Dinaw Mengestu - How to Read the Air

She stood in front of the mirror and noticed that her eyes were developing dark purple sacks underneath them, and that the knot on the side of her head had now taken a distinctly egg-shaped form. She clucked once, like a chicken, at her reflection. The noise sounded hollow, echoing back to her off the cold white-tiled walls. She heard what she thought were footsteps shuffling behind one of the closed stall doors, and for a few seconds she stood there frozen, afraid someone had heard her and her barnyard imitation. She looked at the floor and saw nothing. She turned back to the door, hoping to find a lock that would ensure her privacy, but there was nothing there as well. She entered the stall farthest from the door and locked it, checking once to make sure that the bolt was secure so no one could walk in on her by purpose or accident. As she sat down on the rim of the toilet, she wondered if this was what giving birth would feel like — the hard-rimmed edge of the toilet seat serving as the delivery table, and the general noise of strangers on the other side of the bathroom door serving as both the hospital waiting room and cafeteria. The delivery room would have to be white, just like this one, and at some point, Mariam thought, she would close her eyes and search for a darkness so complete that not even a hint of light could be seen.

She peed with her eyes closed, and as she did so she thought to herself, I wish you were this easy to get rid of. It wasn’t the pain that she particularly feared. Even as a young girl she was nearly indifferent when it came to the scrapes, bruises, scratches, and occasional punches and kicks of childhood. If you were injured you suffered but eventually recovered. Time took care of the scars and slow, deliberate movements eased the rest, but it was the exact opposite with having a child. Once you opened up and delivered you would never fully heal again. The wound was permanent, and for all the days of your life there would be another part of you that could break or die over which you could do little but console. She had been told that babies in America were sung lullabies at night to help them fall asleep. Mariam didn’t know the words to any lullabies yet, but she had a sense of the tone and rhythm in which they were sung. She tried out one now, humming a tune that was soft and gentle but came from nowhere. It masked the sound of her urine splashing in the toilet, and when she was finished she stopped humming and left the stall.

In the nine and a half minutes that she had spent in the bathroom, the crowd inside the diner nearly seemed to double in size. When she came out, she searched for her husband’s face in one of the booths and then at the counter, but there was no one who looked even remotely like him, or her for that matter. The faces here were decidedly uniform in color, shape, and by and large, size as well. They all seemed to be related, distant cousins, aunts, uncles, brothers, all gathered together for a sullen family reunion at Frank’s Diner, located just a half-mile off the interstate highway. She walked toward the door, but this time she stopped just short of the exit, as if told to pause by command. This time all eyes in the diner really did turn on her, and for once she turned hers back on them.

That meeting of strangers’ eyes is something I’ve thought about often since — the confused, bewildered stares heading in both directions, passing one another along the way like two cars driving past each other on a highway, headed for similar but opposite destinations. The people on the other end of my mother’s glare must have wondered what she was staring at so intently, if perhaps she was mad or in some sort of desperate trouble and searching for a friendly face to rescue her. I have a hard time picturing any cruelty on their part. At that age my mother was too slight and pretty to have inspired any real hostility, but there was no doubt in anyone’s eyes that she didn’t belong here, and that, at least, is one point on which everyone in the diner could agree. If they shared anything, it was the common sense of relief that came when she opened the door and finally left.

When I was finished with my class, more than just my mood had visibly changed. I decided to walk back home, and for one hundred and two glorious blocks I was on my own, left to puzzle over the events of that morning and what I had said to my students in the crowded rush of a large metropolitan city at the close of what was for the millions of other people around me just another average working day, no greater or less than any other. It was halfway through the semester and the first signs of winter had yet to be felt. By this time some of the trees should have been bare — scarves and jackets should have been standard, but fall had dragged itself out longer than normal. Everyone was grateful for the delay — the sidewalk cafés were once again crowded with people and talk of global warming and the earth’s demise, in which we couldn’t help reveling.

As I walked home that night I was aware of a growing vortex of e-mails and text messages being passed among my students. I could almost see the messages moving in the air — tiny encrypted notes carrying word of my breakdown from one phone or computer to the next. They would have been written in a descriptive shorthand — Wht the fck? — that I never fully understood. Millions of invisible bits of data were being transmitted through underground cable wires and satellite networks, and I was their sole subject and object of concern. I don’t know why I found so much comfort in that thought, but it nearly lifted me off the ground, and suddenly, everywhere, I felt embraced. It’s often said that a city, especially one as vast and dense as New York, can be a terribly lonely and isolating place. I had felt that before, even at the happiest points of my marriage to Angela, even when we deliberately hid ourselves nearly underground in the five-hundred-square-foot confines of our apartment, just the two of us, alone and with nowhere to go for days at a time. I felt none of those lost, lonely sentiments that night, not once as I walked down Riverside Drive, with the Hudson River and the rush of traffic pouring up and down the West Side Highway to my right. Here the tight control on neighborhood borders and divisions hardly mattered. From my vantage point the city stood alone, all of its buildings, whether they were made of glass and steel or old brick, were gathered together in unison.

I waited outside our building for Angela to arrive. I wanted to convince her of important changes that I was going to make in order to save our marriage. I knew what I could say and do to evince that, and was prepared to do so. I had to speak to her, however, before we entered the apartment and found ourselves surrounded by the couch and chairs on which we had spent many nights and afternoons avoiding each other. All it would take was a quick glance into a closet full of barely worn expensive shoes or the recent absence of a photograph on a windowsill to remind either one of us of who we had become. After that it would be difficult but not impossible to say anything that could convince Angela that large, substantial adjustments could be made to a person’s character.

I saw Angela from half a block away and gathered my coat and bag so I could meet her on the corner, at a distance safe from home. Before she could say anything I took hold of her one free hand and led her in the opposite direction.

“I’m starving,” I told her. “Let’s get something to eat before we go inside.”

She was too tired to resist, which was what I had hoped for. There was a window of time between leaving work and settling in for the evening where Angela’s defenses were weakened and there was an air of almost visible vulnerability around her. I had often caught sight of that and been grateful that it never lasted too long. It was there as we turned the corner and headed south on Avenue A, especially when she asked me how my day had been.