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Dinaw Mengestu

The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears

To Hirut and Tesfaye Mengestu, for everything

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

To my family for all of their support and for sharing their lives with me, especially Fekada Stephanos, Berhane Stephanos, Zewditu Abebe, Aster Stephanos; to my sister, Bezawit; to my early readers, Manuel Gonzales, Marcela Valdes, Mark Binelli, Benjamin Lytal, Samita Sinha, Jaime Manrique, Mako Yoshikawa, Carin Besser, Alice Quinn, Rattawut Lapcharoensap; to Clarissa Jones, for having made this story possible; to Aamer Madhani and Jonathan Ringen for years of unfailing support; to Meghann Curtis, for listening; to Norma Tilden, for her early guidance; to the New York Foundation for the Arts; to my wonderful agent, PJ Mark, for believing in this book from the very beginning; to my editor, Megan Lynch, for her patience, trust, and most important, for making this a better book; to my uncle, Shibrew; to my grandfather Stephanos.

THE BEAUTIFUL THINGS THAT HEAVEN BEARS

1

At eight o’clock Joseph and Kenneth come into the store. They come almost every Tuesday. It’s become a routine among the three of us without our ever having acknowledged it as such. Sometimes only one of them comes. Sometimes neither of them. No questions are asked because nothing is expected. Seventeen years ago we were all new immigrants working as valets at the Capitol Hotel. According to the plaque outside the main entrance, the hotel was built to resemble the Medicis’ family house in Italy. On weekends tourists lined the rooftop to stare at the snipers perched on the White House roof. It was there that Kenneth became Ken the Kenyan and Joseph, Joe from the Congo. I was skinnier then than I am now, and as our manager said, I didn’t need a nickname to remind him I was Ethiopian.

“You close the store early today?” Kenneth asks, as he walks in and glances at the empty aisles. He comes straight from his job, his suit coat still on despite the early May heat. His shirt is neatly pressed, and his tie is firmly fastened around his neck. Kenneth is an engineer who tries not to look like one. He believes in the power of a well-tailored suit to command the attention and respect of those who might not otherwise give him a second thought. Every week he says the same thing when he walks in. He knows there’s no humor in it, but he’s come to believe that American men are so successful because they say the same thing over and over again.

“Don’t take it from me,” he said in his defense once.

“Listen to them. Every day. The same thing. Every day my boss comes in, and he says to me, ‘You still fighting the good fight Kenneth?’ And I put my fist in the air and say, ‘Still fighting. ’ And he says, ‘That’s what I like to hear. ’ He makes ninety thousand a year. Ninety thousand. So, I say, ‘You close the store early today?’ And you say, ‘Fuck you. ’”

“Fuck you, Ken,” I say as the door closes behind him. He smiles gratefully at me whenever I say that. As much as Kenneth has ever needed anything in his life, he has needed order and predictability, small daily reassurances that the world is what it is, regardless of how flawed that may be. He has a small mouth, with full lips that would be considered beautiful on a woman, but that on him come off as overly puckered. He’s self-conscious about his teeth, which are slightly brown and bent in the same direction. Joseph pressed him once into saying why, even now with all that he earns, he has never had them fixed. Kenneth smiled a full, wide smile for us before he responded. When he speaks in front of strangers he buries his mouth behind his hand. He rubs his lower lip between his thumb and forefinger, making everything he is embarrassed about disappear.