Weekly Read: “Forty-One Months” by Will McGrath
BLR’s Weekly Read brings you one outstanding story, poem, or essay from our archive. This week’s read is “Forty-One Months” by Will McGrath, which won BLR’s Prize for Nonfiction in 2014.
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Thato is a small sad boy who has come to stay at the safe home in Lesotho, up in the cloudvoid in the eastern mountains of Mokhotlong district. His mother is dead and his father is off working somewhere, possibly South Africa. His grandmother has struggled to care for him but is unable. Thato is severely malnourished and HIV-positive, three-and-a-half years old, with a tiny skeleton’s body and mournful eyes that swivel in their sockets as they silently scan the room, taking in foreign surroundings, trying to interpret this newest confusion, this latest question-with-no-answer.
Thato makes ten now at the safe home. But what separates Thato from the other children is that, on some level, he knows what has happened. Most of the babies—weeks old, months old—are too young to process their current circumstances. They don’t understand that their mother is dead, or their father by necessity works in another country. They don’t realize that their uncle the drunk won’t take them in, or their aunt doesn’t have enough money for food, or their cousin is in jail, or their sister is nine and doesn’t know how to treat abdominal tuberculosis. All they know is that suddenly they are being fed five times a day. Perhaps for the first time in their lives they feel healthy—getting meds exact to the minute—or at least the absence of pain.
But Thato knows, understands more than any child should.
Why this essay?
“McGrath’s detailed and observant descriptions of the sick and dying boy bring Thato to life for the reader even as he fades from the story. An exquisite example of healthcare going beyond the physical medicine, the simple actions of touch and presence cross cultural and language barriers.”
– Adele Dummermuth,
former BLR intern
More from Will
Will’s debut book, Everything Lost Is Found Again, expands on his experiences in Lesotho. It won the Society of Midland Authors Award for Biography & Memoir and the Dzanc/Disquiet Open Borders Book Prize. His most recent book, Farewell Transmission, was a finalist for the Minnesota Book Awards and shortlisted for the bi-annual William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. Learn more about Will on his website.
BLR spoke with Will in 2014 after he won our nonfiction prize. A brief excerpt of the interview is below:
Working so closely with child mortality must be taxing. Was writing “Forty-One Months” a cathartic experience?
It was cathartic and it was an attempt to organize my thoughts about Thato’s death, but for me the story is primarily a memorial – a kind of eulogy. When I learned that BLR was going to run this piece it was heartening to think that some people who had never met Thato might know his name, that some people outside his family and his village might have cause to think about his brief life for a moment, perhaps allow it to give some context to their own lives and experiences. So while the process of writing this story was a useful experience personally, overall the story is much more externally driven, intended more as an act of memorial, eulogy, and acknowledgement – as an act of preservation.