Chapter 5: A Name in Three Pieces

From Hurried Ascensions
by Esi Noire

The shadows were listening now.

Rene could feel the shift, the way the air thickened, like dust remembering its shape. Dinah stood still beside her, lips pressed, hands folded like someone waiting for lightning.

“You can’t call him by what the hospital called him,” Dinah said.

“What name do I use?” Rene whispered.

Dinah reached into her shawl and pulled out a folded slip of faded linen. Inside: three words, each stitched in a thread Rene had only seen once before, on the edge of her grandfather’s prayer rug.

“The name before the census,” Dinah said.
“The name before the land deed.”
“The name before the war.”

Rene held the cloth in her hands. Her fingers burned slightly as she traced the first word.

**“Oluwa…”**

Her mouth dried at the second.

**“Bakari…”**

The third unraveled as she said it, floating out of her like incense.

**“Sekou.”**

The train jerked. The shadows stood.

Some turned their heads. Others reached toward her, not with hands, but with longing.

And somewhere behind the next carriage door, a man coughed softly and said,
“…I thought I was alone.”