Namesake

August in New York is a season of its own: Humidity is high and the sun rises with a temperature of eighty degrees most days. If the power goes out on your block, the option to fry an egg on concrete lies available, but there’s certainly no street in the city clean enough to wear flip flops without concern, let alone to whisk up a meal. The only thing Sunny Side up on a New York corner are bags of trash, which spent the night marinating in the summer heat. The locals know they’re cooked by their pungent scent which travels up to the nose of passersby or anyone brave enough to crack a window and let the warm city air into their apartment. The scent never comes alone; it’s usually escorted by the sound of music from passing cars, sirens from blocks away, or maybe even a couple of dogs meeting for the first time, barking ecstatically at the sight of their own kind.

Growing up in the city makes one wonder if the break from five-month winters is worth it when summer comes with such an attack on your senses.

Kanafeh and her best friend decided that the summer of 2019 was the perfect time to test that theory. They’d embarked on a girls' trip to South Africa, trading in their last month of summer in the city for a lukewarm winter. August in South Africa brought a cool breeze at sixty degrees, and morning air that smelled like damp sand and rooibos tea. Well, at least in Cape Town, where they’d been for the past sixteen days. It was an unfamiliar place for them, but nowhere else had felt more comforting. The girls were thirty hours away from home but felt in their natural habitat. Although, the views from any point in Jeffrey’s Bay could make anyone feel at home. Every corner of the Eastern Cape was simply so lush and refreshing. So, as they drove on that narrow road, a few yards from the sea seashore and patchy grass with straggling palm trees, there was a shared sense of apprehensive anticipation. With Kanefah in the passenger seat and her friend behind the wheel, there was excitement to see Durban, despite the eleven-hour drive. Both women felt eager to see more infamous beachland, though not quite ready to part with the one they’d so quickly grown to love.

“Zip up your sweater, let's open the windows.” Kanefah smiled, flipping on her hood and letting it shield her cornrows from the cool air.

Her friend silently wheeled down her window, but neglected Kanefah’s advice, choosing to keep her sweater open and wrap her waist-length braids around her neck as a makeshift scarf instead. Kanefah reached over and raised the volume on their portable seeker, filling the kombi van they’d rented with the sound of Snoh Alegra’s “Woah”. They nodded their heads in unison as the min green van pushed forward.

Before the hook on the next song came on, they were met with the view of another kombi van parked at the curve of the road. It was bright orange and far less polished than the one they sat in. A tall white man wearing a fleece and swim shorts coordinating with the van stood alongside it, and immediately began waving them down when he caught a glimpse of them in the distance.

“I’m not stopping.” Marigold uttered passively, as if speaking directly to him.

“Why not? Look, he's selling stuff!” Kanefah replied

“We can buy ‘stuff’ when we reach the next town. What if he’s a murderer or a trafficker?”

“Who’s he trafficking with that busted van? And there’s two of us and one of him. We’ll be cool.”

Marigold squinted at her friend before slowing down.

“Ay! Ay! Biltong and cold drink all day!” The man cheered, his smile widening at the sight of their van yielding.

“You see? He’s selling soda and that beef jerky, we don’t need either of that.” Marigold concluded

“Ugh! Just stop - Hi! What are you selling?” Kanefah asked eagerly.

“Biltong, cold drink, Simba chips, crochet beanies… I have lighters, vetkoeks, water, granola bars, and my book.”

“Your book?” They asked in unison.

“Yeh, it’s about my life yer in The Cape. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but it’s mostly about why I quit my office work abroad to come back and live yer.”

“Mmmm.” Kanefah nodded

“That’s crazy,” Marigold added. “As in, that's brave.”

“Are you two from The States? You sound like it.”

“Yes.” Marigold replied.

“Lekker! I lived in The States for nearly seven yehs. Then I came back to S.A.”

“Really where?”

“I can’t tell you. You’ve got to buy my book to find out.” The man laughed.

Marigold rolled her eyes as her friend giggled.

“We’ll take two copies… and four vetkoeks.” Kanefah smiled

“Lekker! Wait one moment please.” he replied, walking to the back of the van.

They paid him and shared information on where they were from and where they were driving to. He gave them recommendations on where to stop and warnings against where not to. They exchanged parting thank-yous before driving off again.

Kanefah scrutinized the book's cover as they drove on. Oddly enough, the man looked younger in person. Perhaps it was the way his brunette hair laid over his ears or the mirroring of the sun in his ocean blue eyes. On the cover, he looked awkward, and much more like an exhausted school principal than the type of free spirit who’d quit an accounting career in Chicago to move back to his hometown and sell dried ostrich meat on the side of the road.

“Toebroodjie Vancleefie.” Kanefah sounded, reading his name off the cover.

“Toebroodjie.” Marigold repeated, mimicking the man’s accent and pronouncing it with the correct tones. “I wonder if that means anything special in English… Google it Nefah.”

Kanefah took her friend’s direction and looked up the Afrikaans to English translation, something she had yet to do on their trip.

“It means sandwich.” she announced, adding a silly face to her delivery.

The two spent a while laughing, mostly due to the image of Kanefah shrinking her neck back to form a double chin over the drawstrings of her hoodie.

“Wow! His parents set him up with that one.” Marigold laughed

“Maybe he explains its special meaning in the book.” her friend proposed, letting out a final snicker.

“Why are you even laughing? You’re named after food too!” Marigold responded

“But it’s cute because it’s a dessert. The dudes are always like ‘Ouu, I’m tryna have a slice of that Kanefah.’ You feel me?”

“Alright. I’m clocking out of this conversation.” Marigold smiled, shaking her head. “That’s weird… how did your parents choose your name again?”

“Girl, I’ve told you before.”

“No. That must’ve been your other best friend.”

Kanefah rolled her eyes, “No it was definitely you.”

“Well then tell me again, because I don’t remember.”

“Fine. Let me take a sip of this water, because it’s a long story.”

“EXTRA!” Marigold laughed, making a right into Port Elizabeth.

“Well, you know South Africa still had the Apartheid going on in 1990 -”

“Yeah ended in ‘94 right?”

“I think so. But anyways, my grandfather on my mother’s side had a very successful business. So he was rich or what have you, and didn’t feel like his kids should be growing up in that mix. My mom’s brother had already moved to New York two years prior, so he figured she’d just send her to live with him, since he was already paying the rent anyway.”

“Mmmm.”

“You know my mom is a twin, so both her and my aunt packed up and moved to Brooklyn… on a visitor's visa.”

“Why weren’t they given asylum? Technically they were refugees.”

“I don’t understand how that works, but that’s how they got here. Anyway, not too long after they arrived their brother moved into another apartment with his girlfriend and left them in the old place. Their dad ended up cutting their budget because he couldn’t pay for two apartments, especially not with that exchange rate.”

“Mmm!”

“Meanwhile, these girls barely spoke English and couldn’t legally work in the city. Money for rent was all they had. So, my aunt was thinking quick and got a boyfriend. He was giving her money on occasion, so they bought household things, toiletries, etc. For food, they were already getting help.”

“From a pantry?”

“No, from the bakery downstairs. Their place was above a Turkish Sephardic bakery. My mom got cool with the owner's daughter because she wasn’t out and about like my aunt. So the girl would give them bagels and artichoke puff pastry, etc. Things they can’t resell the next day.”

“Wow! We really underestimate the kindness of strangers.”

“Yeah, for real… but yeah. That’s how I got my name.”

“Really? Kanefah isn’t even that good, I would’ve named you Delighty. Because of Turkish Delight.”

Kanefah gave her friend a curious side-eye. “No, I wasn’t named after the dish. My mom said they didn’t sell it there. The owner’s daughter was named Kanefah. After she moved, my mother vowed that she’d name her first daughter after her.”

“Mmmm! Okay, that makes more sense… wow. Good thing she married a Morrocan man, so it still makes sense.”

“And Morrocan Kanefah is the best there is.” Kanefah shrugged, “Look how life works.”

There was silence between them as “I Didn’t Mean To Fall In Love” came to a close.

Marigold tied her braids back and zipped up her sweater. It was an hour past noon but the breeze coming in was just as it was in the late morning.

In that moment she felt a sudden surge of emotions; a mix of gratitude, fatigue, and disorientation, which made her tune out the background noise altogether. Perhaps it was the fresh air and how it had a slight smokiness from the crop fires burning a few miles in the distance. Or maybe it was her GPS that said ‘turn right on Nelson Mandela drive’. It felt strange to know that she’d been alive longer than the people in this country have had equal rights or desegregated education. Suddenly twenty-eight seemed so much older. She wondered if the people her age that lived here ever felt that way sometimes, or even all the time. Did knowing this make them feel more grateful or more disheartened?

“Hello!?” Kanefah nagged from the passenger's seat. “Mary, are you getting tired?”

“No, why?”

“Well we’re four hours in and you're spacing out. I’ve been talking to you this whole time.”

“Sorry, what did you say?”

“Nothing... I was just talking about how ironic that my parents both came from their countries and straight into the same neighborhood in Brooklyn.”

“Yeah, and that our dads ended up being coworkers after getting into a fight a year earlier.” Marigold chuckled.

“They never stop telling that story. It’s the main conversation at every function.” Kanefah laughed. “But yeah, I don’t think you ever said how you got your name.”

“Mmmm. It’s not even a good story like yours.”

“So, I still wanna know.”

“Okay.” Marigold shrugged, “But after that, we’re switching, I want to stretch my legs.”

“Okay.”

“Mmmm… I’m not even sure if I’m thinking of this in order, but it’s how I remember my mother saying it. So you know my parents were high school sweethearts.”

“And she had you on her prom night.”

“Right. So that night my mom wore ‘an exact replica’ of Christina Appelagate’s VMAs dress, sewn by her cousin. It was long and printed, and my grandma thought it made her look ‘less pregnant’ in photos. To make sure that belly was nice and camouflaged, she wore the headscarf as a shawl instead and kept her hands crossed in front of her all night.”

“Like that would hide a full-grown child. I’m sure you were even tall as a baby.”

“Absolutely. Twenty-two inches at birth. Just ready to spend my entire life at the back of the class line.” Marigold laughed at her own joke, “But yeah, it didn’t do much. To make matters worse, the dress had so many colors it was hard for my dad to match, so he just wore a grey suit. Because of that, my mom paid special attention to her corsage.”

“What’s that again?”

“The flower on your wrist that matches your date’s pocket flower. Corsage and boutonniere.”

“Ahhh! Okay.”

“Usually it’s some kind of fake rose, which would’ve made more sense with her dress. But she grew up watching so many Bollywood films in Kenya (and didn’t stop after her family moved to Harlem) so she wanted a Marigold flower instead of a rose… fast forward to their drive home, my mom starts going into labor.”

“Wow.”

“But she still hadn’t picked a name for me. Her mother’s name was too familiar and my dad’s mother’s name was ‘too American’.”

“I think Monique would’ve been cute for you.” Kanefah contested.

“We’ll never know… anyway: she gave birth and I’m still nameless. My dad said she was too scared to hold me, so the doctor passed me to him. As unsanitary as it was, he was still wearing his prom suit, Marigold flower and all. When my mother saw me in his arms, it came to her. The end.”

“Marigold Browne!”

“Marigold Browne.” she echoed, sounding less enthusiastic than Kanefah.

“That’s still her favorite flower, after all these years.”

“And you're allergic… life can be cruel huh?”

Before she could think of a reply, Marigold caught a glimpse of two school girls kicking a soccer ball between each other. The one’s blonde bun tied in a scrunchie co-ordinating with her gingham uniform. The same scrunchie gathering her friend’s afro puff. She watched on from the red light as the girls stopped their game to pet a slim Boston terrier.

“Yeah, sometimes it can be.” Marigold said finally. “But most times the good outweighs the bad. Both times it all comes full circle.”