The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021
- Автор: Рот Вероника, Адамс Джон Джозеф
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: HMH Books : Mariner
- ISBN: 9780358470076
- Жанр: Малые литературные формы прозы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021». Краткое содержание книги:
This year’s selection of science fiction and fantasy stories, chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and bestselling author of the Divergent series Veronica Roth, showcases a crop of authors that are willing to experiment and tantalize readers with new takes on classic themes and by exchanging the ordinary for the avant-garde. Folktales and lore come alive, the dead rise, the depths of space are traversed, and magic threads itself through singular moments of love and loss, illuminating the circulatory nature of life, death, the in-between, and the hereafter.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021 captures the all-too-real cataclysm of human nature, claiming its place in the series with compelling prose, lyrical composition, and curiosity’s never-ending pursuit of discovering the unknown.
responsible
oldest
daughter.
Visitors stream in and out. She serves them tea; microwaves the samosas and mandazis that aunty made, then transitions into polite hostess.
“Yes, God’s timing is best.
No, as you can imagine we are not okay but we will be.
Yes, we are so grateful you have come to show your support.
No, Mum is not able to come downstairs. She is feeling a bit low but I am sure she will be fine.
Yes, I will make sure to feed her the bone marrow soup. I know it is good for strength.
No, we have not lost faith.”
But sometimes; sometimes she is in the middle of a handshake, or a hug, or a sentence when grief takes her captive;
binding her sound,
squeezing her lungs,
drawing her breath.
She holds herself. She runs to the bathroom or her room or anywhere there are no eyes and she screams silently without letting the words out . . .
her own private little world out.
“Wasted tears.” The lady, one of Mum’s cousins: second? Or third? Clicks and shakes her head. How long has she been standing there?
I open my mouth, shut. Open again, silence; can only lick my wounds and move away. There is really nothing to say after that dismissal. I shift, angling my body away from her, lifting my half-open silver notebook off the bathroom counter. The bathroom door, slightly ajar, is calling me to the space between its bark and the wall. I will not beg for sympathy. The pen drops and I swear I see a spark as it hits the ground. Can you see sound?
“Shit.” The word slips out before I realize who I am in the room with. I pick up the pen and attempt to squeeze past her body, which is covering the space I saw as my escape route.
A sucking in of teeth. “Kabi, wait!”
I turn my head slightly back. She asks, “What does gone mean for you?”
I am confused by the question; have no time for old woman foolishery. Already there is Tata Shi shouting my name in the kitchen. “Yes?” I answer because I must be
Responsible
Oldest
Daughter
Always in that order. No time for my grief, no time for Mama’s cousin, second? Or third? To sit with and dismiss my grief. The first “yes” was not heard so I shout again, hearing my voice transverse rooms. “Yes Tata?”
And the response: “Chai inaisha, kuna maziwa mahali?”
How to leave politely, because respect; to mumble under my breath something about going to make tea for the guests.
“You have not answered my question.”
I sigh, in a hurry to leave. “What was the question?”
“Gone, child—these terms that talk circles around death: gone, no longer with us, passed away, passed on—what do you think they mean?”
“NYOKABI?” Tata is sounding irritated now, she is trying not to but you can always tell when she is.
“COMING!” I scream back, and to the woman in front of me, “Gone is . . . not here.”
“Aha, you see but not here does not mean not anywhere.”
This woman is talking madness now. I mumble, “Nimeitwa na Tata Shi, I have to attend to the guests now.”
She smiles. “I know you are trying to dismiss me, Kairetu, but here, take this.”
She slips a little bottle into my hand just as I widen the door to leave. She says, “A little remedy for sleep. There are dark circles around your eyes.”
I slip the bottle into the pocket of my skirt and run to the kitchen, no time to look or to ask, no time to wonder or to wander, no time to be anywhere or to be anything but the
Responsible
Oldest . . . only?
Daughter.
This is how to not think about dying when you are alive: look at colors, every color, attach them to memory. The sky in July is blue into gray like the Bahari on certain days. Remember the time the whole family took a trip to Mombasa, and Kabi and you swam in the ocean until even the waves were tired. Kabi insisted that you could not go to Mombasa and not eat authentic coast-erean food, so even though everyone else was lazy and Dad had paid for full board at the White Sands Hotel, the whole family packed themselves into his blue Toyota and drove to the closest, tiny, dusty Swahili restaurant you could find. It smelled like incense, Viazi Karai, and Biryani. Are these the smells of authentic coast-erean food?
This is how to not think about dying when you are alive: take note of smell, like the first time you burned your skin and smelled it. The charring flesh did not feel like death; in fact it reminded you of Mum’s burned pilau; attach feeling to memory.
“Tutafanya nini na mtoto yako?” Dad never shouted, but he didn’t need to.
“What do you mean? Did I make him by myself? He is your son as well.” Mum was chopping vegetables for Kachumbari.
“Yes, but you allowed him to be too soft.” Her hand, still holding the knife, stopped midair, its descent interrupted, and she turned around to face him, her eyes watery and red from the sting of the onions.
“Too soft? Ken? Too soft? Did you see him? Have you seen your son? The fight he was involved in today . . . he can barely see through one eye. How is that softness?” Baba looked away, Mum’s loudness overcompensating for his soft-spoken articulation.
“Lakini Mama Kabi, why was he wearing that thing to school?”
She dropped the knife. “Have you asked him? When was the last time you even talked to him, Ken? Ehe?”
Quick breaths. “We went to the church meeting for fathers and sons. I spend time with him.”
“Ken, you talk to everyone else about him, and you talk at him, but you never talk to him. Maybe if you were here more . . .”
“Don’t tell me what I do and do not do in my own house, Mama Nyokabi. Do I not take care of the needs of this house? Nani analipa school fees hapa? You will not make so it looks like I do not take my responsibilities seriously. If there is a problem with that boy it is not because of me!”
Smoke started rising from the sufuria. You reacted, pushing yourself from behind the door, forgetting you were not supposed to be in such close vicinity to this conversation. “Mum, chakula chinaungua!”
She rushed to the stove, turned off the gas, and then realized you were in the room, looked down, ashamed that they were caught gossiping. The smell of burned pilau.
This is how to not think of dying when you are alive. Move your body; like the first time you punched Ian in the face.
Whoosh!
Fist moving in slow motion, blood rushing through your veins, knuckles-connecting-to-jawline, adrenaline taking over: alive,alive,alive,alive,alive. This is how to be alive. This is how to not think about dying when you’re alive.
Of course this was right after Ian had called you shoga for wearing eyeliner to school and then said, “Ama huelewi? Do you want me to say it in English so you understand F-A—”
“Go fuck yourself!” you screamed and punched simultaneously. And of course this singular punch was right before Ian punched you back and did not stop punching you back over and over and over but God knows you kicked and you moved, and you were alive.
On the night before the funeral,
I am exhausted but I cannot sleep. There is shouting upstairs. I close my eyes as if that will block my ears from hearing the sound. A door is banged. I hear footsteps shuffling down the stairway.
I should go and check if everything is okay but I do not want to. I cover my head with my pillow and count one to ten times a hundred but I still cannot sleep.