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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 [70], (36 Lines: 56 ——— 0.0pt P ——— Normal P PgEnds: T [70], (36 caya makhélé The Labors of Ariana End of the day. She’s about thirty years old and bends under the weight of two large baskets overflowing with plastic bags of all colors. The week’s groceries. She throws them carelessly across the room. Takes off her shoes with one hand, and with the other places two glasses in front of herself. Opens a bottle of champagne that flows noisily from having been shaken too much. Fills the two glasses right to the brim. Gulps them straight down one after the other, then immediately pours herself a new round. Inadvertently, with a nervous, clumsy movement, knocks over the bottle, which spins around on its side. For a long time she watches the champagne flowing out in little eruptive spurts. Takes the empty bottle and hugs it against her chest as she lightly rocks herself. A barely audible lullaby filters through her lips: “Cracked Coco, broken baby, ripped doll, you who are busying yourself at the river, tell mother to have no regrets. You who are busying yourself at the river, please tell mother to have no regrets. Tell mother to watch over the baby, over my cracked Coco, Orisha, broken baby, ripped doll, cracked Coco. Broken Coco.” One year. It’s been a year already since Orisha no longer exists. Orisha, 70 The Labors of Ariana 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 [71], (37) Lines: 583 to ——— -3.0pt PgV ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [71], (37) my beloved albino. Each day, after I return from the office, I shut myself in so I can unlearn, forget the noises of the street, the kowtowing of the cousins, nephews, uncles, and aunts who congregate around my meager salary. Refuse the demands of a Saturday embalmed with music and curl in on myself. She pulls up a chair. Settles in with her knees against her chest. Stays silent for an instant. Her eyes go from the baskets to the plastic bags her purchases are spilling out of. Eat nothing, listen to nothing, look at nothing. Maybe observe deep inside of myself. Démokoussé cleared out when Orisha was born. Yet she was a wished-for child, not a lost ball like you see all over the neighborhood. How could I have had the hots for such a cowardly man? Our little girl was albino. To think that I carried her in my belly for nine months without knowing it. For a moment I felt a disgust in my throat when I saw her. Then I squeezed her hard, very hard, in my arms. She was so fragile. That night, the rain that had been falling for a week on Punta Negra had stopped, and since dawn, my daughter’s life had been hanging on the will of a disjointed couple. Her destiny and my curse were engraved in the colorless sky. I heard her breathe, eager for this new life. Démokoussé saw her twice. At her birth and at her death. “Here,” he said, “is a daughter that I’ll have trouble marrying off and who is going to poison my existence. This child cannot be mine.” Orisha was sleeping in her cradle.That’s what I called her. Orisha, like a fallen Yoruba god. Her diaphanous skin was a mirror spotted with a multitude of droplets, dark tears from her innermost depths. Upon seeing these blotches, my heart went cold. Nothing could warm me again. I imagined that she would be an isolated little girl, not playing ndzango,1 obediently living through teenage, then an adult, a curvaceous woman 1. Ndzango: a game played by girls in Congo. 71 makhélé 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 [72], (38 Lines: 59 ——— 0.0pt P ——— Normal P PgEnds: T [72], (38 rejected by everyone, giving herself to anybody who happens by so she can feel she exists: taken, thrown away...

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