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.

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.

“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

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

“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,”

Her body was full of other bodies. Every wajinru who had ever lived possessed her in this moment. They gnashed, they clawed, desperate to speak. Yetu channeled their memories, sore and shaking as she brought them to the surface.

At first, struggle and breathlessness. Then an uncomfortable stillness, like being wrapped in layers of kelp, too disoriented to break free. The waters suffocated them.

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

“Remember now or perish. Without your history, you are empty.” Yetu told them. “Everyone, shout this person’s name so they remember!”

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

HISTORY WAS EVERYTHING. YETU KNEW that. But it wasn’t kind.

“Such madness does exist,” Yetu said, dizzy, her words gobbled up by the eddy she was whirring. “You all made me this way. I carry the burden of remembering so you don’t have to. So acknowledge it, then! That it’s a burden!”