Friday Feature: Banchiwosen Woldeyesus

Banchiwosen Woldeyesus (she/her) is a Black woman, short fiction and nonfiction writer. She has sworn to read books slowly. So she pretends she has all the time in the world, so she can read this story at this moment, so she can savor each story she’s reading, so she can pay attention to small things she might have missed if she read the story fast—like the way a writer describes the feather of a dead warbler in a short phrase. Her work appears in The/tƐmz/Review, SmokeLong Quarterly, which has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and midnight & indigo. Her debut story collection, The Town Under the Mountains: Stories, will be published by the University Press of Kentucky in the New Poetry & Prose Series on May 18, 2027. She publishes craft essays, short stories, flash stories, book recommendations, and curated reads on This Precious Dark Skin, her Substack newsletter. She’s a Submissions Reader for Narratively.

1960 E.C.

At the old tree that stood tall in its foreboding presence, the wives found her body. In the dark afternoon, they stood on the scratchy grass on naked feet, facing the body. 

One of their husbands jumped on a wooden chair to bring the hanged girl down, but the wives said quietly, “Not touch her.”

Their husbands crossed themselves; their wives had never given them orders before.

The silence that surrounded the old tree was louder than the swaying of the old tree’s branches. The wives didn’t know what the strange silence meant. 

They were about to speak when the wind blew hard, and they shivered and lowered their heads. The wind that blew was old, older than the old tree, older than the mountains that surrounded the town, and they couldn’t speak. When they walked by the old tree and the wind blew harshly they’d wanted to do something that disturbed the old wind, like saying no to their husbands, to not look so small because of the old wind, but they were never strong enough to fight the blow that came from the old wind, the wind that blew like it wanted them to walk past the tree without saying a word. 

The wives looked up, looked at their husbands. The wind still blew hard, but their husbands stood taller, and they didn’t shiver like the old wind was them and they were the old wind. 

The husband on the wooden chair ignored the wives and reached for the dead girl in the tree. 

The wives were used to this, being ignored by their husbands, but they heard a frantic voice in their heads when she came to them a few days ago while they gathered in one of their huts for a coffee ceremony, a frantic voice that begged them to talk to her father, to beg him to change his mind about giving her for an arranged marriage. We all married this way, they told her. When she left the hut, head down, they’d stared at her. She was a girl they had known since she was a baby, but at that moment she was a girl they didn’t know. To ask for something that had never been done in town before, they didn’t know girls could do that. 

One of the wives put both her hands on the husband’s back, who stood on the wooden chair, and pulled him down. 

Then the wives repeated, “Not touch her.” 

They touched their lips reverently, like this was the first time they realized they belonged to the lips that could say NO to their husbands. 

The wives didn’t speak when they brought the girl’s body down from the tree. They wanted to move her away from the tree but decided to wash her body there, under the old tree, in the place where the town men sat to decide on the fate of girls, in the place where they would see what their silence cost them when they walked around town every day.

When the wives washed their hands with water from a bucket of water one of them brought to the tree, the husbands said, “Not done before, we wash our deads inside huts.”

The wives continued washing their hands. 

The husbands did not leave right away.

These were men who were used to their wives obeying them and now they stood shaken, the steady ground under their feet betraying them, and they stared at their wives, the same way they would stare at the purple flowers that would grow in the place where the old tree used to stand, the flowers who dared to grow and make themselves at home in the place they considered their place.

The wives removed the netela the girl wore on her head, then they paused. They didn’t turn around to look at their husbands, but they waited for them to leave. 

The husbands did not leave right away. 

The air around the wives suffocated them, and the girl’s body smelled bad, and they wanted to quickly wash her. But not while their husbands stood behind them. When they waited for their husbands to leave, they didn’t know how many minutes passed. 

The husbands did not move, waiting for their wives to obey them, to be who they had always been, silent town wives, the same way the boys in town would come a year later to the place where the old tree used to stand, who wouldn’t accept that the old tree they used to climb was gone.

The husbands turned and walked away. 

The air changed. For a few minutes the wives just breathed in the new air. Then they removed the long skirt the girl wore, gently. When they washed her body from head to toe with water and leaves of white eucalyptus trees, and when they covered her body with a cotton cloth, they were quiet, and even their cries had no sound. 

*

The next morning, before the sun appeared above the mountains, the wives buried the girl under the tree. They dug the cross they made out of two long sticks above her grave. 

When the sun appeared above the mountains, their husbands walked toward the old tree, and the wives knew they were coming to take the girl’s body to the mountains.

The husbands stopped in front of the cross, then they crossed themselves. “This not done before, we bury our deads in the church.” 

The wives looked their husbands in their eyes and said quietly, “She buried here, she stays here.”

The silence that surrounded the old tree was louder than the swaying of the old tree’s branches, louder than the old wind. The wives didn’t know what the silence meant. 

The husbands ignored their wives and said, in thundering voices, “We bury the dead in the church.”

“We know.” The wives said. 

The husbands shook their heads, and they were about to speak when the girl’s father, who stood in front of them, asked, “Why?”

The wives were startled by the question the girl’s father, who was the eldest elder in town, asked. An important question, a man had never asked them before. All the questions the men in their lives asked them were not important, like what food they prepared for them. They were startled by the fallen elder’s old face, by the fallen stooped shoulders; in one day he’d aged a thousand years. Men in their town, when their daughters died, the wives could never tell what they felt, if they felt loss over their losses. They were startled by his dark eyes that looked at them as if . . . as if waiting for them to answer. Waiting for women to answer an important question; they didn’t know men could do that. The elder was acting strangely, and they didn’t know if where they stood, at the old tree where his daughter hanged herself, was why. The men in their town, including their husbands, were like the black flowers found on the edges of town, the black color not changing for thirteen months, every year. But now, when the elder asked again, “Why you buried my daughter here?” and he waited for them to speak, the men in their town wore another color, and a terribly too too late thought shivered them. If they’d spoken to him, if they’d gone to his hut or the old tree where he always sat with the town men and told him about his daughter who cried on her knees, this man, this elder who wore another color, maybe . . . they could not believe they were thinking this, maybe he would have listened to them. 

“So we see—” the wives paused, looking at the elder and their husbands, “what we did when we walk around town, when we walk past the tree.”

The silence came again, louder than the swaying of the old tree’s branches, louder than the old wind. 

“You saying,” their husbands shouted, pointing at the tree, “our fault?”

“Yes.”

Their voices came out quietly, but they knew they were heard; they’d spoken at the same time. 

“Not our fault!”

This, not caring about girls, was familiar, old, as old as the old tree where they stood, as old as the mountains, their husbands behaving like themselves, their husbands wearing the same black color. But now the wives wanted the unfamiliar, something new, a color they had not seen in their husbands, not the old, old black color that made them keep shouting, “Not our fault.”

“She not wanted arranged marriage,” the wives said, “she not wanted to marry at sixteen.”

“But that our tradition.” Their husbands were quick to answer. “We not know why she did what she—” They stopped talking for a second. “We dig the grave and take her to the mountains.”

The wives looked at the top of the mountains, at the church found there. “She stays here,” they turned to their husbands, “you not dig her.” 

The silence that surrounded the old tree was louder than the swaying of the old tree’s branches, louder than the old wind. 

*

Days later, when their husbands left their beds and tiptoed out of their huts at night, the wives followed them. At the old tree, their husbands stopped. Kneeling at the grave was the elder, the girl’s father. 

Their husbands were going to dig the girl’s grave; this was the only thought that came to their minds, and they pulled up their long skirts from their feet, and they were about to run to the tree when what they saw next stopped them. To show any emotion for girls was something the town men never did, and yet their husbands knelt behind the girl’s father. 

The wives knelt. They’d walked on the familiar scratchy grass and touched it all their lives, but at that moment the grass they touched didn’t scratch at their naked feet, didn’t scratch at their hands.

At the old tree, their husbands stayed, kneeling at the grave for a few minutes, and their husbands under the foreboding tree looked small. They stared at their husbands, and for the first time in their lives the feeling of smallness that breathed down on their shoulders when they looked at them didn’t breathe down on them. They smelled the grass and the night air and the mountains, and they didn’t know what a bright color smelled like, but they could swear, even put their right hands on their hearts, then make a cross sign with their forefingers, that they were that sure they smelled a bright color. The next morning, in a coffee ceremony, in front of the town people, they would tell their husbands what they saw at the old tree the night before, and their husbands would tell them, looking them in their eyes, in voices that threatened to never speak of it again, “You mistaken, you not saw us.” And the wives would know their husbands would hide the bright color from the town people, and even from themselves. 

Weeks later, city people came to the town to visit the old mountains and the old tree, and they asked the wives about the cross under the tree. They were about to speak when they saw their husbands walking toward the tree.

Waiting for their husbands to reach the tree, the wives didn’t speak. When their husbands reached the tree, their eyes spoke to them, in that familiar way, in that old way, to stay silent, and the old wind blew harshly, threatening to blow away their new selves, and the wives shivered, swallowing what they wanted to speak about. But then they turned to look at the old tree and heard the last words the girl spoke to them: I not want to marry, I not want to marry. They’d wanted to say no to their fathers, no to their husbands, all their lives, but this want, they never spoke of it to each other. But there she was, on the last day they would see her alive, next to the burning fire in one of their huts, kneeling on the wooden floor in front of them, speaking out loud her want, and they didn’t know what to say to a want they never said out loud even to themselves, and even when she kept crying, kept repeating the strange words I not want to marry, I not want to marry, there they were, standing still, staring at the girl whose want mirrored theirs, the girl who burned with a want that burned more than the burning fire next to her, and they—they stayed silent, they didn’t move toward her, they didn’t pull her up from the wooden floor, they didn’t dry her tears. 

Now the grass under their feet burned them as they stood on a burning fire. They turned to look at the city people. “A girl,” they said quietly, “h-hanged herself here.”

The silence that surrounded the old tree was louder than the swaying of the old tree’s branches, louder than the old wind. 

“She dead because of us.” 

The old branches of the old tree swayed with their old rhythm, high in the air. 

And the silence of their husbands was terrifying.

Any minute now they would tell the city people their wives did not know what they were saying; they would shout at them to behave like the town wives they were, but they remained silent, and in that looooooong silence the wives, slowly, learned what the strange silence meant. What they were doing after they found the girl’s body- they—they were the reason for the silence. Shocking their husbands into silence, a silence that disturbed the old tree, a silence that quieted the old wind; they didn’t know they could do that. 

Then the old tree’s old branches bent, swaying downward like they’d lost their old rhythm, like the silence that quieted the old wind became a violent thing that made the branches lose their old rhythm.

In the coming months, when the wives would keep speaking about the dead girl under the old tree to more city people, the old branches would bend all the way to the grass. When the last branch would start bending the wives would sit facing the tree but the old wind would blow harshly like it wanted the last branch to stand where it’d stood for centuries, tied to the old tree, high in the air, and the wives would watch the branch the whole day and it would not fall to the grass that day and they would come and face the old branch and the old tree, their shoulders up, for months until the last branch would fall on the grass, until the old tree, without its old branches tied to it, would no longer look like a foreboding old tree.

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