“Zimmer Land” by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

1.10.12

Yesterday I spent the day working and catching up on a bunch of short stories, reading the next several stories so that I could read them again on their respective days. As a writer I feel like I can’t really get a short story until I’ve read it twice, maybe three times. The first read is for the aura. In this way short stories are kind of like poems. You know when you read a good poem and you feel like you’ve entered another universe? Reading a good short story feels the same way to me. Reading it twice helps my writer-self figure out how the story works. Three times, and the structure embeds itself into my subconscious, where it’s reduced. Not made smaller. That’s not what I mean. What I mean is it’s combined with all the other stories and books I’ve read and reduced over a hot flame until it’s a sticky syrup. That syrup is what keeps me alive? Or it’s what keeps me inspired. I wouldn’t be alive without inspiration.

Way way back when I would have never called myself a writer I used to take any job that came my way. I worked as a brake-press operator, had a job wiping plastic siding for expensive cars with Fantastik and then wrapping the siding in a plastic bag and boxing it, worked at Taco Time and McDonalds, as a hotel housekeeper, a stripper, an escort, at a doggy day care corralling all the beloved pets of my community, as a barista, a server, a nanny.

I was nineteen when I worked cleaning the side panels during the day and stripping at night. I’d bring my little boom box (it was 2000) into the windowless room where I worked, stick it under the long table, my workspace, and play Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Thelonious Monk, Bach, Sonny Rollins, Dead Can Dance, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Aphex Twin. The CD’s belonged to my roommate, Jonathan, a man in his thirties who grew pot in a back room and would, years later, die of an overdose. He had excellent taste in music and my taste evolved because of him.

Though my job could have been called mundane, it wasn’t. The music, the smell of Fantastic and plastic, my sparse smoke break which I took out back, in an empty concrete lot. Beyond the lot was a field of grass. The sky was often that strange deep fluorescent blue characteristic to the Pacific Northwest before the sun rose. Or maybe I only remember the early mornings. It was so quiet out there, but the residue of the music, the sounds of unwrapping and wiping; they continued.

Was it then that I learned about how everything stays with us? All of it living inside us?

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“Zimmer Land”

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah by Joyce Kim for the New York Times

“Zimmer Land” is about a job. It’s also about a society. Our society, but more. The tone and subject matter is reminiscent of George Saunders but also entirely individual. It made me think of “Victory Lap,” one of my favorite stories by Saunders. Maybe because it’s surreal, almost unbelievable, and told in sharp, cutting detail. The narration is first person, and our narrator is Isaiah, a Black man who works at a park called Zimmer Land, an amusement part for white people who want to freely defend themselves by shooting Black men like Isaiah.

This story is so damn inventive and creative and also uncomfortably close to our world, like watching an episode of Black Mirror. Adjei-Brenyah keeps us very close to the narrator with sharp physical details and descriptions. Isaiah tells us he goes through 6 white t-shirts per shift before we know what the t-shirts are used for. Later, we find out they’re meant to absorb the fake blood that erupts from his mecha suit, which is a self-defense armor suit.

There are so many incredible and disturbing details in this story, but half way through is where it gets super creepy, when the creative director of Zimmer Land, Saleh, announces at a group meeting that children are the next frontier. Isaiah, post-meeting, prods Saleh and the CEO, Heland (who is white and has recently started dating Isaiah’s ex-girlfriend Melanie), to please consider adding another element to the program. Maybe the people shooting could have another choice, besides the gun? Or the opportunity to face the consequences of their actions? He is rebuffed.

There are many elements that keep this story grounded in the real. What are they? What made Isaiah real for you? How did you feel as you read the story? Tell me in the comments.