I recently read Uwem Akpan’s MY PARENTS’ BEDROOM from his short story collection SAY YOU’RE ONE OF THEM (2009) again. It renders a child’s experience of witnessing the death of her mother. The voice stays closely connected to the nine-year old narrator. In Akpan’s story nine-year-old Monique finds herself amidst the brutal conflict in Rwanda between Hutu and Tutsi. In an ever-escalating tense plot, Monique falls victim to and witnesses unspeakable acts of violence. Choosing a young narrator allows the writer to exploit subtext through which the described acts become somewhat palpable for the reader.
The story opens with the ominous foreboding that the character’s mother is hiding something from her. Her mother is leaving for the evening and her father isn’t home. Without explicitly stating so Monique does not want her mother to leave. She only says, “But, Mama, you told me only bad women go out at night.” Monique wants to please her mother by doing as she is told. She is asked not to pose any more questions and obeys. In a young mind, if you do as you’re told everything will be ok. But the reader can already sense that things will not be all right.
In The Art of Subtext Baxter argues that “the stronger the presence of the unspoken and unseen, the more gratuitous details seem to be required, proliferation that signifies a world both solid and haunted.” There are several great examples in Akpan’s story that illustrate this point. Throughout the story, Akpan employs this technique expertly by focusing on such details. For example, the family’s crucifix is something the narrator focuses on as a source of comfort and strength. While the Hutu-Tutsi conflict of the 1990s was largely economic in nature, inserting the crucifix as a symbol could be seen as a potential criticism of the Church’s passivity during that conflict. Monique loves the crucifix and views it as her responsibility to protect it. The reader feels that she places great value on the protection it provides—an unfortunate misbelief as she finds out later.
The young narrator uses fantasy and imagination themes to fill in the blanks of what she doesn’t understand about the world—shining a light on the transition from innocence to experience. In Akpan’s piece, Monique has a growing fixation on the “ghosts” in the apartment. After her assault she wants her parents to listen to what happened to her, but her parents dismiss her with “Don’t tell me now,” “You’ll get a new pair of underpants. Your face will be beautiful again.” Monique and the reader instinctively know that her parents are hiding something from her. As she listens to their conversation, she cannot make sense of what is really going on. She “hears” invisible people (ghosts) breathing everywhere. Unbeknownst to her and the reader at that time, actual people are hidden in the ceiling. These “ghosts” become another focal point for Monique. The ghosts have meaning for her and the story. One could argue that the ghosts hidden in the ceiling literally become a symbol of the story’s subterranean world.
