New Daughters of Africa

by Margaret Busby

  A waiter in linen livery is ready to take the women’s orders. Indigo is not ready yet, but Zawadi knows what she wants, or so she thinks. The waiter is kind and grants Indigo a few more minutes. The two women have been carrying on a food conversation spiced with ripples of laughter as they try to make their choice. They settle—finally!—for the afternoon tea menu. The club sandwiches look good. They will go the whole nine yards and order tea with their sandwiches, and round things off with dessert. Another waiter in linen livery comes to take their orders: two Club Louvre, with black ginger tea for one and Thé des signes, iced Dragon green tea for the other; it’s the Year of the Dragon, after all.

  The tea comes first. Indigo’s iced tea surprises both women, coming in the biggest wineglass one ever saw. It has the women in stitches. Indigo looks at the tea, its colour, and knows that she will not like it at all, but it doesn’t matter.

  Zawadi pours her tea and both women look at its colour. Something about it is not quite right. Zawadi takes one delicate sip, then another. No, this is not what she asked for. Someone must have noticed, for they send a nervous waiter—probably a novice—who apologetically says that there has been a mistake. The Marco Polo green tea is replaced by another tea. Zawadi pours it and the colour still does not look right. More delicate sips. It doesn’t taste right either. The novice waiter comes back. The tea is Karikal, a spicy green tea. The pot is taken away yet again. They get it right the third time, but there is no milk in sight, only a jug with water in it. Indigo is much bothered by this jug. Zawadi would like some milk, but doesn’t ask for it, what with Indigo’s no-you-can’t!—because the French are such tea purists and this is Mariage Frères. Indigo seems to know what she is about. But what about this nagging jug of water? And she wants to enhance her concoction, but sugar will not do. Ask for honey, Zawadi urges. She does. Mariage Frères don’t have any honey (too common?). Oh, well. Stiff upper lip, the Queen back in England would be chuffed.

  Zawadi picks up the jug of water. She does not assume things are what they appear to be. She pours a few drops onto a teaspoon and takes a sip. Water? What water? This is clear corn syrup, ladies. Marco Polo, the Asian elephants, and the Englishmen in their uniform and colonial pith helmets gaze at these two black women who laugh crystal clear, making heads turn because they make no attempt to hide their mirth. The walls and tea-cups laugh along with the women, a laughter that goes on and on, tears coursing down the two women’s cheeks. From then on, laughter will not be too far away. The tea-flavoured green salt will set them off, the green tea club sandwiches will set them off. But the jug, and the word “water” will be the mother. Serious conversation will be interspersed with fits of joy.

  Onlookers must wonder what is so funny about what they have ordered since their laughter is plainly concentrated on what is on their table. They do not know the women’s story, that they met that same morning, but that in the few hours spent together they have not only discovered a shared significant past but have also woven a rich tapestry of bonding memories. They do not know that these two women have bonded through a red dress, a marbled tea-cup, beads bought at the flea market; that they have bonded through tea, motherhood and stories of home. And even if they were to hear their story, would they believe the women? Impossible to skip all the stages of friendship and find yourself at intimacy.

  Piano:

  The waiters seem to understand that something magical is taking place. Zawadi charms the waiter at the dessert cart when she says she has travelled a fair distance to come to Mariage Frères. She, like the Queen, has a superb command of Molière’s language. French waiters are partial to foreigners who respect their language. Mariage Frères waiters are no exception.

  At a little before 7.30 p.m., a waiter places the bill on the table. He is apologetic. It is closing time. Indigo will look round at the salon de thé and realise they are the last clients and probably have been for a good while now.

  The women will pick up their bags filled with memories; the waiters will bid the two sisters au revoir. It is rare for French waiters to forget to maintain that aloof and superior demeanour but the ones at Mariage Frères do. Their body language says Karibuni tena. See you soon.

  Encore! Encore!

  Natasha Trethewey

  A two-term US Poet Laureate, Pulitzer Prize winner, and 2017 Heinz Award recipient, she has written five collections of poetry and one book of nonfiction. An American Academy of Arts and Sciences fellow, she is currently Board of Trustees professor of English at Northwestern University. She lives in Evanston, Illinois. Her writing includes the poetry collections Domestic Work (2000), Bellocq’s Ophelia (2002), Native Guard (2006), Beyond Katrina: A Meditation on the Mississippi Gulf Coast (2010), Thrall (2012) and Monument: Poems New and Selected (2018).

  My Mother Dreams Another Country

  Already the words are changing. She is changing

  from colored to negro, black still years ahead.

  This is 1966—she is married to a white man—

  and there are more names for what grows inside her.

  It is enough to worry about words like mongrel

  and the infertility of mules and mulattoes

  while flipping through a book of baby names.

  She has come home to wait out the long months,

  her room unchanged since she’s been gone:

  dolls winking down from every shelf—all of them

  white. Every day she is flanked by the rituals of superstition,

  and there is a name she will learn for this too:

  maternal impression—the shape, like an unknown

  country, marking the back of the newborn’s thigh.

  For now, women tell her to clear her head, to steady her hands

  or she’ll gray a lock of the child’s hair wherever

  she worries her own, imprint somewhere the outline

  of a thing she craves too much. They tell her

  to stanch her cravings by eating dirt. All spring

  she has sat on her hands, her fingers numb. For a while

  each day, she can’t feel anything she touches: the arbor

  out back—the landscape’s green tangle; the molehill

  of her own swelling. Here—outside the city limits—

  cars speed by, clouds of red dust in their wake.

  She breathes it in—Mississippi—then drifts toward sleep,

  thinking of someplace she’s never been. Late,

  Mississippi is a dark backdrop bearing down

  on the windows of her room. On the TV in the corner,

  the station signs off, broadcasting its nightly salutation:

  the waving Stars and Stripes, our national anthem.

  Southern Gothic

  I have lain down into 1970, into the bed

  my parents will share for only a few more years.

  Early evening, they have not yet turned from each other

  in sleep, their bodies curved—parentheses

  framing the separate lives they’ll wake to. Dreaming,

  I am again the child with too many questions—

  the endless why and why and why

  my mother cannot answer, her mouth closed, a gesture

  toward her future: cold lips stitched shut.

  The lines in my young father’s face deepen

  toward an expression of grief. I have come home

  from the schoolyard with the words that shadow us

  in this small Southern town—peckerwood and nigger

  lover, half-breed and zebra—words that take shape

  outside us. We’re huddled on the tiny island of bed, quiet

  in the language of blood: the house, unsteady

  on its cinderblock haunches, sinking deeper

  into the muck of ancestry. Oil lamps flicker

  around us—our shadows, dark glyphs on the wall,

  bigger and stranger than we are.

  Incident

  We tell the story every year—

 
how we peered from the windows, shades drawn—

  though nothing really happened,

  the charred grass now green again.

  We peered from the windows, shades drawn,

  at the cross trussed like a Christmas tree,

  the charred grass still green. Then

  we darkened our rooms, lit the hurricane lamps.

  At the cross trussed like a Christmas tree,

  a few men gathered, white as angels in their gowns.

  We darkened our rooms and lit hurricane lamps,

  the wicks trembling in their fonts of oil.

  It seemed the angels had gathered, white men in their gowns.

  When they were done, they left quietly. No one came.

  The wicks trembled all night in their fonts of oil;

  by morning the flames had all dimmed.

  When they were done, the men left quietly. No one came.

  Nothing really happened.

  By morning all the flames had dimmed.

  We tell the story every year.

  South

  Homo sapiens is the only species to suffer psychological exile.

  —E.O. Wilson

  I returned to a stand of pines,

  bone-thin phalanx

  flanking the roadside, tangle

  of understory—a dialectic of dark

  and light—and magnolias blossoming

  like afterthought: each flower

  a surrender, white flags draped

  among the branches. I returned

  to land’s end, the swath of coast

  clear cut and buried in sand:

  mangrove, live oak, gulfweed

  razed and replaced by thin palms—

  palmettos—symbols of victory

  or defiance, over and over

  marking this vanquished land. I returned

  to a field of cotton, hallowed ground—

  as slave legend goes—each boll

  holding the ghosts of generations:

  Hilda J. Twongyeirwe

  Born in Kacerere village near Lake Bunyonyi, Uganda, she is a teacher by profession and has an MA in Public Administration and Management. Since 2007 she has been working with FEMRITE—Uganda Women Writers Association as Executive Director which has enabled her to participate in literary programmes aimed at amplifying African women’s voices. She has received four Recognition Awards for contributions to Ugandan literature and women’s emancipation from the government of Uganda, Women for Women Awards Uganda, Uganda Registration Services Bureau, and the National Book Trust of Uganda. In March 2015, she was named by For Harriet website as one of 18 African feminists to celebrate. She is a member of Action for Development and The Graca Machel African Women in Media Network. She serves on the Permanent Bureau of the African Asian Writers Union and the National Book Trust of Uganda.

  From Maisha Ndivyo ya Livyo

  Miriam lowered her bag on her lap and gasped . . . the earphone and power-bank charging cables dangled out of the bag like small intestines. Her mind raced through all the events of the morning, but she could not point at any suspicious act. That was Owino market.

  She had just spent her morning there and all had seemed to end well, despite the overwhelming mud from September’s El Niño rains—even stepping on the stones along the criss-crossing pathways between stalls splashed mud. It had rained again in the early hours of the morning, but Miriam still had to go to Owino because it was the only day she had for shopping before travelling to her village for the Christmas break. She knew Owino was the only place where she would get what she wanted. As she walked from one stall to another, hopping forwards and sideways to avoid bumping into people, she remembered what her friend Joy always said: that Owino market people walk in a to-whom-it-may-concern manner, as if other people are insects.

  “It’s their space,” Miriam would respond.

  “It’s our space too.”

  “They’re here because we come here.”

  “Look, we’re here because they’re here.”

  “But suppose we never came, who would they sell to?”

  “Suppose they were not here, what would we come here to do?”

  “Whatever! But this is a shared space.”

  Miriam had wanted Canon bed-sheets for her new bed. She was never sure about her ability to tell original quality from duplicates under the dazzling lights in shopping malls. Owino natural light worked better and, besides, she would get the original Canon bed-sheets at less than half the price quoted in main-street malls. She had hobbled to the stall of the bald-headed seller who always selected those bed-sheets for her that she never saw on other people’s clotheslines.

  “Oh, my friend. You have arrived,” he greeted her. “You cannot exhaust my stock today.”

  “I want good quality Canon bed-sheets like the ones you always give me.”

  “I have them.”

  “I want a good price today.”

  “I always give you good price that I don’t give to anybody else, even when they beg me. But for you, I always give you because you are my friend.”

  “Today I have little money.”

  “I have bed-sheets for all prices,” he said, touching one pile after another. He selected a pair of white sheets with small pink flowers, cast it over her arm then dug out another pair, soft cream with a blue print.

  “I want only one pair.” But Miriam agreed with the bald-headed man. They were cute bed-sheets, soft and frothy. “I’ll give you 20,000 for each of them,” she told him.

  “You people can insult.”

  “But that’s what I have today.”

  “Then I will not eat your money today. You walk to other stalls and get bed-sheets for 20,000.”

  “Okay. How much?”

  “80,000.”

  “I will give you 50,000.”

  “That is also money. I can get you another pair for 50,000. Those are for 80,000.”

  Miriam shook her head. “Please . . .” she said, looking at the shiny patch on the man’s head where old age had already eaten away almost half of his hair.

  “Put down my sheets and walk away.” The man’s smiling face was becoming several sets of furrows, belying the earlier declared friendship.

  Miriam counted 160,000 shillings from her purse and paid for the two pairs of bed-sheets.

  She had walked past several stalls looking for piles of jeans. She wanted some for herself, and a travel bag and a heavy duvet for her parents. As she walked, she found herself listening and smiling at the sale-songs that the vendors sang to attract or chase away customers:

  Two thousand, two thousand, pick whatever you want.

  It’s two thousand whatever you choose.

  If you don’t have it, don’t bend your back.

  If you have nothing, you do’ot point your wire at the mandazi.

  Two thousand, sweaters.

  Do nor envy your neighbour’s child’s fat cheeks

  Coldness brings kwashiorkor cheeks.

  Nowadays Miriam avoided the cheapest heaps, however tempting the items. The last time she bought a sweater from such a heap, when she got home and tried it on, it had only one sleeve. Factory error, her sister had commented; but they could both see the sleeve had either been cut or had fallen off. On another occasion, her sister bought a flowered cotton dress, and after one wash the entire colour ran, leaving it a dirty brown thing that she could use only as a rug. Those cheap heaps were not to be trusted, yet they always drew the biggest crowds of buyers counting out hard-earned savings coin by coin to pay for the stuff.

  Miriam stopped at the stall of two young men with welcoming faces. She never stopped at the stalls of mean-faced sellers; they could be a nuisance if you chose not to buy anything from them. Miriam looked at several pairs of trousers, tossing them back onto the pile. The sales boys became agitated. They drew closer and started gathering up and tidying the trousers she was throwing back.

  “Are you buying or are you not buying?”

  “What
is your problem?” Miriam asked them.

  “Hear how she opens her mouth. You don’t just touch our maali and cast away, touch and cast away as if you are a witch.”

  “But I have to touch them in order to decide on what to buy.”

  “Just leave!” they shouted.

  “Eeh. I will leave if you want me to.”

  “So what are you waiting for? Leave! You people make other people remain paupers because you put a spell on their maali and make it slip through their fingers. Go!” The voice was rising.

  And leave she did. This was Owino. Very unpredictable.

  She moved on towards the stalls ahead. As she negotiated her way around the mud, the scent of boiled rice and meat wafted through the air, reminding her that she had left home without breakfast.

  A petite woman carrying a tray of food swung past. She could have been anything between sixteen and twenty-three years old. A white cap hid her hair. Her long skirt reminded Miriam of those days in her village when she would see women return from gardening during the rainy season, the hems of their skirts heavy with mud, flip-flapping against their legs. She loathed meeting those women; she did not want to be like them. Always returning in the evenings with soil-covered legs. There were a few women at the trading centre too but those were always clean. However, whenever she did anything wrong at home, her mother told her she was going to turn out like the women at the trading centre. Miriam did not know what was wrong with being like women at the trading centre. She admired them. They were clean. They were smart. They had time to just sit at the roadside and say “welcome back” to the women returning from the gardens. They had time even to talk and laugh with the men drinking amaarwa or those playing omwesho. Miriam smiled, remembering the time her mother said that the men in their village spent their days rolling their testicles on the bar benches, and Miriam had wanted to say that wasn’t true, since the men just sat and played chanisi and other games without ever removing their trousers. Only much later did Miriam understand her mother’s language.