No matter how green the maize looks in America, it is not real. They call it corn here, and it comes out all wrong, like small, sweet, too soft. I don’t even bother with it anymore because eating it is really a disappointing thing, it feels like I’m just insulting my teeth. I watch the fields stretch endlessly and it starts to make me nervous because I can’t imagine what could be coming next. Maybe thick forests with lions and tigers and monkeys swinging from branches and stuff because you just never know.
Uhmmn, maybe we need to use the navigator, Uncle Kojo, I say, leaning forward and speaking into his ear. I know he doesn’t like being told what to do, but still. I am not surprised when he just keeps nodding to his music like I haven’t spoken. A long while ago, after we got off the highway, Uncle Kojo started cussing the navigator in his language because it kept saying, Recalculating, turn right, turn right, recalculating, even though we were on a long stretch and there was no way to turn right. In the end Uncle Kojo just yanked the navigator off its thing, handed it to me over his shoulder, raised the volume on the radio, and started listening to his music.
When I get tired of looking at the endless fields and the back of Uncle Kojo’s head I fish my Hello Kitty case from my purse and take out my mirror and lip gloss. I kind of like my face today, even though it looks strange, because Aunt Fostalina did it with makeup for the wedding since she says I’m now a teen. If I were standing outside of myself and saw this face I would maybe say, Who is that? because I wouldn’t recognize it at first, but at the same time it also looks interesting and I’m happy with it. My only regret is that it’s summer and schools are closed so I really can’t show it off, but I’ve decided that come fall, this is the face I’m taking to Washington Academy.
When I first arrived at Washington I just wanted to die. The other kids teased me about my name, my accent, my hair, the way I talked or said things, the way I dressed, the way I laughed. When you are being teased about something, at first you try to fix it so the teasing can stop but then those crazy kids teased me about everything, even the things I couldn’t change, and it kept going and going so that in the end I just felt wrong in my skin, in my body, in my clothes, in my language, in my head, everything. When I talked to Aunt Fostalina about it she told me how when she was going to boarding school at home, the bullies would eat the other students’ food and generally made them maids—had them washing their clothes and cleaning after them and stuff. She has this weird thing of constantly referring to back home when she doesn’t want to deal with anything—When I was growing up back home we only got new clothes on Christmas and we turned out just fine; back home you wouldn’t ever dream of talking to your elders in that tone; back home this, back home that.
The teasing stopped only when Tom joined our class; I don’t know where he came from but he came with these crooked teeth and long, greasy hair and these large glasses and this sad stutter. Somehow he made them forget about me and I almost felt like thanking him for it. I remember they teased him harder, maybe because he was a boy. I remember they always wanted him to fight and called him freak, which I had to Google since I had never heard the word before; there were a lot of American words and things I was still learning.
I remember it was the way they said freak that made me want to look it up; said it like they wanted to puncture their bottom lips with their teeth when they said the f part and then making the rest of the word explode from their mouths. I remember I waited until I was alone in my room to Google it. I searched for the word, then hit Images, and when all these crazy pics popped up I just stared at the screen and wondered how it felt for Tom, but I knew, we all knew just a week later, when they found him hanging near the lockers at school, the word freak! scrawled in a red marker on a locker behind him.
You need to watch out for the hall, it must actually be here somewhere, Uncle Kojo says.
Here? In the fields? I say, and I’m immediately sorry because it comes out like Uncle Kojo just said something lame and I cannot believe my ears. He doesn’t respond, so I finish putting on my lip gloss, smack my lips together like I’ve seen Aunt Fostalina do. I put the lip gloss and mirror away, push my purse under Uncle Kojo’s seat, next to the navigator. My shoes are starting to pinch my feet so I kick them off.
You see, at your age, the best thing to do is forget makeup and actually think about school. What you want to be when you grow up, that kind of thing, Uncle Kojo says. When he turns down the volume I roll my eyes because I know what’s coming.
You know how many young women actually want to come into this country to study? How many of them are just—just dying to be where you are?
Uncle Kojo sounds all upset now, and this annoys me very much because it’s not like I’ve done anything wrong. And besides, I’ve been getting all As in everything, even maths and science, the subjects I hate, because school is so easy in America even a donkey would pass, so I don’t know what Uncle Kojo wants, what else I’m supposed to do. He looks at me from the rearview mirror and his eyes have this disappointment in them that I know I don’t deserve, so I borrow TK’s word and say inside my head, Leave me alone, motherfucker.
I think it’s at that moment when Uncle Kojo is giving me the look that the deer runs in front of the car. Next thing I know there’s the sound of smashing and the car lurches to the side and we’re being jolted all over. There’s a blaring horn from a second car coming straight at us, and Uncle Kojo is shouting in his language and Aunt Fostalina has woken up and is shouting in our language and TK is saying, What the fuck? and I’m screaming. By the time Uncle Kojo gets the car back on our lane and slams the brakes, the deer is already limp-hopping away into the bushes, a large bloodstain on its side. I’m worried about the deer but I’m also thankful because now Uncle Kojo has finally left me alone.
What in the world are you doing, Jameson, you want to kill us? Aunt Fostalina says. Her voice is sleep and shock and panic. Uncle Kojo ignores her and gets out of the car, muttering. For a while he just stands there shaking his head, hands in his pockets. Then he bends down to take a closer look at the right side.
Jesus, it’s 3:35, we’re missing the wedding! How did this happen? Aunt Fostalina says, a new panic in her voice, like this is more serious than the accident that almost happened.
Where are we? she asks, turning back to TK and myself, and we answer her with silence.
We were supposed to be at the wedding an hour and a half ago, an hour and a half! Where is my navigator? What did he do with it? she says, and I quickly retrieve the navigator from under Uncle Kojo’s seat and hand it over. Aunt Fostalina snatches it; she is all mad now, making phone calls and asking for directions. Uncle Kojo gets back into the car and says, That deer actually broke my light. Now I have to replace it. I just fixed the exhaust only last week!
After Uncle Kojo has turned the car around and we’re on the way back toward 94, TK says, Oh shit, the police are right behind us, maybe somebody saw.
The police? Is it actually the police? Uncle Kojo says, his voice so high and panicky you wouldn’t think it was Uncle Kojo speaking but a terrified young boy. The way he says the word police, as if they were witches, monsters.
Just don’t turn around, you know how they don’t really like that, TK says. The car starts to slow down toward the right, getting off the road and preparing to stop. Uncle Kojo is muttering; it sounds like prayer. I look over my shoulder, and when I don’t see any police I put a fist in my mouth and giggle. Beside me, TK is busy dying. When Uncle Kojo hears us he looks over his shoulder and screams at TK in his language, his voice now loud and angry and sounding like his again. He doesn’t think it’s funny.
By the time we finally get to the wedding, we figure the most important parts must be over, which doesn’t bother me a bit because I don’t really know Dumi, the guy who’s getting married. But Aunt Fostalina does, and I know she is mad because for the past few weeks she’s been talking about the wedding like it was her own. She gets out of the car, slams the door, and storms off like s
he doesn’t even know us.
About three weeks ago, I went with Aunt Fostalina to JCPenney to buy her dress for the wedding. We spent hours and hours trying this and that dress, until finally, when I wanted to just run out of JCPenney, she found the one she really wanted, a long, strapless cream dress that clung to her body. The zipper wouldn’t close, but she bought it all the same, which meant she would have to lose some pounds for it. This morning, when she came to my room and asked me to zip the dress up for her, it zipped without a problem, like she had poured herself inside.
You look good, Aunt Fostalina, I said, because she really looked beautiful, and also because she likes hearing that.
Really, you think so? she said, turning around, and finally standing still in front of the mirror. Her face appeared a little tired in the reflection.
Don’t tell anyone: me and the groom used to date, but that was way back at home when we were in college. It ended when he moved to the States a while ago, but it’s all in the past now. I’m just going to see who he’s marrying, that’s all, Aunt Fostalina said with a mischievous grin I had never seen before, and I didn’t even know if she was speaking to me or herself or her reflection.
The first thing I notice when we get inside the hall are the white people. I know that of all the Americans, it’s really the white people who love Africans the most, but still, looking at how many of them are at the wedding, I can’t help but think, This can’t be just love. It’s only when I see the bride that I understand why there’s this many white people: she is white. Besides that, she is just rolls and rolls of flesh; I cannot help staring, cannot help thinking, But this is not just fatness.
In America, the fatness is not the fatness I was used to at home. Over there, the fatness was of bigness, just ordinary fatness you could understand because it meant the person ate well, fatness you could even envy. It was fatness that did not interfere with the body; a neck was still a neck, a stomach a stomach, an arm an arm, a buttock a buttock. But this American fatness takes it to a whole ’nother level: the body is turned into something else—the neck becomes a thigh, the stomach becomes an anthill, an arm a thing, a buttock a I don’t even know what.
The tall husband, Dumi, is sitting there beside the bride in his white suit. He has this smile that never goes away; his tinted dreadlocks reach his shoulders, and his body looks like a stick in comparison to his wife’s. I look at his carved smile and ask myself what he’s smiling for because I don’t see why anyone would be smiling with a bride like that because it’s not like you’re saying, Look at my beautiful wife; it’s not like other women are busy envying her and wanting to kill her for her beauty or hating her for it. I look at Aunt Fostalina and she is all smiles looking at the couple, and I know the reason she is so happy is that Dumi’s bride is fat and ugly.
We sit through the reading of messages from home. The MC explains that Dumi’s parents and family couldn’t make it to the wedding because they couldn’t get visas so they wrote down their messages, which were later sent by e-mail. Dumi’s friend, who introduces himself as Mtha, reads the messages, and another, Siza, translates for the white people.
The first message is from Dumi’s grandmother, who starts by addressing Dumi with his totems, the way old people like to do. They sound like a tumbling poem, the totems, and it’s just beautiful to hear them read in our language. The grandmother congratulates her first grandson, and she says she hopes he has chosen a healthy, pretty, respectful, and grounded wife who will bear strong sons and teach them our beautiful culture and come home and revive the ancestral homestead as expected of the first daughter-in-law. A wife who knows her place and who will listen to and obey her husband and make him a man among men. A wife who is quick on her feet and talented with her hands and hardworking and pure and faithful.
The bride keeps nodding and smiling like she can understand the language, but now I know that smiling at nothing is really a white-people thing so I’m not surprised. I notice, though, that when the translator translates, he leaves out things like reviving the ancestral home and teaching the grandsons our beautiful culture and being quick on her feet and hardworking and obeying the husband. When the messages start to go on and on like Bible verses, I get up to find the restroom.
I am in the middle of peeing when I hear two voices talking in our language. They talk in tones that are lowered and guarded, just like you are supposed to do when you gossip, but I can still hear. I hold my pee and listen.
The nerve! I think she’s the sister. Talking about African men and their love for big women! I seriously wanted to laugh.
Well, that’s you, ’coz I so wanted to slap that dumb whore. Like, bitch, what the fuck do you know about Africa? And since when did big become fat?
Girl, that’s not even fat.
Damn right. Obese is the word. Like, she is a freaking mountain!
Here, the voices explode in laughter. I giggle inside until two drops of pee come out, so I stop giggling and concentrate so I can hold the rest.
All I’ll say is that he is a brave man. I mean, if it’s not bravery, then I don’t know what it is. Stupidity?
Ah, what a waste, and such a fine-ass brother too.
But the things people will do for these papers, my sister, I tell you.
I am surprised by the sudden change in the second voice now, by the pity, and I can almost picture the speaker: not a girl, like the voice suggests, but an old, old woman with a kind face, maybe shaking her white head in sorrow. Water rushes from a tap and stops. There’s the sound of heels, then I hear, Okay, you. Stop, somebody’s coming.
Yeah, we better get back, I’m starving like a fucking fat bride.
There’s more sounds of heels, probably the gossipers walking away, and I hear a Hi, and then the first voice saying, in English now, in a cheerful tone that does not mean what it says, That’s such a gorgeous dress you have on! I pee, wipe, and the toilet flushes itself.
I am washing my hands and admiring my interesting face when a voice says: Are you from Africa too?
I look in the mirror, and this woman in a blue dress is standing there smiling at me. I notice the smell of her sweet perfume is all over, like a living thing. I smile back. It’s not exactly a smile-smile, just the brief baring of teeth. That’s what you do in America: you smile at people you don’t know and you smile at people you don’t even like and you smile for no reason. I nod, turn around, and start drying my hands under the noisy dryer. When I turn back, the woman is waiting for me like we’re maybe on Main Street at home and she’s selling me some cheap eggs.
Can you just say something in your language? she says. I laugh a small laugh, because what do you say to that? But the woman is fixing me with this expectant stare, which means she is not playing, so I say:
I don’t know, what do you want me to say?
Well, anything, really.
I let out an inward sigh because this is so stupid, but I remember to keep my face smiling. I say one word, sa-li-bo-na-ni, and I say it slowly so she doesn’t ask me to repeat it. She doesn’t.
Isn’t that beautiful? she says. Now she’s looking at me like I’m a wonder, like I just made magic happen.
What language is that? she says. I tell her, and she tells me it’s beautiful, again, and I tell her thank you. Then she asks me what country I’m from and I tell her.
It’s beautiful over there, isn’t it? she says. I nod even though I don’t know why I’m nodding. I just do. To this lady, maybe everything is beautiful.
Africa is beautiful, she says, going on with her favorite word. But isn’t it terrible what’s happening in the Congo? Just awful.
Now she is looking at me with this wounded face. I don’t know what to do or say, so I fake a long cough just to fill the silence. My brain is scattering and jumping fences now, trying to remember what exactly is happening in the Congo because I think I am confusing it with another place, but what I can see in the woman’s eyes is that it’s serious and important and I’m supposed to know it,
so in the end I say, Yes, it is terrible, what is happening in the Congo.
I squeeze hand soap into my palm and start washing my hands all over again, my back to the woman. But she is not trying to leave me alone. She has pulled up the chair that was by the door and is sitting now; I don’t even know why they have chairs in the bathroom.
Tell me about it. Jesus, the rapes, and all those killings! How can such things even be happening? she says. I can’t tell if it’s really a question-question or if it’s a question I don’t need to answer, but in the end I hear myself saying, Yes, I also really don’t know. Then I begin drying my hands.
I mean, I can’t even—I can’t even process it. And all those poor women and children. I was watching CNN last night and there was this little girl who was just—just too cute, she says. Her eyes start to mist and she looks down. I glance at the box of Kleenex at the edge of the counter and wonder if I should pick it up and hold it out to her.
It just broke my heart, you know, the woman says, her voice choking. Then she lifts her head like she has remembered something important.
Now, Lisa, up there, my niece, one of the bridesmaids, the tall one, real skinny redhead—she’s going to Rwanda to help. She’s in the Peace Corps, you know, they are doing great things for Africa, just great, she says. I nod, even though I don’t really know what the woman is talking about. But her face is looking much, much better, like the pain from earlier is going away.
And last summer, she went to Khayelitsha in South Africa to teach at an orphanage, and let me tell you, we all donated—clothes and pens and medicines and crayons and candy for those poor African children. Then she puts her hand over her heart and closes her eyes briefly, like maybe she’s listening to the throb of her kindness. I’m surprised by the way she says Khayelitsha, says it so well, like maybe it’s her language even.
We Need New Names: A Novel Page 13
