Magnolia Trees

By Kethia Embelo Ngeleza

Butu ata ewumeli, suka suka tongo eko tana.

The screeching sounds of the Amtrak train rolling into the platform at Penn Station startled Sylvia awake. She checked her watch, looking down at the brown leather strap that left deep red marks on her wrist every time she wore it; it was 5:15 am, fifteen minutes past the time her ticket said they would arrive in New York.

She had left DC’s Union Station a little after midnight, falling asleep in her chair immediately after boarding the train. The wedding activities of the weekend had exhausted her. From parties to dinners, she had spent the weekend performing a balancing act between making sure everything was perfect for her sister and dodging invasive questions from aunties and uncles. Her sister spent her time sitting at the head table with her new husband. Sylvia would make gagging noises every time she walked by. Watching the newlyweds stare longingly into each other’s eyes as she dealt with the unreliable catering team and complained to the wedding planner about the venue’s leaky bathroom pipes. Her mother had advised her to stick to three topics of conversation throughout the weekend: How happy Sylvia was for her sister, how well her course at NYU was going, and how she was preparing for a husband of her own.

“Searching seems desperate; no one will send a good son towards a desperate woman. Preparing, however, gives the illusion that you’re soon to be ready.”

Sylvia stuck to her three allocated topics and served both her sister and her guests, spending the weekend as both a Maid of Honor and Housemaid. By Sunday night, every time someone spoke to her in Lingala, her responses would be short and limited. Near the end of the night, one of the catering team members asked her a question in English.

Sylvia’s eyes brimmed with tears as she responded, “Yes, the plantains need to be refiled on the hour. Everyone can’t get enough of them.”

She could no longer answer any questions about NYU or her scholarship, nor could she explain in detail how she planned to earn money with a degree in history. Once the last plate of cake was served on Sunday night, the last round of festivities was completed. She swiftly kissed her mother and sister goodbye before heading to Union Station, buying a ticket for the next Amtrak to New York, and finally taking a deep breath.

Joseph had been driving around all night. After putting his daughter, Dalia, to sleep and having a cup of coffee with his wife, Esther. He left his tiny one-bedroom apartment in East New York and drove to Penn Station around 9 pm. He rolled into his black Toyota Corolla and opened up the Uber app. Sunday nights offered him the smooth consistency of Saturday’s customers without the rowdiness that Saturday night brings. Most of his passengers were returning from their weekend trips to Montauk, Connecticut, or Upstate New York. Too tired from travel to face the frenzied subway, they opted to call an Uber. Joseph’s Sunday passengers usually sat quietly in his backseat, dozing off, only raising their heads to look out the window and see how close they were to their final destinations. Sunday’s passengers were more generous and so relieved to arrive home after an exhausting weekend that they were more likely to leave a $5 tip.

The ringing sound on Joseph’s phone startled him awake. He raised his head from the headrest, holding onto the button to move his seat back up to its normal position. His eyes slowly adjusted to the scene around him; it was now 5 am he had been driving all night. His car sat parked across the street from the enormous Penn Station. He peered out of his windshield to stare at the tall building; even under the cover of nighttime, it cast an enormous shadow over the street.

When Joseph first arrived in New York, he marveled at the scale of the building before even setting foot in it. The first time he took the train there, heading to New Jersey to meet a distant cousin who had been living in the USA for a while. He walked through the entire station as he waited for his platform number to be announced. Counting the number of mini-marts, fast food places, and stores inside Joseph swore to visit every single one before he moved back to Kinshasa. He went around, aimlessly wandering through the different shops. For breakfast, he got a drink at one place, a bacon, egg, and cheese at another, and finally, for dessert, a small pastry at a bakery at the far end of the station. There was nothing like this in Kinshasa; transportation was a nightmare, you could barely move around the city, let alone the country. Joseph counted Penn Station as one of the great wonders of America. Every time Joseph stumbled across one of these wonders, he would pull out a crumbled-up Post-it note he kept in his wallet, jotting down the name and location. The list grew and shrank over time.

When Dalia was born, Joseph and his wife spent five days in the hospital. They accepted everything that was offered: genetic testing panels, private rooms, and even the newborn photography package. Their first child had been stillborn in Kinshasa, and they were elated to have their second child at an American Hospital. Six weeks later, Joseph had received their hospital bill in the mail. Joseph stood over the kitchen stove as he peeled the white envelope open. He was cooking while Esther and the baby rested. His oily fingers left orange stains on the corner of the paper as he unfolded it. His entire body stood still as he read the bold black number at the top. Dalia started crying, and Joseph could hear Esther rush out of bed to tend to her. He walked over to the dining table and dropped the paper onto it. Reading the number over and over again. Before falling back into the chair with a big thud. He did calculations in his head. None of the numbers added up in a way that made sense to him. He looked over to the bedroom door, hearing Esther’s soft singing as she tried to calm Dalia. The smell of burnt cassava leaves filled the room. Crumpling up the paper in his hand, he shoved it into his pocket before pulling the Post-it note out of his wallet. Smoothing it out on the table, he grabbed a black pen and scribbled out the latest entry to his list.

American Hospitals.

Sylvia approached the black Toyota Corolla and looked down at her bright phone screen. Matching the license plate number to the one on her phone, she headed around to the passenger door. Joseph Nkulu, a Mongo name.

She spent her last spring break in Houston, Texas. Between rodeo shows, museums, and park dates, every Congolese person she came across was Mongo. The man who ran a small Congolese shop on the corner of 125th and Fredrick Douglas Boulevard was Mongo. The woman who braided her hair was a Mongo.

Her mom insisted on a tribal hierarchy that was carefully explained to Sylvia at a young age. The Tetela people were always at the top. Lumumba was a Tetela; her mother was one too. The list would then progress; the lower the tribe, the farther they lived from Kinshasa. It was a miracle her parents ended up together. Her father was from Bukavu, the farthest point possible in Congo from Kinshasa; he spoke Swahili as his native tongue. Mongo’s were somewhere in the middle; they were numerous and large, and they spoke the real Lingala. Anytime Sylvia met a new Congolese person, she made sure to ask what tribe they were from. Her mother would always ask.

If Sylvia replied with “Mongo,” her mother would shrug and let her get on with the story.

Joseph turned around, leaning over the driver’s seat to get a look at the girl entering his car. As she entered, the scent of palm oil and shea butter greeted him. Sylvia was tall, and she got into the car awkwardly, moving around to make space for her long legs. She had dark brown skin, a sharp face, and hair braided back, pulling her scalp so tightly that her eyebrows looked permanently raised. Her forehead was spotted with raindrops that ran down her face, mixing with her brown makeup to create patchy lines that ended at her chin. She wore a long, sleek black coat that seemed too heavy and warm for spring. Joseph was entranced by her face; he looked her over again and again. She was not necessarily beautiful. He had seen countless girls who looked like her in Kinshasa. Walking along the roads with baskets full of peanuts and unripe plantains on their heads. But she was familiar. Joseph got so distracted gawking at her that he didn’t hear the words coming out of her mouth.

“For Sylvia,” she repeated.

Finally, he responded. Sylvia had sat there quietly as the man observed her face. She was used to this leering; she had grown up under the watchful eyes of her aunts and uncles. Her aunt was the first person to point out to her that she had breasts.

The week before, during health class, Sylvia’s teacher had rolled out the projector, and the squeaking sounds of the projector cart wheels had caught her attention. She hoped they would be watching the Magic School Bus. Following Ms.Frizzle and her class into a new world of adventures. Instead, her teacher stood in front of the class and went on a long tangent about puberty. Sylvia turned her head towards the window to look out onto the school yard. The 7th graders were in PE class. Sylvia watched them run around playing flag football. Their screams traveling through the glass windows. Sylvia caught a few words from the video playing, “Periods,” “Puberty,” and “Safety.” However, she didn’t turn her head back to the screen until the lights came on.

When she got home that evening, her mother was already in the bath. She called Sylvia in to the room, asking her about her day at school while she soaked in the tub. The room smelled like Japanese Cherry Blossoms and Epsom salt. As she spoke, Sylvia studied her body. Her short stature and her breasts that sat on her chest like two rolling mountains. She looked at her stomach, which hung over a forest of hair that sat between her legs.

“What are you looking at, my fololo?”

Sylvia gazed, dropped after her mother had noticed her staring, and she mumbled nothing. Her mother got out of the tub, splashing water onto the floor, and motioned Sylvia to hand her a towel.

Later that night, when Sylvia went to take a shower, she undressed and stared at herself in the mirror. As steam from the hot shower created a misty fog in the bathroom, she stared at her flat chest and long, skinny limbs. Sylvia raised her arms, sniffing under her armpits. She stuck her hands between her legs, feeling the hairless skin. She shrugged. Perhaps puberty would turn her into her mother.

When she was fourteen, small lumps started to grow on her chest. They were never that big, and even today stand as menial mementos to her femininity. Still, the summer she turned 14, her aunt commented on her small, pointed breasts that bounced as she ran,

“Helene, she can’t be outside like that.”

Sylvia overheard her, and since then, every time she entered the bathroom, she would observe herself. Turning left to right, she grabs and feels these controversial lumps on her body.

The next day, she went to the mall with her mother and got her very first bra. This was a trend to continue throughout the rest of her life. The day an uncle complained about her school uniform skirt being too short, she was banished to wearing the unattractive uniform pants until ninth grade. At 16, her aunt messaged her mother on Facebook about a “scandalous Instagram bikini picture” made it so she was forced to wear tankinis the rest of the summer. This observation was not reserved for family alone; any old Congolese person who spotted her in public could share an opinion or critique. Sylvia felt as if she lived in a panopticon of culture, and opted not to share any information unless explicitly asked. Despite all of this, her habits were long and hard-formed; she had spent the weekend greeting and sending off uncles and aunties. Her prison had turned into a glass box, so when she installed herself in Joseph’s backseat, she couldn’t help but say.

“Merci, Tonton.”

Thank you, uncle.

The last time Joseph heard those words, he was at the  N’Djili International Airport. His wife’s family had come to wish them goodbye. As they prepared to head towards security, Esther’s nephew, Emmanuel,  remained attached to her leg. Wailing, the small child wrapped his arms around her thighs, dragging her towards the exit.

“Please auntie don’t leave.”

Joseph cringed at the sound of the child crying. They had left Esther’s mother’s house at 4 am that morning to head to the airport. He was tired, and his head ached; the crying was making it worse. Joseph dug into his pocket, pulling out a $500 bill of Congolese Francs. Approaching the child, he bent down onto his knees, holding the bill in front of him. Emmanuel loosened his grip on Esther’s leg, staring at the money.

Finally, he came towards Joseph, quickly grabbed the bill, and examined it thoroughly.

“Merci, Tonton.”

The expression was a bit formal, but nevertheless made him smile. Joseph turned and looked at Sylvia’s juvenile face, watching her soft hands type on her phone. Joseph figured that he could be, at most, ten years older than the girl.

Joseph would not call anyone less than 15 years his senior “Uncle.” He would reserve “Ya” for his most respectable agemates.

As he pulled the car away from the curb and headed down 8th Avenue, he was transported into a different world. He was now in Kinshasa, driving down the Boulevard Lumumba. Traffic moved slowly as a symphony of car horns honked all around him. Children, street vendors, and beggars moved through the mass traffic, knocking on his car window, asking, and selling. He bought a bundle of Rambutan, spitting the pits out of his window as his car inched along. Joseph looked at Sylvia through his rearview mirror. Watching as she rested her head on the window and closed her eyes. It was Monday morning, and he was used to sleepy customers and silent rides. However, when he looked back and saw his front bumper about to touch the car ahead, he suddenly braked, jolting him and the girl forward. He smiled when he saw her eyes open again.

The car advanced, moving through the gridlocked streets. The pace was tedious but moving, due to the light traffic in the morning. Yet stoplight after stoplight kept the car in a forever lull of push and pull. Joseph drove, and Sylvia watched. The light rain that made shallow puddles on the ground ran down the car windows. Sylvia’s vision was blurred, and through the window screen, the streetlights blended into a rainbow glow that cast into the car. The raindrops made a light thudding sound that echoed into the car, sounding like the soft beats of a Djembe drum. New York City was always breathtaking. After a weekend away, the city shone a bit brighter than it usually did.

It was a point at which she always found herself in contention with her parents; they never liked the crowded streets and the city's high energy. The permanent smell of cigarettes and weed suspended in the air. They hated her apartment; they said it was too small and suffocating for one person, let alone two. Sylvia found it comforting; she never complained that her kitchen and living room occupied the same 350 sq ft space. She didn’t mind that the smell of her roommates’ cooking seeped into her sheets, or when her radiator dripped. New York was a place where people sink or swim.

Her parents would sink here

“Are you new to the city, Uncle?” Sylvia asked in Lingala.

Joseph jumped when he heard her voice; he saw her body jolt and her hands reach for the grab handles after his abrupt braking earlier, so he slowed and glided through the turns smoothly for the rest of the ride. He often glanced through his rearview mirror, looking at her hunched shoulders and pained expression. Her body was turned away from him as she spoke, and she kept her eyes on the window. Looking out to the streets. Yet hearing Lingala sent him into a state of mild euphoria; he hadn’t heard the language come from anyone but his wife in a long time.

Sylvia also flinched at the sound of her own voice. She had spent her entire weekend checking the Amtrak tickets back to New York. Hiding away from her family in bathrooms and closets. All she thought about was returning to New York.

She never spoke Lingala here. When she perused the Congolese markets in Harlem, she adopted an imaginary persona. She told the Mongo man on 125th that she had spent time in Kinshasa on a mission trip, and never been able to shake the craving for authentic Fufu. It was enough to be black, to be American, to be vaguely African. Yet, to be fully Congolese here meant another social obligation, another defining layer that people had to wade through before they reached her core.

But Joseph had a bag of raw peanuts in his passenger seat, which he cracked open with his teeth. He hummed along to the soft sounds of Fally Ipupa and Kofi Olomidé playing on his car radio. It would’ve been bad manners to spend the entire ride in silence.

From there, the two launched into conversation. Sylvia told him she was the child of two Congolese immigrants; she was born in Kinshasa but arrived here quickly after the war. She explained that she came from a long line of Congolese intellectuals and that, in an obscure, distant way, she was related to Lumumba.

Joseph rolled his eyes at that.

“I have only been back to Kinshasa twice. Congo is a beautiful country, but it’s difficult to enjoy the city when it’s so underdeveloped and disorganized. Anyone who calls New York dirty should spend a week there!” Sylvia laughed.

Underdeveloped, disorganized, and dirty. Those were only words that Americans used. A long silence hung in the air as Joseph searched for his response.

“Mwasi ya Amerika,” Joseph shook his head.

They continued to converse, Sylvia switched between Lingala, French, and English with an ease that Joseph envied. It was obvious she was comfortable in all three languages; even when he made complicated jokes in Lingala, she would kiss her teeth, laugh, and reply,

“Yes, that’s America, Uncle.”

Sylvia learned more about Joseph’s life, while, from the outside, Joseph’s story was one often debated about on the 6 o’clock news. One of the immigrants is coming to take low-paying jobs. Relying on the few social systems the United States had and draining its resources. Yet Sylvia’s parents had walked the same path, one of food stamps and church donations. So as he continued to speak, she could do nothing but smile.

He had been an economist in Kinshasa, but was unable to get a job with his Congolese degree in New York. He was enrolled part-time at one of the local universities in Brooklyn, but learning the same material twice was a slow and despairing process. As Joseph spoke about his life, his voice wavered. He no longer made eye contact with her through the rearview mirror. Sylvia listened intently. This was the story of her parents, of her aunts and uncles.

“No one is rich when they first come to America.”

Their conversation dwindled as both retreated back into their minds. Joseph thought about Dalia. Looking back at Sylvia, her face morphed into his daughter’s. Sylvia alternated between looking through the window and sneaking glances at Joseph. She stared at his rough hands gripping the steering wheel and his furrowed brows as he focused on switching lanes safely.

When he first arrived in America, her father painted houses during the day while attending night school. He would always shrug off her questions about this period of his life focusing on after he finished his PHD. She imagines her parents lived two different experiences in this country. They could be organized into two categories: B.C. (before college) and A.C. (after).

In Sylvia’s first semester at NYU, she shared a dorm with Laura, a first-generation Nigerian immigrant. They would spend all night talking about their shared feelings of displacement. Their anger towards their parents. Laura bought two copies of “Half a Yellow Sun” by Chimamanda Ngozi for the girls to read. When Sylvia finished it, she began discussing the book during one of their late-night conversations. Laura began to cry; she had not finished it. She thought reading it would be a homecoming to her Ibo culture, but she was unable to relate to it in many ways.

Through her tears, she admitted shamefully, “I related more to The Bell Jar.”

Joseph’s daughter would grow up feeling the same way, dismembered and strewn across the borders of two countries. Yet during their conversation, when Sylvia mentioned it was difficult for her to choose between Congo and the United States.

Joseph replied, “Why can’t you have both, miss?”

Sylvia’s heart ached as he described his life back home to her. As he spoke about the Congolese church, he had joined. He and his wife went to the Congolese film festival in Harlem every year. He only spoke Lingala to Dalia.

Sylvia still harbored the hatred of a teenager, and at first, she cringed when hearing a story so close to her own. She still wore scars of middle school—one of being ostracized, of being othered. Yet Joseph’s eagerness to continue their conversation affirmed her. She was happy to speak Lingala in a different setting. To show off her cultural knowledge. Joseph didn’t talk to her the way he would to an American; he spoke to her in a relaxed manner. Turning up the car radio and switching from a low hum to full-on singing.

With age, her parents have been increasingly adamant about her participation in their culture. They read and listened to Congolese news more than ever. They organized a big party in DC every year for Congolese Independence Day. They insisted on her sister’s wedding being traditional. There was always an underlying pressure on her siblings to marry a Congolese man.

If immigration leaves a gaping wound, one that’s temporarily relieved with pressure. The pressure to feed and clothe your children and to re-establish your life and career. Once that pressure is released,  and the painful existence of continuing to live outside your culture rips the scabs that have formed off the wound. How do our parents ever heal?

Sylvia’s attention fell into her surroundings. She watched quietly as Joseph parked into the empty spot between two cars, turning his head to look out the back window and smiling at her.

“Alright, mademoiselle, we’re here.”

Joseph opened his car door and ran around to the trunk, popping it open and pulling out Sylvia’s pink suitcase, and pulling it onto the curb. He walked around to her passenger side to open it, leaning down to look into the car. Sylvia’s head was hanging down, her shoulders were shaking, and Joseph could see the tears falling from her cheek and leaving wet spots on her blue jeans.

“Sylvia?”

Hearing her own name made Sylvia’s shoulders shake harder as the tears began to flow quicker and quicker from her eyes. She was frozen. Joseph attempted a few more times to call her name, but to no avail. Her shoulders sank lower and lower until her head was on her knees and her arms touched the dirty car floor.

Abandoning the suitcase, Joseph closed Sylvia’s door and got back into the driver’s seat, looking through his rearview mirror at her. He quickly averted his eyes from the mirror, nervous that she would catch him staring.

He didn’t like crying; he never felt comfortable doing it. The only time his wife had seen him cry was when her mother died. He had spoken to her only a handful of times, as he and his wife had immigrated a few months after they married. In the whirlwind of wedding activities, he had only sat down with her once, when he asked his wife's father for her hand in marriage. Her mother sat quietly throughout the conversation between the two men. Watching and listening. The only time she spoke was after, when she moved to sit next to Joseph, grabbed his hand, whispered a quick prayer under her breath, and then released it, returning to join her husband. Joseph didn’t speak his wife’s native tongue, Swahili, so her prayer fell on deaf ears. Yet he closed his own eyes and intertwined his hands as she spoke.

When his wife’s mother died, and he watched her receive the news over the phone, he cried. And cried and cried. He probably cried more than she did in those first few hours; his wife was so distressed. Her mother had died, and her husband was crying in front of her for the first time in their marriage. She’d spent a few minutes comforting him but quickly the well of tears that fell from his eyes dried up. His head hung low, and he avoided his wife’s eyes. What kind of husband was he? They spent the next few minutes in silence. Joseph wouldn’t look up from the floor. Now they were in this scary country, far from the familiar, and his mother-in-law was dead. The blessings she had set upon them were now broken; what did they have to protect them? No one else had blessed them on their wedding day; his parents were angry about his marriage to his wife. She was from the eastern part of the country, a region associated with an unappealing tribe. They saw their union as a treasonous act against their heritage; they would be of no help now. How would he look his wife in the eyes and tell her they could not scrape enough together for the airfare to attend her mother’s funeral? So he cried, out of shock, shame, exhaustion, and grief. The tears kept coming until they didn’t, and yet even then, individual ones seemed to escape from his eyes during random moments over the next few days. He would catch them in his palms and close his fist around them tightly, digging his nails into his skin.

Sylvia’s tears seemed to come at a frequency too fast for her to catch them in her fists. Joseph looked out the car window, checking for rain; the rain's echoes against the hood of his car deafened him to even the loudest sounds in his backseat. Kissing, arguing, or laughing all became muted noises when the rain fell hard enough. It lulled his passengers to sleep, quelling even the drunkest or the loudest. The rain had stopped, though the sunlight had just started to break, and the sky was a clear orange. Joseph looked back again through the rearview mirror, watching Sylvia’s body hunch over and shake from the tears. He looked away again, fighting the lump that built in his throat.

Sylvia looked out of the window, staring at the lone suitcase on the sidewalk. Early morning joggers and dog walkers maneuvered around it as they went about their business. She looked up at the tall brownstone where she lived in the garden-level apartment with her roommate. She looked straight onto the Magnolia Tree-lined street, watching the shadows the rising sun cast. All of these images were blurry from her tears, yet even in crisis, she was able to take in the city's beauty. Why couldn’t her parents see the same thing, she thought to herself.

Joseph was still completely still. He looked down to check his watch. Clearing his throat loudly, he looked back again. The only sound in the car was Sylvia’s dry heaving. What had he done?

He decided to break the silence, “What’s wrong, mademoiselle?”

He asked the question in English; there seemed to be no space for Lingala anymore. The familiarity that hung in the air had dissipated; there was nothing familiar to him about this situation. Dalia only cried for two reasons: when she was hungry or tired. There was no obscurity in her wailing, rather a checklist Joseph and his wife ran through to soothe her.

What was wrong? Sylvia went to respond, but no words came out. Her lips trembled as she thought about Joseph’s question. When she walked into her apartment, it would be empty; her roommate was already long gone on her way to work. There would be no Rumba playing from the speakers, and the smell of freshly fried beignets would not float through the air. No one would shove a plate of food in her face, forcing her to eat after a long journey. Through her tears, she looked down at her phone, finger hovering over her mother’s number.

Sylvia listened to Joseph’s grievances about his life in America clearly. She had given him advice and sympathy. Yet now with the spotlight turned back to her, she was unable to speak. Every time she tried to calm herself down, she cried even harder. To be othered was to be lonely, yet she continued to remove this aspect from her being, when in fact it encompassed all of her. She wore the same scars as her parents; they were jagged and lumpy. They were not soothed in the same ways: pressure, especially pressure to be specifically one thing. To live one existence that fits perfectly into two worlds had made her retreat into one. Hiding from the other, she had nurtured only one part of her existence.

Sylvia looked back at her phone. Her mother’s contact picture was one of the two of them in Miami last summer. Her mom wore a long linen dress that reached her ankles, and Sylvia wore mini-shorts and a bikini top. Her mother had yelled at her all day to cover up. Bathing suits were for getting into the water, and Sylvia and her had been sitting on the beach all day. Reading books and looking out into the ocean. The next morning, Sylvia woke up with red blisters all over her chest. She never applied sunscreen; she usually didn’t need to. The Florida sun had done a number on her skin, and she spent the morning lying on the hotel bed as her mother rubbed Aloe Vera gel all over her body.

“I must be the first black person ever to get a sunburn.”

“You know it’s your father and my fault. We should’ve taken you to Congo more often when you were a child. If we did, you wouldn’t have this soft American skin.”

Much to her mother’s delight, Sylvia spent the rest of their trip wearing her long linen dresses.

Joseph had circled her block four or five times before Sylvia stopped crying; he kept glancing at the watch on his wrist. This detour meant he wouldn’t get home until 7 am, but he read the signs warning against stalling on the road for too long. Sylvia showed no signs of replying to his questions. On his fifth turn, he slowed down again in front of her apartment, looking to see if the suitcase was still stationed on the street. Someone had pushed it while walking by, and it rolled onto its side. Creating a big blockade on the street. Joseph parked and got out of the car again. Grabbing the suitcase, he carried it up the stairs to her brownstone and left it at the very top. Before running back into the car, he glanced back at his watch, seeing the minutes tick down, he had made his decision. He would ask her to leave. He took his time as he walked back into the car. His wife needed the car to get to work in an hour, but he didn’t rush as he opened the door. By the time he got back in, though, she was calm. Her eyes had dried up, even though there was a red tinge left along the rim. Her nose was clear, and the only remnants of her tears were dry streaks that covered her round cheeks.

“I’m sorry, Uncle, I just really appreciated our conversation. I will let you get home now. Thank you for the ride.”

Joseph stared at Sylvia, blinking.

He began to speak, but could only stutter out an inaudible “okay.”

Before she swiftly exited the car, walking up the stairs to grab her luggage and carry it back down to the door for the garden apartment. Joseph cursed himself for not asking before he moved it. Joseph stayed parked and watched as she fumbled around her bag looking for her keys. After entering the apartment, she looked back at the car, giving him a little wave before closing the door.

“I just really appreciated our conversation.”

Joseph pulled away from the curb, driving towards Linden Boulevard for his final journey home. The air in the car felt thick, and the smell of tears hung in the air. Joseph’s shoulders sagged as he gripped the steering wheel tighter. His breathing became deep and unstable. The space in the car became smaller, and Joseph’s eyes darted around to the exits. Their conversation should’ve taken place in Kinshasa. In his grandmother’s kitchen. Both of them were seeking solace from the loud party in the courtyard. They were not supposed to meet here, but in another place. In another timeline, where Congo was still beautiful. Where the Congo River powered the entire continent, and the farms fed half of the world. Where the mines of the east were still untouched, and the roads were paved. One Dalia could grow up in, and Sylvia could appreciate. Joseph’s driving slowed as he drifted through his imagination. He pulled up to his apartment building. His hands shook as he parallel-parked between two cars. He sat in his car for a moment, silence hanging in the air. Head dropping, Joseph stared at his shaking hands and began to cry.