojo, really? But I just did groceries yesterday, what do you think that fridge over there is full of, huh, bricks? And he says, Fostalina, ever since you started this weight thing you never cook. When was the last time we actually had a real dinner in this house, heh? You know in my country, wives actually cook hot meals every day for their husbands and children. And not only that, they actually also do laundry and iron and keep the house clean and everything.
Fat boy TK pulls up his trousers and mutters, Patriarchal motherfucker, and Aunt Fostalina throws the rest of the orange in the bin and says, Yes, in your country maybe, but this is America, and nxa ubon’ engan’ ulebhoyi lapha manj’ uzatshetshela ngereza fanami! and Uncle Kojo shakes his head and walks away since he doesn’t understand a word of it. But I think it is better that Uncle Kojo did not understand what Aunt Fostalina just said to him, otherwise he would actually be very, very angry.
On TV that pretty man Obama who has been saying, Yes We Can, America, Yes We Can, is becoming president. He do
es not look old like our own president; he looks maybe like our president’s child. There are crowds and crowds of white people and black people and brown people, just people, and they are happy and cheering and clapping. Prince looks at it all with tears in his eyes and shakes my hand until I think he wants to break it and says, See? That is democracy, we can’t even say that word back home, and then he shakes his head and laughs and laughs and laughs until fat boy TK says, Crazy-ass motherfucker. Prince talks to himself like there are a lot of people inside his head that he needs to tell things.
When the microwave says nting, fat boy TK takes out a pizza and eats it. When the microwave says nting again, he takes out the chicken wings. And then it’s the burritos and hot dogs. Eat eat eat. All that food TK eats in one day, me and Mother and Mother of Bones would eat in maybe two or three days back home.
They are out there digging the snow, because so much of it has fallen. I think it is a very good thing that they are digging it; that is just too much whiteness, as if somebody told the snow the other colors don’t even count. I think if it were a pretty color, like maybe purple or pink, or even rainbow-like, then it would at least be interesting to look at. They dig and fling the snow to the sides, where it piles into dirty heaps.
There are also little children playing in the snow. They touch it, kick it, throw it at each other, just play with it like it is meant to be played with. Now they have even gone on to make a thing that almost looks like a round person, and they have put a hat on it and a red rag around its neck and a carrot on its face. Maybe that is an American tokoloshe, maybe when night comes it will start walking and do evil. I do not know what I would do because I cannot even fight evil now because they made me throw away my weapon at that airport.
In the living room Prince is polishing his wooden animals; he brought them with him from home and plays with them as if he is a young child. The animals are all lined up there on the table: the lion, the elephant, the rhino, the giraffe. Prince talks to his animals like they will hear and talk back to him. He says to the lion, Silwane, bhubesi, nkunzi! Then he picks it up and holds it against his cheek and roars for it, and the dead light in his eyes almost comes back.
Then he picks up the elephant and says, Ndlovu, ntaba, umkhulu! Then he holds it against his other cheek and trumpets for it. I say to him, It’s a good thing they are made of wood because they do not have to go outside and die in that snow, but Prince does not look like he hears me. He just butts the heads of the elephant and lion against each other and bares his teeth like a dog and growls and asks them, Who will rule this jungle, who will rule it? Uncle Kojo says to him, Shouldn’t you actually be looking at colleges, Prince? You are in America now and you can actually be anything you want to be, look at Obama. Aunt Fostalina looks at Uncle Kojo like she wants to cut him with her eyes and says, Wena silima, can’t you see he is coping with everything that happened there?
The snow has not fallen in a while, and on the ground, it looks like it is starting to melt. It is much thinner and you can see puddles of water in some places. It is also falling off the branches, and you can see the roofs and the road. Maybe the snow has decided to go away, to go back where it came from because it knows I am watching it. I do not want to go outside yet, and I shake my head no when Aunt Fostalina asks if I want to go places with her. She leaves me alone and does not force or beat me up like perhaps Mother or Mother of Bones would if I was not doing what they wanted me to. She always asks me if I want to do things—Do you feel like eating mac and cheese? Do you want to go to bed? Do you prefer this or that? Are you sure?—as if I have become a real person.
Prince is talking to himself more and more, like maybe the people in his head have really come out and he can see them. Sometimes he yells and screams and kicks like somebody is trying to do things to him. Aunt Fostalina shakes Prince to make him stop but she is not strong enough. He is flailing his burned arms and screaming for help now. When he stops, Aunt Fostalina wraps him in her thin arms like he is a baby. He quietens down and she rocks him and rocks him and rocks him. When he starts talking again she sings him a lullaby, and he sings along with her, though he sings a different song, his fists hammering his head like he wants to make himself bleed:
Sobashiy’ abafowethu
Savuka sawela kwamany’ amazwe
Laph’ okungazi khon’ ubaba lomama
S’landel’ inkululeko—
Once the snow is gone it will be possible to go outside and see what this Detroit is all about, to see the grass, the flowers, the leaves, the birds, and the litter. Maybe I will finally see things that I know, and maybe this place will look ordinary at last. I will go out there and smell the air, maybe catch some grasshoppers and find out what kind of strange fruits grow on all these big trees. I will draw country-game on the ground, or even arra, which Bornfree taught us to play. He said they played it when they were boys, when the country was still a country.
Stina said a country is a Coca-Cola bottle that can smash on the floor and disappoint you. When a bottle smashes, you cannot put it back together. One day when we were squatting in the bush after eating guavas, Mukoma Charlie found us and said, You are the most unfortunate children this broken bottle has ever seen. When it was still a country you would all be at school doing some serious learning so you would grow up and be somebodies, but here you are, squatting in the bush, guavas ripping your anuses.
Stina also said leaving your country is like dying, and when you come back you are like a lost ghost returning to earth, roaming around with a missing gaze in your eyes. I don’t want to be that when I go back to my country, but then I don’t really know because will Paradise be there when I return? Will Mother of Bones be there when I return? Will Bastard and Godknows and Sbho and Stina and Chipo and all my friends be there when I return? Will the guava trees be there when I return? Will Paradise, will everything, be the same when I return?
The onliest time that it’s almost interesting here is when Uncle Themba and Uncle Charley and Aunt Welcome and Aunt Chenai and others all come to visit Aunt Fostalina. I call them uncles and aunts but we are not related by blood, like me and Aunt Fostalina are; I never knew them back home, and Uncle Charley is white, for instance. I think the reason they are my relatives now is they are from my country too—it’s like the country has become a real family since we are in America, which is not our country.
Whenever they come, Uncle Kojo leaves the house for most of the time because everybody will be speaking our real language, laughing and talking loudly about back home, how it was like when they were growing up before things turned bad, then ugly. They always forget Uncle Kojo cannot understand them and he sits there looking lost, like he just illegally entered a strange country in his own house.
The uncles and aunts bring goat insides and cook ezangaphakathi and sadza and mbhida and occasionally they will bring amacimbi, which is my number one favorite relish, umfushwa, and other foods from home, and people descend on the food like they haven’t eaten all their lives. They tear off the sthwala with their bare hands, hastily roll and dip it in relish and pause briefly to look at one another before shoving it in their mouths. Then they carefully chew, tilting their heads to the side as if the food speaks and they are listening to the taste, and then their faces light up. When they cook home food, even Aunt Fostalina will forget she is on a fruit diet.
After the food comes the music. They play Majaivana, play Solomon Skuza, play Ndux Malax, Miriam Makeba, Lucky Dube, Brenda Fassie, Paul Matavire, Hugh Masekela, Thomas Mapfumo, Oliver Mtukudzi—old songs I remember from when I was little, from Mother and Father and the adults singing them. Some of the songs I don’t know because Uncle Charley says I wasn’t even born then. When they dance, I always stand by the door and watch because it is something to see.
They dance strange. Limbs jerk and bodies contort. They lean forward like they are planting grain, sink to the floor, rise as whips and lash the air. They huddle like cattle in a kraal, then scatter like broken bones. They gather
themselves, look up, and shield their faces from the sun and beckon the rain with their hands. When it doesn’t come they shake their heads in disappointment and then get down, sinking-sinking-sinking like ships drowning. Then they get up, clutch their stomachs and hearts like women in pain, raise their arms in prayer, crouch low as if they are burying themselves. They rise again, abruptly, stand on their toes and stretch their hands like planes headed for faraway lands.
Wedding
Things begin to go wrong when we miss our turn and get lost on the way to Dumi’s wedding in South Bend, Indiana. But it’s not like we know we’re lost; Aunt Fostalina is taking a nap in the front seat because she worked overnight, and TK, sitting beside me, is busy as usual, iPod on his lap, loud headphones in his ears. I am behind Uncle Kojo, who’s driving, nodding to that weird Ghanaian music that sometimes makes him forget himself, like maybe there’s something inside his head that’s calling him away to somewhere far.
We’ve long left the houses and stores behind, now we’re just driving between stretches and stretches of maize fields, which make me keep expecting to see hoers bent double, tilling; boys walking in front of ox-drawn plows, leading the oxen, the sounds of their whistles and cracking whips in the air, hoes hitting the earth, voices of women urging one another with song. There are always moments like this, where it almost looks like the familiar things from back home will just come out of nowhere, like ghosts.
We Need New Names: A Novel Page 12
