Free The House of Discarded Dreams by Ekaterina Sedia Page B

of their surroundings. Later, Vimbai thought it an unnecessary affectation, and forgot most of what little language she knew back then. She did not realize the need to set herself apart—in fact, her childhood was dominated by the opposite impulse, to be one of many.
    Her color did not help matters—even though they lived just a few miles away from Atlantic City, their particular town was white; they were the only black family on the block. And no matter how much one tried, there were things that simply could not be hidden.
    Afterwards, as an adolescent burdened with an unfair amount of social conscience, Vimbai went through a brief but histrionic stage of embracing her heritage—she reasoned that if one could not blend in, it was better to exaggerate the difference. It brought about a brief resurgence in her interest in Shona and African lit, as well as the love of ‘ethnic’ fashions. Out of these, the latter lasted the shortest—all it took was one eye roll from Vimbai’s mother to plant the seed of doubt. Nonetheless, it was during this time that Vimbai visited Harare and met her extended family on her maternal side.
    Harare shocked her by its hasty urbanity—it felt like a city that was created too quickly, without giving a chance to people or the land to adjust to its presence. The tall skyscrapers that wouldn’t be out of place in Philadelphia or New York City jutted out of red soil, as if plopped down by some magic tornado. The houses pushed upward among trees; her mother said that they were called jacaranda trees, and that when they all bloomed, Harare was the most beautiful city on earth. They went to African Unity Square, and Vimbai gawped at the flower market that shone with so many colors—several of them not found on the spectrum, Vimbai was pretty sure.
    Much later, when Vimbai was eighteen, she watched her mother cry when she read in the newspapers that the flower market was destroyed at Mugabe’s orders. She felt like crying too, but was too busy drawing a firm line between herself and Africana Studies and everything they entailed—even the flower markets in her mother’s home city. Now she understood the deep hurt of that destruction, the most basic betrayal of one’s childhood love. It was not just about the flowers; it was never just about anything. It was always about what one knew to be true about the world when one was a child, and the death of that knowledge.

Chapter 6

    “We have to get back to New Jersey,” Maya said one morning, the ruddy fur carpet stretched by her feet across pale linoleum tiles. “We’re almost out of coffee, and the milk is going bad.”
    Vimbai peered into Maya’s cup, the murky coffee in it studded with pellets of milk coagulated in an unpleasant fashion. “Ew.” The question of return had been on her mind, even though she tried not to think about her classes and her mother, insane with grief—the moment she did, her stomach felt sick.
    “Exactly.” Maya made a face and took a cautious sip.
    “I suppose I could ask my horseshoe crabs to tow us back,” Vimbai said.
    Maya smiled. “So they are your horseshoe crabs now, huh? Do they have little harnesses?”
    “No,” Vimbai answered and drank her coffee black. “But I guess we’ll need to give them something to grab on. They have to walk on the bottom—they are not great swimmers.”
    “Why couldn’t you befriend dolphins?” Felix said.
    Maya laughed, eyeing her half-foxes, half-possums tenderly. “Yeah. Mammals are smarter.”
    Vimbai shrugged. “I don’t care. I like crabs. And they are the ones that can take us home, so be nice.”
    “Are you sure that they can?” Felix said.
    Vimbai wasn’t. “Pretty sure,” she said out loud.
    After breakfast of dry pancakes (they were low on syrup too), Vimbai went to talk to the crabs. Her grandmother came along, quiet and helpful as usual. She helped Vimbai see and helped her talk, and the words that bubbled out of Vimbai’s mouth underwater