Content warning: violence, self-harm
Honey said holding onto memory is like trying to grasp water with spread fingers. She told me to hold on to the sweet ones, to turn my mind into cupped palms before they leak from the gaps of my fingers. If you remember anything, remember this: hold on, hold on, she’d tell me, forming her cracked, bleeding lips around the words spilling from her mouth.
Here’s one: I’m eleven and my cousin, Aaliyah, has come to help. Honey is getting older, her back’s a smooth curve easing her body back to the dirt—not yet! Mama is out cleaning the toilets of rich men and my father… he is molted, fallen skin that couldn’t form into fatherhood. Daddy is exposed sore and red meat. Daddy is Emmanuel. Emmanuel is Amaka to familiar ears. And Amaka is gone, gone, gone aching and raw somewhere, somewhere that is not this home.
Aaliyah, Aaliyah is beauty. She points her hazel eyes at me. They’re not real—I’ve never seen anyone who looked like us with those colored eyes, but Aaliyah’s the type that could make you believe in those things. Her papa stole his father’s English name and used it as his last. He collected English names he overheard and gave them to his children. So, Aaliyah is Aaliyah Allison and that’s how I come to understand we are not the same. My father’s last name tastes like stones in my mouth. She eyes me and I know that she can see that thing hiding in me. I know, baby, I know… but stay away.
Mia is single braids and all legs and she has come to use me. She needs me. Her eyes hold the same tired plea, and I can’t help but sigh. Mia’s mama is the type to watch her through the window, her almost black eyes staring out from behind a cloudy glass. But, whenever it’s the three of us—Mia, her mama, and me—her mama will find anyone she can and point at me smiling, saying: that’s the good one before faking a frown and pointing to Mia and saying: this, this the one that gives me trouble. Blame it on Xavier. Xavier, the boy up the street with the endless curls and deep dark skin and the letter ‘r’ that rolls from his tongue. The boy who makes Mia giggle. The boy who Mia’s mama thinks is making her daughter fast. What Mia’s mama means to say is that Mia is the type of girl that boys like Xavier like and I am not, and she hopes that I am enough to stop the boys from coming.
When Mia is with me, the black eyes retreat. Our house swallows her up and Aaliyah leads the two of us to the backyard. Honey’s medication has put her to sleep on the couch, her hands still sticky from eating oranges, the peels strewed across her lap. A steady trail of ants are marching towards the orange peels and I step on as many as I can as we walk towards the backyard.
Here’s the thing about Aaliyah: Aaliyah is sixteen and all body and she likes to fight. Bloodied, loosened teeth and pulled hair grasped between a clenched fist are her sweetest memories. One time, Aaliyah showed me a small bundle of smooth amber hair she kept, gleaming with pride as she held it up to my face.
Look at the bulb! she said, her hot breath and clenched fist so close to my face I could taste it.
Aaliyah wants us to fight. She tells us we got to learn at some point.
Put your fists up like this, she starts. Tuck in the thumb. You can’t look like a goofy bitch with your thumbs out!
Mia is all eyes on Aaliyah and I’m all eyes on Mia. Aaliyah is talking and then she is not. She looks at us and her stare tells us it’s time. I’m still all eyes on Mia and Mia is staring at the ground. Look up, Mia! There’s something about time. How it slows down in front of you. And then Aaliyah shouts: Don’t be a pussy! And that breaks it. Everything moves and that’s enough for Mia. Mia… Mia… Mia who is all bones and legs. No meat. Look at her wrists, see how bones bulge out from beneath tight skin? And me? I’m big-boned and late-night treats and too big for my age, they say. Me, my mama buys me clothes from the women’s section. So, when Mia forms her bony hands into a fist and punches me, it takes me a second to realize what has happened.
And then it hits me. She has hit me in my nose. The blood leaks from my nose and pools in the crevice of my cupid’s bow. And I’m crying and looking stupid. Mia looks scared. But, Aaliyah is laughing and laughing and repeating: this little bitch just hit my cousin! And Aaliyah is yelling at me and telling me to hit her back! And I am stunned and limp and taste the salty tears and metallic blood. And there’s something sweet and delicious and intoxicating about this. And, somewhere deep inside, I want to hold on to this feeling a little longer.
Here’s another one: the blue-black bruising of brown skin. I’m fifteen and far too much skin and tissue, something womanly, and I need it all to go away. What I want: to tuck away the hanging parts of me, bind them into something tight, something… permanent.
But first, Mama—who these days is all red, baggy eyes and thick yellow pinguecula—takes me to the meat shop in Edison where the meat is cheap and gray and from behind a glass partition, I watch a smooth knife tear through cartilage and flesh and wonder if it’s truly that simple.
In a darkened bedroom, it’s afternoon and winter stole the sun. In that room, I’m hunched over, my exposed chest pressed against the curve of my belly. Look! There’s me playing doctor. A tiny razor blade pressed against my skin. Bubbled blood rising from the sliced separated skin. It could be so simple… a slice here and there and part of what makes me discarded onto the hardwood floor. No no no. Instead, it is a small slice against the top of my chest. I spit, the thick phlegm dripping from my lips and rub it into the blood. Call it scarification.
Something brief: Dee. Dee is the spilled sun and they look at me and tell me with their eyes it’s ok and somewhere I want to believe them. I am eighteen and still hiding, hiding, hiding under the weight of someone else.
Sometimes, when the sun is too bright and the band digs deep into my skin, I think Honey is wrong. I’d say: Honey, sometimes it’s not sweet. Sometimes it’s all bitter and we got to let these things go before this shit drags us down with it. Spread my finger so wide, let the memories slip from between me. But sometimes, sometimes when it’s 3 am and I remember Honey is nestled in the belly of the earth and it’s heavy all around me, I think maybe bitter things can be sweet. And I clench my fists, holding onto all of them, punching away at my skin until I can become weightless memory too.
angel ogoemesim is a trans, Igbo writer. They are a recent graduate and current Junior Fellow at Washington University in St. Louis. Their fiction explores queerness, blackness, embodiment—being, and madness.
VAGABOND CITY 