How Beautiful We Were

by Imbolo Mbue

life gifts easy peace only to the very young and very old.

much of the suffering in the world was because of those who had forgotten that they too were once children.

Every morning I ask the Spirit to grant me reasons to be grateful.

I hope he’ll soon be happy, but I’ve spent enough time around grieving parents to know that happiness is no goal of theirs; seeing flickers of light in the darkness that surrounds them will suffice.

My mother always cautioned me against dwelling on the past and the future. What happened will never unhappen, she liked to say; what is to happen will happen—better you focus on what’s happening in front of you.

This story must be told, it might not feel good to all ears, it gives our mouths no joy to say it, but our story cannot be left untold.

Like every woman who has lost a husband before me, like every woman who will lose a husband after me, I am doomed to aloneness. My days of being cuddled and fondled have come and gone.

opened my eyes to see that Yaya was no longer Yaya, just a breathing object awaiting death.

wish I didn’t detest my husband for dooming me to a life of being solely responsible for a broken girl and a lost boy and an old woman, all of them laying upon my back their anger and grief, with no one to bear mine but me,

“The thing where you all dance and take me to his hut, he climbs on me, I give him children, he dies, the children grow up and have their own lives, and I’m free again.”

We did not think we would have any tears left by the time we got to Jakani and Sakani’s coffin, but that day we learned that within us lies an ocean.

One of us was going to soar, and someday we’d all soar because of her. Our fathers and grandfathers took turns pulling Thula aside to tell her what she needed to know about life in America, intelligence

Oh, dear husband, I fear that, like you, Thula walks around consumed by all the ways the world has failed to protect its children.

days might be long, but years were seldom slow.

Come out the twins finally did, holding hands.

I think being born to parents from two different parts of the world made him a man from somewhere and elsewhere but sadly from nowhere.

“Fathers—doesn’t our pain begin and end with them?”