We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo

Author:NoViolet Bulawayo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2013-05-21T04:00:00+00:00

The snow has not fallen in a while, and on the ground, it looks like it is starting to melt. It is much thinner and you can see puddles of water in some places. It is also falling off the branches, and you can see the roofs and the road. Maybe the snow has decided to go away, to go back where it came from because it knows I am watching it. I do not want to go outside yet, and I shake my head no when Aunt Fostalina asks if I want to go places with her. She leaves me alone and does not force or beat me up like perhaps Mother or Mother of Bones would if I was not doing what they wanted me to. She always asks me if I want to do things—Do you feel like eating mac and cheese? Do you want to go to bed? Do you prefer this or that? Are you sure?—as if I have become a real person.

Prince is talking to himself more and more, like maybe the people in his head have really come out and he can see them. Sometimes he yells and screams and kicks like somebody is trying to do things to him. Aunt Fostalina shakes Prince to make him stop but she is not strong enough. He is flailing his burned arms and screaming for help now. When he stops, Aunt Fostalina wraps him in her thin arms like he is a baby. He quietens down and she rocks him and rocks him and rocks him. When he starts talking again she sings him a lullaby, and he sings along with her, though he sings a different song, his fists hammering his head like he wants to make himself bleed:

Sobashiy’ abafowethu

Savuka sawela kwamany’ amazwe

Laph’ okungazi khon’ ubaba lomama

S’landel’ inkululeko—

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