The House of Discarded Dreams (18 page)

“No,” Vimbai said. “Looks like for us it’s all about Felix’s Hair and Phantom Limbs and Peb’s Tongue. Speaking of which . . . ”

Maya heaved a sigh. “I know. Don’t nag, please. We’ll go as soon as I get a chance to take a nap, okay? I’ve been climbing stairs all day long. And you’ve been drowning, so maybe you should do the same. Then we check on Felix and go looking for the tongue.”

Vimbai nodded. “I’ll check on him first. See you in an hour or two.”

She tiptoed past the forest of what looked like coat hangers and fishing poles and hat racks, and across a brand new meadow, sprinkled with white and pink flowers, that hadn’t been there this morning, on her way to Felix’s room. Thankfully, he remained unmolested, and asleep. Vimbai thought of waking him but decided against it—there seemed no point in exposing him again to the shock of his transformation, to the realization that his parent universe was gone forever, his umbilicus to his home world, however tentative, severed with unnecessary brutality and machine-like efficiency, and that the effluvia of the dead universe were dumped onto the ocean surface. Vimbai wondered if it would affect marine life at all, or if they would be able to surface through the ghastly space remnants with no problems. Maybe waves would disperse it, she thought; maybe it was the sort of thing only people noticed, like time. No, it was better to let him sleep—perhaps his dreams would help him when he woke up.

Vimbai reached her room and curled under the blankets. She thought idly that she probably should hang up her wet clothes from earlier today so that they could dry properly, but dismissed the thought as something best left for later. Now, she had to concentrate on the strategic dreaming—she had to dream of something that would help them to retrieve Peb’s tongue. Vimbai closed her eyes and, before uneasy and fitful sleep claimed her, pictured the grotesque body of Peb, with many arms and hands and feet bristling from it in every direction, and the empty hole of its black crying mouth.

Vimbai’s dream felt strangely sedate, even ordinary —she dreamt of being a petulant twelve-year-old, shopping for shoes with her tight-lipped mother. It was important for some reason to get new shoes right before the school started again, and Vimbai’s mother was determined to make this experience as stressful as possible—even worse than the rest of obligatory back-to-school nonsense.

First, there was the issue of the overall effect malls had on Vimbai’s mother—there was something about the sheer volume of the superfluous consumption that put her in a foul mood as soon as she parked her car. Wherever they went afterwards, there were more and more irritating things, and the stream of muttered commentary never ceased; it eventually grew in volume, causing the shoppers nearby to look at them. Vimbai felt embarrassed and hissed at her mother, and she snapped back. And it went downhill from there.

Second, there were the shoes themselves. Vimbai, being twelve, liked them square-nosed and funky, with chunky heels and bright colors; her mother tended toward more demure and practical styles, preferably of the Mary-Janes variety; lime green and three inch wedges or platforms were out of the question.

Third, there was the political side—it took them forever to find shoes that were not made in a sweatshop, and made by those who were either the US unionized workers or at the very least fair wage workers in China or elsewhere in the world. That took forever, and it drove Vimbai insane—nothing she liked could possibly meet her mother’s approval, and if by some miracle it did, there was almost no chance that it would pass the fair labor test. Vimbai thought that it wasn’t fair that her shoes had to be a political statement by her mother, but there didn’t seem to be a way around it.

In the dream, Vimbai saw herself as if looking on from the outside, hovering disembodied and invisible, and looking with her adult eyes at the sulky and young version of herself—was she really that chubby as a kid? Young Vimbai scowled at the brown shoe that enclosed her foot like an ugly polyp. Her mother kneeled before her, tying the laces with uncalled-for vigor, as if she were trying to strangle Vimbai’s foot.

“It’s ugly,” Vimbai said. “I hate it.”

Her mother looked up—one of the very few moments in Vimbai’s life when her mother was looking up at her. “Vimbai,
sahwira
, please. These are the only ones in your size.”

“Mom, this is ridiculous. There are tons of shoes here. And some of them are not even ugly.”

“You know why we can’t get these,” her mother said, exasperated, her pupils narrowed into needle points, her voice so taut it was ready to tear into a scream at any second. Dangerous, dangerous, not the woman to toy with or to piss off just now.

Vimbai rolled her eyes. “Mom, buying a pair of shoes is not a political decision. It’s just shoes. It’s not fair to put it on me, you know? There are countries and governments and all these people in the world who could make sure that there are no sweatshops or child labor, so I can just get a pair of fucking shoes without drama and without you telling me how everything is my fault.”

To her surprise, her mother’s lips relaxed and her shoulders sagged, as if the tension wire had just been pulled out of her, leaving her without the ringing terrible support she relied on all these years. “It’s not your fault,” she said. “I never said anything was your fault—why would you even think that?”

Vimbai shrugged and nodded at the ugly hoof on her foot.

Her mother laughed, unexpectedly. “I suppose it feels like punishment, doesn’t it?”

“Yes.” Vimbai kicked off the shoe, now that she realized that argument and screaming had been miraculously averted.

Her mom sighed and stood. She took Vimbai’s hand and pulled her along, away from the imitation leather benches and the low mirrors on the floor, away from the shelves crawling with mismatched shoes, away from the smooth hardwood floors and the restless children and annoyed mothers. “We’ll find you something,” Vimbai’s mother said. “Just understand one thing for me, all right? It’s not your fault, but sometimes we have to do what we can to correct wrongs done by other people. Sometimes those who committed them are dead or they don’t care or they don’t see it as a wrong. But this is what makes us human, this—the fact that we are able to fix other people’s mess. Even when it’s not fair.”

Vimbai nodded that she understood. “You can just get me canvas sneakers,” she said. “Now let’s go get a pretzel.”

Her mother smiled, nodding, and her firm warm hand squeezed Vimbai’s in unsaid gratitude. When Vimbai woke up, it was dark outside, and she felt like crying.

Maya woke up before Vimbai. She sat in the kitchen, darker than a storm cloud. “We’re out of coffee,” she announced as soon as Vimbai came downstairs.

“Bummer,” Vimbai mumbled, unwilling to meet Maya’s eyes. “Any tea?”

“Just loose green tea that’s been sitting in the cupboard since the previous tenants,” Maya said. “Whoever they were.”

Vimbai sniffed at the yellow paper package with green lettering, and laughed. “That’s not tea, that’s
mate
.”

“What’s the difference?”

“It has a better kick than coffee,” Vimbai said. “Only you have to drink it through special straws, otherwise the leaf debris would get into your mouth.”

“I don’t care,” Maya said with a suddenly renewed enthusiasm for life. “How do you make this thing?”

Vimbai put the kettle on and poured boiling water over what she judged to be sufficient quantities of a substance that resembled dried grass in appearance and smell.

Maya drank greedily. “Yuck,” she said. “Then again, it does have a kick.” She looked at Vimbai and stopped smiling.

“What’s the matter?” she said. “You look bummed out.”

Vimbai heaved a tremulous sigh and sniffed, all the while aware that it wasn’t really fair to Maya who did not have any family left. “I miss my parents,” she said. “Especially my mom.”

“I thought you fought a lot.”

“We did. We do. But it doesn’t matter; I still miss her.”

Maya nodded. “I suppose families are like that. Anything you want to talk about?”

Vimbai considered the offer—it was tempting, to tell Maya about her mother’s obsessive social consciousness and the liability it brought to her teenage daughter, amplifying the usual embarrassment every offspring had suffered while interacting with their peers in their parents’ presence. Vimbai suspected that her social status suffered doubly—for her mother’s insistence on responsible consumption and her accent. Even though she was a college professor, her accent and her color marked her as an immigrant, a first-generation, and Vimbai preferred to downplay her mother whenever possible—which was not often. Yet, all these complaints seemed petty now, especially in Maya’s presence. Maya, who did not have any parents, did not deserve to listen to Vimbai’s unsubstantiated bitching. Instead, she said, “I just regret that I never invited my mom over to this house. I think she would like it, and she would love you.”

Maya laughed, took a hasty sip of her mate, and coughed, her face turning dark purple.

Vimbai patted Maya’s back, trying to dislodge whatever renegade
maté
leaves had lodged in her throat. “No, really, she would. She would try and adopt you, of course. And then she would drive me nuts telling me how I should be more like you.”

“Why would she say that?”

Vimbai shrugged and sucked in a mouthful of
maté
through her teeth, trying to filter out the debris in the manner of whales. “She wants me to have more positive role models. See, I’m not African enough, and then I’m not American enough, and I’m not really anything proper. And my mom . . . she means well and she tries hard, but I know that she secretly wishes that I had grown up in Zimbabwe so that she wouldn’t have to deal with a spoiled American kid. Or she wishes that I would know more about the Diaspora, at the very least. She wants me to understand why it matters to everyone but me that my parents came over here voluntarily.”

Maya nodded. “We all have our problems, I guess.”

“I guess. And I know that mine are not important; they are just the ones I know.”

Maya finished her
mate
. “I understand. Well, I have a job and a roof over my head, so I have no reason to complain either; still it doesn’t matter if I do. Meanwhile, let’s take care of those who can’t complain even when they want to.”

Vimbai finished her drink and stood. “Oh, grand. We’ll go find the
wazimamoto
and ask them for Peb’s tongue.”

“That’s right,” Maya said. “What are you afraid of? You seem to have power over them.”

Vimbai sighed. “I hope it still works.”

Chapter 18

Vimbai and Maya decided to look for the truck—it was day, and the
wazimamoto
were more likely to be roaming around. Maya’s dogs trotted ahead, sniffing the ground, barking in short bursts and occasionally peeing on the ground, excited.

Vimbai thought guiltily that she wouldn’t really mind walking like this, through the plains overgrown by skeletal umbrellas and yellowing sedges, with rare clusters of what looked like forks piled high with calamari salad off in the distance—just walking and talking to Maya, about anything they wanted to talk about.

“Your mom sounds really cool,” Maya said. “And smart, too. I think it is awesome that your parents came from overseas and managed to make a good life here.”

“I guess it is good,” Vimbai said. “Only my mom complains so much, you never would guess that she is happy.”

“Maybe she complains because she sees how things could be better.”

Vimbai nodded, all the while imagining bringing Maya over to visit her parents. They would hit it off, Vimbai thought, her mother and Maya; they would really like each other. They would probably understand each other better too—they would sift through their collected experience, looking for similarities in stories of privation, shutting out Vimbai who really never missed anything. Maybe this is why her mother got so angry—maybe it was because they were too good as parents, they provided too well, spoiled her too much. They made it too easy for her, and thus failed to raise a child they could relate to. Vimbai could not decide whether it was truly sad, or if it was a ridiculous thing to feel bad about.

She was distracted from her thought by the appearance of something tall, stone, and domineering on the horizon—even if she hadn’t seen it in her dreams, she would’ve recognized it anyway. The Great Zimbabwe, this version made of concrete slabs and wrought iron. When they traveled closer, Vimbai saw that there were occasional Legos and plastic building blocks sprinkled in the great seams where one slab joined the next.

Maya’s dogs dispersed over the grassy area between the giant structures—houses of giants, Vimbai thought, temples of dragons. The sort of thing that made one want to believe in ancestral spirits and their ability to bring messages from the creator. Vimbai smiled and looked around her, a vague pride filling her heart with joy.

She wanted to look for people’s houses, for the round houses she remembered from her dreams as well as her travels to the outskirts of Harare, so perfect and almost fairytale-like, with their smooth walls and grassy roofs. She wanted to find people from her dreams and their winged boats, the delicate contrivances that allowed flight from the terrible draining of the
wazimamoto
. She wanted to hear the powerful whooshing of these wings, displacing the air with great beats, and the shouts of people in the boats, not looking back but intensely staring ahead of them, already forgetting what they had escaped, intent only on finding out what waited for them in whatever new place their boats carried them to.

But there were neither houses nor boats, and Vimbai sighed with disappointment. Maya wandered between the great stone contraptions, her mouth alternatively hanging open and shaping a delighted smile. “This is yours, isn’t it?” she asked Vimbai as if it was something she had made herself. “You have such wonderful dreams.”

“Thank you,” Vimbai said, and felt a bit silly at being complimented on the quality of her subconscious. “This is something I’ve really seen—it’s The Great Zimbabwe.” She explained to Maya what it was, all the while keeping her gaze on the openings between the stones, where the green canopy of the surrounding forest, punctuated here and there by tall gray spires of unknown origin, met the grass of the clearing. Vimbai could not see any roads, and yet it offered no comfort.

She was not surprised when she heard the sound of engines, getting closer and closer. She thought then that the
wazimamoto
were like European ghosts, unable to do anything but revisit the places that had mattered to them when they were still alive. Like clockwork, their truck went in circles, regardless whether there were victims to be had.

“Quiet,” Vimbai whispered and took Maya’s hand. A normal protective gesture, she told herself, no reason for Maya to think anything was up and to reject Vimbai on the spot and outright. She pulled her along, to hide in the tall grass between the jutting cliffs and leaning slabs of the construction, parts of it resembling not so much the Great Zimbabwe but radioactive spill sites—those were always covered with concrete slabs, in indifference or foolish optimism, it was so difficult to decide. All Vimbai knew that every single one she had ever seen had cracked concrete with thin tree saplings pushing through the cracks, nothing contained, and thoughts about where the radioactive spill went were best left unthought and unanswered.

Maya followed her, and the two of them lay on their stomachs, behind a piece of concrete that jutted partway out of the ground, forming an inclined smooth surface that was so easy to hide behind. The noise of the engine came closer, and Maya barely had enough time to whistle to her dogs, who came to her call and lay behind the slab too, a rusty river of fur and pricked up ears, of bright black eyes and long pink tongues separating Vimbai from Maya like a legendary sword.

Vimbai waited for the sound of the car engine to get closer—so close, it seemed to be shuddering in her heart now, the ashes of Klaas, the thunderous choking beats that made her want to jump up, her hands over her ears, screaming
, enough, enough, please stop!

Instead, she clung closer to ground, trying to disappear in the narrow space between the concrete slab and grass, her eyes squeezed shut. Maya’s elbow pressed against hers, and only this warm touch offered a measure of comfort. The scars on her inner arms glowed with a pale yellow light, as if they felt the approach of this specific danger. Or perhaps something different—just as the engine fell silent, Vimbai felt a gentle tap on the shoulder, and turned around to come face to face with the man-fish.

He did not seem much inconvenienced by being out of the water, and perched among the small saplings sprouting through the cracks in the stone. The man-fish managed to maintain a semi-upright position; his fins must’ve gotten stronger since the last time, Vimbai thought. Or maybe he found more souls to swallow, and this is what sustained him.

“Hello,” the man-fish said in his gravelly voice. Vimbai thought that if he only twirled his whiskers, he could’ve passed for an operetta villain. “What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing out of your lake?” Vimbai countered. “Don’t you need water to breathe?”

“Eventually, O girl who would not drown,” he said. “But now I am here to help those who help me—they cannot deal with you, apparently.”

Maya moved closer to Vimbai, crouching by her side, her knee touching the side of Vimbai’s thigh. “Neither could you.”

The man-fish ignored her, and turned his slightly glassy eye to the dogs, who whimpered but stayed close to Maya—out of loyalty, or possibly out of fear of something else hidden within this dream replica of a great monument. His mouth gulped air in quick, convulsive breaths, and his gill covers rose and fell like miniature beating wings. “What have we here?” he said. “Little fox-creatures, little girl’s imaginary friends—all little pieces of her soul, all tasty morsels.”

“What is he talking about?” Vimbai whispered to Maya.

Maya only paled in response and gathered her pets in a protective embrace.

“That’s right,” the man-fish said, leering. “You know I can suck them all in as if they were candy, slimy gummi worms. You know that these misshapen mutts are just little freewheeling bits of you, and if I swallow them, what will become of you, hm?”

Vimbai drew herself up, straightening between the man-fish and Maya and her whimpering creatures. “You won’t be swallowing anyone today,” she said. “You better tell us where Peb’s tongue is, and then we’ll be on our way.”

The man-fish seemed taken aback—he deflated somewhat, shrank away from Vimbai and looked smaller than he ever had. “And you think you can command me: why?”

Vimbai thrust her carved-up forearms that glowed brighter and spilled their pale yellow light in narrow beams, like the weak spring sun, into the man-fish’s face.

He backed off a bit. “Where did you get this magic?” he asked, with curiosity rather than fear.

“I made it myself,” Vimbai answered, deciding that going into great detail would be counterproductive.

The man-fish nodded with respect. “Very nice,” he said. “With magic like this . . . it’s very impressive, really. If one had such magic, one wouldn’t need to beg for soul scraps from others.”

“You mean—” Vimbai started.

The man-fish nodded again. “I mean that with such magic, I wouldn’t have to go to
wazimamoto
or even help them drain your blood and your soul—and I could, I’ll have you know, I totally could. Child’s play. I’ll even strike a bargain with you—you carve me a spell like this, you
muroyi
, you. You little witch. You carve me a spell and I tell you how you can get the psychic tongue back.”

“So you lied to us the first time,” Vimbai said. “It wasn’t in the hospital.”

“Oh, it was. Only not where you’d think. The
wazimamoto
, see, they are just nightmares, blind and dumb. They are nothing—they need psychic energy to even exist, let alone talk. The tongue you’re looking for was there with them the whole time.”

Maya gasped. “So Peb’s tongue is what’s keeping them talking.”

“It’s what keeping them existing,” the man-fish said. “Which is a good thing for me, because this place is not exactly rich in life, and therefore in souls. They had drained what they could off your friend, and then off that funny head on a single leg. They give me what they don’t use. But if you offer me something better . . . ”

“I’m not going to let you steal more souls,” Vimbai said. “Or help you to do so.”

“You don’t have to,” the man-fish said. “If you make me a spell that would let me live without souls, that would let me collect the energy I need from the air and the water around me, then I would be content.”

Maya nudged Vimbai. “You sure he’s not lying?”

Vimbai shook her head. “Of course not. I mean, he probably is. About some of these things, at least.”

“Can you put a spell on him?”

“Yes.” Vimbai’s fingertips stroked the scars on the insides of her arms, left hand to the right arm and the other way around, crossed, entwined. “I’m not sure I understand how it works or why I even can do that, but I think I could. But only after we get back Peb’s tongue.”

“That’s rather inconvenient,” the man-fish said. “If you banish the creatures that sustain me and then your spell fails, what will happen to me then?”

“We’ll release you into the wild,” Vimbai promised. “There are plenty of lakes in New Jersey, and there are dead people’s souls you can swallow to your heart’s content—if the spell fails, that is. As soon as the crabs get us there.”

The man-fish appeared to scowl, even though Vimbai was not quite sure how he managed that without any eyebrows. “And I should trust you: why?”

“Because we cannot trust you,” Vimbai said. “You tricked us twice already—it would be stupid to believe you again, you have to agree.”

The man-fish muttered but conceded the point.

“So you see, you’ll have to trust us, or we’ll be at an impasse,” Maya said. And added, in a flash of brilliance, “Besides, how long do you think before they decide to drain your blood?”

“That’s a very good point,” Vimbai said. “Can you really trust any creatures who do nothing but rob everything alive of its blood?”

The man-fish considered, his small eyes slowly moving from one girl to the other. “You won’t trick me?” he finally asked.

Vimbai rounded her eyes at him. “How could we? You are quite smart, we wouldn’t dare to.”

“Yeah,” Maya said. “And we give you our word—it actually is worth something.”

The man-fish sighed, his gill covers fluttering. “All right,” he said. “Now, get closer.”

Vimbai and Maya approached the man-fish on their hands and knees, cautiously, as Maya’s dogs hung back, whimpering with their fluffy tails lodged between their hind legs.

“Now,” the man-fish said. “The tongue you’re looking for is shared between all of them, split into many fine energy strands, psychic energy fibers, if you will. And to draw it out of them, you will need something inert, something that would accept this energy and hold it. It’s like osmosis, see? Spirits would move into a greater spiritual vacuum—so you just need to find something that is a greater spirit vacuum than the
wazimamoto
.”

“Is there such a thing?” Vimbai asked. “Is there anything more devoid of soul than colonial vampires?”

“Undead crabs?” Maya suggested.

“Their souls are too close,” the man-fish argued. “But something close, something dead . . . ”

“Oh no,” Maya interrupted. “You’re not touching my grandma.”

The man-fish chuckled softly. “Even if it’s just a memory of her death? Even though it would let you fix your little psychic energy friend?” His flat head and beady eyes thrust forth, his slimy skin almost touching Maya’s face, his wet cold lips almost on hers. “Even though you could make her alive again, even for just a little while?”