What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky

by Lesley Nneka Arimah

  You’ve changed names and addresses so many times that you’ve written “Amara” on dusty cars across the country and in coffee grounds spilled on motel breakfast counters, you whisper it as you fall asleep, so you don’t forget which name is real. And so it goes, year after year: the fall, the payoff, the glitz. Always followed by slipping out of apartment windows and rented trailers, clothing stuffed in pillowcases and grocery bags thrown into the trunk of the car (please, God, let it start), and on to the next town, the next mark.

  —

  You were sitting in the lobby of Jones and Margus, cradling your arm, which was in a cast. It may as well have been Hunter and Cleb, or Dynasty and Associates, any in the string of ambulance-chasing firms you had used in the past. Your mother was beside you and pulled you up when you were motioned into a small office. In firms this size, a junior associate, some hapless new graduate from an area law school, screens plaintiffs.

  You were relieved to see a woman behind the desk. This spared your mother the embarrassing last resort of offering a blow job to convince the lawyer to take your case. (It also relieved you of extending one yourself, discreetly of course—and only after you’d turned thirteen—when your mother excused herself on a false trip to the bathroom.) As the woman rattled off the information you’d provided so far, you picked up a letter opener resting on the edge of the desk and twirled it between your fingers. The handle was weighty and appeared to be carved from bone.

  “I am sorry, but I don’t think we’ll be able to move forward with your case.” You were prepared for this, and your mother launched into a diatribe. It was tearful and ugly and manufactured, right down to the last sniffle. The clerk sat there, polite but unmoved, watching you instead of your mother. You realized your mistake, that you should have been the one with the tearful monologue this time. It’s a tricky thing, this act.

  If one is working with a child, use her on the women. Most will have children of their own, others will wish they did, so tears are guaranteed to elicit concern. Women should work on the men themselves, breasts a-heavin’, tears a-flowin’. When age leeches tautness from face and body, take note as men’s eyes follow the child’s ripening form. For a brief span of years, she will be perfect: old enough to capture men’s lust, young enough to rouse women’s sympathy. Make use of this.

  “Marsha will see you out, and I’ll need that back, please,” the associate said, indicating the letter opener you still had in your hand. As you were handing it back to her, handle first, you looked into her eyes. They were knowing, like she saw through you. You felt as though you were falling and you don’t know what got into you, but you didn’t let go. It became a tug-of-war that the associate eventually won, but only by jerking the letter opener out of your hand at an angle that sliced into your palm.

  Your mother, ever the opportunist, screeched, “Oh my God, you cut her! Oh, baby, Graceline, are you okay? I’m pressing charges!”

  The woman apologized profusely, wadding up tissue to stanch the trickle of blood. But your mother was in full swing by then, the bleeding palm her prop, and launched into the lobby with you in her grip.

  The firm exchanged a large check for dropped charges and your silence, and for months you lived like queens. You moved into a motel where you had your own bed, a rarity, and your mother gave you a daily allowance to spend at the fairgrounds a quarter mile away. You hobbled to the grounds while your mother occupied herself with shopping and the men who darted in and out of her life like a lizard’s tongue. You spent the days balancing on the Ejection Seat and testing your aim at the Chump-a-Lump. You insisted on riding the Tunnel of Love by yourself, despite the efforts of Giles, the carnie, to find you a partner (“C’mon, fellas, you aren’t going to let the little lady go by herself”) and his efforts to join you later at night when he clocked out. The children who waited in line giggled at you for riding alone. While they spent their day at the fair dodging overbearing parents and piles of manure from the livestock on display, you, too much your mother’s daughter in face and body, dodged the hands of eager men.

  —

  Baby, I’m so proud of you.”

  Your mother lay next to you on your bed and picked at the plastic fittings on your brace, a nervous habit she’d gotten from you. The scent of Chinese food wafted from the trash in the corner, where the roaches that never bothered her would soon gather. She waved her hand, heavy with costume rings, at the room. “All this because of you.” Your palm, marred with a hoary scar, itched.

  You never considered another lifestyle, tethered to your mother by familiarity and a notion of loyalty. Then you discovered your pregnancy. You were sitting in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven when your mother handed you a five-dollar bill to purchase tampons, something she’d been doing with soldierly regularity the third week of every month since you’d turned twelve.

  “I’m surprised you haven’t asked me yet.”

  In the silence that followed, the words weighed heavy. You ended up purchasing a pregnancy test instead, and thirty-five minutes later, under the flickering fluorescent of a gas station bathroom, the fetal presence was confirmed.

  There were a few paternal options. One was Billy, the law clerk and recipient of a blow job that had gotten out of hand. Upon catching you, your mother had flashed your birth certificate, verifying the delivery of a baby girl now fifteen and too young to be bent over that desk, bare stomach resting on the polished wood, servicing a man almost twice her age. He’d wasted no time sliding your suit to the top of the pile. The money had lasted a few weeks, until you had to pay for your car to be towed off the highway to the Lucky Leaf Truck Stop. There you were assisted by Randall the trucker, who turned out to be the guy a girl had to do to get a ride around here. He’d let you out three days and two thousand miles later, leaving you with one last blast of his horn and a wad that amounted to $850. You used this money to purchase a car from Jerry, the used-car salesman, who had to be persuaded to discount the price of the dark green Camry that had caught your mother’s eye.

  You couldn’t afford to see a doctor and rarely settled in a town long enough to locate the free clinic, so you spent every spare dollar on baby books, parenting manuals, and potty-training tomes. You were convinced you could change a diaper in 12.8 seconds.

  “‘Very young children require stability as they grow to ensure sound development,’” you read out loud from your latest acquisition, Formula for a Well Child. Your mother was watching the road. You were six months along and had begun hinting to her that your unstable life wouldn’t “contribute a fair environment” for the baby. “What do you think about that?”

  She turned up the radio, cutting you off. A deep, thrumming bass filled the car. She ignored you often now, getting up to leave when you were on one of your “baby rants,” as she called them. But at the moment you were captives of a moving vehicle, so you decided to press the issue and twirled the volume low.

  “We can’t keep doing this. We need to stop, really stop somewhere.”

  “You think I’m stupid or something? I know we got to stop somewhere.”

  “Okay, but it needs to be soon.” You patted your belly, now the dimensions of one of those personal-sized watermelons. Earlier, you’d speculated to your mother that it could be twins, but she’d just rolled her eyes. You grabbed the side of the door as the car swerved to the shoulder. Your mother rounded on you.

  “If you’ve got something to say, say it.”

  “I’m just saying it needs to be soon. If you’re going to stop, it needs to be soon, that’s all.”

  “Why, you think I don’t know these things? You think I’m a bad mother or something?”

  The question came from left field. Was she a bad mother? You were fifteen years old and pregnant because she wanted a price cut on a battered green Toyota. You weren’t sure how to answer, so you didn’t. She pulled back onto the road and continued, silent.

  At the
next town she stopped at the first grocery store you saw. You’d insisted on eating as healthy as you could manage and made frequent stops for fruit, which you ate hastily to avoid rot. Your mother pulled into the furthest open parking spot and handed you a twenty.

  “Hurry up.” She levered her seat back and closed her eyes.

  You eased out of the car and made your way to the store. Right outside, a group of girls with signs identifying them as Glyndon Elementary School students were selling cookies to exiting customers. Two women, probably moms to some of the girls, stood watch behind them, making change and straightening uniforms. One woman, short and round like a grapefruit, adjusted a girl’s ponytail. The girl bobbed her head as she spoke and the ponytail came out lopsided and loose; the woman would have to redo it soon. It was a simple, effortless act but you realized that you’d never felt your mother’s hands in your hair in quite that way. You continued past them into the store and picked up a shopping basket. Instead of heading for the grocery aisle, you began to look for the section that stocked children’s clothing. You wouldn’t buy anything until you found out the sex of the child and there was money to spare, but it was nice to look.

  A group of small boys barreled toward you, ice-cream cones in hand. “Excuse me, ma’am,” “’Scuse me,” “Sorry.” They politely avoided slamming into you and you smiled after them, which was why you didn’t see the puddle of melting ice cream one boy left behind.

  You dropped the shopping basket. Your feet slid out from under you, right crossing behind left. The metal edges of the brace failed to find purchase on the tile. Your knee buckled and you put your hands out to catch your weight. Your face angled forward. You knew from years of practice that your chin would be the point of impact and you braced yourself. But your belly caught your fall. It held, then crumpled and spread like a ball of Play-Doh under a child’s fist. The pain was instant and blinding. You heard someone wailing and the concerned murmur of the crowd that gathered. When the keening of an ambulance sounded in the distance you blacked out.

  —

  You lost the baby. The nurse informed you as soon as you woke. She was brisk and added, “You’re young yet.” It was a girl, and you thought about the pink bib you’d passed up two towns ago. You wavered in and out of consciousness as your body shut down to repair itself. You weren’t allowed any visitors for several hours. The first was your mother, unsurprisingly.

  It was the middle of the day, but your lids were still heavy. You lay on your side, a recommendation from the doctor. The curtains were drawn shut and the dim light lulled you back to sleep. You woke every few minutes as your mother entered and exited the room. You could hear her voice in the hallway. It was shrill, and you knew she was either excited or angry. She walked in and took a seat. Her hand stroked your sweaty head and she leaned into you, lips rubbing your ear as she whispered.

  “Five hundred thousand dollars, baby. That’s my girl.”

  You pulled your head out from under her hand. She smoothed the sheets across your shoulders and to anyone looking at that moment she must have resembled a concerned caretaker. Maybe if you continue looking at her from that angle, you’ll begin to believe that too.

  WHO WILL GREET YOU AT HOME

  The yarn baby lasted a good month, emitting dry, cotton-soft gurgles and pooping little balls of lint, before Ogechi snagged its thigh on a nail and it unraveled as she continued walking, mistaking the little huffs for the beginnings of hunger, not the cries of an infant being undone. By the time she noticed, it was too late, the leg a tangle of fiber, and she pulled the string the rest of the way to end it, rather than have the infant grow up maimed. If she was to mother a child, to mute and subdue and fold away parts of herself, the child had to be perfect.

  Yarn had been a foolish choice, she knew, the stuff for women of leisure, who could cradle wool in the comfort of their own cars and in secure houses devoid of loose nails. Not for an assistant hairdresser who took danfo to work if she had money, walked if she didn’t, and lived in an “apartment” that amounted to a room she could clear in three large steps. Women like her had to form their children out of sturdier, more practical material if they were to withstand the dents and scrapes that came with a life like hers. Her mother had formed her from mud and twigs and wrapped her limbs tightly with leaves, like moin-moin: pedestrian items that had produced a pedestrian girl. Ogechi was determined that her child would be a thing of whimsy, soft and pretty, tender and worthy of love. But first, she had to go to work.

  She brushed her short choppy hair and pulled on one of her two dresses. Her next child would have thirty dresses, she decided, and hair so long it would take hours to braid and she would complain about it to anyone who would listen, all the while exuding smug pride.

  Ogechi treated herself to a bus ride, only to regret it. Two basket weavers sat in the back row with woven raffia babies in their laps. One had plain raffia streaked with blues and greens, while the other’s baby was entirely red, and every passenger admired them. They would grow up to be tough and bright and skillful.

  The children were not yet alive, so the passengers sang the call-and-response that custom dictated:

  Where are you going?

  I am going home.

  Who will greet you at home?

  My mother will greet me.

  What will your mother do?

  My mother will bless me and my child.

  It was a joyous occasion in a young woman’s life when her mother blessed life into her child. The two girls flushed and smiled with pleasure when another woman commended their handiwork (such tight lovely stitches) and wished them well. Ogechi wished them death by drowning, though not out loud. The congratulating woman turned to her, eager to spread her admiration, but once she had looked Ogechi over, seen the threadbare dress, the empty lap, and the entirety of her unremarkable package, she just gave an embarrassed smile and studied her fingers. Ogechi stared at her for the rest of the ride, hoping to make her uncomfortable.

  —

  When Ogechi had taken her first baby, a pillowy thing made of cotton tufts, to her mother, the older woman had guffawed, blowing out so much air she should have fainted. She’d then taken the molded form from Ogechi, gripped it under its armpits, and pulled it in half.

  “This thing will grow fat and useless,” she’d said. “You need something with strong limbs that can plow and haul and scrub. Soft children with hard lives go mad or die young. Bring me a child with edges and I will bless it and you can raise it however you like.”

  When Ogechi had instead brought her mother a paper child woven from the prettiest wrapping paper she’d been able to scavenge, her mother, laughing the whole time, had plunged it into the mop bucket until it softened and fell apart. Ogechi had slapped her and her mother had slapped her back, and slapped her again and again till their neighbors heard the commotion and pulled the two women apart. Ogechi ran away that night and vowed never to return to her mother’s house.

  —

  At her stop, Ogechi alighted and picked her way through the crowded street until she reached Mama Said Hair Emporium, where she worked. Mama also owned the store next door, an eatery to some, but to others, like Ogechi, a place where the owner would bless the babies of motherless girls. For a fee. And Ogechi still owed that fee for the yarn child who was now unraveled.

  When she stepped into the Emporium, the other assistant hairdressers noticed her empty arms and snickered. They’d warned her about the yarn, hadn’t they? Ogechi refused to let the sting of tears in her eyes manifest and grabbed the closest broom.

  Soon, clients trickled in, and the other girls washed and prepped their hair for Mama while Ogechi swept up the hair shed from scalps and wigs and weaves. Mama arrived just as the first customer had begun to lose patience and soothed her with compliments. She noted Ogechi’s empty arms with a resigned shake of her head and went to work, curling, sewing, perming until the women w
ere satisfied or in too much of a hurry to care.

  Shortly after three, the two younger assistants left together, avoiding eye contact with Ogechi but smirking as if they knew what came next. Mama dismissed the remaining customer and stroked a display wig, waiting.

  “Mama, I—”

  “Where is the money?”

  It was a routine Mama refused to skip. She knew perfectly well that Ogechi didn’t have any money. Ogechi lived in one of Mama’s buildings, where she paid in rent almost all of the meager salary she earned, and ate only once a day, at Mama’s next-door eatery.

  “I don’t have it.”

  “Well, what will you give me instead?”

  Ogechi knew better than to suggest something.

  “Mama, what do you want?”

  “I want just a bit more of your joy, Ogechi.”

  The woman had already taken most of her empathy, so that she found herself spitting in the palms of beggars. She’d started on joy the last time, agreeing to bless the yarn baby only if Ogechi siphoned a bit, just a dab, to her. All that empathy and joy and who knows what else Mama took from her and the other desperate girls who visited her back room kept her blessing active long past when it should have faded. Ogechi tried to think of it as an even trade, a little bit of her life for her child’s life. Anything but go back to her own mother and her practical demands.

  “Yes, Mama, you can have it.”

  Mama touched Ogechi’s shoulder and she felt a little bit sad, but nothing she wouldn’t shake off in a few days. It was a fair trade.

  “Why don’t you finish up in here while I check on the food?”

  Mama had not been gone for three minutes when a young woman walked in. She was stunning, with long natural hair and delicate fingers and skin as smooth and clear as fine chocolate. And in her hands was something that Ogechi wouldn’t have believed existed if she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes. The baby was porcelain, with a smooth glazed face wearing a precious smirk. It wore a frilly white dress and frilly socks and soft-soled shoes that would never touch the ground. Only a very wealthy and lucky woman would be able to keep such a delicate thing unbroken for the full year it would take before the child became flesh.