The Deep

by Rivers Solomon

The rememberings were always drawing her backward into the ancestors’ memories—that was what they were supposed to do—but not at the expense of her life.

She needed frequent reminders she was more than a vessel for the ancestors’ memories. She wouldn’t let herself disappear.

Only the historian was allowed to remember.

If Yetu died doing something reckless and the wajinru were not able to recover her body, the next historian would not be able to harvest the ancestors’ rememberings from Yetu’s mind. Bits of the History could be salvaged from the shark’s body, assuming they found it, but it was an incredible risk, and no doubt whole sections would be lost.

A historian’s role was to carry the memories so other wajinru wouldn’t have to. Then, when the time came, she’d share them freely until they got their fill of knowing.

Remembrance. “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 meaning behind their name, wajinru, chorus of the deep, was clear.

bits of the past absorbed into them and transformed into instincts.

Years of living with the memories of the dead had taken their toll, occupying as much of her mind and body as her own self did.

sometimes I just have no desire to honor your questions with a response.”

Her patience was waning. She could only be the good daughter, the compliant wajinru, and the dutiful historian in short bursts. After a time, the constant conversation and stimulation wore her patience down. She was becoming a sharp edge.

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.

“Our mothers were pregnant two-legs thrown overboard while crossing the ocean on slave ships. We were born breathing water as we did in the womb. We built our home on the seafloor, unaware of the two-legged surface dwellers,”

Every wajinru who had ever lived possessed her in this moment.

Oh, was this pain real? It didn’t even belong to her. Was there anything about her that wasn’t a performance for others’ gratification?

This was their story. This was where they began. Drowning.

when they’d learned and internalized all they could, they would give the History back to Yetu, their historian, who would keep it for them while they lived out their days in blissful ignorance.

These were her people, her extended kin, but they were also death itself.

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

When with our pod of skalu, we only hummed—long, low howls that filled the depths so we might find one another.

It’s difficult to achieve at first, but after a time, we try to copy the land creature’s noises and make them our own.

“What is belonging?” we ask. She says, “Where loneliness ends.”

“No. I am who I am now. Before, I was no one. When you’re everyone in the past, and when you’re for everyone in the present, you’re no one. Nobody. You don’t exist. I didn’t exist. If you prefer a world where I don’t exist, then stop bringing me fish.”

Yetu smelled the coming rain in the air.

She imagined it like gutting an animal. The sky was the belly. Something sharp would come along and slit it open till all its contents spilled out and filled the sea, nourished it.

What does it matter where any place is, unless you are trying to return to it? It’d do you well not to think of here at all. You’re trying to find yourself, aren’t you? To do that you must go. Thinking of this place will only hold you back,”

Pain is energy. It lights us. This is the most basic premise of our life. Hunger makes us eat. Tiredness causes us to sleep. Pain makes us avenge.

“When I think about the rememberings I’ve had, I believe this to be the case. I remember the womb from the first wajinru. I remember the ocean teaching us to breathe water. Once we were born, it would’ve been too late, but in the womb, it came to us naturally. That is why it changed us then.”

“Didn’t you know the ocean grants wishes?” asked Yetu.

she was breathing underwater, just as she’d breathed in the womb.

pregnant America-bound African slaves were thrown overboard by the thousands during labor for being sick and disruptive cargo. Is it possible that they could have given birth at sea to babies that never needed air? Are Drexciyans water-breathing, aquatically mutated descendants of those unfortunate victims of human greed? Have they been spared by God to teach us or terrorize us?