Welcome to the Melancholy Jungle
by AASHA PERRY
in Fall 2020
Zalika Ibaorimi, Good Grief - VIII, 2020
MY OWN SCREAM SCARED ME IN THE DARKNESS, but I kept my eyes shut tight. I didn’t know you could scream after you died. Was I really dead?
I didn’t know death was so real. I didn’t know that it could sound beautiful, like the lullaby my Palestinian mother sang. Her voice rings of so much freedom and power it could grow flowers. She always told my sister and I that freedom was our right, and as Black Arab girls, the world would always try and take that away.
Now I was stuck in this dark place with sounds as beautiful as my mother’s songs. But I knew everything was wrong. I was gone.
I wanted to smile at the sounds of the birds and sleep at the sounds of the ocean. The sand under me was almost as soft as my sheets. I almost thought I could open my eyes, above them I felt sunshine.
Then I remembered what happened the last time my eyes were open. The dark woods were blurry with my tears, my soccer uniform that had been a token of my achievements was merely rags. Bloody rags that the monsters ripped.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEE”
Hope made its way through my body. I thought back to the time when my sister and I ran away from the monsters. They were fast, but I was faster. I stopped to put Yusra on my back. Then we fell and I felt dizzy. The last thing I saw were my sister’s muddy soccer cleats moving farther and farther away from me. I told Yusra that no matter what happens, she needs to run until she finds a road. That was the last time I felt hope.
I prayed that she wasn’t dead as I questioned my desire to pray in such a haunted state. She couldn’t be with me. They wouldn’t tear apart my mother’s family tree.
“You can open your eyes baby,” said an unfamiliar voice. A maternal voice.
Those six words took me right back to my mother. I longed to be with her one more time, in my yellow canopy with fireflies and glowing plastic stars as she read me The Little Prince. But I was way past the moon. I was even farther away from my mother.
Soft hands lifted my body from the earth, and I was wrapped in arms that felt like home. Strong arms and bare skin. I felt like a baby again. A soft hand ran its fingers through my thick, kinky hair and pressed my head to its shoulder. I felt the woman sway side to side. I heard the birds sing, I heard monkeys laugh, I heard water, and I heard children crying. I heard the ocean crying too.
I opened my eyes and I saw the jungle—the monkeys jumping from tree to tree, elephants with their families, birds flying left and right. But the girls were a scary sight. Dozens of Black girls were in the sand. Some of them were naked, and some had on tattered bloody clothes. They all had wounds, fresh wounds, some on their stomachs, on their foreheads, on their chests. There was so much blood, on their faces, on their hands, blood was everywhere, blood was trickling down their pubic hair.
Most of them were crying too, crying for their mothers and fathers, for the lives they once had that were now lost inside of this jungle that cried with them.
“Mommy! I want my Mommy!”
“Maman où et vous?”
“Daddy! I need my Daddy, I'm hurt!”
“Papá yo quiero tu!”
“I need help Mama!”
“Mama! A chọrọ m gị! Ebee ka ị nọ?
As they cried, tall half-naked women with braids that reached their ankles were walking over to them one by one. They carried and held them close to their breast, swaying side to side to make them rest. I watched as the women washed the blood from the girls' bodies, dressed them in bright yellow kaftans, and carried them deeper into the jungle, away from the wailing waters.
“I’m sorry baby,” The woman holding me said, “I’m so sorry the world failed you.”
She was very beautiful, her smile was like moonlight and her eyes were the color of the jungle; bright yellow-green, and she smelled like cocoa butter and lavender. After our baths my mother would always rub the sweet smelling concoction on our bodies so that our skin wouldn’t curl like raisins in the summer. Umi would always sing us songs in Arabic and take us back to her homeland with only her voice. So that we would never forget who we came from.
“Do you know how beautiful it is to have bravery in your roots?” my Umi would ask. “We came from people so brave that they roared amongst fire and spread love amongst those who wished them harm.”
Yes, Umi, I did know.
And even though I’m dead now, I believe that I was brave. I saved my baby sister.
“Come baby,” she put me down and kneeled in front of me. I was naked, too, but I didn’t feel exposed under her gaze.
There was a small hole in my chest that kept on bleeding. She placed her hand over it and looked at me.
“This will always bleed a little bit,” she touched the back of my head and showed me the blood on her hand.
“That one as well,” she opened the sack on her waist and pulled out a yellow kaftan.
“Did they shoot me?” I asked.
She looked at me again sadly but didn’t answer. That look was all I needed.
“How old are you? Ten?” she began to wash me with water and black soap.
I wanted to warn her about not washing me down there but I didn’t need to. She already knew.
“I am eight.”
She stopped what she was doing and looked at me angrily. I knew she wasn’t mad at me. She was mad at the monsters who took me away from my Umi.
Then she smiled, “You’re very tall, you like that?”
I nodded, “I’m almost taller than my grandma.”
“Wow,” she put the kaftan over my head and helped me into the sleeves.
“You want me to braid your hair?”
“Yes please! I love braids.” I sat down in the sand and she stood behind me.
“You have such beautiful thick hair.”
My thick kinky hair was a gift from my daddy. He’s Sundani. When we visited Sudan, my aunties would braid my hair in spirals and ponytails down my back. My Baba’s land was like home. Baba is still in Africa. Umi didn’t tell my sister and I much, but Baba had to stay in Sudan when I turned seven. Something about America’s government. All I knew was that my Baba wanted to be with us and it wasn’t his fault he couldn’t come back yet.
Now when he comes back, I won’t be there to welcome him home. Tears watered in my eyes thinking about my Baba coming home and not being able to see me.
“Are you hungry baby? The other Nenes and I made curry today,” she asked, parting my hair with her long fingernails, and braiding it back quickly. It didn’t hurt.
“Can I go home and say goodbye?” I said mourning my mortal life.
I felt her stop braiding and for a second I thought she would scold me. I never meant to be rude. I just wanted to go home just for a little bit. This jungle was taking me back to my family in so many ways. But I couldn’t go back to them. I couldn’t even go to Paradise to be with Him. I didn’t understand what I did to die.
I began to cry.
She picked me up again and began to sway. I continued to cry oceans into my palms, I cried for hope, I cried for my family, I cried for the strength that Umi gave me. I cried for the resilience Baba showed me. I cried for my sweet baby sister, lost and on the run. I even cried for the nights we would draw arrows in the snow for Santa because the trees covered our chimney.
I heard her begin to sing and all the other Nenes began to sing with her. The animals began to sing, too, and the sound of crying Black girls stopped. I stopped. The sky turned pink and water stopped wailing. There were no more Black girls in the water, everyone was in the arms of a Nene. Our tears dried as the women continued to sing.
My Nene kissed my cheek and wiped my tears, “You’re different. You don’t like it here.”
“This is a sad jungle,” I whispered. She continued to sway.
“Yes baby. What are you called?”
“Hero. But at school they call me Hidayah; my middle name.”
“Hero. I like that. Come, let's finish your hair.”
She braided my hair back, but had two braids on each side come down the side of my face like Fulani braids. When she was finished, she carried me into the colorful jungle, with animals larger than I’d ever seen.
I locked eyes with a mother elephant and she began to cry; the same happened with a panther. Then a tiger, a gorilla and even a large python. Why were they crying at me? They weren’t doing it to the other girls on their Nenes’ hips. I hid in the crook of my Nenes neck and closed my eyes. She shushed me and rubbed my back.
“It’s okay. They can see a lot more than what you and I can see. They can see thousands of years before us and thousands of years ahead. If they look at you and shed a tear you shouldn’t take offense. Maybe they think you’re special.”
Then why was I murdered?
We approached a large village full of Black girls wearing kaftans all the colors of the rainbow. There must’ve been thousands. Thousands of dead Black girls running around in kaftans spotted with blood where their wounds touched the fabric.
The only color I didn’t see a lot was yellow. The new girls, the ones who met the Nenes with me, were the only ones wearing it. There were three large orange and yellow brick houses. A river ran in between each house and joined to form a larger body of water. Two large purple whales swam inside. A few girls were swimming with them in water and laughing as they did so. Others were on the backs of tigers and lions, collecting mangos and other fruits from all the colorful trees.
The large animals were walking among the women and girls. I could still hear the wailing but no one else seemed to. Perhaps it was drowned out by the laughter. The Nenes carried us towards a red canopy tent in front of a large tree. The tree cried too. Under the tent, I saw thirty mats and pillows. A bowl of curry, a plate of fufu, and a cup of mango juice sat in front of each one. I was taken back to my Baba again, but I ignored it. Every time I was taken back home by my mind, I was taken back to the monsters and to my murder. I was getting tired of going there.
But I couldn’t stop.
My Nene put me on a pillow and kissed my forehead. A maternal warmth spread across my body, and I felt like I was being hugged. Then she went to sit in front of us with the other Nenes. I noticed that they spoke another language, many of the other girls spoke it as well.
One Nene was having trouble with a little girl in her lap who was wailing and screaming. She wasn’t even wearing a kaftan yet, just a yellow pull-up. The Nene was trying to nurse her breast into her mouth as I had seen several women doing with other girls. Some were as old as me. They needed to be close to their mothers. Perhaps it was what made them so happy and free.
I knew by the little girls’ crying that she was young, no older than three, but her long legs could have fooled me.
Because those legs used to fool everybody.
No.
No no no.
She ran away without me. She listened to me. How could it be?
My three year old sister was struggling with the Nene right in front of me.
I couldn’t move even though I knew exactly what I had to do. My sister needed me to hold her like our Umi did. She didn’t know why these sweet-smelling women were taking our mother’s place. They weren’t giving her what she wanted; our Umi.
Where is she now? What would she say when we came home? What about x, what will he do with no children left?
I walked over to the Nene and pointed to my sister.
“S-she’s my sister,” I said. “Can I hold her?”
Yusra turned away from the Nene’s breast and looked at me, crying and desperately opening and closing her fists for me to hold her. I took her from the Nene, and we sat down on the floor. The moment she stopped crying I started. How could this have happened to her? She was just a baby. She barely even knew how to read.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered to her Arabic. “I’m sorry.”
A Nene walked over to us and handed me a yellow kaftan for Yusra. “She can eat next to you okay?”
I nodded and ran my fingers through her thick wavy hair, looking for her wound. She didn’t have one. She wasn’t bleeding.
“You want to eat Yusra?”
“Yeah,” she whispered.
“Come on,” I helped her into the kaftan and we walked over to our pillows. Everyone else was eating, talking or crying.
I broke Yusra’s fufu up for her and she was grabbing at the food before I finished. Our daddy always said that she could eat all day if she wanted to.
As we were eating, all the Nenes sitting in front of us stood up. They began to sing again. The same song from when I was wailing. The other girls running around the tent stopped and joined them. And the animals watched.
Yusra continued eating, pushing her hair out of her face so she could eat faster.
I just wanted to find the monsters who murdered us.
This could not be the end.
We could not sit here and sing and run with gigantic animals as if we all weren’t here lost and alone. I died that night, but they didn’t kill everything. I still had bravery in my roots.
“Welcome to Melancholy Jungle,” said the tallest Nene.
“We know that you all must be confused and sad. We know that you miss your mothers and fathers. The lives you had in the mortal world were very beautiful. It breaks our hearts to tell you that those lives have come to an end. But we are honored to offer a new life here. Where Black girls are loved by Black girls. Where Black girls learn with Black girls. Where Black girls are protected by Black girls. Our love is immortal here, you may sing, dance, swim, create, and dream however you like. You will also attend school where you will learn our language, Odoru.”
“But why aren’t we in heaven?” an older girl in yellow asked. Her wounds were all over her chest. She had been stabbed.
“This is not heaven nor hell. But if you’d like to think of it as something it is closer to heaven.”
“It doesn’t feel like it. Why can’t we go to Heaven? What are we supposed to do here? Cry and sing?”
“You’re here because like thousands of Black women and girls you went missing and you died. And when you died the world did not cry, no one batted an eye except your loved ones. When you went missing not enough people searched. We get dozens of girls every day and you get younger every day!” The Nene looked at Yusra, who was scooping up her curry with her hands.
“They must know that we’re dying and no one is talking. No one is looking. We can’t just disappear. Our mother says that this melancholy is not our forever end. One day we will run past this jungle.”
But we will never run back home.
If we couldn’t go back home, why did my mind continue to take me there so vividly? Why was I stuck inside my last day alive? I didn’t want to be here. The darkness was so much better. Not knowing what was to come was so much better. But I wasn’t a little girl anymore. They had stolen that from me too. I didn’t want to be with the Nenes or the animals. I wanted to scream. I wanted to yell.
And I did.
I screamed so loud the girl sitting beside me dropped her mango juice on the floor. I watched the orange liquid fertilize the grass and other girls’ cups began to fall too. I saw the monster that took my sister and me crawl down from a tree. I saw my blood on its hands. I saw its fur drag against the grass; I saw other little Black girls’ heads all over its body. They cried too.
I cried harder.
Then, I wasn’t in the Melancholy Jungle anymore.
I was in a dark forest again. I wasn’t wearing my bloody yellow kaftan. I was wearing my bright orange soccer uniform and a shiny leadership medal was around my neck.
The moon was full and lit up the forest. It was beautiful. But why was I here?
I lifted my shirt. No wounds.
“They couldn’t have gotten far! Just shoot to kill.”
I knew that voice. I recognized it from as far as I was from life.
“Run Hero! Run!” Yusra cried. She was tugging at my shirt.
I picked her up and I ran.
Aasha (she/her/they/them) is Trinidadian/Jamaican Indigenous writer and illustrator from Harlem, New York who is studying Modern Languages (French, German, Spanish) and Writing at Duquesne University. She has been writing since age five but has never published any of her original work. Aasha would like to be a professional writer and illustrator when finished with her studies. "Welcome to the Melancholy Jungle" is a excerpt from her novel in progress.