Dinaw Mengestu - The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears

Dear Naomi,

I wanted to give you something that you could keep for the rest of your life.

Dear Naomi,

As the smartest eleven-year-old in the world, I wanted you to have someplace where you could write down all of those brilliant thoughts of yours. This can be your secret place to say and write everything.

I settled on that last one, although before I wrapped the journal, I would white out the word “Dear” and replace it with a simple dash: “—Naomi.”

When I returned home from my Christmas shopping, armed with my bags of presents, I found a note waiting for me on the landing to my apartment.

Dear Sepha,

Thank you for the letter. It was very nice of you to think of us. Unfortunately, Naomi and I are leaving early this evening to spend the holiday with my sister and her family in Connecticut. I’m sure we will see you again shortly after we return. I hope you have a merry Christmas.

I’m sorry.

Best,

JM

I brought all the presents into my living room and laid them out on the floor one at a time. I didn’t know what to do with them now. I had bought wrapping paper just before coming home. It was a last-minute decision. I was passing a pharmacy, and there in the window I saw the usual display of trees and lights and presents and fake snow with elves and a sleigh resting around it. I went in and wandered aimlessly through the aisles, listening to the Christmas music and watching people buy bottles of perfume and bags of candy. I don’t know if there really are general moods of joy and happiness that can come with a season, but if I had been left all alone, I could have danced through those aisles for hours. It was only when I noticed that the security guards were beginning to lower the grates to the door that I settled on a package of wrapping paper to take home. It came in a pack of three. One was red, with images of Santa Claus on his sleigh, another was green with mistletoe, and the last, a medley of green, red, and white pinstripes. The saleswoman threw in a free box of bows to stick on top. She smiled cheerfully at me as she threw them into the bag, and again I felt the same way as I had in the aisles.

I sat on the floor and ripped open the wrapping paper. I decided that red was for Naomi, green was for Judith and Dawit, and the pinstripes were for my mother. I had never wrapped a present before, and now, I decided, it was time I learned to do so. I wanted each of the presents to come out looking like the boxes under Judith’s tree, but the more I cut and contorted the paper to try to fit it around the hard edges of each box, the more I realized that was never going to happen. But I tried. For nearly four hours I tried. I went through the first two rolls of wrapping paper in just over an hour. A few times I came close to achieving the effect I wanted, but it wasn’t enough for me anymore. I wanted smooth, flawlessly wrapped presents, just like the ones Naomi’s father had sent from Germany. I had begun with the bottle of perfume for my mother. It was small, just barely larger than my palm, but that, I decided, was the problem. It was too small. I went through the presents one at a time and found the flaws in each. Judith’s book was too thin. Naomi’s journal was too squat and with a pen wrapped on top formed an unnatural bulge that could never be wrapped properly. Dawit’s box was simply too big. I spent most of one roll on his present alone. None of them fit the wrapping paper the way I needed them to. I tried measuring out pieces of wrapping paper to fit each individual side of each box. There was always something a little off: a corner would be showing, or another corner would have too much paper. If I clipped the extra piece of paper protruding from the edge, I would suddenly have too little, or I would find a sharp jagged edge sticking out. The edges were always the problem. Every flat surface was perfect. It was only when I tried to get around the corners that I got stuck.

By the time I ran out of wrapping paper, it was a few minutes past one in the morning. It didn’t matter. The presents weren’t going anywhere. If I had enough wrapping paper, I could have toiled away on my floor for another week, and there wouldn’t have been any consequence. No one expected anything of me.

I tried stacking the boxes on top of one another in the hope that, taken together, they would lose some of their tattered, deformed quality. I set them on top of the coffee table and took a few steps back. Distance did nothing to redeem them. They looked nothing like the presents under Judith’s tree. They looked as if they had been wrapped by a blind, one-armed man who had torn away at the wrapping paper and tape with his teeth.

Before going to bed I decided to take a walk around the neighborhood. I walked past my store and a few blocks farther south where there were still boarded-up buildings and glass-strewn sidewalks. A few people were out, mainly bored teenagers who sold drugs out of abandoned buildings and alleyways during the day. I wondered if the Christmas season was as good for their business as it was for mine.

It seemed like an appropriate night for walking down the middle of the street. I used to be afraid of this part of the neighborhood. As bad as things may have been around the circle when I first moved in, they paled against these blocks. Few people lived here. Half of the block was entirely burned out or boarded up. There was a unique fear that came with feeling that it was the inanimate objects around you that frightened you most. The crumbling brick façades streaked with black from fires that had raged decades ago didn’t need rumors of violence to intimidate. They were frightening enough on their own. Like anything, they had softened with time. All I saw now was how sad and empty they looked — how sad and empty all of these blocks looked.

I cut through the circle before returning home. I sat on one of the brightly lit benches nearest the street and waited for the few women who still hung around the circle late at night to come by. This time it took only a few minutes of waiting before two walked by together. They slowed down as they neared me; one of the women recognized me from the store. There were familiar faces everywhere I went today. They drew nearer, and the woman I knew asked me if I could use a “special Christmas date.”

“What do you say?”

I didn’t hesitate. I stood up and said, “Yes.” The other one walked away. I decided to go back to my apartment. It was late enough at night that I wouldn’t have to worry about Mrs. Davis or any of my other neighbors watching me. Judith and Naomi had gone to Connecticut. I had nothing to lose.

We lay down on the couch first, and then later the bed. I wanted to be more than just half-present, which is to say I wanted to see myself fully and honestly, naked in my bed with a woman whose real name I would never know. I took pleasure in feeling another body under me and on top of me. I buried my head in her chest and treated her as if she were someone I loved. It was purely the context of the evening that mattered. It gave a certain weight and substance to what we were doing, so that when we were done and lying on my bed with the orange glow of the streetlamp as the only light in the room, neither one of us moved or rushed to get up.

Before she left, she asked me who the presents were for.

“I’m not sure anymore,” I said.

“Nice wrapping job you did there.”

The living room was littered with scraps of wrapping paper. I hadn’t bothered or tried to clean any of it up before I left, and could have cared less about it when I returned.

I separated Dawit’s present from the other three.

“Pick one,” I told her.

“You don’t care which one?”