He lives in Oakland, and that's fine too. He still can be as Zimbabwean as he wants there, and attend Berkeley City College, work two jobs, one at a bookstore, another at a grocery store. But he's prepared to do anything else--landscaping, construction. All those are good things. He is Zimbabwean, and he sends money home. Perhaps when he finishes his studies at the community college, his undeclared major which he thinks can turn out to be Computer Science or English Literature, he will still be a Zimbabwean and that will continue to be fine. So what's the matter now?
He burns the meat when he barbecues, and Zimbabweans are beginning to talk. Some now prefer to call him when the meat is almost done; they need him at the gathering, there is no disputing that fact, but to allow him to barbecue would be a crime. He doesn't invite them to his home, they don't know where he lives, but like all the other Zimbabweans who should gather once in a while, sometimes every weekend, he needs to be there too.
At first that bothered him, this rumor that he burned meat. Because before the younger crews began to arrive, the ones driven by the bad economy back home, he used to be one of two Zimbabwean men in Oakland, so they had no choice but to count on him to be the barbecue man. The other man was much older, a veteran immigrant who could not waste his time smelling like smoke. Back then, when he escaped from his marriage to an African American woman who promised him every other day that she would cut his thing, he would be the one asked by the host woman to barbecue.
He burns the meat when he barbecues, and Zimbabweans are beginning to talk. Some now prefer to call him when the meat is almost done; they need him at the gathering, there is no disputing that fact, but to allow him to barbecue would be a crime. He doesn't invite them to his home, they don't know where he lives, but like all the other Zimbabweans who should gather once in a while, sometimes every weekend, he needs to be there too.
At first that bothered him, this rumor that he burned meat. Because before the younger crews began to arrive, the ones driven by the bad economy back home, he used to be one of two Zimbabwean men in Oakland, so they had no choice but to count on him to be the barbecue man. The other man was much older, a veteran immigrant who could not waste his time smelling like smoke. Back then, when he escaped from his marriage to an African American woman who promised him every other day that she would cut his thing, he would be the one asked by the host woman to barbecue.
He's a Zimbabwean, forever will be.
And all around, he knows there is much he could do, to change what he has been, and who he could become.
1 comment:
This is a good start on an interesting theme. I like the idea of one's identity wrapped up in cooking, especially the meat. Cooking the meat seems to mean something more than, well, cooking the meat.
What happens if he becomes a vegetarian? Will he still be interested in cooking the meat? Perhaps he already is a vegetarian, which may explain why he burned the meat when he did cook it. Since he wasn't going to eat it his interest in making sure it was prepared correctly was sufficiently low.
What started with a clear voice in the first two paragraphs seemed to fade by the end of the third paragraph. The voice was gone, particularly at the point where the African American wife was mentioned. Something shifted right there, as though the mention of the marriage and its demise caused the narrator to shift emotion.
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