Namwali
Serpell
New York, December 2017
Dear 33 Senanga Road,
How are your bricks holding up? Has dry season dust coated you pink? Has rainy season mud splashed red fingers up your walls? And you, flaky guava tree, so quick to skin yourself, to wince your bark under my nails; you, with that one long limb that I once monkeyed across, that I could now stand beneath and simply reach up and grasp—have you budded green fists yet this season? Do you still await my clamber? Yaw darkbark avocado, with the swing that broke—did they cut you down for making half the garden a shadow? Has the mulberry crawled the rooty path to choke you?
I must not forget you, dear sweet frangipani, of the elephant branches and the glueymilk blood and the whitepetal hands pinched to coral. You stood inside the low garden wall, the perimeters of which my mother, now dead (just dead), lined with flowers—marigolds and violets and a rose bush where twice I met a wry chameleon. What of the big grey rock that jutted vertical from the ground, is it still painted with the unaccountable chessboard? And what of the tree that used to bow over it, the name of which I never learned and which refused my climb by hefting its forks?
It had thin leaves and yellow bell blossoms that were terrible to press. They never stayed yellow no matter how briefly I left them in the folded card between the stacked encyclopedias. The flowers browned as they flattened, and when I slid out the card and unstuck it open, they fractured, looking quite like the browning, breaking pages of the encyclopedias themselves, which were old, very old, and incomplete. I myself tore out the plastic section with the illustrated man that one vivisected by turning each translucent page—digestive, circulatory, reproductive, reproductive. I have been sliced open since, and my mother not so long ago, and we too were splayed across blank backlit pages, and we two then learned the sorrow of the illustrated man, how the riven flesh sticks but doesn’t heal.
House, I know your insides, house. Just like I know the illustrated man’s and my own insides, and my mother’s. I know your rooms and corridors, house. That blueprint is layered with how the light lay on your walls and doors, on glass and mirror, over furniture, across Ba Enela’s ironing board. Some of my knowing comes from the photos in our gummy shuffled albums. But my knowing is inside me, too, how all of our things sat or hung inside you, house—the furniture and curtains and pictures. Or how they did then. I don’t know about now. Last I looked, I couldn’t come in.
No one was home, the gates rudely locked—different gates, not sweeping sisal but shuddering metal—so I could only peek through the gap between them. I confirmed then that your bricks are still white and I saw that you are shockingly small and I caught glimpses of all my trees, or I imagined that I did, because I couldn’t see inside, or inside. I won’t ask you to show me now or tell me in reply, nor will I presume to open you up for these others peering through the gaps between our gates. I will assume, unless otherwise notified, that you still stand there, house, divided and replete and exactly as I remember you, and with my mother inside, and her laughter.
Sincerely,
Namwali
To be published in McSweeney's Quarterly 53
New York, December 2017
Dear 33 Senanga Road,
How are your bricks holding up? Has dry season dust coated you pink? Has rainy season mud splashed red fingers up your walls? And you, flaky guava tree, so quick to skin yourself, to wince your bark under my nails; you, with that one long limb that I once monkeyed across, that I could now stand beneath and simply reach up and grasp—have you budded green fists yet this season? Do you still await my clamber? Yaw darkbark avocado, with the swing that broke—did they cut you down for making half the garden a shadow? Has the mulberry crawled the rooty path to choke you?
I must not forget you, dear sweet frangipani, of the elephant branches and the glueymilk blood and the whitepetal hands pinched to coral. You stood inside the low garden wall, the perimeters of which my mother, now dead (just dead), lined with flowers—marigolds and violets and a rose bush where twice I met a wry chameleon. What of the big grey rock that jutted vertical from the ground, is it still painted with the unaccountable chessboard? And what of the tree that used to bow over it, the name of which I never learned and which refused my climb by hefting its forks?
It had thin leaves and yellow bell blossoms that were terrible to press. They never stayed yellow no matter how briefly I left them in the folded card between the stacked encyclopedias. The flowers browned as they flattened, and when I slid out the card and unstuck it open, they fractured, looking quite like the browning, breaking pages of the encyclopedias themselves, which were old, very old, and incomplete. I myself tore out the plastic section with the illustrated man that one vivisected by turning each translucent page—digestive, circulatory, reproductive, reproductive. I have been sliced open since, and my mother not so long ago, and we too were splayed across blank backlit pages, and we two then learned the sorrow of the illustrated man, how the riven flesh sticks but doesn’t heal.
House, I know your insides, house. Just like I know the illustrated man’s and my own insides, and my mother’s. I know your rooms and corridors, house. That blueprint is layered with how the light lay on your walls and doors, on glass and mirror, over furniture, across Ba Enela’s ironing board. Some of my knowing comes from the photos in our gummy shuffled albums. But my knowing is inside me, too, how all of our things sat or hung inside you, house—the furniture and curtains and pictures. Or how they did then. I don’t know about now. Last I looked, I couldn’t come in.
No one was home, the gates rudely locked—different gates, not sweeping sisal but shuddering metal—so I could only peek through the gap between them. I confirmed then that your bricks are still white and I saw that you are shockingly small and I caught glimpses of all my trees, or I imagined that I did, because I couldn’t see inside, or inside. I won’t ask you to show me now or tell me in reply, nor will I presume to open you up for these others peering through the gaps between our gates. I will assume, unless otherwise notified, that you still stand there, house, divided and replete and exactly as I remember you, and with my mother inside, and her laughter.
Sincerely,
Namwali
To be published in McSweeney's Quarterly 53