The House of Discarded Dreams (17 page)

Vimbai resented herself for thinking of her dead grandmother as a parasite—everything else aside, the
vadzimu
was the reason Vimbai was still alive in the freezing ocean, breathing underwater. Her memories offered Vimbai a glimpse of a life so different from her own that really, she should be grateful for the opportunity. Her mother always told Vimbai that she was too sheltered, too ignorant of how the rest of the world lived—and yet, Vimbai thought, she was the one doing all the sheltering. Just think about what it took for Vimbai to move out of her protective fierce embrace—it took a house that was filled with landscapes and contained the entirety of Vimbai’s idea of Africa, and two very strange roommates.

Vimbai thought of the jacaranda trees and the horseshoe crabs, their fine delicate claws combing the white sand of the bottom with the speedy mechanical motion of a small windmill; her memories of her children intertwined with her memories of her parents, and for a few dizzying moments she could not tell which was which. Her eyes filled with tears of either childhood helplessness or sadness of old age, useless underwater and superfluous in the ocean already filled with salt, and unknown hard words filled her mouth—Shona words she had neither used nor remembered since she was little, too little for kindergarten; it was kindergarten where she stopped talking Shona, she remembered now. Before, Shona and English were inseparable and the same, one become the other in her mouth as easily as in the mouths of her parents—they did not discriminate, and the languages switched in a joyful leapfrog of words not bound by rules. When Vimbai was little, she found the words that best filled the void, be they Shona or English; she had lost this ability on the first day of kindergarten, when she answered her teacher’s question in Shona and everyone in the class laughed. Her parents still spoke a mix of languages at home, and how she envied them! She wished she could forget the laughter of the kids and just speak the way she had been doing before.

And now Shona forced its way back into her throat, just like the memories of Harare forced themselves back into her mind, and Vimbai closed her eyes, her warm tears flowing into the cold ocean and disappearing there without a trace, leaving no imprint. She had to go back now, she thought, back to the surface, into the warm embrace of the house and its smells of dank domesticity and over-boiling coffee, where she could disentangle herself from her dead grandmother and be herself; she just wanted to catch her breath and examine what was and wasn’t her anymore.

But the feat of returning proved more difficult than she had hoped; it always was, after all, the impossibility of the act implied in so many language clichés and morality tales. She kicked her way to the surface only to discover that the surface as such had disappeared—instead, there was a thin layer of oily and impenetrable darkness, as if some mythological version of Exxon Valdez had suffered an accident and spilled whatever mysterious substance it carried and that could poison an imaginary ocean.

Not Exxon Valdez, Vimbai realized when her face touched the murky substance and entered it as one enters a summer night, clammy and humid and warm, from the crisp chill of an air-conditioned house—the too-warm, too-humid air wrapped around her skin and beaded it with sweat. There was darkness and nothing at all to see, and there was neither sky nor the house anywhere in view.

Shocked, Vimbai sank again, back into the comforting and familiar chill of the ocean. Her thoughts raced and her heart thumped harder against the delicate cage of her ribs—she could feel every contraction, every pump resonate through every bone in her body with a hollow echo. She looked around her, at the newly vivid green of the water and the white of sand, studded with black and blue bivalves, twined in the yellow and brown and green of seaweed. She could not comprehend what had happened to the surface, but there was no doubt in her mind that it was the work of Balshazaar and the
wazimamoto
.

And then it came to her, the memory—thick, viscous fluid, the extraneous membranes of space in Felix’s universe. It was the remnants of space from his denuded head, she realized, it was what had been drained from him—a layer of foreign dimensions floating atop of the ocean like oil, cutting her off from the house as effectively as any barrier. There was no crossing this pocket universe, even as it spread in an infinitely thin layer—she could only stick her face inside and squint at the impenetrable darkness and the faint taste of rain-beaten dust in the thick, immobile air.

The urgency of Vimbai’s situation caught up with her occasionally and then she would bound for the surface, crazed and weightless like an air bubble (and those had ceased leaving her lips a long time ago), only to find again and again that the barrier persisted, and she still did not know how to breach it. Then she sank back, to the crabs, and floated by them as they dragged the house and Vimbai clinging to the rope along with them. There, she thought that maybe it would be okay, maybe she could stay there until someone—either Maya or Felix or Peb—found her. Or perhaps she would be okay all the way to New Jersey—didn’t the crabs say that they were close?

But she knew that these were idle fancies, and that she did not have time to be found or rescued. With every passing second, the wrinkles on her grandmother’s face grew more and more familiar, with the same inevitability as one’s face is recognized in the mirror. Soon, the
vadzimu
and Vimbai would not be able to tell where one ended and the other began.

“I’m so sorry, grandmother,” Vimbai whispered, and immediately answered herself, “I’m so sorry, granddaughter.”

It had occurred to Vimbai that lately she had been spending quite a bit of time drowning or otherwise under water; she wondered if there was some significance to it.

“What say you, crabs?” she said out loud.

The crabs chittered and whispered among themselves, such disconcertingly high-pitched and birdlike sounds. “What pierces the darkness?” they finally asked.

Vimbai sighed. Stupid riddles, she wanted to say, sthe ame riddles that surfaced in fairy tales—just feeble-minded guises for simplistic morality lessons, not at all challenging or enlightening. “Light,” she said out loud, struggling not to let her irritation show. “Light pierces the darkness. Thank you, this is very helpful. Only I have no sources of light here, and neither do you.”

This is not true
, the
vadzimu
in her mind answered.
Remember the story I told you, remember the story you told Peb. Both are
ngano
—and
ngano
is how children learn. Your task may be hopeless or you might not even know that you have a task in the first place, but there are things within you that you can reach.

Vimbai only sighed in response. It seemed silly, the same psychobabbly message of hope she’d been hearing from school counselors and the books that were supposed to instill ‘values’ (no one ever told her what those values were supposed to be) into her. It didn’t change, she thought. There was always someone offering a simple solution, there was always this belief that only if you try hard enough, want something bad enough, there would be a wellspring of miracles and you would always get whatever it was you wanted. One could always triumph—but she knew, she had learned through a long and disappointing string of letdowns that sometimes there were circumstances beyond one’s control. Sometimes one was too short for basketball or too stocky and thick-boned to seriously consider gymnastics. Sometimes one did not have the complexion to play Snow White, no matter how much enamored one was of this role at the age of five. Sometimes one had to throw away the dreams, no matter how dear or powerful, after first experiencing a bitter sting of reality. But then again, this is what this house was for, wasn’t it? The old dreams that everyone had forgotten about, so she really had no right to get angry at them.

She thought of the tortoise in her grandmother’s story, and hated the smug beast who got everything everyone else wanted without even trying. Humility indeed. And yet, and yet . . . there were dreams in this house, she thought, and what were dreams if not irrational wish fulfillment? What was the point of ever dreaming if one could not be a ballerina anyway? And didn’t the sea follow her? It followed her in her dreams as if it was her, Vimbai who was the moon, round and heavy like an old silver coin—a coin tossed by a careless hand, heads or tails, and now stuck in the middle of the sky. The coin that attracted all the seas in the world, heavy and smooth, grave and yet pouring out bucket after bucket of pure light, reflected though it might be—it didn’t matter in the slightest.

Vimbai closed her eyes and imagined pure white light, white as milk, as the tortoise’s beak slurped it up as if it was candy. She pictured all this cold, pure whiteness sloshing inside her belly, heavy and round like the moon, with enough gravitational pull to attract all the oceans in the world, and then she thought of her slender fingers reaching inside, into all this light, asking for a wishing thread—and receiving a white burst of light instead, the kind of light that burned bright as a carbide lamp, and before which no darkness could resist.

Chapter 17

There was one memory Vimbai rarely thought about—not because she had forgotten and not because the memory was in any way unpleasant. Rather, Vimbai felt that some things were too precious to tarnish with frequent reminiscences, and thought around it, obliquely, while always retaining the warm feeling the memory gave her.

But now she felt it was a good time to remember it—she chose this memory from among all the others for its golden light and the overwhelming sense of joy that radiated from it. It all happened when both Vimbai and Elizabeth Rosenzweig were in eighth grade, when Vimbai was still too clueless to realize what was happening to her.

She remembered that day with such clarity—it was May, and their class was mercifully sent on a fieldtrip to one of the dinky little museums that peppered the shore towns like lighthouses and souvenir shops. Vimbai did not remember which town it was, and she did not remember much of what she had seen at the museum—there were vague memories of old fishing nets and handmade fishing floats, rusted antique anchors, and the musty smell, the same as every tiny and ill-conceived maritime museum she had visited over the course of her life in South Jersey. There were stuffed blue marlins mounted on the walls and insipid paintings with white-sailed ships frozen on the brink of white-capped waves, and things rescued from shipwrecks of dubious authenticity mixed in with preserved specimens of octopi and other strange-looking invertebrates; if Vimbai was so inclined, she could’ve traced her fascination with marine biology to these dusty jars with discolored eyes and tentacles in them.

What made this museum different, though, was Elizabeth’s presence—she had just transferred in from whatever glamorous life she had previously lived, and Vimbai tried really hard not to follow the new girl too much but found such restraint difficult, due to Elizabeth’s interesting way of speaking. At the museum, Vimbai spent little time looking at the exhibits and a lot trying to maneuver herself next to the new girl so that it looked like an accident, in case anyone actually paid attention to Vimbai.

She had finally managed to stand next to Elizabeth, who yawned and looked at an old, sepia-toned photograph of one fishing vessel of the bygone days or another.

“Hi,” Vimbai said, staring at the photograph with a greater intensity than it warranted and keeping her tone casual.

“Hi,” Elizabeth answered and smiled at the photograph. “Vimbai, right?”

Vimbai felt a happy little flutter in her stomach that the glorious new girl remembered her name, and even pronounced it correctly. “Yes,” she said. “And you’re Elizabeth?”

The girl nodded and finally tore her gaze away from the photograph and gave Vimbai a slow, half-lidded look, which gave Vimbai goosebumps on the back of her neck and head. “I don’t like any of the diminutives of my name,” she said. “And I’m bored. Is there anything else to do around here?”

“Well, sure,” Vimbai stuttered and looked for the teacher who was just ahead of them, pointing something out on some stupid diorama. “There’s the beach, and the shore towns always have a boardwalk. But we’re supposed to be here . . . I think.”

Elizabeth shrugged one shoulder, took Vimbai’s hand—so confidently and thoughtlessly, as if it was her right to grab Vimbai’s digits like they belonged to her doll or stuffed bear—and dragged her along, to the diorama. “Excuse me, Ms. Burns,” she said to the teacher. “My allergies are acting up because of the dust, and I don’t have my medication with me. Vimbai will take me outside, and we will meet the group by the bus later.”

Maybe it was that snooty accent, Vimbai thought. Maybe it was the way Elizabeth carried herself—she didn’t even ask, she told the teacher what she was going to do, and Mrs. Burns just nodded and told them to stay out of the sun. Or maybe, Vimbai realized much much later, maybe their overworked teacher, who was looking back to the summer recess more than her students did, had a small moment of mercy and just decided to let them go and enjoy themselves on the boardwalk. Such a small kindness that seemed such an enormous stroke of luck back then—such incredible escape from the dark and dusty and boring sepia-colored museum and its stench of formalin, into the blinding sun and the smell of salt in the air.

The boardwalk was not crowded, since it was only May and a work day, too early for the tourists to swarm in earnest. But there was salt taffy and small shops that sold cheesy t-shirts and painted shells and hermit crabs that allegedly made excellent pets.

Elizabeth dragged Vimbai along, laughing, stopping at every store that caught her attention. She bought Indian lapis-lazuli jewelry and canvas bags that said nonsense like “Visit Ocean City.” Vimbai passed on the jewelry, but made up for it in cotton candy and funnel cake—the latter invention Elizabeth had been woefully unfamiliar with, and Vimbai did her best to remedy the situation. They quickly got covered with powdered sugar and Elizabeth complained that her hands dripped with oil and she couldn’t possibly clean it off with napkins. All in all, it was the best day of Vimbai’s life, even though she was too inexperienced to realize that it was due to the fact that she held hands with Elizabeth, rather than the boardwalk and the funnel cake.

The memory of that golden, sun-drenched day was her most precious one, and as she recalled the sun and the red and white stripes of the shops’ awnings, the smell of salt from the ocean and the fried dough on the boardwalk, the overwhelming sense of freedom and happiness at being allowed to break out of the museum—just the two of them, marked as special enough for such privilege by the teacher—and to roam the town instead of doing dull and educational things. Oh, how she missed Elizabeth now, how she missed her magic.

The magic was never far from Vimbai’s skin’s surface—the scars, the sigils glowed again. Not with a red hot protective fire, not with the hidden lava of painful love magic Vimbai had not realized she knew so well—but instead they burst open, split like the seams of a pea pod and released not some prosaic seeds but sunbeams, the light Vimbai had drunk in years ago, like the tortoise who did not know what he was doing—he thought that he was just slaking his thirst, just like Vimbai used to think that she was just cutting school and eating funnel cake. The acts of great personal replenishment went unnoticed and unrecognized, and their significance could only become apparent in retrospect.

Vimbai’s skin split and narrow sunbeams shot out. The horseshoe crabs, the undead ones running below and the little ones encrusting the ropes as if they were Christmas ornaments stood out in bright relief, in their true color—emerald green concentrated into dark khaki by the water. The beams crossed the thickness of water and sliced into the oily darkness floating on the surface, and Vimbai let go of the rope and swam after them, trying to keep inside the narrow road of light that seemed to lead—somewhere.

To her surprise, she did not reach the house or the surface. To make the matters worse, the
vadzimu
’s mind inside her grew stronger and louder, jamming her memories, chasing away the perfect recollection of a perfect day in adolescent love. The light pouring out of her opened cuts grew dimmer and the skin, held open and taut by the sheer intensity of the light stream, sagged and wilted, closing the open scars and diminishing the light further. Oh, this was not good, and Vimbai scrambled for more.

The only trouble was, there was not enough in her love for Elizabeth to sustain a long examination or contemplation—surely, there was plenty of material for navel-gazing if she was so inclined (and she had been in the past). But the simple truth of the matter was that Vimbai’s first love was an exercise in cowardice, where she never dared to say anything first, and expressing her feelings remained entirely out of the question. She had failed by clinging to this one infatuation well into her college career, as the means of letting herself escape any other kinds of entanglements—she was even too afraid to find out whether she only liked girls, or if boys were an option as well.
I lied to you, grandmother
, she whispered, mournful and dimming, almost lost in the darkness that approached from all sides, engulfing her once more.
I’m sorry for lying—I don’t really worry about boys, I worry that I would never be able to love anyone for real, and this is what I’m afraid of.

Don’t worry, granddaughter,
the
vadzimu
replied.
We all have fears, and none of us knows a perfect way of dealing with them. But maybe you just need to take a look at the person you love now, and learn bravery there.

Vimbai felt neither outrage nor shock, just weary acceptance, and she had no strength to deny. There was no point—from the first day she sat in the (now unrecognizable) living room of the house, from the moment she watched Maya sling her long legs over the armrest of the worn chair, she knew that she wanted to stay. Yes, the house pulled her in—but so did Maya’s voice and face, so did the prospect of having a roommate such as her, seeing someone as breathtaking every day. And she thought of Maya’s lonely tower, where she slept like a fairytale princess, among the crumpled candy wrappers and empty soda cans, her sleep guarded by an unmoving and dead grandmother. She had nothing left but to coax this reluctant love (those who had lost, she remembered now, those who were honest were the most delusional) into its real form, and she tried to coax herself into admitting what it was and why it mattered.

Vimbai’s grandmother did her best to help as well—she pushed on Vimbai’s eyes from inside, forcing forth the visions of her daughters, of them growing up. She lamented the deaths of her friends with the same quiet clarity as she lamented the passing of the country she once knew—she did not miss the British, but she found a total collapse frightening. She pushed forth the memory of independence and the jubilation in the streets when the Land Reform was first announced. She grieved about the failure of the ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ paradigm. Then she thought about all the strength and all the love she had seen in her life, and it filled Vimbai’s heart with hope, and her scars with light. The light pulsed and pushed them open, forcing Vimbai’s own confessions out of them.

Maya poured out of Vimbai’s scars and her eyes, and there was darkness parting before her. The little eddies and layers of darkness floated and separated, and tore like stormy clouds in the November sky. Through the holes she could see snatches of the real sky above and the shingles of the house’s roof. With one final thrust and a kick of her tired legs Vimbai pushed herself through one of the openings and came to the surface, just a few feet away from the porch.

Balshazaar was nowhere in sight, and Vimbai swam up to the porch in quick strokes. Her vision doubled, and she feared that the
vadzimu
would become too entrenched to ever be separated from Vimbai. Her own hands already looked strange to her—pruned from being in the water for so long but young, too young, with pinkish full moons of fingernails and the skin that was lighter than what it was supposed to be—and it took her a while to remember that she was neither eighty nor dead. She clambered onto the porch, simultaneously panicking at her grandmother’s insidious presence and addressing herself as
sahwira
, trying to talk herself down and thinking that young people spooked entirely too easily nowadays. Despite her confusion, she felt the cold in the air, and the sticking of heavy wet clothes, and she crouched on her hands and knees, shivering violently and vomiting gallons of salt water—now that there was air to breathe, the water in her lungs become heavy and unwelcome, and Vimbai remembered that it was unnatural for human beings to breathe underwater like that, even though spirits could.

Somewhere along with all this salt water and an occasional tiny fish, Vimbai managed to expel the spirit too—or perhaps the
vadzimu
had extricated herself without Vimbai’s help, and now she stood by her, patting her back solicitously, as if burping a baby. Vimbai spat out a couple more mouthfuls and stood up, her legs trembling under her, and queasiness filling her stomach.

“It’s all right,
sahwira
,” the ghost said, seemingly unperturbed. “Go change your clothes, I’ll make you some tea. And then, then you better go and set things right—poor baby still doesn’t have his tongue.”

Maya had returned from her expedition, and reported on the successful stashing of the horseshoe crabs’ souls. Vimbai felt almost relieved that Balshazaar had chosen to turn his questionable attention to Vimbai and away from Maya—the fact that the crabs were safe and undiscovered by him made it almost worth the blind, panicked flailing underwater, with nowhere to go but the oily dying space off Felix’s head.

“Oh, poor Felix,” Vimbai said out loud. “Should we check on him before we go looking for Peb’s tongue?”

“This is an awful way to pose a question,” Maya said, her voice teasingly scolding. “I can’t say either ‘yes’ or ‘no’ without agreeing to go look for Peb’s tongue. And I have to say, I don’t like these weird quests. What’s with the body parts, anyway? Can’t we go looking for some Book of the Dead or Amulet of Awesome Power?”