Dinaw Mengestu - How to Read the Air

A few days before my classes were scheduled to begin, Angela came home from work with a large elaborately wrapped bag that she set on the kitchen table as soon as she entered. She didn’t have to tell me that the package was a gift for me. It was obvious from the unrestrained smile on her face when she walked in. Angela was one of those people who took an almost excessive pleasure in seeing their gifts received, although in her case there was nothing vain or self-serving in it, and if anything, the act of gift-giving as performed by her was fraught with danger, which made the genuine looks of surprise and pleasure that much more meaningful when they came.

Before I had finished unwrapping it Angela told me what it was.

“It’s a satchel,” she said. “You’ll need a nice one when you’re a teacher. Or at least that’s what I hear anyway. Although if you hate it you can tell me. I still have a receipt. It’s black so it will go with everything.”

The bag was highly polished and elegantly stitched, most likely by hand, around all the edges, and although I made no mention of the price, and almost went out of my way to prove my ignorance of its worth, I knew from the first click of its silver clasps that it had cost multiple times more than what we could have ever hoped to have honestly afforded.

I began teaching at the start of the new year. It was early January and I was heading off once again to school for what felt like the first time. Angela sensed my anxiety, even though I never mentioned it. Without saying anything she woke up earlier than normal with me. We dressed for work standing side by side at the foot of the bed. Afterward we even took the same northbound train to Fourteenth Street, where Angela eventually transferred to the proper line. Her excuse for doing so was that she wanted to make sure I got to work safely.

“You never know,” she said. “You could get lost or kidnapped in this city.” On a crowded train we pressed ourselves together. I slid my hand under Angela’s jacket and held her stomach for support. When it was time for her to get off the train, she leaned back so I could kiss her good-bye, and in parting said, “Don’t be afraid of them, Jonas. They’re just kids.”

When I arrived at the academy and the first of my students entered the class, I understood what Angela had meant. By any standard I had been afraid for too long of anything that I thought might pose a physical or emotional risk, and Angela, in her own way, had always been aware of that. I hardly spoke in the company of strangers, and went out of my way to avoid expressing a contradictory opinion. Until Angela, I had kept my attachments to a minimum.

As soon as I began teaching at the academy I noticed that there was a distinct, almost palpable difference in the general haze through which until then I had conducted my life. Things, objects, people all suddenly appeared sharper, as if I had been wandering through the world with a pair of dirty, poorly cared-for glasses that blurred the lines and washed away distinctions. Angela, who had always struck me as pretty, with her large, wide eyes and equally large head, in which every feature was somehow perfectly exaggerated from her ears down to her lips, was now strikingly and even beyond that alarmingly beautiful. I couldn’t help staring often, and not only at her but at so much else throughout the city, from women on the street to men freely urinating in parks. There were vast swaths of both city and normal life that I had failed to notice, if only for the simple reason that none of it, as far as I had understood, concerned me and the quiet discreet life I had been living. I had always suspected that at some early point in my life, while still living with my parents and their daily battles, I had gone numb as a tactical strategy, perhaps at exactly that moment when we’re supposed to be waking up to the world and stepping into our own.

With my new job at the academy, I began to see myself as part of that active, breathing world which millions of others claimed membership to. When asked how my day was, I had, if I wanted, more than just a one-word response at hand. I had whole stories now that I often wanted to tell, even if I didn’t have the words for them yet.

When my mother finally entered the car, she noticed that today the seat belt only half worked. It hung tired and limp from the car ceiling, unable to tighten or relax, its position fixed, permanent, like a dead limb that can only be lifted and dropped and lifted again, vital and useless at the same time. When she slid into the passenger-side seat and buckled the belt into its metal clasp, it took on a second, unintended presence that was more than just physical. The belt, clasped around her stomach, became for her a confirmation of the simple fact that in some places, life did indeed matter, and deserved careful, deliberate protection. The lower half wrapped around her waist and today, the feeling was not that different from the sensation she felt when she wrapped one arm around her stomach and squeezed herself to the point of nausea.

The car didn’t roar to life so much as it sputtered, as if waiting to be convinced of the role it still had to play in my parents’ marriage. My mother adjusted her weight from one side to the other, and the white vinyl seats squeaked along. The seats had baked throughout the summer, at times becoming too hot to touch, and now, for once, they were cool, almost perfect. In the winter they would freeze, becoming as cold as their color promised, and in six years the vinyl would begin to crack into long, thin, parallel streams that leaked artificial fabrics into the hair of anyone who sat there. She wasn’t showing yet but soon enough she would. Her stomach had already started to round just slightly, as if someone had crawled underneath her skin and blown one burst of air, a breath just strong enough to puff the skin into a soft little ball. Her hair had begun to grow damp and limp with constant sweat, making even the slightest curl all but impossible. She had seen this happen before, first with her girlfriends and then one by one with each of her three younger sisters, all of whom had married after her, all of whom had taken a small sadistic pleasure in taunting her with their outstretched stomachs and physically present husbands. One by one she had watched them swell and then burst like balloons, suddenly shocked and disappointed to find that the great surprise hiding in their stomachs was simply just another baby, no greater or worse than the thousands of others who were born and died that day. She, however, was a modern woman, one liberated from the standard burdens of family life. She envied no one, least of all her sisters. With a husband at the time lost to God knows where (perhaps Kenya, perhaps Egypt, she had thought, never suspecting him to be one for jail or cargo ships), and no children to clean or feed or watch over, she was free to take the money she made each month typing letters in the Ministry of Agriculture—“failing crops and historic food shortages are to be expected”—and put them to use in the modern way. She bought shoes: black, brown, tan, red, blue, white, gold, purple, all with heels, straps, and the all-important gold stamp: Made in Italy. She bought cigarettes imported from England, a bottle of scotch to entertain friends with. Mariam took taxis instead of buses home from work when it rained in the winter or when the crowd had swelled to a near-violent breaking point in the summer. At those moments she would step gingerly from the curb just a few feet away from the bus stop and raise one arm (the left one, carrying two gold bracelets and a quarter-carat diamond ring), quietly imagining the jealous stares of the women she worked with, of the dozens of other women she didn’t know and had never met but who happened to be standing there at that moment with their children or husband next to them, their heads still wrapped in a shawl, their eyes cast down.