Retro 20s
It is a Friday morning, Marianna awakes to the cheerful chirps of birds. Dust particles shaped like bones that collide with the sunlight penetrate their way into her room. In slow motion, she slides her body out of the blue quilt to stand in the crepuscular ray. It engages and disengages her golden-brown, skin-tight body. She watches the sun’s reflection twist and break on the window panel into a staircase. The ray slowly creeps out of her room to rest on the window sill.
By the time she notices the sun make its escape out of her room, she plucks her long stretched-out plain blue shirt off a metallic hook by the bedside and wears it over her denim short and white bralette. Marianna makes her way to the living room, where she places a vinyl record of Nina Simone’s Feeling Good on her ocean blue turntable. The song radiates the room and she taps her feet in her wool socks on the white floor. Her head rocks itself, up, down, up, down. She skids her feet across the floor to the kitchen, with her hands stretched apart like the wings of a plane. Still rocking her body to the soft jazz melody of the song, Marianna opens the fridge to take out small portions of all the vegetables in one of its compartments – carrot, kale, broccoli, purple berries with vanilla. She puts them in the fruit blender attached to the socket on the other end of the kitchen table to make herself a vegetable smoothie before going out for a run at the park about two minutes away from her apartment building.
This lady with skinny hairless legs in a blue shirt and white wool socks pours the blended vegetable smoothie into a glass cup, which she stores back in the fridge while she goes into the bathroom to brush her teeth and cleanse her face. After washing her face, she damps it with a soft cotton hand towel. She packs her twisted braids into a bun but allows it to touch the nape of her neck then returns to her bedroom. In the retro setting of the room, Marianna swipes her hourglass body into pink leggings and a full black sports bra. From the bedside cupboard, she picks up her phone and tosses it into the side pocket of her pink leggings, and hooks her apartment key on the waist of the leggings like she did every time she went out for a run. Before vacating her room, she places air pods in her ears.
Now back in the kitchen, Marianna drinks the vegetable smoothie in the glass cup and goes out for a run at Lake Erie Park. As she runs this morning, Nina Simone’s Don’t let me be misunderstood bursts out of her air pods into her eardrums and every stride, sweat and breath strums to the quick pacing of the deep jazz lyrics that resonates within her like the summer sun glistening on the sea’s surface. She stops at a bench directly facing the sea and stretches her legs on it.
She grabs her phone to read a broadcast message on WhatsApp from a friend back in her home country. She clicks on the link below the text and it directs her to a news report about the labor market and the increase in road side killings on major city roads—a girl was killed when she crossed to catch the public transport bus. It could be her or anyone who still lives there. She closes it and puts the phone back in her pocket. Her mind wanders back to her family in Lagos city. There is something in the stillness of the crystal-clear waters that tempers the feeling of loss. It feels like magic to be at peace with herself. She remembers what it feels like to pound and knead palm juice from palm kernels. This yearning pulls the strings of her heart, and somewhere along the waves of the lake, she sees herself dancing fearlessly in a contemporary language to the tune of folktronica songs in what feels like yesterday, but the stiffness of her body proves it several years ago.
She stops by another bench to take a breather. A dragonfly moonwalks around her, and her fingers make intricate movements. Her hands pop to the hip hop beat blasting in her eardrums to create flawed geometric shapes. Dancing reminds her of the intersection of all human races in its finesse. It retraces her origin, her home country’s deep natured dances flared with African culture like Kukere, Sakem. In the process of doing this, her apartment key falls off without her knowing. But before she leaves this area, Marianna stretches her hands to the left and right directions of her body stance. She continues her run back home.
Marianna realizes her apartment key is missing, so she retraces her steps back. In her search for the apartment key, the thought of how many things that are lost and never found in the world infiltrates her mind, like her lost key, lost love, lost puppy or the black girl who is still yet to be found and what of the missing things that are found dead.
Step by step, Marianna bounces and strolls in languor. There is a joyous feeling leaping inside of her despite losing her key, more like a gut feeling that she will eventually find it. Marianna is listening to Dancing in the Sun by Onyeka Onwenu. Even though her body feels sticky, she taps her palms on her thighs to the tune of the song, and some minutes later, she spots the key in the place she danced with the dragonfly.
