The Deep

by Rivers Solomon

Given her sensitivity, no one should have been surprised that the rememberings affected Yetu more deeply than previous historians, but then everything surprised wajinru. Their memories faded after weeks or months—if not through wajinru biological predisposition for forgetfulness, then through sheer force of will. Those cursed with more intact long-term recollection learned how to forget, how to throw themselves into the moment. Only the historian was allowed to remember.

“We grow anxious and restless without you, my child. One can only go for so long without asking who am I? Where do I come from? What does all this mean? What is being? What came before me, and what might come after? Without answers, there is only a hole, a hole where a history should be that takes the shape of an endless longing. We are cavities. You don’t know what it’s like, blessed with the rememberings as you are,” said Amaba.

The ocean pulsated. The water moved, animated. The meaning behind their name, wajinru, chorus of the deep, was clear.

That was all remembering was. Prodding them lest they try to move on from things that should not be moved on from. Forgetting was not the same as healing.

Even with the rush of movement of their in-sync bodies, she could feel unique flourishes in each person. They each had a signature.

The Remembrance had officially begun, but she hadn’t gotten to the actual remembering part. This was the preparation. Stretching their bodies so they could be open to the truth.

Yetu felt Amaba’s body cease to struggle and go limp, then someone else’s, then yet someone else’s, until every wajinru sunk together to the bottom of the womb, mimicking the falling bodies of the first mothers, just as Yetu intended. “Remember,” she said. This was their story. This was where they began. Drowning.

The rememberings had stolen Yetu away. Who might she have been had she not spent the better part of her life in the minds of others?

“I’m here! I’m alive!” said Ayel, surprised by her own existence.

Babies of all kinds are always wanting more: more touch, more food, more answers, more kindness, more world, more sea, more newness, more knowledge.

“Do not follow me, strange fish. Savior. We must each be where we belong.” “What is belonging?” we ask. She says, “Where loneliness ends.”

We plunge through the cold, through the darkness. The deep will be our sibling, our parent, our relief from endless solitude.

And yet we, the maker of all this, want more and more and more. We are collectors, and a collection is never complete.

As Yetu drifted in the tidal pool toward sleep, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had cursed them. After all, when she held the rememberings, only one wajinru suffered. In the aftermath of her leaving, all of them did. All but Yetu. That wasn’t right, but neither was the alternative. She didn’t deserve to die, did she?

“Well, kinship isn’t inherently a good thing,” said Yetu, beginning to understand Oori more and more. Perhaps for Oori, kinship meant taking care of a mother who’d hurt her. For Yetu, it had meant isolation from her people as she tried to cope with the rememberings.

She inhaled sharply through her nose and blew it out through her mouth, the resultant sound whistly and shrill. It was anger. More specifically, resentment. She’d always done what she’d needed to do in service of her people, no matter the cost to herself. To preserve her own life, she’d fled, but now they needed her again, and there she was, willing to sacrifice herself for their benefit.

With Oori, she always wanted more, desperate for time together, for conversation, for closeness. The depth of want seemed endless.

At least with pain there was life, a chance at change and redemption.

Wanting the world to exist, to be more than just a place with a history no one would ever know.

Who each of them was mattered as much as who all of them were together.

“We must save one another,” said Yetu.

This is as much a part of their politics as was the science-fiction story of Drexciya—the rave, the block party, the live concert… they are all approaches to utopian world-building.