His boss had stood watching him one day while he used a clean, dry piece of cloth to shine a car he had just washed. He had looked up and seen his boss watching him.
“I have never seen anyone wipe down a car with so much joy,” his boss said.
“I always do a good job because you never know where the cars might end up,” he said to his boss.
“You never know, huh? Good job, keep it up,” his boss had said.
He had thanked his boss.
His boss had made to walk away and then had come back and said to him, “You know there can only be one supervisor here, right? I’ve been the supervisor for three years and the company has no plans to fire me or promote any person to my position. Still, I like your hustle, man.”
The short speech had left him confused but he had only smiled and continued with his cleaning.
Later that winter he had reported at Work Ready one morning and was met by the long faces of his colleagues. Work Ready was letting the cleaners go. They were consolidating—that was the language they used. The drivers would be the ones to clean the cars from now onwards. It was a way to save money.
His supervisor had pulled him aside to the hallway near the bathroom and had asked him if he could drive. He had said he couldn’t. The supervisor had told him to go to a driving school and to come back when he got his driver’s license.
He sat before the Memory Machine and began to dredge his mind. He realized how true something he had heard years ago was: everything in life becomes difficult when you try to force it. He thought that since his mind often wandered into the past recalling stuff would be easy. His mind was going blank at the moment.
“Some people find that when they close their eyes, it helps,” R. said to him.
He closed his eyes and hoped he would not nod off and start snoring loudly. Why was he worrying about everything all of a sudden?
His mind became clear. The fog lifted. He was a little boy of seven running home from school. He could still smell the aroma of jollof rice and fried goat meat. At the completion of the academic year, they were served jollof rice and fried goat meat by the school. He didn’t wait for the jollof rice or the fried goat meat. He snatched his report card as soon as they announced that he was the first in his class and began to run home to his grandmother.
She was outside bathing in the sun. She was wearing her green sweater, the one with the Christmas decorations. His grandmother didn’t know that the design on her sweater was Christmas decorations. He wouldn’t know either until he came to America. He would also learn in America that they were called “ugly sweaters.” He never did understand why. They were beautifully colorful to him.
He handed the report card to his grandmother.
“Tell me what it says, my son.”
“Open it, grandma. Look at it yourself,” he said to her.
“You open it and read it to me, that is why I sent you to school,” she said.
He opened the report card and told her that he came first in his class and that he had scored one hundred percent in all his subjects and that he had not stayed back to eat the jollof rice and goat meat that was cooked for all the students for the end of the academic year.
“Will their jollof rice taste as good as the one I am going to make for you?” his grandmother asked.
“Never,” he said.
R. was tapping him on the shoulder. He was almost too far gone. So carried away by the memory that he had forgotten where he was and had been transported entirely into that world of his childhood with his grandmother.
“That is all we’ll need for today’s session. You did really great. These types are quite rare. They’ve got everything we are looking for in a memory. Genuine, not artificial, and filled with joy. Now follow me and I’ll give you your payment. It is a card. It is loaded and you can use it at designated stores to buy really good stuff,” R. said.
He was still feeling a little unfocused from the experience. For some reason he was also feeling lighter, but not in a heavy-load-taken-away kind of way; it was like he had misplaced something—perhaps an object he had in his pocket had been lost.
He collected the payment card. He was surprised at the amount they were paying him.
“Thank you,” he said to R.
“No, thank you,” R. said.
He hesitated to leave. Something was still bothering him. It had all seemed too easy.
“So what is going to happen to the one I just gave you?” he asked R.
“We are going to put it to good use. Like I told you, it is a great one. Very much in high demand. Authentic and genuine. They are gonna love it.”
“Ah,” he said.
“You know some people come here and try to sell us fake memories or pass off other people’s memories as their own, but the machine has a system for detecting those kinds real quick,” R. said.
“The one I just gave you, what about it?” he asked.
“Oh, I see what you mean. It is gone. You will never recall that particular memory again. It is like it never existed. Wiped out. Gone. It no longer belongs to you. But don’t worry about it. I am sure there are lots where that came from, buddy,” R. said. R. sounded jokey but a little furtive in his manner. He could tell that R. wanted him to leave.
He took his card and walked to the store that sold household goods. He had always wanted a huge television. He wanted a giant one that would dominate the environment of his sitting room. The lives of American families did not revolve around the television the way lives did back home. Back home the television had come to replace the grandmother around whom everybody sat after the evening meal listening as she told her folktales. Over here the television was overlooked just like American grandmothers who talked to themselves for the most part and who went largely ignored when they spoke to other occupants of the house. Life here rather revolved around the fridge. The opening of the fridge and the slamming of the fridge door and the perpetual complaint of “there is nothing to eat; there is never anything to eat here” though the fridge would usually be bursting from the seams with all kinds of food and drink.
He bought the giant television. It was sixty-four inches. They took it home for him. He rode with the delivery guys and watched them install it. He sat in front of the television and began flipping channels. He flipped and flipped again, his right hand and thumb feeling heavy, yet there still remained channels to flip.
He recalled that back home the television came on at 4 p.m. That was when the station opened. The station closed at 11 p.m. There was hardly more than an hour of movies and drama—the rest of the time was devoted to men and women in elaborate costume-like clothes using big words to argue between themselves about how to move the country forward.
He stumbled on a soccer game and stopped.
There was no commentary.
It must have been originally in Spanish but had been edited to remove the Spanish commentary. They had not bothered to do the work of substituting an English language commentary.
He began to watch the game without commentary by following the colors of the jerseys of the players. His eyes soon grew weary and he fell asleep and began to snore. The television was still on and soon was watching him sleep. It was one of the modern types of TV and when it sensed no movement in the sitting room it shut itself down. When he woke up he was sitting in the dark, alone without the television glow, but he was not afraid of the darkness here in America. He found