Adé: A Love Story (13 page)

Khadija insisted we stand outside the house for photographs. She pulled out a small, inexpensive camera and pressed a passing neighbor to capture the moment, to preserve the memory of our almost family. In the photo, I am wearing a white-and-black-striped shirt with my long black skirt. My skin is pale, and my eyes squint at the camera lens. My arms are wrapped around Adé’s waist, and Khadija’s arms are wrapped around my shoulders, and Halima’s arms around Adé’s. Asma came running up from nowhere moments before the neighbor pushed the button. She knelt in the middle of us, her arms spread wide, her smile irreverent.

THE PLANE TOUCHED
down on the tarmac at one o’clock exactly. Adé and I were waiting on the black tar in the hot sun, surrounded by my bags from Malindi. There was no time to get back to our little room on the hill for the rest of my things. Adé said he would send them, or keep them safe until my return. The plane was larger than I had imagined, but decidedly full. Adé walked me over, but a man in uniform blocked him from escorting me onto the plane. Adé tried to tell him I was sick, that I could not carry my own bags, and promised he would get off the plane immediately, but the man was wearing headphones, and shouted back, “No time! No time!” The whole scene reminded me of
Apocalypse Now,
which made me cling even more tightly to Adé. Finally, the man ran down the steps to where we were standing and began to pull me, physically, away. But Adé did not let me go. Instead he whispered to me and stroked my back and told me I had changed his life completely, and he would have no other love. He told me to tell my mother and father that he would meet them soon, and he would write his first letter to me that night and send it in the morning.

He said it was time for me to let go. It was time to get on the
plane. I needed to be home, where my family could take care of me, and I would get well. I told him he was my family. Kiss Nuru for me. And Amina’s baby. He said he would, but it was time to go. He wiped the tears as they fell and kissed my cheek and told me there was nothing more to say. Our house of words is on the inside now, he said. The rest was in the hands of Allah.

I boarded the plane and sat down quickly, straining my head to find Adé through the window. I could see him searching for me in each one. Then the door closed and the engine started. The blast of air from the air conditioner hit my face, cold and artificial. The plane started to taxi, and then he saw me. I lay my palm flat against the window, and he nodded, raising his hand to meet mine. And then the gathering of speed, the roar of the engine, and the nose of the plane reared up. Adé was meant to fly, I thought, and I felt like a goose shot from the sky, but not with me.

I looked down at the island and in place of Adé there were now many islands: the archipelago. Briefly I wondered what other lands he would see without me, where his new passport would carry him, as if it was obvious from the start that this is how it would end. That I would have to leave Adé where I had found him, love’s perfection, no more and no less than the blossoming of a seed.

Two decades later, I have forgiven myself for leaving, for trying, for dreaming, for all of it. We burned brightly, and then the rumblings began. Now I have only gratitude. For him, for us, for that place in time when I relished the long, bumpy ride on the truck from the old town loaded with cassava and cardamom. Our days together marked me for life. In Adé’s sturdy embrace, against all odds, I had learned the meaning of home.

I veiled for him, and he peeled me open each night, unwrapping my sarongs, my brightly colored scarves, one at a time, as the flame of the white candle by our bedside flickered hungrily. Those days at the end of the world gave me a taste of freedom. I did not have to perform a self. We, who moved as one, were already aching. We walked for miles on the shore at low tide, our feet burning until we found the wetness of the sea, fell into her cooling waters, and emerged renewed, the white of his teeth meeting the whites of my eyes.

Twenty years ago we lived by the sea in a small green house that you painted every year after the rains. Do you remember,
mpenzi?
And in that house we made love almost every day, and dreamed about all the lands we would see together, and in that house I imagined writing a book about being there with you. The book would be about love. I knew that then. It would be about living deliriously without all the things and people I held dear. I had you and I had the sea and I had the beautiful blue indigo the women wore on the cloths wrapped around their waists. I had fish and I had the taste of you—salty, musky amber.
Do you remember?
I do.

Because I remember everything.

Acknowledgments

I thank everyone.

About the Author

REBECCA WALKER
is an award-winning writer and lecturer, named by
Time
magazine as one of the most influential leaders of her generation. She is the author of the memoirs
Black, White and Jewish
and
Baby Love
, and the editor of the anthologies
To Be Real, What Makes a Man, One Big Happy Family
, and
Black Cool
. Her writing has appeared in
Bookforum, Newsweek, Glamour, Marie Claire
, the
Washington Post, Vibe
, and
Interview
, among many other publications and literary collections.

www.rebeccawalker.com