Dinaw Mengestu - The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears

She tried again to recover. “Come on, I’m kidding,” she said.

Regardless of how hard she tried, there was no way she could take it back completely. I turned my head away from her. Naomi came up to me and led me by the hand to her presents.

“In here,” she said, pointing to the green box, “is a TV for my bedroom. And in here is a dollhouse from Germany. I don’t know what’s in the white one because that’s supposed to be a surprise.”

“Germany?” I said.

“That’s where he is right now,” Judith responded. “He’s teaching economics at a university there. Last year it was Greece, and the year before that Nairobi.”

“So he’s a professor?”

“That’s how we met,” she said. “He was a visiting professor from Mauritania.”

The picture was complete now. I could see him, Judith’s former husband and Naomi’s semiabsent father. I imagined a tall, sandy-skinned man with oval wire-rim glasses and smart, well-tailored suits like the ones my father used to wear. Someone who spoke with a crisp accent, whom women described as being gorgeous. I imagined academic conferences, family vacations on windswept beaches, and late-night dinner parties. A confident and assured voice that knew how to order wines, talk to salesclerks, and command the attention of a room. Someone I knew I could never stand against.

I took another look around at Judith’s living room, with its oversize Christmas tree and absurdly lavish presents. If what Judith wanted was another African to substitute for the one who had left her, then she was right, she had chosen poorly. I was not that man.

The teakettle began to whistle in the kitchen. It had a distinctive whistle to it, a singsong quality that was supposed to resemble, I imagine, an early morning birdsong.

“The tea’s ready,” Naomi said.

Judith walked over to her daughter and wrapped one arm protectively around Naomi’s neck. Naomi clasped her mother’s forearm to keep her from holding her too close.

“I think I should leave now,” I said.

Judith tried to hide her shock but a fraction of it was still there, if not entirely in her voice, then at least in the way she quickly turned her head up to look at me.

“You just got here. What about the tea?” she asked me.

“Maybe another time.”

I hated every word I said. Even as I spoke them I began the long process — one that would continue throughout the rest of that evening — of creating a series of different scenarios, ones that had me drinking tea on the couch and kissing Judith in the hallway. I couldn’t bear being in that living room any longer, stuffed as it was with relics of Judith’s former life, all of which pointed conclusively to distances too great to be crossed by a couple of dinners and over-the-counter banter. I wanted to take it back and start all over again, just as we had that evening in my apartment, but I knew that we had run out of roles to play.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But it’s getting late.”

“It’s only nine o’clock,” Judith pointed out.

“I know. But I have to wake up early tomorrow.”

“Okay, then. If that’s what you want.”

Judith was not one to beg, but of course I wish she had. Perhaps then I could have set aside enough of my injured pride and self-pity to stay. I picked my coat up off the couch. The teakettle whistled on. Judith stopped watching me. She focused all of her attention on her daughter. I put my coat on quickly. How were we supposed to say good-bye now? With a hug or handshake or a quick wave like casual acquaintances? Judith settled the question by sticking her hand out. I took it, and in doing so learned what it meant to feel your heart break.

“Good night,” she said.

“Good night,” I replied. “Good night, Naomi.”

“Good night, Mr. Stephanos.”

I let myself out. I walked down the steps, straight toward the circle. I took a seat on a bench across from General Logan. It was cold and only a few people were out. A group of teenage boys walked past me. They turned their attention to me briefly, but once they recognized me for the harmless man I knew myself to be, they moved on. Finally, after close to thirty minutes of sitting in the cold, a group of women in short black miniskirts and stiletto heels walked by. I had never cared too much which of the women on the circle I went home with. I don’t know how many women there had been over the years. I imagine it was somewhere between six or seven a year. Given the neighborhood and the location of my store, there was a simplicity and convenience that made each encounter seem almost logical, if not inevitable. I had slept with almost every prostitute who had come into my store. I did so by refusing to take their money when they came to the register to pay for their candy bar or can of soda. I would tell them that if they were free, they should come back alone just before I closed. When they did, I turned off all the lights, locked the door, and for a half hour tried to forget everything about myself. It was easy enough.

I stood up from my bench across from General Logan. I had settled on the woman walking closest to me. As soon as the women saw me standing up, they banded together. It was a small, protective act, just enough to make me sick of myself.

“Looking for something tonight?”

The voice that asked the question remained faceless in the dark.

“Sorry,” I said. “I was just walking home.”

I turned around and walked away in the opposite direction. The last thing I wanted to do now was scare anyone. I walked quickly, and had the streets been entirely empty I would have run away from the circle as fast as I could.

When I first came to this apartment, my uncle sat me down on the couch in the living room and proceeded to lecture me about what I could expect to find now that I was in America.

“Everything that is in this apartment,” he said, “belongs to you as much as it does to me. Outside of this apartment, though, you have nothing. Nothing is yours. Nothing belongs to you. Take nothing for granted. No one here will give you anything for free. There is no such thing as that in America. People will only give you something because they think they will get something in return.”

I remember there was absolutely no passion or conviction to his words. He seemed to be reading them off an invisible monitor lying just before his eyes, aimed toward the ground as they were. I don’t know if he saw in me a flicker of ambition or desire, but he need not have worried. I didn’t want anything from America. In those days I believed it was only a matter of weeks or months before I returned home to Ethiopia. I spent all my energy and free time planning for that. How was I supposed to live in America when I had never really left Ethiopia? I wasn’t, I decided. I wasn’t supposed to live here at all.

I nodded my head obediently as he spoke and pitied him for not understanding just how temporary all of this was.

For the first three weeks I was here in this apartment I didn’t speak to a single person besides my uncle, and even then our conversations were brief and strained. I rarely left the apartment, nor did I want to. Any connection, whether it was to a person, building, or time of day, would have been deceitful, and so I avoided making eye contact with people I didn’t know, and tried to deny myself even the simplest of pleasures. I refused to acknowledge the charm of a sunset or the pleasure of a summer afternoon. If possible, I would have denied myself the right to breathe another country’s air, or walk on its ground.

My uncle and I lived off the divide that separated our life in this apartment from everything that occurred outside of it. I ate his food. I slept on his couch. For two months this was all I did. At the end of the second month he came into the living room while I was getting ready to sleep, and said in that always whispering voice of his, “Buka.”