“American Death” by LaToya Watkins

Photography by Mick Davidson

I wanted to dive across the room and cradle his sad face in my arms to save him from his weeping. Of course, it was not manly weeping. In our old country—in our tradition, no weeping is manly. Alas, he wept and held her hand. She was dying. He did not weep and hold her hand only because she was dying. She was his mother. He loved his mother and I loved him. I had loved him since I was five. My mother taught me to. I remember the day we stood outside the huts of the men, and she explained the plan for my future to me. My husband was just a boy then too, older than me, but not old enough to know the ritual of manhood.

“Tsiuani,” my mother began. “The ancestors have given you over to this man. You should be grateful.”

She clasped my hand tighter and turned her eyes from me, peering out at the yellow field beside us. The wind blew wildly that day and the taller-than-me grass swayed like singing bushmen.

“He has a great destiny. He will make you whole. Not outcast like me.  Maybe someday you’ll leave this place.”

She was the youngest of Baba’s four wives, the only one raised outside our land. She was his reward for a winning battle in Harar.

“Maybe through him, you’ll find my freedom. Your womanhood time is nearing.” She turned her head away from the bushmen grass, toward me, but still gazed above my head. At innocent five, I knew she was avoiding my eyes.

“I’ll call my father’s ancestors to be with you. I love you, Tsiuani.”

She was a beautiful long-faced woman, but the only people who saw her beauty in our village, were me and my father. Her long hair was not like the tight knots that adorned the heads of the other women. Her sandy skin did not shine with the same obsidian blackness as everyone else who lived there. She was a princess in her old village, the one that my father had helped other’s raid when my mother was just a child. He shed the most blood on that day, including that of my mother’s parents. There was no cutting and scrapping of womanhood in the village where she came from, and she saved me from my father’s tradition of cutting out the hanging parts.

“Why do you even wish to bother with her? Her half-caste spirit will never be strong enough to handle the knife. I know. My people were not built strong like yours. Did you not kill enough of them to know this?” she said to my father. “Save the cow and eat well this year.”

And he listened and spared me the ritual.

As for my husband, he knows the ancestors wait in the corners of his mother’s powerless, fragile world—her room, in anticipation of her arrival, but he is reluctant to allow her departure from our world. Her death is not beautiful like the pink lace chiffon that she has always kept on the arm of the couch in her warm, mothball-scented den. Her lips are cracked, and little red slits of old life rest between the gaps. Words can no longer pass through her lips. Her once glowing smile is years behind her, and her mouth curls down, almost in a permanent exhausted frown. She was an extraordinary woman—once. Of this, I am sure, but all traces of brilliance have been stripped from her by relentless disease and sickness. The breasts that nursed my love into adolescence are no more. They sag like deflated sandbags carrying the treacherousness, yet preciousness of our own Kalahari Desert. The hands that had rescued him from falls and brushed away creeping bristle grass from his hair are frail and pinned to her sides, ready for eternal rest. I read somewhere in our country that death was the only beauty in life. Her death is not beautiful.

“Water?” I manage in a strained voice from the side of the bed opposite of him. He is seated in the comfortable recliner beside her bed.  It is usually reserved for special guests. His presence makes an uneasy feeling erupt inside of me. He is wearing traditional clothing for the first time in months. The kofia hides the top of his balding head, and a low bush sprouts out from the sides. I wonder what he was thinking besides my mama is dying. I wonder if he blames me. I am her guardian each day when he goes off into the world to make sure that I have meals, and she, a dying bed covered by a leaky roof.

He works hard at being a good janitor in the mornings and a student in the evenings. He tries hard to fit in, but his thick, dark skin and clumsy accent give him over as something other than American.  He is proud of the small pink house we rent from the man with the belly that jiggled. There are problems with the roof, and rats sometimes invade our space, but it is very different from the thatch huts we came from—much better. There are heaters and air blowers and ways to keep flies out. Men and women aren’t separated by huts, and we have beds with thick mattresses topped by crisp sheets. But sometimes I feel bad for him, coming home to our borrowed house. Some Americans say it is in the roughest neighborhood in the roughest city in America.  Sometimes there is shooting outside his mother’s window. She has never flinched though, none of us do. We are used to flying darts from back home. The witch doctors would send them when villagers paid them to. Darts have no names. Anyone can catch them.

Once, all of the women in our village gathered for a fertility party for one of the elder shaman’s wives. She was his fourth bride, and had not, after a full year, produced a son for her husband. The young bride was presented with dolls, beads, and ostrich eggs. The women danced around fires and chanted fertility songs all night long to the continuous drumming. All the while, the women in a neighboring village sent darts to block our blessings from the ancestors. One of the women of that village had been presented to the elder shaman as a wife, but our elders had refused her, and bitterness from that village festered for ours. It was my mother-in-law who saw the darts intercepting our prayers to the ancestors in a vision. She looked into the clay pot that she always carried with her, and called out to the women in the neighboring village. She commanded them to stop or they would suffer the darts of her chants, and they stopped. She was a good shaman when she was well.

I shift my weight in the hard wooden chair as I anticipate his response. I ask myself many questions in the thirty seconds it took him to respond. Is she dying because of me? Did I forget to wipe her nose or bottom completely at some point? It became a problem for me when the skin on her backside began to wipe off in the process. Her whimpers of pain are why I just blot at soiled spots and stopped using soap to wipe her completely. How could I let his mother slip away from him in such a way?  Am I not diligent enough in my duties to her as a daughter-in-law? She called me useless when she was well.  Said I would never give her grandchildren, because I was not a woman. The ancestors were angered by my western ways, and I would forever been a nuisance because I let the ritual of womanhood pass me by. I was not cut below. I hung like a man. No stitches, no tightness, not enough screaming and blood on the sheets outside our hut on the night of our wedding. She beat me with a floor broom that night. The whole village waited and I was judged whore when they saw. There was chanting and drumming all around us as the barely stained sheets waved outside our window, but the only music I danced to was that of one-hundred lashes across my back as she sang her own songs of deception in Bantu.

He stayed married to me despite the dragging between my legs. He took no other wife, but he did not lay with me after the beating I received from his mother on the night of our wedding.  It was his destiny to come to America. The old shaman told us so. His task was to come and gain and the ways of Westerners, while teaching the ways of our village. It was to be a subtle infiltration. We would take home only what was necessary for the survival of our people, but we were to leave whole pieces of ourselves behind. Weeks after we came to America, I slid my hands across his leg and gently cupped his limp loins while he was sleeping. I thought American freedom would change our lack of intimacy. I thought in America, I was his woman and he was my man. In America where a clitoris was a good thing.

“Tsiuani,” he woke suddenly. I smiled at him through the darkness, and his hand came down with great force on my cheek.

“Why must you act so manly?” he asked, through gritted teeth. He grabbed the pillow and left our bedroom that night. After that he began sleeping in his mother’s room on the floor.

She exhales deeply and then lets out a series of short gasps to catch her breath. Soon her chest rises and falls in a rhythm that is reminiscent of Wednesday nights at the Blues Palace. I marvel at her attempts to hold on to her miserable life. She values it in some way. I suppose we all value our lives in some way, no matter how doomed or pathetic they can become.

“Listen,” he whispers and draws his head closer to the space where her breasts lived in another time. I am attentive to him. I want so badly to help. My heart begs to carry his pain. He opens his mouth and lets out a deep and throaty moan meant to be a song:

“Beautiful is your name.” He pauses and waits for a response from her. I become angry with myself, because I want to laugh at him for expecting this horrible animal cry to revive her. She loves music—especially Asa’s tribute to motherhood—and this butchery would upset her if she were remotely conscious. Does he not understand that wailing without drums would offend the ancestors and maybe even his dying mother? No. He knows. Drumming is his tradition too. Others have visited his body by way of his drumming on many occasions. He is aware that the drumming is of great importance. With the opening line to a beautiful song, he had manages to offend me, but I sit nervous and quiet.

I wish that he had taken notes the Wednesday night we ventured outside of our tiny home together. Someone at work at told him about Wednesday night English classes that were given in an old warehouse.

“You’ll finally have something to do Tsiuani—maybe meet some African friends.”

His eyes were hopeful and I could see the first traces of happy since we arrived to this country. So, I held his hand as we stepped off the porch. There were a few empty milk cartons and snack cake wrappers outside of our house. They had probably blown our way from passersby or neighbors, so my husband kneeled down and began picking them up. He looked nice in the suit that his boss had given him, even though the pants were so short they exposed his naked ankles.

“Down,” I said when he stood with the trash in his hands. I was pointing to the collar of his shirt.

“Hmm?” He looked at me with confusion.

“mase iyonu,” I told him and the confusion left his face when I reached over and smoothed it myself.

“Oh,” he said, grabbing my hand again.

A group of young men stood across the street, huddled in a circle. One of them looked around, kind of like a predator look-out back home. He nodded his head in our direction and my husband threw up his free hand, a wave of sorts. It was the first time he’d held my hand since we came to America, so I didn’t mind the cool breeze that wisped around my ears and tickled the back of my neck. He was only slightly annoyed when we approached the address and there was a line of well-dressed black Americans, waiting to get inside.

“I knew what they spoke was not real English. I guess you will all learn together, eh?” he asked, curiously.

I nodded my head. We were close to the guy at the door, taking money when the beautiful drums and horns began to escape from inside the place. The sounds rose and fell in a rhythm and I fell in love with the way it made my heart beat faster, almost as if it were dancing inside my chest. I noticed my husband’s foot tapping the ground with the same rhythm that vibrated from the warehouse.

“I did not know it would cost at the door. I thought it was like most things here. They bill you,” he said, frowning.

I don’t think he noticed his that his mood was shifting. He was almost happy. There is power in drums, he knew and I did too, but he was taken with the idea of me learning English.

“Welcome to the Blues Palace,” the tall man in black, blocking the doorway said. “Ten-dollar cover and you can party all night.”

My husband looked from the man to me, and stepped out of the line. “Come Tsiuani. Let go home.”

I wanted to go in. The music was beautiful.  But I knew better than to argue. A good wife is obedient and cut below. I have to work harder at being a good wife, I am not cut below.

****

So he uses Asa’s words to revive his mother.

“Wonderful is what you are to me
It’s you I see in my dreams
Everyday I pray for you
Queen of my life you are so beautiful mama
You’re beautiful.”

Still no movement comes from her. And of all the tears that I have seen him shed on this day, the one that drops before he continues in song hurt me the most. It is a lonely tear. It somehow takes away my existence. A single drop of love erases me. I am no longer only a few feet away from him, full of love and desire to make him whole again.

“Emi n wa mama kan ta lori ye ye yen
Mama, mi ko roju ri
And that is why I’m loving you

Nitori omo o jiya ni le oko
Mama, mi ko roju ri
And that is why I’m loving you.”

And his pathetic song ends. His eyes meet mine. He notices that I am there for the first time. A vague but loving recognition envelops his face as an empty half-smile creeps across his lips. I fidgets with my hands. His gaze still unnerves me. He is beautiful and frightening.

“Water?” I ask again, my voice cracking with nerves and envy.

He breaks his stare and looks back down at his mother, still clasping her ashen and cracked hand. He brings it to his lips and delicately kisses it, like he is afraid of destroying it with his touch.

“Tsiuani,” he begins with familiar authority, in English that is broken and difficult for us both. “Bring mama her tonic.”

I stand, grateful and appalled. He is demanding this of me, but I am still happy to be the chosen one in a room where only I could be chosen. I look pleadingly in his direction. I dare not speak it, but I love his mother too. As I turn to leave the room and fetch the requested tonic, he stands. He makes his way around the bed, and I can feel my stomach tingle as he moves closer to me. We stand with only our breaths between us in silence before I offer my embrace. In his mother’s dying room, I bubble over with joy when he accepts my touch. He weeps into my arms. It is not manly. We love his mother. He, for life and I, for him.

As I search the cupboard for the tonic, I smile feebly. Maybe she will not die. Maybe she will be fine and stay with us and make him happy. Maybe he will smile a manly smile every day. Maybe he will sacrifice to the gods and see visions in the clay pots that his darling mother has made for him when her hands were still beautiful and persuasive. Maybe there will be laughter and children and barking dogs in the American way, but also with African happiness. We can take vacations and go on outings and picnics in the park. Maybe we can even visit the elders in our country before the children are birthed. Maybe they will accept me and allow me the womanhood ritual. Maybe I will discover my power animal and finally travel to the underworlds. I can become one with our traditions, and then I will be real.  Our children can speak of their futures from my womb and fulfill their great shining destinies. They can carry our traditions in this country, undiluted and pure. Sacred and meaningful—like the ancestors, like their father and his mother. Anything is possible. He has let me console him. He has wept on my shoulder. I will make her stay.  I will conjure up memories from our home and remember the dance and beat of the drum. The ancestors will understand the importance of her delayed departure. They have to. I have to rebuild her shell of life into something glorious and of the past.

I find the tonic behind the box of dried goat’s milk and begin walking back toward the dying room. I stop at the window in the hallway. It is odd placement for a window, but I like it. The sun is always bright there. Maybe I can convince her to get out of the hospice bed and wheel her to the window each day. Life does not have to be so miserable for her.

I continue down the hallway, toward the dying room and stop at the doorway to the small, dark storage room. It lacks a window, but the light from the hallway is enough to light the tiny room. I smile at the exercise bicycle that I talked him into buying at a garage sale, months earlier.

He grumbled under his breath, “I will lose you to America.” Still, he handed over the ten dollars to the man with the American flag waving on his lawn behind him. “Women.” he remarked and the seller of the bike chuckled.  My husband’s belly shook when he joined in with laughter of his own. He looked American that day, standing in front of the flag.

Maybe we will put babies in this room and bring life to our poor, sad house. I smiled as I rub my belly, imagining it full of him, of her.

When I enter the room, I find him first. He is standing over her with his back to me sobbing loudly.

“We can have babies,” I call to him excitedly. He does not turn to me right away. His shoulders rise and fall rapidly, so I call to him again, “I will go through the womanhood ritual and connect with ancestors.”

He turns to me with a river on his face, and I see what has been blocked from my view by his presence. Her dying bed, now visible to me, is quiet and still in a different way. There is no enlarged power or ridicule about my womanhood coming from her direction. The corners of the room are silent and the ancestors have left us. There is no pressure on the pillow that covers her face, but I know there once was. Her chest no longer rises and falls like Wednesday nights at the Blues Palace.

I drop my head and weep. He walks over to where I still stand in the doorway of the dying room and places his hand on my shoulder.

“I love you, Tsiuani,” he whisper before falling into my arms.

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LaToya Watkins works as an editor of Cengage Learning’s, Contemporary Authors. She lives in Texas with her husband and children.