Small World

Abstract

Small World Michelle K. Angwenyi (bio) I was ten years old, beneath the waters of the Kilifi creek, when my father died. At the time, it was like a game; get in the water, don't be scared, my father was saying, you know how to swim, don't you? One foot fell into the cold water—a shiver passing through me, ignored—then the next. I held onto the side of the boat, my palms twisted backwards, chest curved outwards, before I held my breath, and, lit from within with the boyish amber of fearlessness, let go, into the water. It washed over me, blue and breathless, steady waves gently tossing me as I rose to the surface. See! I said to my father, I'm in! Giggling, I wiped my face with my palm, then I flopped onto my back, floating in the sunset as it sparkled over the water all around me. It was like a dream—the solid light, being carried flat by the ocean, bee-eaters chirping soft and round notes as they sped above me in somber murmurations, and then, dream of all dreams, my father was suddenly standing on the boat's edge, hands spread wide as if tacked to a cross. He hovered above me, a silhouette so sharp and strong against the sky, clouding the scene with a sudden shadow. The dream turned dark as I turned my face into the water to see where my father had fallen to, unable to open my eyes against the sting of salt water. You know how to swim, I asked myself from the inside, asking my father, don't you?! Today, all I saw was Seyed's back: curved, fragile, small. He didn't look as if he had any hands. He fell into the water like a heavy sack, unceremonious and full, folded, hefted. Moments before, we'd sailed out into the creek, a hot early September day that cooled into an evening tight with death. Moments before, he'd said, hey, here. Stop the boat here and, without asking, I did. Moments before, he'd looked at me, one last nod, mouthed a thank you, thank you so much, before he sat on the boat's edge, and quicker than any thought of intervention [End Page 116] would allow for, slid into the water with a silence so large, and yet so small, it hadn't been seen for years; a silence lodged into the spaces in his chest, a silence now expanding out into the breaking air. The smell of rotting flesh fills the air; an unjust trick of memory that refuses to let me grow up. I am again in a dream, the dream, floating on the ocean, looking up at my father who has turned into stone, and like a statue toppled from its dignified heights, falls into the water, feet up. When he finds me in the water, he isn't dead yet, and there is a pillow around my face, which he holds as he tries to suffocate me. We are both thrashing around in the water as I try to push the pillow away from my face—we both cannot breathe, not until one of us dies. They found me the day after my father died, shivering on the boat, wrapped in the coat he'd taken off just before he dove into the water. From his arms spread like wings, swift, almost imperceptibly, the coat came off, and he stretched his hands once more. And then his hands fell together again, only this time they came together in what looked like prayer; one last time before he leapt, long, into the water. A coat he loved so much, it seemed incomplete that he would die without it, my mother said to everyone after his death; said it again at the funeral. Nobody knows why he chose to leave that way, she said. ________ Seyed had come into my life, a bubble of contradictions, years and years ago. We were young then, racing through our twenties, even if in opposite directions. I was in Malindi, a waiter at an Italian restaurant, one of many that...