Inspired by Mrs. Dalloway and Sula, The Days of Afrekete is a tender, surprising novel of two women at midlife who rediscover themselves—and perhaps each other.
Liselle Belmont is having a dinner party. It seems a strange occasion—her husband, Winn, has lost his bid for the state legislature and they're having the key supporters over to thank them for their work. Liselle was never sure about Winn becoming a politician, never sure about the limelight, about the life of fundraising and stump speeches. Now that it's over she is facing new questions: Who are they to each other, after all this? How much of herself has she lost on the way—and was it worth it? Just before the night begins, she hears from an FBI agent, who claims that Winn is corrupt. Is it possible? How will she make it through this dinner party?
Across town, Selena is making her way through the same day, the same way she always does—one foot in front of the other, keeping quiet and focused, trying not to see the terrors all around her. Homelessness, starving children, the very living horrors of history that made America possible: these and other thoughts have made it difficult for her to live a normal life. The only time she was ever really happy was with Liselle back in college. But they've lost touch, so much so that when they run into each other at a drugstore just after Obama is elected president, they barely speak. But as the day wears on, Selena's memories of Liselle begin to shift her path.
Asali Solomon's The Days of Afrekete is a deft, expertly layered, naturally funny, and deeply human examination of two women coming back to themselves at midlife. It is a celebration of our choices and where they take us, the people who change us, and how we can reimagine ourselves even when our lives seem set.
Release date:
October 19, 2021
Publisher:
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Print pages:
208
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Late one April afternoon, Liselle stood at the large kitchen window rubbing her hands together for warmth. Gripping the phone to her ear with her shoulder, she acknowledged that early spring was her least favorite time of year. Letting the idea settle, she felt herself slide down into one of the chairs at the cluttered kitchen island. She had intended to stand and take this call, keep a straight spine and spacious diaphragm, but found she could not.
“Jail, Liselle. They’re gonna put his ass in jail.”
“But, Ma,” she said, half expecting to see a cloud of steam come out of her mouth. It was not cold enough for the heat to kick on, and yet the air inside her 150-year-old home in Northwest Philadelphia felt icy. “Just because the FBI said something doesn’t mean it’s true. What about Martin Luther . . .”
Verity let out an acid whoop of laughter. “You sound insane. Do I need to say that Winn is not Martin Luther King? Shit, these days, Winn up here looking more like J. Edgar—”
“Not funny,” snapped Liselle. She did feel an urge to laugh, but as if she were being tickled by someone bigger who did not love her. She imagined herself in the future, taking a panicked call from her son, Patrice, and resolved to do better than Verity was doing to comfort her, even as she suspected she would fail.
“We don’t even know if he did anything,” Liselle insisted. “Yes, this guy told me they’re going to indict him—but we don’t know what he did, or even what they say he did.”
The daylight was gray and the dark wood fixtures in the house weighed her down. She felt a gentle tugging, which, if she gave into it, would take her briefly out of her body. Her mother’s voice snapped her back.
“Liselle, are you listening to yourself?”
“Ma, look, I . . . I just want to know if you think I should cancel this dinner party.”
“Well, I’m not sure what’s being celebrated. Is it Winn losing the primary—which we always knew he would? Church Williams has held that office so long that you were bucktoothed and skinny when they swore him in.”
“Look, the party is to thank the folks who helped us.” Liselle felt sheepish at her use of “folks.” She had no memory of saying the word before Winn decided to run for office.
“Oh, the folks,” Verity said, on cue. “Did you invite the folks who are gonna get him locked up? Because somebody was talking to somebody, right?”
Liselle hadn’t even considered that she and Winn were potentially about to host an FBI informant. Would that person really have had the gall to accept their invitation?
“To the point,” Verity said. “You want to know if you should throw a party to thank these people who had nothing better to do with their money and time than to help you delude yourselves?”
“It wasn’t a delusion,” said Liselle, her cheeks warming. She had used the exact same word, “delusion,” in an argument with Winn early in the campaign, when there had been time to turn back, when she was trying to make him turn back. She was surprised and irritated to find herself defending his—and her—honor. But she persisted, as she often found herself doing when her mother goaded her. “Look, Ma, at one point in the polls—”
Verity laughed. “The polls! Where did he buy those polls? I hope he kept the receipts!”
“Look, can’t you just fucking say if you think I should cancel the party?”
Verity began to breathe.
Since she’d been “on sabbatical” from teaching (an unpaid leave, really), Liselle had taken yoga classes with a frequency that shamed her. She regularly tried out different studios in Mt. Airy and Chestnut Hill during the city’s most productive hours. In her only neighborhood celebrity sighting of Sonia Sanchez, Liselle could not greet her, so galled had she been to be wearing spandex and clutching a BPA-free water bottle with a mat under her arm. But she had learned enough from the classes that listening to Verity’s loud exhalations reminded her of the practice of ujjayi: “triumphantly victorious breath.”
Liselle’s forty-one years of research suggested that no matter how distant, abusive, judgmental, unloving, and useless one’s mother was, one called her when things fell apart. One called one’s mother and told her things no one else knew, even if all she said in response was It is what it is/All I can do is pray for you/Just be glad you have a roof over your head/I told you so, but you wouldn’t listen/Oh, please, he was always like that. You made your choice/You know my money is tied up in this house right now. For weeks, since she’d spoken to the attractive gentleman from the FBI in the coffee shop, Liselle had wanted desperately not to call Verity.
Of course, part of the reason she hadn’t was that she hadn’t even been properly alarmed. It felt almost inconceivable to Liselle that Winn’s political ambition, so sudden and half-hearted, had led him into anything illegal. And yet she had not had the nerve to ask him the truth about what was going on, nor told him what she had heard from the FBI man.
“Liselle”—oh, the singular sound of one’s mother saying one’s name—“I don’t know why you’re suddenly so interested in my opinion. I haven’t seen you do a single thing I’ve suggested since you were seven. As long as Patrice—my poor Patrice—is okay, I don’t care what happens over there. It does not matter if you cancel this fucking dinner party, but maybe you could go back in time and cancel this godforsaken campaign, which was a huge waste of time, money, and tears. Then, after you look into that, you can go ahead and cancel this marriage too.”
Liselle hung up the phone and listened to her heart slamming away in her chest.
A thought reached out and grabbed her. With the same reckless spirit with which she’d hung up on her mother, she dialed another number she was shocked to find she remembered. “Is Selena there?” Then she left her name, number, and a one-word message, hanging up before the person who’d answered the phone could ask her about it.