‘Do’ – a short story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This story was originally published anonymously as one of the stories in Fourth Estate 25th anniversary publication, the ANONthology.

Do

The leaves are the color of dried carrots. They sail in the wind, settle on the seats of the swing sets, on top of the plastic play tunnel, on the dull soil of the playground. Steven watches as the children jump into piles of them, gleeful shrieks echoing round the graffiti-strewn buildings nearby. Steven does not clean the bench at the corner of the playground and the leaves on it make the crunching sound of crumpling paper as he sits. His eyes are fixed on the little girl with two round ponytails standing on either side of her head.

The air has a coppery tinge, as though the whirling leaves have stained it, and the little girl’s brown face, her dark eyes, gleam red-gold as he watches.

It doesn’t seem like a month already, since he started watching her. The first week her hair had been in corn rows, strung with white beads. Then she had worn a denim jacket with a threadbare collar for two weeks after that. Now, she is wearing a puffy coat, and she looks like those tubby Russian dolls that swallow one another.

Steven’s eyes follow her as she goes down the slide, her hands raised, her mouth open in a shriek. Another child has made a pile of leaves at the bottom of the slide and she lands on it then rolls on her side, scattering the leaves, laughing.

She is so beautiful when she laughs. Eve laughed just like her, in that intense, mouth-all-open way that showed a few missing teeth. Laugh of innocence, his friend the former rabbi used to say, watching Eve, she has the laugh of innocence. When Eve died, he’d asked the former rabbi if he remembered saying that. So where is that innocence now? he’d asked.

He hadn’t yelled or anything, just asked quietly. And he hadn’t blamed God, although the former rabbi thought he did. He had never been religious anyway. I am only culturally Jewish, he used to tell his friends in college. But even that he wasn’t sure of anymore, he hadn’t sent Happy Hanukkah cards in years. Still, he’d planned to have Eve go to elementary school at Temple Beth Hillel so at least she’d understand who she was and be proud of her heritage, that sort of thing.

It was Temple Beth Hillel he’d called that day, right after he and Jessica got back from the hospital. My daughter won’t be registering this fall, he told the bewildered secretary, she just died. I’m so sorry, the secretary started to say, but Steven quietly hung up. He didn’t hold Jessica or cry with her, he didn’t take his mother’s calls. He got in his car and drove, ending up here, around East Hartford’s battered buildings.

He saw the little girl that first day. Her laugh was Eve’s, exactly Eve’s, the laugh of innocence. That laugh that wrapped itself around a new doll, or a new picture book, or a stuffed animal, or cartoon tape, or the Mickey Mouse at Disney the weekend he’d taken Eve even though the parenting group Jessica joined said four was too young for Disney.

He had stood unmoving, staring at the little girl that day, so long that his leg ached when he finally moved. He hadn’t planned to come every day after that, he just did. Every morning he would ignore the Courant on the kitchen counter with the rest of the mail, ignore the coffee maker and Jessica’s pleading arms, get in his car and drive. He even ignored his cellphone calls, mostly people from work leaving messages to say sorry and let us know if you need anything. Sometimes he laughed long and hard because they sounded so solemn, all of them. He stood by the trees in the playground at first, the trees had leaves then and could shield him. Now they stand unclothed, like naked people waving too many hands.
 
He would dig his palm over the rough barks until red dots appeared on his palm and he would remember his grandmother, remember her back curved into a C, her shrill voice saying, “Don’t just sit there. Do something.” She said it when he read Charlotte’s Web and cried because the spider died. Do what? he’d asked. And she said it doesn’t matter what, just do. Do.

Chimamanda’s new collection of stories, The Thing Around Your Neck, was called ’stunning’ by The Times. The Telegraph said that ‘Adichie writes with an economy and precision that makes the strange seem familiar. She makes storytelling seem as easy as birdsong.’ Get your copy here.