“If I look like you, white like milk, you would help me,” you overhear the old woman mumbling in an accent you are unfamiliar with. “God is watching you, sah.”
The white man unlucky enough to receive the old woman’s shame turns red and scatters like a cockroach. You glance at the old woman without looking at her because you don’t want to be on the receiving end of her shame. She holds a shopping catalog in her right hand and a black Sharpie in her left. There’s an empty cart beside her. A white woman passes her, and the old woman tries to flag her down, but the white woman sidesteps her and dismisses her with her hand, as though swatting away a fly.
“I don’t have change,” she snaps. The white woman bumps into you as she leaves the aisle and doesn’t apologise. You hear the old woman say something in a foreign language made of clicks and soft ‘l’ sounds, and then you hear a smaller voice in English.
“Gogo, let’s go.” You notice the little girl behind the old woman. You didn’t see her the first time you glanced at the old woman, but she’s dressed in an oversized dress and flip flops. Her short braids are beaded strategically at the ends: pink beads on top, followed by clear beads, and white beads to close out the pattern. The little girl tugs at her grandmother’s shawl. You take a closer look at the grandmother and realise she isn’t wearing a shawl, but a zambiya, something you haven’t seen in almost three decades. Her zambiya is bright yellow with orange and red patterns. She wears a T-shirt over her zambiya, and on her feet, your eyes widen at this, she wears stompies! You haven’t seen those shoes since you were a child back in Harare. Everyone wore those morning slippers back in the suburbs. Buried memories begin to flood your brain but you’re interrupted by the old woman asking someone else for help.
“’xcuse me, sah, may I ask for help?” she says to an Indian man and this time, you recognise her accent. You missed it the first time because you haven’t heard it in so long. You’re almost positive she’s from Zim. There are usually a lot of Zimbabweans on this side of the city. Well, back when you lived on this side of the city, there used to be. You’re not so sure anymore. The Indian man gives the old woman a sympathetic smile in return but keeps walking. Against your better judgment, you look at the old woman and your eyes meet. It’s too late to look away now, so you walk over and smile.
“Hi, can I help you?” You ask slowly. The old woman looks at you, like really looks at you. Her eyes study you and you regret coming over. You were never good at minding your own business.
“Are you,” her wrinkled finger points at you, “like me? We the same?” she asks in broken English. You’re not sure what she means by that, so you shake your head. “You like me,” she insists, and you shake your head again. The old woman pulls out a necklace from underneath her T-shirt and points at the Africa pendant. “You from here.” You notice that she tells you you’re from Africa. You almost nod but then think twice. Are you? You hadn’t been back to your home country in almost thirty years. You barely spoke your language. You considered yourself American now. Not African-American because your father refused to be associated with them, no matter how much you told him, “Baba, Black is Black in America. Bullets can’t tell if you’re African or not.” In the end, you shake your head, and the old woman shakes her head, too; albeit her head shake carries an undertone of that elderly disappointment. You don’t know why you feel ashamed by her disapproval. It’s like, back when you were a child and you’d done something bad, instead of your mom hitting you with a stick, she’d say she was disappointed in you, and somehow, that was worse than a beating.
The old woman brings out the little girl from behind her and says something in a language you still don’t understand. You hear the clicks again and from her necklace, you one hundred percent know she’s African. Maybe she’s South African. You remember they spoke Xhosa there. Or is it Zulu? The little girl nods shyly and looks at you.
“My grandmother is asking if you’re from Zimbabwe,” she says quietly in fluent English. Her accent is thick, and you recognise it. You used to have it. Now it only exists in home videos shot on an old Sony camera.
“I moved from Zimbabwe to New Haven a long, long time ago,” you say. “So, I guess I used to be from Zim. I’m from here now.”
The little girl translates to her grandmother. To your surprise, the old woman ululates and dances in a circle inside Walmart. You feel embarrassed because everyone is looking at you and even though you look nothing alike, to white people, you all look the same, so by association, everyone in the aisle thinks you’re family. You want to distance yourself from them but then you notice the little girl hiding, doing the same thing you want to do. Your shame doubles because why are you feeling embarrassed as a grown woman?
“Gogo, stop! Mama said not to do that anymore,” the little girl whispers. Gogo doesn’t listen. Instead, she cups her hands and claps them in front of you, then she raises her hands towards the ceiling, ululates one more time and says in English: “God resides inside a Warumart. God is good.”
The old woman speaks to you in a foreign language. This time you understand her because your parents used to speak to you in Shona until they stopped when your second grade English teacher told them you couldn’t read or write in English, and if your parents didn’t find you a tutor soon, you’d be held back. You were already a grade behind your age mates. Your parents didn’t know English then, so they’d record conversations and play them for your Auntie who’d translate for them. Your Auntie enrolled you in English Second Language classes after school, and as you learned to repress your tongue, you taught your parents in return. Even though you understand what the old woman is saying, you don’t know how to reply in Shona, so you turn to the girl.
“Can you tell her I don’t speak Shona?” You feel bad for her. This little girl who used to be like you. With the way they’re dressed, you’re almost positive they recently immigrated to the States. Your mom used to walk out of the house in her zambiya and pata patas and doeks. She used to go to the grocery shops wearing clothes she’d wear while back in Zim, confused by the American aisles, mesmerised by the amount of food in stock, disgusted by the cats and dogs allowed in stores, annoyed she couldn’t find Zimbabwean food anywhere. Then as you grew older, attended very white liberal schools thanks to your Auntie’s zip code and connections, you began to feel ashamed to have your mother come pick you up in her zambiyas and doeks and pata patas and you asked her to wait for you at the bus stop instead. You also asked her to stop packing sadza and matemba or bread and meat with chomolia and instead asked her to make you ham and cheese sandwiches or kale salads. You hated the bland taste of ham and cheese, and kale tasted worse than dog shit, but you were tired of your classmates always asking you why you ate weird food. One night, you overhead your mother complaining to your father that Maita was changing, and she didn’t like it. At first you didn’t know she was talking about you because you no longer went by Maita; everyone called you May. Your father, tired from a long day of work, grumbled something incoherent and minutes later, snores filled the basement room you shared with them. Your mother prayed all night that night, begging America to not swallow her child.
The little girl translates for her grandmother and the old woman looks as if she’s been slapped.
“You don’t speak? But why? Why?”
You shrug. At this point you want to leave the store altogether. You only came here to pick up packs of water for your firm’s end of autumn party. The partners wanted a specific brand of water, and it was either driving down here or driving all the way to Springfield. Otherwise, you’d have never come to this Walmart. You haven’t been back here since that incident. But something roots you where you stand. It’s as if the soles of your heels grew roots and they extended deep into the Walmart floor. The little girl tells you they’re looking for the rollback section so they can get the things on sale in the catalog. You reach for the catalog, and you see that it’s an old clipping from three years ago and it’s no wonder they can’t find anything on there. You look at the things they’ve circled. A plasma TV, a twelve-piece pot set, an American Girl doll, an eight-piece bed set, more pots. You tell them these items are probably in store, but they might cost more than what’s in the catalog. The little girl’s face falls before she translates to her grandmother, and you feel bad. This little girl looks around the same age you were back then. When you became fluent in English after a year of classes, you became your parents’ parent. You did everything for them. You kept up with their immigration paperwork to make sure you were all in status, you kept up with their phone bills, you kept up with their doctor’s appointments and made sure they understood what the doctors were saying (even though your parents complained that Americans made you go to the hospital for the littlest things, just for them to tell you to get a good night’s sleep then proceed to charge you an arm and a leg). You were only nine then and somewhere along the way, you no longer felt like a child.
Instead of leaving the little girl and the old woman, you reach for the cart and tell them you’ll help them shop for what they need. You tell them they also need to buy some winter clothes because it is October now and winter is coming very soon. New England winters are brutal, and no immigrant forgets their first snow. The old woman folds the catalog and places it inside her shirt. You hope the catalog wasn’t in there to begin with. Before your father started making money, before he got your mom wallets and purses, she, too, used to keep her money inside her bra. You think back to the incident that happened decades ago. It was your tenth birthday. You’d been in the States for about three years now. You were fluent in English but not in racism. Not yet. It took you an additional three years to understand why your English teachers kept making you rewrite your essays, kept making you retake your English AP tests. They couldn’t believe an African could be so good at English. Who taught her these big words? Someone’s doing her homework. How did she score higher than Betty Smith? Her parents can’t even speak proper English. Your parents were probably more fluent than you at ten, but they never associated themselves with African-Americans, so to them, no one could be racist towards Africans. Because in Africa, you were everything but Black. You were Shona if you went by tribes, you were Zimbabwean if you went by nationality, you were Shumba or MaSibanda if you went by totems, and lastly, you were African. Southern African if you wanted to be specific. If you were fluent in racism by ten, you might have been able to help your mother when the incident happened.
The old woman still speaks to you in Shona. She asks how old you are, and you say you just turned thirty-five. The old woman asks you what you do for work, and you almost tell her you’re about to make partner at your law firm, but you doubt the little girl can translate that, so you just say you’re a lawyer. The old woman nods approvingly, and you feel warm deep down. You don’t know why this old woman makes you feel like a little girl again. Maybe because she reminds you of your own Gogo whom you haven’t seen since you left, and even though your parents never told you, you’re sure she’s dead. You tell the old woman and the little girl that you went to Howard for your Bachelors and Yale for your law degree. The old woman says something to the little girl in what you know remember as Ndebele. The little girl rolls her eyes, and you don’t need to understand Ndebele to know that the old woman told her she, too, should be a lawyer. Unconsciously, you laugh. The little girl laughs, too, and the old woman looks at you.
“I knew you speak my language,” she says in English. Then she switches to Shona and your worlds are once again divided. You don’t reply and instead ask them when they came to America. The little girl tells you her mother won the Diversity Visa, and she brought her and her grandmother to Connecticut as dependents. You ask her about her dad and the girl doesn’t reply so you drop the subject. You were right that they’d just immigrated recently. They’ve barely been here for eight months. A part of you wants to give them tips on how to survive America, so they don’t get swallowed like you did, but you’re just a stranger to them. You look at the little girl’s braids with the beads and you know if you go visit your parents, there’ll be a picture of you with similar braids. When you got to high school, you told your mom to stop plaiting your hair in mabhanzi or Sangita twists or box braids and asked her if she’d install wigs and weaves for you. You asked her to relax your hair because whenever you went to Susan’s house for sleepovers with the girls, and you each tried to braid each other’s hair, all the girls would ask why your hair was so greasy and how you even walked around with all that grease. They said boys wouldn’t want to kiss you and because you were young and wanted to lose your first kiss since everyone had lost theirs, you asked your mom to straighten your hair and use less oils. You did your big chop when you were a freshman in college. A lot of things changed for you once you got to college. For one, you joined Howard’s Black Student Organization and for the first time since you left Zim, you were surrounded by Black people again. Although majority of them were born in the States, you took it as a win because throughout middle and high school, you were always the only one. At your first college party, you went with a few girls from your club and after a couple of drinks, you told them about what happened to your mom when you were ten inside Walmart.
It was your tenth birthday, and you wanted a new dress for your party. You’d worked hard on your tests and gotten all As, so your father gave your mother some money to go buy you a new dress. Your mom put the money inside her bra and you both took the bus to Walmart. Your mom no longer wore zambiyas outside the house, but that day, all her nice skirts were drying so she wore her tamest zambiya, it looked more like a sarong, so you didn’t feel embarrassed. Other people wore sarongs all the time. You spent almost thirty minutes looking at dresses, comparing colours and prices. Because you were ten, you didn’t know why a shop worker kept following you and your mom around. Other people were looking at dresses, too, but no one followed them. When you and your mom found the perfect pink dress with the right amount of frills and sparkles and ribbons, you squealed with excitement. You mom said it was a little outside your budget but because you’d gotten all As, she’d top up with her own money. You never did ask her where she got the money because your mom was a housewife. You headed to the dressing room with your mom, but the shop worker stopped by the entrance and told you you couldn’t go in. Because you were ten, your mom asked why. She still had her Zimbabwean accent, but she knew enough English to hold a conversation. The shop worker told you the dressing rooms were closed, but you saw two people going in to try on clothes. As the shop worker stood between you and the dressing room, someone stepped out holding a bunch of clothes and your mom said a room was free because that lady just stepped out. The shop worker shook his head again and said you couldn’t go in.
You were ten so you didn’t know it was called racism; you just knew people who didn’t look like you could try on clothes. Your mom noticed, too, because she took out money from her bra and said they had money to buy the dress, said they weren’t thieves. The shop worker stared at the money in disgust and told her they didn’t accept dirty money. Your mother was confused, and she turned to you and spoke in Shona. The shop worker said this is America, and in America we speak English. The shop worker said they had a shoplifting policy and if you didn’t leave, they’d call the police. You stared at the shop worker and at the time, you thought he was an adult, younger than your mother but much, much older than you. When you were older, you realised he was just a measly teenager. Your mother sucked in her teeth, threw the dress at the shop worker and insulted him in Shona. As you both left the store, no one offered you sympathy or empathy. Instead, they parted ways for you to leave. You swore you heard everyone release a collective sigh of relief as you exited Walmart. Your mother told you to never come back here again and you never talked about this incident. Your mother never told your father either. She ended up sewing you the dress you’d wanted from Walmart, and it was a better version, anyways.
“What’s your name?” You ask the little girl.
“Gugulethu,” she says.
“That’s a pretty name,” you say. “You should never change it, okay?”
She nods. “What’s your name?”
You pick up three American Girl Dolls. You make sure to get the Black ones. You put them in the cart, alongside everything they’d circled in the catalog. You’d also added some winter clothing gear. The old woman watches you as you pull out your wallet and take out money.
“Aiwa, aiwa,” the old woman says. You know this word. No.
You place the money inside the girl’s hands and enclose it in her small fists. You cup her hands and smile at her. “Please accept this, Gugulethu. It’s a welcome to America gift. America can be hard. If you’re not careful, it can swallow you. I hope it doesn’t,” you say, and because you know how America can be, you add, “If America does swallow you, you should swim, not float. I floated for a very long time until water filled my lungs and I almost drowned.” You know Gugulethu doesn’t understand this yet but one day, she will.
Gugulethu shakes her head, her beads beating against each other. “I’m sorry but we can’t take this. My mother would never want to owe you—”
You place your wallet back in your bag. “It’s a gift. I insist. You know it’s rude to say no to elders in our culture, right?” Gugulethu gives a small smile and nods. “And my name is Maita.”
Rutendo Chidzodzo
is a Zimbabwean Afrosurrealist writer with roots all over. She graduated with a BA in Creative Writing and Film Studies in Iowa and received the 2020 Ladies’ Literary Club award and the Paul Engle Memorial Prize for Creative Writing. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Fiction at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she is the recipient of Ocean Vuong’s Rose Fellowship. Tin House Workshop, REAL Fellowship, the Voodonauts Workshop amongst others have supported her work. Rutendo is currently working on a short story collection that explores the lives of Zimbabwean immigrants across the diaspora.
