I, Ngwamba Mae

On the African continent, at the bottom to the west, there is a port to which a boat comes every four moons.  The boat, a ship for sailing across seas, it departs at five hours in the A.M. and if you are late it goes and you do not.  My village was not near this port and I had much trouble arriving at the appointed hour. 

When I boarded, I hoped to go to America.  I did not know if this boat was going to America; it was the only boat.  We made many stops, this ship and I.  At each stop and at each fresh beginning, I became anxious as to my final destination.  The moment would last only until I would remind myself that I was, at least, going.  Then calm would return.  Even now, sometimes, in my new country, when I am riding the system of public transportation, I know a moment of peace and a moment of anxiety both when I realize the bus I am riding may not be going where I am headed. 

I walked from midnight.  I could not afford a room.   Toward the port, I brought my body, my soul, and a kerchief in which I tied a meatpastie and a thin, fresh shift.  There are Rands as well, hidden away over four years’ time in the walls of my house and sewn now inside the long, orange sarong I wear over my shift.  I will give the Rands to the boatman.  I will hope to go to America.

This I do for me.  But this I do too, for the son of my granddaughter.  I do these things because change comes hard, and long, and because if I do these things now, these things that are hard, the son of my granddaughter will be a different man than he would be if I do not.  He will be a man like my father, a man who honors women, a man who understands strength.  But I do this most of all for the daughter he will have, so that her life too, will be different, will be better than it would be if I did not try, if I stood still, and let the world around me stay the same. 

For me then, and for them, the son of my granddaughter, and his daughter, I walked.  I stumbled much, as I walked.  Then I would run, to make up for the stumbling.  I never stopped.  I kept my motion.  I arrived at the boat.  The boat, it arrived in America. 

I have new money now, from my new job in America.  I have dollars now where Rands were.  It is the same work here as I did in Namibia.  I keep the house, with another woman, for a pretty lady.  She is Mexican, Cherise, the other housekeeper.  I do not know the pretty lady. 

The dollars, they are not for me to keep.  I give them to the merchants, but I am happy passing them on.  In return, they give me fish and rice and milk.  And a place to stay, a place that is all mine.  

As I walk to work each morning, I pass the shop for the music.  The instruments in the window there, they remind me of the reeds I plucked from the banks of rivulets as a child to play the music out of them.  In this shop, only the tips are reed, the rest of each instrument is shiny and pretty.  I plan to save, to buy one of these instruments of little reed and much beauty.  In this window of this shop of music, I have seen the item which will be my first purchase.  The first thing I will own in my life that will not be worn or eaten but held and treasured.  It will be one of these.  Inside, when I have saved my dollars, the man there, he will help me choose.

Tonight I walk home from the pretty lady’s house, I am tired but strong and happy with my strength.  I walk past the shop and stop and look.  I move on. 

The fish merchant calls out to me, “Mae,” he calls, “Mae-Mae, come see,” he calls and he waves with strength, his whole arm.  It is a year I am here tomorrow.  I swing my small rucksack up onto my shoulder and go to see what Manish has to sell to me today. 

“Many beauties today, Mae, many beauties.”  He is pointing at five or six closest to himself and smiling.  He has come to America from India but, unlike me, he has been here many years.

“I will take a beauty tomorrow.  Will you have a beauty tomorrow, Manish?”

“Don’t I always have beauties, Mae?”

After my supper I climb outside my apartment.  I see lights.  Many lights, bright lights.  I sit in the breeze on my fire escape and I see stars, fewer stars than lights but both attract me. 

On this perch, where I am a bird feeling the breezes soften my face and strengthen my wings, I see a man, every night.  He is a kind man.  This I know because I have watched him.  He is a man of deep skin, beautiful as a tree, and I hope he is Namibian though I know this is not likely.  He is alone with his son, this man, night after night.  There is no woman and he feeds his son and smiles with him.  Sometimes he embraces his son and it looks comforting, this man’s hug.  When the man comes in from work, the boy runs to him and talks with much excitement.  It has been a year now, I have watched them.  He talks this way to his father, the two of them at the table before the window, and I imagine the details in the stories the boy is telling his father.  I imagine he is speaking of his day the way I spoke with my mother in the magistrate’s house, before the time of the ritual to make me a woman. 

After a time of this listening to his son and looking at him, the man must make them their dinner.  When he rises from the table, there is, I have noticed, always a small ritual with them the way I, we, had our rituals at home.  Their ritual is the touch.  He will cup his son’s head or he will touch his son’s face, laying his thumb on the boy’s jawbone as if seeing in the boy the remnants of his woman.

As he prepares what he has brought for them to eat that night, the boy’s talking continues.  Then they are setting the table together, then eating, then it is the boy’s studies.

And then the man I can see from my fire escape when I am a bird flying free in the breeze, is alone, like me.  He is cleaning his few dishes, straightening the few items they have gotten out of place that evening, and he is looking out his window where he can see up to my perch.  I hide myself but when I uncover myself and look over at him, he smiles at me.  Every night for a year, that huge smile of many teeth.  And sometimes, he laughs.  His laugh is full; there is no loneliness in it, it is a happy laugh and I smile back at him then, and he sings. 

*

The dreams haunt me again this night.  In the dream I am running through the rainforest outside my village.  It falls at a rapid pace now, that forest, but when I was a child I played many hours free from care in that jungle.  In the dream I run through the roots and vines and giant plants.  My mother’s hands, and my aunt’s, they are grabbing for me but always I am just out of the reach of these hands for which I never see any arms.

My father, he calls for me.  In the dream, he searches for me and I see him calling out.  To the ends of the jungle he sends his voice.

The morning finds me sitting by the window.  I awaken there having walked before the window after my dream, then falling, as I have now for five years, into the sleep of exhaustion.

                                                                                           *

This morning, the morning of my one-year, it is to sounds of a different laugh that I awaken.  It is Peter’s laughter and not the dark man’s I fell asleep to.  I hear Peter’s little sister there with him.  In the hallway they play.  They live with the older sister in the apartment across the narrow hall from my own.  She is young but good to them.  She and I, we talk.  Their mother lives there too, sometimes.  She is not so good to them.  I listen to their laughter as I get ready for work, I like the sound.