'A sweet, charming, funny story about finding friendship, finding yourself, and love' Netgalley Reviewer 'I was waiting for a book like this!' Netgalley Reviewer
***INCLUDED IN THE AFRICA CENTER'S ROUND-UP OF 50 NOTABLE AFRICAN BOOKS OF 2021*** ___________________________________
Zainab Sekyi is on a quest to find herself. . .
She's moving to New York City to pursue her lifelong dream to become an illustrator, but she doesn't just want to get a job. She's also on a mission to make enough money to go on a night out, buy a whole bottle of wine (not just a glass) and, most importantly of all, to fall in love.
But as she grows accustomed to the hustle and bustle of city life - with the help of her new roommate Mary Grace, and life-long friend, Densua - she begins to hear the voices of her ancestors in her mind. . .
Could understanding her family's past hold the key to Zainab's future?
A charming romcom about one woman learning to fall in love in one of the most magical cities on earth, Ayesha Harruna Attah's novel is perfect for fans of Uzma Jalaluddin, Kiley Reid and Angela Makholwa. ___________________________________
Readers love Zainab Takes New York. . .
'If you're looking for a cute fun read, here is your next book' Netgalley Reviewer, 5 stars
'This was just the most beautiful book, from it's gorgeous cover to the immersive storyline. I haven't read anything quite as engaging as this in recent years!' Netgalley Reviewer, 5 stars
'Ayesha has a way of writing that makes it hard to put the book down.' Netgalley Reviewer, 5 stars
'This book is filled with so many lessons from incredible characters.' Netgalley Reviewer, 5 stars
‘Doesn’t this city make you feel amorous?’ I said to Mary Grace, who was nosing behind a pickup truck on the FDR.
Hot, heavy air enveloped us, but it didn’t bother me. I was pleased with how I already sounded like a New Yorker. The FDR. I only knew it because it was the highway closest to Densua, my childhood best friend who was already living in New York.
‘Wow, amorous,’ said Mary Grace. ‘A word! I’m supposed to be the writer here. But you are right, enamoured is the way I feel when I come here. One falls in love with the city and in love in the city . . . Or maybe it’s just romantics like us.’
Cool Mary Grace considered herself kin with me? I caught my reflection in the car’s side mirror. My twists were flat from the three-hour trip from New England, and I fluffed them up with my fingers.
It was the middle of 2006. I’d spent the last four years of my life in a sleepy college village, and had lain dormant for most of that experience. But now I felt like I was pushing through an embryonic sac and was being born again in New York City.
‘Pinch me,’ I said out loud. ‘I am actually moving here?’
‘Yes, we’re in New York City, baby!’ Then a beat later, she honked and yelled, ‘Move! Sorry, people don’t know how to drive. He’s from Jersey. No wonder.’
I wanted to point out that Mary Grace’s number plate made her an outsider too, but what did I know? Maybe people from New Jersey were worse drivers than people from Massachusetts?
‘I could never drive here,’ I said. ‘Even back home in Ghana, I was too scared to drive. So yeah, I don’t drive, period.’
‘New York has nothing on cities in the Philippines,’ Mary Grace said. ‘Or even Italy. Drive in Italy, and you can drive anywhere.’
She has lived.
‘Did you say something?’ I asked Mary Grace.
‘Just about driving anywhere . . .’
So what was that I heard? A voice, certainly. A bit different from my own thoughts. Like it had emerged from outside of me, but it must have been wedged very well within my mind, because Mary Grace hadn’t said those words and she wouldn’t talk about her own self in the third person, would she? I cleared my throat and massaged my temple as if that would also clear my head. The heat was getting to me now.
The first time I saw Mary Grace was outside my dorm that very morning, and my first thought was hoping she wouldn’t find me boring. With her pretty round face, big eyes, plump lips and skin almost as dark as mine, she had arrived in a RAV4, deeply dented on both sides, its bumper tacked back on with duct tape. The car was bursting with boxes, and on the roof were two plastic storage bins, their contents a mix of colours, textures and shapes. I didn’t know how my two suitcases would Lego in with all the nyama nyama in the car, but we made it happen. She’d answered my ad on the five-college list serve and told me she was moving to New York, just like me. She went to Smith and I went to Mount Holyoke. She was going to NYU to write; I was going to SVA to draw. It was her red hair or the fact that she owned a car or that she knew how to get to New York; something about all that told me she and I came from very different worlds. But she seemed friendly, and the ride had gone smoothly.
We were whizzing down the FDR, preparing to shed our old skins and lead new lives.
‘Want to change the music?’ said Mary Grace, when traffic thickened and we were forced to slow down. The air in the car grew still. The hair on my arms stuck to my skin. ‘I think we’ve listened to all five discs now.’
She pointed to the back. Her suitcases, boxes, blankets were covered in swirled S’s of her hair. ‘My CD folder is under the seat somewhere.’
I reached back; my fingers grazed furry surfaces, rubbery stringy things, and I tried not to gag at what I could be touching.
She has no home training, said the voice that had intruded earlier.
Those words, I knew them well. Who often said them? Not my mother. But close. The answer was on the tip of my tongue . . .
I finally made contact with what had to be the CD wallet and pulled it out.
And that was when it came to me. My late grandmother, Fati!
When somebody walked past and didn’t greet her, she said they didn’t have home training. Someone came to her house and didn’t eat food she’d offered, they had no home training. If I went to visit and stayed out too long with a cousin, I had no home training. Over the years, she’d found a way of seeping into my thoughts, stopping me from trying what most people went to college to experiment with: sex, drugs and alcohol. But even in those moments when she’d intruded, it was more the lessons she’d shoved down my throat than her voice. This was different. It was as if the real person had woken up in my body and was speaking in my head. If it really was her, what was she doing there? Was it the sultry entry into New York messing with me?
I looked at the fat CD wallet now on my jeans. Mary Grace had stuck all sorts of stickers on it: the iconic bitten apple, Ludacris, Sleater-Kinney, Bob Dylan, Michael Jackson, Kiss, Alanis Morissette, Lauryn Hill. She had the most eclectic taste in music I’d ever seen. The CDs inside the folder were just as varied, and suddenly my armpits itched, as they did any time I got nervous. This felt like a test to see if I was cool or not. I went for Lauryn Hill. She was universal.
‘Good choice,’ said Mary Grace. ‘I’d love to see her in concert.’
‘Me too.’ I was trying to sound normal, but the voice I’d heard was bothering me. What was happening to me?
‘Well, we’re in the right place. I left Northampton one Tuesday evening just because Dave Matthews Band was playing at Madison Square Garden. I had a poli sci test the next day.’
‘I wish I’d been that brave in college,’ I said.
‘My friend, you’re still young, and you’re moving to a place that wants you to go wild. You can finally go wild. If you need help, just call.’
You better not follow this one. She’s dangerous.
And then:
Just because she’s wild doesn’t make her dangerous.
‘OK?’ I said out loud, a long-drawn-out question, more than a reply. Mary Grace didn’t respond. I looked at my reflection again. What was going on? That just felt like two strangers were having a conversation in my head. Why was my mind suddenly so loud? I wiped off the fat beads of sweat from my temple. It had to be the heat or the hunger. That was it! In my excitement at moving to New York, I’d nibbled on a cinnamon bagel and left most of it on my plate. I would just endure the voices till I could get some food.
‘Is it hot or is it just me?’ I said, pulling at my collar.
‘Here, let’s turn on the AC.’
When the air cooled down, I felt slightly better. I was waiting for the voices to come back, but maybe talking to Mary Grace would make them stay away.
‘How come you did poli sci and you’re going to writing school?’ I asked.
‘I did it to please the parents,’ said Mary Grace. ‘Now I can do what I want. Writing fiction. What was your major?’
‘Biology.’
‘Ha. And you’re gonna be an illustrator?’
‘I did my pre-med requirement, but I barely passed. I minored in art and spent more time in the art department than in bio. My mother says, “Your ancestors didn’t suffer all they did for you to end up as a starving artist”, and yet here I am.’
‘Sounds like something mine would say, too. That’s what I like about international students. We get each other. So how did you know you wanted to be an illustrator, or why is it that you want to draw?’
Her question threw me off. I didn’t want to admit how much of a fraud I felt for going to art school. I couldn’t believe that SVA – one of the most competitive programmes for illustrators – had accepted me.
‘I feel the most eloquent when I draw,’ I said, ‘if that makes any sense. Sometimes words get stuck in my mouth and don’t come out right, but if I draw how I’m feeling, everything is clearer.’
‘I get it. Writing is my therapy, too. But I want to make people pay to read my words. Ha, that reads FAT BUM,’ Mary Grace said, pointing to an orange number plate ahead of us.
The plate’s numbers and letters were 4A7 3UM.
‘My brain does things like that,’ she said. It was the first time the whole ride she’d come down a few notches on her cool ladder. It made her seem a little more like me.
‘Did you take student housing?’ I asked.
‘Four years of student housing at Smith was enough,’ she said, her hair, tied in a top bun, radiating a deep burgundy. With her Catholic name, I’d thought she was from South America, but she’d told me Cebu City in the Philippines. ‘No, I have a place in Bushwick.’
We approached midtown New York, and I craned my neck far back, trying to see that point where most buildings kissed the sky. Even with the air conditioning on, the air was charged with the cacophony of a thousand honks, sirens and the smell of hot tarmac. So far, the voices had stayed away. Maybe it was the heat. Wasn’t it incredible how the body worked? Overheat a bit and things go out of whack.
‘What’s your address?’ Mary Grace asked.
I reached for my sketchbook, which carried my doodles and all manner of lists, including subway directions to Mr Thomas’s, where I would be staying for three months before moving into student housing. Although Mary Grace was now making me reconsider my plans.
‘I’ll drop you off,’ she said.
I paid her twenty-five dollars for the trip. Most people asked for twenty, but because I was carrying two suitcases and hers was a bigger car, I didn’t mind the extra five.
‘Let’s hang out,’ she said, and I was glad.
She left me at my doorstep, on a wide street lined on both sides with similarly hued brown buildings. This was going to be home. The voices hadn’t come back.
I stood before a brownstone. These townhouses with their giant brown slabs had held my imagination since I was a child and gorged on The Cosby Show. Down the block, purple and yellow flowers pushed proudly out of pots under windows; on this building, the one I was about to enter, the plants looked crisped by the sun. I carried up one suitcase and then the other, and knocked.
When the Huxtables climbed into their house, they were blessed with the perfect life – a big family, with the parents living together and lots of siblings, a spacious living room, a kitchen with all the goodies a West African child could dream of, and those bedrooms! How I had dreamt of having a room like Vanessa’s, with enough space for a big bed and an armchair. My dreaming was cut short when a small man with powder-white hair on his head and chin answered.
‘Mr Thomas? I’m Zainab, um, from the Craigslist posting.’ He pushed his nose into the air to look at me. He studied me, and what he saw was a skinny, tallish girl with dark brown skin in jeans and a striped shirt.
After probably deciding that I was harmless, he nodded and opened the door wider for me to bring the suitcases in. Inside, I squeezed my eyes, as if that would make the dark room brighter. He led me past a musty entryway to a living room that was hardly brighter. If only he would push open the shutters to let in the blue skies outside. I sat on a blanket-covered sofa and a cat jumped on me, its nails digging into my jeans.
‘Jangles, down,’ said Mr Thomas.
He peeled the cat off my lap and apologised.
It smells in here.
‘Can I please have some water?’ It was hot at Mr Thomas’s. My theory was being proved. The New York heat activated the voices.
The old man, shoulders draped with a cardigan, shuffled around the corner of the living room and came back with a brown mug shaped like a face.
He watched me until I’d finished drinking. Then he spoke.
‘The room’s upstairs. Five hundred dollars a month. But my daughter’s back in September, so just the three months. People don’t always understand. Three months only. Wanna take a look?’
I nodded. Just how long had his daughter been away? The place could do with a good dusting – no, a purging, then refurbishing. The cat’s acrid urine was now in my nostrils, and my nose itched. Even if this was cheap and temporary, I was beginning to doubt that I could spend even an hour here.
We scaled the creaky stairs, where a small stream of light squeezed in through a dusty translucent plastic sheet. I wondered who had lived here when it was first built. A bourgeois black family, I wanted to believe. They had settled here in the roaring twenties and had thrown wild intellectual parties that led to jazzy soirées afterwards. This man must have descended from one of the original owners.
He cracked open a door. Inside was a metal-framed bed next to faded brown wallpaper. I sneezed.
‘God bless you,’ he said. ‘You’d have to do some cleaning when you come. I’m no good at it.’
It’s why the rent is so cheap.
She can clean it and save money.
No. I wouldn’t live here.
The voices were back. And maybe there were three of them? Was I hearing other people’s thoughts? I turned around and peered over the banister. It was just Mr Thomas and me in the house. And these were certainly not Mr Thomas’s thoughts. They were my thoughts, very much related to what I was thinking. I needed to cool down. I had to stay focused. I needed a home. I had a room to appraise.
But I couldn’t cross the threshold. I had a way of propelling myself into the future, in my mind, but my future refused to have anything to do with this room. I couldn’t picture myself sleeping on the most likely mite-infested mattress. I couldn’t imagine having to dust the wallpaper. I couldn’t see being inspired one bit by the room to get any drawing done. I could not envision myself tangling legs with anyone in this room. Because what was the point of coming to this city of hot men if I wasn’t going to tangle legs sooner or later?
It was decided when we got into the bathroom.
‘We share this one bathroom, so we’re gonna make some kinda timetable or something.’
From outside the bathroom, I could see a film of brown coating what should have been a white ceramic tub. The smell of mildew clogged my nostrils and I stepped towards the staircase so I wouldn’t gag.
‘If you can write me a cheque for the deposit,’ he said as he led the way downstairs, ‘it’s yours whenever you’re ready.’
I unclasped the snap on my bag, dipped in my hand and danced my fingers around my chequebook.
‘I can’t believe it!’ I said, palming my forehead. ‘I could have sworn I packed it this morning.’ I had to think fast. What was I doing with two suitcases and without my chequebook? It didn’t add up. ‘I’m going to stay with my family tonight, but I’ll get back to you and have the deposit then.’
‘Just come back with it at the end of this week and it should be fine.’
After he gave me directions on how to get to the G train to eventually make my way to Manhattan, I walked out of my dream of living like the Huxtables. I dragged my suitcases onto the landing outside and drew in the biggest breath of air. The horror! I hoped his daughter could come back faster, because someone needed to take care of that poor man and that house.
I walked slowly, my suitcases trailing me like a toddler’s soiled blanket. They were hand-me-downs from my parents’ trips to Rome and Frankfurt, and their outdated leather and all-round lack of style surely made me look like a bag lady. As I walked by row after row of brownstone buildings and their accompanying majestic trees, I felt self-pity rise in my chest. It would have been nice to live here. I could see myself calling a place like this home and being friends with my neighbours. But that dream was now crushed into powder and was being blown away by a sudden gust of hot wind.
Where would I stay?
My childhood friend Densua was my number one choice, but she was working in her all-important job, and I couldn’t call her just out of the blue. So I phoned my mother’s cousin, Uncle Ali. He lived in the Bronx and had a big house. I really didn’t want to stay up there, especially since I’d decided that coming to New York would be my time to grow up. But now I didn’t have much of a choice.
He picked up after two rings. After pleasantries, I told him what was going on.
‘Um, so the place turned out to be a disaster and I need somewhere to crash.’
‘I hear you, Zainabou,’ he said. ‘You know, let me call your aunt and get back to you.’
I’d expected him to say, ‘You shouldn’t even have to ask. You’re family. This is your home.’ When that wasn’t forthcoming, that should have been my first red flag.
I waited, sitting on one of my suitcases, my back to an empty playground, as I studied the lime-green orb around the G train sign at the Myrtle–Willoughby subway stop. Shifting my gaze between a lot with grass pushing out of concrete and the storefronts across the road, I waited for the voices to come back. I waited for Uncle Ali, watching people push shopping carts with all sorts of contraptions in them. Coming from Mr Thomas’s pretty street with its stately trees and gorgeous buildings, this subway stop was seedy. The faster I was gone from here, the happier I would be. The voices stayed quiet. Finally, my uncle called me back.
‘Your aunty is home and expecting you. Take the number 2 to Gunhill Road.’
‘How do I get the 2?’
He gave me directions, which I scribbled as soon as we hung up.
I knew some of my way around – I had memorised the one route I’d thought would become my lifeline: G train to the A train into Manhattan for my internship and then, after the summer, grad school. I supposed New Yorkers didn’t say ‘G train’. I would take the G.
I went down the steps with one suitcase, then ran back up for the other, praying nobody had put their grubby hands on my property. I got on the G, plunked myself on its orange chairs that reminded me of an inside-out orange popsicle, and felt my whole self deflate.
Densua’s first day in New York must not have looked like this. Mary Grace was probably at her destination, already ensconced in comfort. Since I wasn’t born rich, why hadn’t I followed the path of most of the foreign students in my graduating class? I could be working at Pfizer or some other big pharmaceutical company. Or I could have switched tracks and gone to Lehman Brothers or Goldman Sachs or any of those two-name investment banks, and could be already living in a nice studio in Manhattan. No, I had to be the artist, the one bird doing wild twisty circles on its own while everyone else was in a straight V.
I switched to a crowded A, where people eyed me and my suitcases, and got down at Port Authority, the place I knew best in Manhattan, because it had always been my entry point into the city. My last year of college, any time I couldn’t stand the village living any more, I would pack a weekend bag and take the bus to Densua’s. Because she worked late hours, I would spend the whole afternoon going in and out of shops, from 42nd Street down to 34th, from 8th Avenue across to Park Avenue, and would never get bored. Sometimes, I would just walk, fancying myself a flâneuse, of course minus the wealth that the typical idle city walker came with.
I settled on the 2 up to the Bronx, grateful for a seat. My disappointment rose even more than I thought possible, and I considered Mr Thomas’s place. It had seemed the most decent on Craigslist and was honestly all I could afford earning a thousand dollars a month at my internship. And yet . . . my mother had raised me to be stronger than the weakness I’d just displayed. When she and my father split up, we moved out of a comfortable home with a nice surrounding fence and garden into a house in the middle of a crowded compound with other people. I didn’t hear her once whine. She decorated the new house so nicely that it began to feel like home. All I had to do was slide on some ultra-strong yellow gloves and give Mr Thomas’s house a good scrubbing, and I would have a beautiful place to call home . . .
We don’t like cats.
One voice was back.
How did it work? I was still hungry, yes, but they had calmed down after a while. The voice was right, though. Jangles the cat was not doing it for me. I really had an aversion to the creatures, because I considered myself cat-like: always watching, sneaky. I would call Mr Thomas and tell him I was allergic to cats. It wasn’t a total lie. I didn’t like them, and my nose hadn’t stopped tingling since I walked in.
I had to think positively. It would be good to eat home cooking at Uncle Ali’s and not pay any rent. Sorry for Mr Thomas.
Maybe being back with family would also make the voices go away.
I arrived in the Bronx with my two suitcases, and my pinched face met Uncle Ali’s wife’s pinched face. Not only did they live at almost the last stop in the Bronx, they also lived up four urine-stenched flights. I carried my suitcases all the way up and arrived at an apartment that smelt like stale palm oil and fermented corn. Suddenly, Mr Thomas’s lodgings weren’t looking so bad. Was living in New York destined to be an exercise in whose apartment smelt or looked the worst?
My boy and girl cousins, aged twelve and thirteen, came sullenly to join their mother. I liked children when they were two or three and could be cuddled and manipulated. At this stage between childhood and adolescence, I didn’t know what to do with them.
‘Hello, Aunty Emefa. Hi, Dzifa. Hello, Ibrahim!’ I said, summoning pep and positivity. Maybe we’d all get along, and I could even become their cool cousin staying with them for the summer.
Only two weeks before, they had come to congratulate me for joining the ranks of Bachelor of Science. My aunt had held her children’s hands as my uncle wielded a giant bouquet of flowers, proud of their ni. . .
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