SARAH KABAMBA

THEY COME CRYING

“Back home, when someone dies, you can hear the women crying throughout the entire village,” Baba tells me, sitting on the edge of my bed. The glow from my night light leaks into the wrinkles in his face and highlights the grey in his curly black hair.

From downstairs, I hear the crying. I can tell which cries are Mama’s. They’re the loudest, guttural and raw with grief. Baba continues to talk. I try to listen but all I can hear are the wails from below. Baba stops talking and looks at me expectantly. I pick at a stray thread on my flowered bedcovers.

“Ada,” he says. “Are you even listening?”

I continue to pull at the frayed thread. I want to build a fort with my covers and hide there with my hands over my ears.

“Mama Dalia, your mother’s sister, has died.” Baba lifts my chin up with a finger, forcing me to meet his brown eyes. “Ada. I need you to go be with your mother.”

I stand still as Baba wraps the bright purple and yellow patterned kikwembe around my waist. The cloth covers my Care Bears pyjama pants and hangs to the floor. It’s loose, Mama always ties it nice and tight so I don’t trip over the edges.

“My older sister, Janie, showed me how to tie these,” Baba says. He looks at me and the corner of his mouth tips up. “I never paid attention.”

“Are you going to come downstairs too?” I ask.

Baba shakes his head. “Women and men don’t mourn together. The men will come tomorrow.”

Baba hugs me and I snuggle into his chest. The wool of his sweater tickles my cheeks. I feel his heart beating like a drum and for a moment I can almost ignore the crying coming from downstairs.

“Nakupenda,” Baba whispers in Swahili.

“Love you too,” I whisper back.

I slip out of his arms and stand at the foot of the stairs. There are fourteen steps. I count them in my head as I go down. The seventh step always creaks but tonight I don’t even hear it over the weeping.

My kikwembe drags against the cold tile of the kitchen floor as I make my way into the living room. Mama sits on the floor in front of the fireplace surrounded by women. Their wails rise and weave with one another. I recognize Mama Jina and Mama Nuru. The other women are vaguely familiar in the way aunts and uncles that you only see on holidays are.

Mama Jina, who is beside Mama, motions me over. “Mtoto,” she says, standing up. “Who tied this for you?” She picks at the knot Baba tied, rewraps the colourful material around my waist, and secures it at my right hip.

I sit beside Mama. She doesn’t look at me. She just continues to cry and scream. She rocks back and forth, tears running down her cheeks, and the other women join in. I bow my head to hide the absence of tears from my own eyes. I want desperately to feel something but I can barely bring the image of my aunt to mind. I’ve never met her, only seen pictures and heard stories. She’s never been real to me, just a name of a woman in Congo that my parents promised I would one day meet.

I look up and one of the women is looking at me with narrowed brows, tears glistening on her dark skin. “Ambaye ni mtoto huyu ambaye hawezi kulia?”

Whose is this child who doesn’t cry? I keep my head bowed and pinch the skin of my arm until tears rise to the corner of my eyes.

The kitchen is full of chattering voices and brightly patterned kikwembes. Oil sizzles in the pan as the plantain fries, okra boils in a pot, and one of the women heats water for the fufu in the largest pot we have.

“You’re going to burn the plantain,” Mama Nuru says to no one in particular.

“Where do you keep the piri piri?” another woman asks me.

I take the plastic container with the ground spices out of the fridge and hand it to her. She thanks me and turns back to the stove.

“Will you make the fufu?” Mama Jina asks me in Swahili.

The woman who had glared at me yesterday clucks in surprise. “Oh, she speaks Swahili?”

Mama Jina shakes her head. “Not fluently, Aisha, but she understands it.”

I look Mama Aisha in the eye and I wonder if she is remembering what she said last night. She meets my gaze steadily and doesn’t look away. “Utafanya?” she challenges.

I remember all the times Mama tried to teach me to make fufu and how I would never really pay attention. My dough always ended up too watery or full of lumps.

I look at Mama Jina. “I don’t know how,” I whisper.

“Kuja.” Mama Jina takes my arm. “You can make the rice.”

Behind me, Mama Aisha clucks again. “A shame, not being able to make fufu at her age.”

The doorbell rings. I hear Baba’s firm footsteps down the stairs. He opens the door to let the men in. They fill the foyer and speak in hushed voices as they follow Baba into his office. Bits and pieces of their conversation float into the kitchen and then one of the men pushes the door closed. The men have left their shoes in a careless pile and Mama Jina rearranges them, lining them up into pairs.

When we are done cooking, every surface of the wooden kitchen table is covered with pots and plates. The food that could not fit is crammed onto the kitchen island. We stand around the table, eyes closed, as Baba leads the prayer. When he’s done, the men go sit at the dining room table in the other room, the one that we only use for special occasions and guests. The women prepare plates for their husbands. Mama Jina hands me a plate for Baba. I fill it with rice, fish, plantain, sombe, and fufu. Silently, the women slide the plates in front of the men, who do not pause in their conversation. Mama Nuru, whose husband died last year, goes around the table filling the glasses with water.

Back in the kitchen, the women now fix plates for themselves. Mama Jina hands me a full plate.

“Bring it to your mother,” she says.

Mama is on the living room floor, where she has been since last night. The women who were not helping in the kitchen are sitting with her. I kneel down in front of her and present her the plate. She makes no move to take it. My knees ache and my hand trembles with the weight of the plate, but I don’t move.

“Kula,” one of the women whispers to Mama. She takes the plate from me and places it on Mama’s outstretched legs.

Silently, tears roll down Mama’s high cheekbones, falling on the edge of the plate, and I just stay there, knees aching.

The living room is dark. Some of the women sleep on the couch. Some on the floor. I am curled up by Mama’s side with Mama Jina’s kikwembe pulled around my shoulders. I can’t see Mama’s face but I can hear her tears and feel the sobs racking her body. I stretch my thin arms around her and squeeze as hard as I can.

“Your mother has to go to Kinshasa to bury her sister,” Baba says to me.

The house is temporarily empty; the women have gone home to tend to their own households and children. Only Mama Nuru, who has coaxed Mama upstairs to take a bath, remains. The kitchen tile is cold under my bare feet and I let my hands sink into the dirty dishwater.

“For how long?” I ask.

“A week at most. She’s leaving tomorrow.”

I don’t say anything and Baba looks up from the computer, where he is buying Mama’s plane ticket.

“She’ll be back before you know it,” he says. “I just need you to keep being a big girl for a little while longer.”

Mama Nuru, Mama Jina, Mama Aisha, and all the other women come to see Mama off at the airport. They take turns hugging her and whispering reassurances into her ear. All of them cry. When it’s my turn, I hug Mama as hard as I can. I open my mouth but there are no words and all I can do is squeeze her tighter.

The women come back to the house with Baba and me. They will stay until Mama Dalia is buried in Kinshasa. We clean the house. We cook. Mama Nuru and Mama Jina braid my hair with colourful beads. We clean and cook some more.

On the third day Mama’s been gone, we do not cook. We do not clean. The women and I sit in silence in the living room. Nobody says anything. Every so often someone shifts or gets up to use the bathroom but otherwise nobody moves.

Mama Aisha begins to cry and suddenly they’re all weeping. The room is filled with their sobs, and their sorrow suffocates me as I sit there, silent and dry-eyed. Outside, the sky goes from a golden caramel to an inky darkness broken only by the glimmer of stars. As the women continue to wail, I stare at the twinkling stars and wish that my aunt would come back and make Mama happy again.

The shrill ring of the phone breaks the rhythm of their cries. Mama Nuru answers the phone, listens, and hangs up. “Ni kufanyika,” she announces to the room.

Like a record winding down, the women’s cries slowly stutter and stop.

For the rest of the time Mama is gone, the women take turns stopping by. They stay for a bit, drop off dishes of food, and talk to Baba. Before they leave, they always hug me and ask if I’m okay. I know that they don’t want to hear that I miss Mama, that I’m scared that she will never come back, so I don’t say any of this.

One day while Baba is out, Mama Aisha comes by. I stare at her through the glass window of the front door. I don’t want to let her in but I know I have to.

“Took you long enough,” she says, handing me a casserole.

I follow her into the kitchen and set the dish on the island. I lift the lid and peek in.

“Puff-puffs!” the words leave my mouth before I can stop myself.

“Do you know how to make those?” Mama Aisha asks.

I look up from the casserole full of deep-fried doughnut balls to see a slight smile on her face.

“Mama showed me how,” I reply.

“Let’s make some more then. Your baba will finish these as soon as he gets home.”

I stare at her in surprise.

“Well? Don’t just stand there, get the ingredients.”

As we mix the flour, sugar, eggs, and yeast, Mama Aisha begins to talk.

“My mama taught me how to make these. She would sell them in the village marketplace. Some days I would go with her.”

Mama Aisha abandons the wooden spoon and begins kneading the dough with her hands. “One day,” she continues, “Mama got sick. She was too weak to even beat the dough. I had to make the puff-puffs and sell them or else we wouldn’t have any money.”

“Where was your baba?” I ask.

“He left. He had another wife.” She looks down at her flour-covered hands and shakes her head.

“When Mama died, everybody in the village came. They stayed with me until her burial. They cooked for me, fed me, cried with me. And after, one of the women took me in as her own daughter.”

I look up at Mama Aisha. She’s stopped kneading the dough.

“Do you still miss her?” I ask.

She nods, a tear leaks out of the corner of her eye. “Mauti hutia kilio,” she whispers.

I cock my head. Mama Aisha sniffles and smiles at me. “It’s an old proverb. It means: ‘Death makes people cry. One day the seriousness of life will be brought home to everyone.’ One day the seriousness of life will come to you too. Now you want your mother to come home to you, and that is okay.”

I don’t realize that I’m crying until I see the drip of tears on the dough in front of me. Mama Aisha reaches over and wipes my face with flour-streaked fingers. “If we keep this up, our puff-puffs will be so salty that no one will eat them.”

We finish making the puff-puffs and then we do the dishes. Mama Aisha hums as she dries. Before she leaves, she hugs me and tells me to greet Baba for her. Later that night, I can’t sleep so I clean the house. It’s not dirty. I try to erase the remnants of sorrow from the walls but I can still hear the echoes of crying no matter how much I scrub, sweep, and mop.

The women come early the next day. They come laughing. They come singing. They come with brightly coloured kikwembes. They come with cassava leaves, plantains, okra, ndakala, piri piri, and yams. The kitchen fills with the sound of oil sizzling as we fry the plantains and fish. Okra boils on one of the back burners. Sliced yams are piled high on the counter waiting to be boiled. Mama Nuru sifts flour for the fufu. As they work, the women sing, their voices weaving in and out with one another.

I sit on the floor, beating the piri piri in the mortar with the wooden pestle. The spices sting my eyes, and unbidden tears leak out of the corners.

Mama Aisha dances past me and says, “Ambaye ni mtoto huyu ambaye analia wakati wengine kucheka?”

Whose is this child who cries while others laugh? She smiles at me and I smile back.

The table is set. My hair is brushed and braided. Green and yellow beads, Mama’s favourite colours, clink together at the ends of my braids. I wear her old yellow kikwembe with the matching top. The women talk quietly as we wait for Baba to come back home with Mama. I sit by the window and watch as cars go by. Our red Camry rolls into view and I can’t move. What will I do if she’s still crying? What will I do if she refuses to eat again? Will she talk now? Will she smile again? Will she—

“Mtoto,” Mama Aisha says, breaking into my thoughts. “Kwende.”

And so I go. I slip off the couch and out the door. The pavement is bumpy under my bare feet but I barely feel the rocks as I run toward Mama.