Aerogrammes and Other Stories - By Tania James Page 0,9
a head wrap of blue and green and a matching skirt that fishtailed around her ankles. They had dinner in the hotel restaurant, groundnut soup and country rice, while the woman talked about Neneh’s mother. Pearl had thought that learning of the other woman would crush her, but instead she was oddly fascinated. Isatu had taken any number of jobs to support her child, selling cassava by the road and dyeing gara fabrics. The NGO worker kept saying the word “suffer” over and over: “Even just for buy half back and feeding and clothing, she suffered a lot.” The whole time, Pearl was vaguely aware of Neneh regarding her with a strange vigilance, as if trying to memorize her entirely.
When it was time for the NGO woman to leave, she kissed Neneh once on each cheek and accepted the package Pearl had brought for Neneh’s grandmother, gifts that seemed all wrong. What would the old woman do with a flannel nightgown in this broiling heat? Pearl had also slipped money up the nightgown’s sleeve, but would Neneh’s grandmother know where to convert the dollar bills?
For Neneh, Pearl had brought a red headband and a lacy white dress that would surely attract swarms of sienna dust. Dutifully, Neneh fit the headband over her braids and refused to remove it until she went to bed. With equal resolve, she would not go anywhere without holding Pearl’s hand. While Neneh slept, Pearl stared at the girl’s curled fingers, her hard palm inscribed with the same lines that appeared on her father’s. The lines filled Pearl with wonder rather than hate, and it was at that moment, tracing the birdlike bones of Neneh’s hand, that Pearl understood how hate could carry her only so far.
Several days before they left for Ohio, Pearl thought it would be good to get Neneh out of the hotel. Pearl had chosen the hotel for its royal-sounding name—Sir Milton—but the toilet bowl was bereft of its seat, the water tasted of metal, and the mosquito nets had holes that left her scratching all night. The receptionist suggested that they visit the Cotton Tree, the site where the first African-American slaves, freed and arrived in 1792, had held a thanksgiving mass. Pearl felt apathetic about visiting a tree, but it turned out to be more astonishing, more alive than any monument she had seen, its massive trunk roped and coiled with fantastical vines as thick as her arm, with bat-filled branches that sprawled up against the pale blue sky. Deriving some strength from its ancient shade, Pearl felt that she could stand and stare forever at the tree, with Neneh at her side, and for the first time during her visit, she felt capable of everything her friends and family had dismissed.
When she and Neneh walked past the vendors, Pearl did not flinch at what she saw: the dismembered parts of what seemed to be a goat, lying in the heat, bright with blood; the stares of local children gleefully pointing at her and calling out, “Pumui! Pumui!” There were women selling fruits and vegetables piled on burlap, green plantains and thick fingers of cassava, tables of trinkets in bowls, balls of black soap, mountains of country and white rice, hills of sesame seeds and black-eyed peas. Toward the end of their walk, Pearl and Neneh came upon a baby chimpanzee in a cardboard box.
As Pearl reached for the chimp, she felt a rejuvenating sense of certainty, a rectitude with no moral or rational ground. She was destroying her old life, blow by blow, and building a new one out of new names. Neneh, and now Henry; the name came to Pearl as a breeze. She tucked Henry into her orange shawl and stroked the soft saucers of his ears. She did not consider what her husband would think of this latest development. It didn’t matter. He hadn’t called a single time, and Pearl had known all along that he would not be home when she returned.
• • •
On the plane, Henry was so wide-eyed and serene that the flight attendants let him ride in Pearl’s lap, swaddled in her shawl. It had been relatively easy for Pearl to secure the import and export permits necessary for his adoption, but later that year, the United States issued a ban on the importation of chimpanzees as pets, citing them as health hazards and possible vessels for disease. Pearl was relieved that Henry had slipped by the ban. She dismissed the thought