She fanned her wings open and flew down onto the abandoned tree,
stretched out across a bed of scrub and fern. She bobbed there and sang into one
of the few weeping branches that remained. She cawed inwardly, lunging with
muscles of grieving gut, as if regurgitating her song, as if feeding and singing
were one and the same.
Nestor!" She called to some fledge of her memory,
now lost inside the tree.
Where?
Where!
Bloated by rain.
Kettle, flung by the wind, eaten by mice, by flies, by
maggots.
Fledges snagged by hawks, by angry gods without
names."
Since crows can count up to seven, any bird beyond that in age
is from the seasons beyond counting, and though it wasn’t always true for my
mother, the seasons beyond her counting were advancing. She could remember the
many who had flown from her nest. She just couldn’t tell how long ago they had
come, or gone, or if they had gone, or where to.
Then Our Many flew back up to the nest.
Through her distant, cloudy blinking, I could swear she hardly
saw us, but looked far into her song and whatever unfortunate simp her memory
had conjured up just then.
Fearless, gripping, at once darkly funny and tender, spanning three continents and numerous lives, Americanah is a richly told story set in today's globalized world.
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