Like a Fly on the Wall

by Simone Kelly

  “Oh, excuse me,” I said to Miss Rita as my mom locked her arm in mine.

  “Tonight you’re Catholic. I don’t need any more gossip about me or my kids,” she whispered.

  “Any more? What kind of gossip?” I teased. She rolled her eyes. Mr. Maganelo came over with a plate of chocolate chip cookies and a big coffee stain on his ruby-red shirt. My mother started to wipe it and restrained herself when she saw me watching her.

  He looked down at his shirt to follow our eyes. “I know, I’m such a klutz! Hey, would you like some?” He looked at us and smiled as he held the plate of cookies.

  “Oh no, not me.” I waved him away. “It’s bad enough I’ve been eating New York City pizza with Hicham. You remember my brother, right?” I put my hand on his shoulder and looked into his eyes.

  “Remember? Of course! I was his Cub Scout leader. I hear he’s very successful now. I’m so proud. Your mother brags about him all the time.”

  Miss Rita called my mother to the back table. I was relieved to have a few minutes alone with this joker to see what the real story was.

  Mr. Maganelo seemed up for the challenge. “So, enough about me.” He sat down and pulled out a chair for me. “What is it that you’re doing now? Some sort of guidance counselor for children, right?”

  I smiled. Gotta love that mother of mine. I pointed my chin up in my mom’s direction. “Is that what she told you?”

  He frowned. “Yes. Isn’t that what you do?”

  I leaned forward and scratched my chin. “Well, not exactly. You see, I get messages from, well you know.” I pointed up. “The spirit world. I can read people and help them get answers.” I leaned back, awaiting his reaction.

  “Oh, well no . . .” He cleared his throat nervously. “She didn’t tell me that. Son, you know that is nothing to fool around with.”

  “I don’t fool around. I make a pretty good living from it and I help a lot of people get answers to their questions. Speaking of which . . . do you mind telling me what’s really going on with you and my mother?” I felt anger starting to bubble up. Staring into his face was like looking into Hicham’s face—only thirty years into the future.

  Mr. Maganelo squinted. “Marguerite is a dear friend. Watch your tone, son.”

  He stood up. He knew what was coming next. I stood up with him. He was about two inches taller than me, but thin as a rail, just like my brother.

  “Like I said, I know things. I have a funny feeling you were way more than a Cub Scout leader.”

  That last part just popped out of my mouth. I don’t know what got into me. I felt almost as if my dad jumped into me. Mr. Maganelo turned as red as his shirt. I tilted my head. “Am I right?” My heart sped up.

  He put his hands in his pockets and deepened his tone as if it was supposed to scare me. “Son, I think you are mistaken.”

  An elderly Latino man with a cane shouted behind us. “Benny! Benny, is there gonna be class next week? I might need a ride again.”

  Mr. Maganelo excused himself with the phoniest smile I’d ever seen. He couldn’t wait to get away from me. Coward. My mother finally escaped Miss Rita and practically jogged over to me. “What were you two talking about? You look upset.”

  “Oh nothing. Sports. Man talk.” I gave Mr. Maganelo a side glance.

  “Okay, okay. Well, let’s get ready to go home.” She put her purse on her shoulder and began saying her last good-byes.

  Mr. Maganelo gave her a kiss on the cheek and looked uneasy as I approached him.

  “Bye, Benny. I can call you Benny, right?”

  “Oh sure, son!” He seemed relieved.

  “Yeah, I feel since we’re practically family and all, Mr. Maganelo is so formal.” He forced out a chuckle, realizing I was just getting warmed up.

  “Okay, enjoy the rest of your stay, it was good seeing you after all these years!” What he really wanted to say was fuck you. I nodded and waved to keep the peace. For now . . .

  We walked home at a slow pace. She’d moved to the TriBeCa neighborhood to be closer to the church, only six blocks away. “So, Mom, just how close are you and Mr. Maganelo?” I asked.

  Her shoes made a steady click-click sound on the concrete.

  “What kind of question is that? We’ve known each other for years.” She looked as if I was invading her privacy. I didn’t care.

  “I kinda remember him being around a lot when we were kids. Were he and Dad buddies?”

  She snickered. “Absolutely not. Your father despised my church friends. To him they were the enemy taking me away from my wifely duties.” Resentment lingered in her voice.

  “I didn’t know Dad felt like that. So, he’s not your boyfriend, then? I saw, heard, and felt some things that are making me think you aren’t telling us something.”

  “Like?” The smirk on her face told it all.

  “I saw how he rubbed your back when you sat down. How you were dying to rub out his coffee stain. How he looked into your eyes.”

  She pushed her hair behind her ears. “Oh, please!” Mom scoffed. My throat tightened and my stomach swirled, but I knew it was her energy and not mine.

  “I’m more alert than you think. Just admit it. Hicham and I are big boys now. It’s okay if you have a boyfriend. We don’t care. We’d actually be happy for you.” I tried to soften her up to see if she’d be willing to open up the Pandora’s box she’d kept shut tight for more than twenty-some years. A taxi’s horn beeped loudly followed by an ambulance racing down Canal Street.

  “Huh! Boyfriend? I don’t have time for a booooy-friend.” She blushed.

  “Whatever, Mom. He’s your booooooyfriend . . . just say it!” I laughed, trying to lighten the mood.

  “Oh, please, Jacques!”

  I put my arm around her, yet I was furious. I wanted to shake her for lying and part of me wanted to clock Benny in the nose.

  I must have grabbed her too tightly as we walked because she yanked my arm gently, letting me know I needed to loosen my grip. “You want to tell me what the problem is?” she said softly as her pace slowed down.

  “You know, I don’t know what’s wrong. I guess that’s what is so frustrating. You ever have that feeling when you’re upset, you feel something is off and you can’t quite put your finger on it? Or maybe you know someone is playing games.” My pace got quicker and she had to keep up with me. “They take you for a fool and they won’t fess up? Do you know what I mean, Mom?”

  “Jacques, you are scaring me, you sound like your father.” Click, clock, click, clock. Her shoes seemed to slam against the concrete as she walked even faster, trying to keep up.

  I released her arm and continued walking in silence. I didn’t want to lose my temper in the street, so I walked fast and didn’t say a word.

  We got closer to the building and she couldn’t take it anymore.

  “What happened to you, Jacques? Did Miss Rita tell you something? Just tell me! If something is bothering you, just say it.”

  I think she was starting to cave, but I wasn’t letting her off the hook that easily. As we walked up the stairs to her apartment, I started to feel the emotions again, the energy of Mr. Maganelo, who probably came here daily.

  After entering the apartment, I paced back and forth by the kitchen door.

  “Tell me something, in those bad dreams you had, what was Dad saying?”

  “Why? What made you ask that?”

  “Just tell me,” I insisted. “You never told me what was so bad about it. I’m wondering why you couldn’t sleep. Maybe we had the same dream.”

  “I don’t remember it all. He was saying something about you and . . . and Hicham.” She turned her eyes away as she put dishes in the cabinet. “He kept showing me water. I felt like I was drowning. It was a silly dream. I don’t remember.” I could sense that she was lying.

  “Really? I think you do, Mom. You know what Dad shows me in my dreams and visions? He’s drinking coffee and he is always handing me the Bible. Specifically, the one with
your embossed initials. I never understood that message until tonight.”

  I walked over to the Bible in the hallway, her eyes following me anxiously. I smoothed out the page it was opened to and walked back to the kitchen. “You know, it’s not the fact that he’s your boyfriend that disturbs me. It’s that you could hide something for so long. Soooo long, Mom.” I started pacing back and forth. I went over to “the Hicham shrine” and picked up a photo of him in the Cub Scouts. I looked closely in the photo and there he was: a young, more buff Mr. Maganelo in the background.

  “It all makes sense now! Why you’ve always been so on edge, so obsessed with church. So obsessed with Hicham.”

  She felt my anger starting to boil and her defenses rose to the challenge.

  “Obsessed? What kind of nonsense are you talking about? I love the church and Hicham is my baby. You— I don’t know what your problem is. Why do you love to torment me? Why do you always love to use that . . . that thing . . . you call a gift to dissect my life?” She pointed at me.

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Look, I’m just going to say it.” I held the Cub Scouts photo up to her. “Don’t you know Hicham is the spitting image of that man! Did you think I wouldn’t notice?”

  She blinked, then stared blankly at the fridge where the missing Forty-Second Street photo had been. “What are you talking about?” She grabbed the photo from my hands as if she didn’t know who was in it.

  “Do you seriously think I’m that dumb? Come on! Mr. Maganelo! Your boyfriend! Hicham’s real father! You know? Benny!” I almost laughed at how she really thought she could keep this act up.

  “You take that back. You take that back! That is absurd. He looks nothing like him. Hicham is a Berradi!”

  “How can you go to church and pretend that you haven’t been hiding a huge sin for close to thirty years?” I looked at her with disgust. My eyes began to water.

  Her face lost all color. I walked toward the hallway. I picked up her Bible, which was on the hallway foyer table and was always left open to the Psalm 23.

  “I always wondered, why would my father, a devout Muslim man, want me to go to Bible study? Why was he sending me that message? It has always been a mystery. And I wondered why you were always in church or volunteering so much. Most of your friends aren’t even that active. Church was just your cover. Your excuse!”

  She pointed to the Bible in my hands. “Put that down!”

  She rushed over to me and tried to snatch it out of my hand.

  “I’m tired of the lies. I know the truth already. I know Hicham is not Dad’s,” I screamed. “Benny’s your lover! You cheated on Daddy! You cheated! You couldn’t wait for Dad to die, could you?”

  She slapped me across my face and the sting vibrated through my jaw. I held my face in shock. Then she tried again to take the book. I blocked her hand but it immediately felt almost as if invisible hands grabbed me and shook me so hard that I dropped the Bible.

  Her voice was cold and angry. “You wretched child. You have no respect and you never did!” She rushed to pick it up, but a bookmark had fallen out. I saw the terror in her eyes as she tried to reach it, but I was quicker.

  The beloved bookmark was a yellowed 3 x 5 photo. Hicham’s face was painted as a lion. Mom held him and behind her, with his hands on her shoulders, was Benny Maganelo. It looked as if they were at a carnival. I turned the photo around. The date was not even a month after my father died. I felt like everything was happening in slow motion. Even her yelling was drowned out.

  Why wasn’t I in this photo? I didn’t remember the carnival. I looked at the photo again. My stomach lurched. I felt bile in the back of my throat. I thought about Dad, how he was found dead in the tub. Drowned. How no one ever really found out what caused it. I fell to my knees.

  I couldn’t hold it back anymore. I hunched over and sobbed. “Mommy, how could youuuuuu? How could you do this? Why lie like this? Like this!” I held up the photo.

  She watched me in awe. I don’t think she believed it was really happening, didn’t believe that her Pandora’s box was finally open.

  Her legs seemed to wobble as she sat down, speechless, and then began crying.

  “This was your perfect happy little family, huh? Did you wish I’d drowned, too, so you could have your perfect family? How could you keep something like this from us?”

  I looked up at her from the floor.

  “Jacques, it’s not what you think,” she said softly.

  I got up and kicked the Bible clear across the dining room floor and stormed out. I needed air. We’d been lied to all our lives. Hicham was so proud of his Moroccan half. Now, to find out he didn’t have one at all. He was half Italian and half French. He was going to lose it.

  As I went downstairs, my phone vibrated. It was Kylie. I normally wouldn’t take it at a time like this, but I needed to hear a friendly voice.

  I cleared my throat, so I wouldn’t sound emotional. “Hello.”

  “Heeeey! Jacques! Wow, I finally got you. I’ve been dying to tell you the update. Is now okay?”

  “Hey, Kylie,” I said flatly. “I could talk for a few.”

  “Whooooa, are you okay?”

  “Yes, well, no . . . I just found out some crazy stuff. My head is sort of spinning.”

  “Oh no, do you wanna talk about it?”

  “No, no, I don’t want to stress you out. Tell me your story, please. Please. No worries.”

  “Well, okay, so I finally found out who my father was!”

  “What! How?”

  “Oh my Gawd! You were so dead-on! Remember you said he was older and you saw him in a uniform? Well, he was a cop from Jamaica. But the disgusting and embarrassing part is that he’s my father and my granduncle!”

  “What?”

  “Yes, you heard it right!”

  “Well, are you sure?”

  “Yes, True finally admitted it. Now I know that it is back in Jamaica where her personality took shape. Where she got her manipulative ways, using her body to get things. It started with her uncle.”

  I heard my spirit guides as I walked. Their whispers took me over. “You know it wasn’t by choice. She was coerced and then manipulated.”

  “Oh God, oh God, Jacques. My stomach is in knots. What kind of monster was he? How could he do that? And why didn’t she tell on him?”

  “Kylie, she was so young. He was on a power trip and knew how to control her with fear. It all makes sense why True is who she is. Don’t you see?” I walked to a dark park bench. It was damp from a light drizzle from earlier on in the evening.

  I felt like I was going to explode and needed to vent. I trusted Kylie, so I shared with her. “Now, you think you got family drama, listen to this!”

  “Wow, you too?”

  “I’ve been having dreams and visions that said I needed to go to Bible study. So I went with my mom tonight. Doing what I do, I decided to follow my intuition and I bumped into an old family friend. A close friend of my mom. Apparently they are now dating.”

  “Wow, your mom’s getting it on with her church boo?”

  “Oh, that’s just the beginning. I haven’t seen this man in fifteen to twenty years. When I saw him tonight I realized he’s the spitting—and I mean identical—image of my brother, Hicham!”

  “Wait, Hicham, It’s Just a Stab Hicham?”

  “Yes, my brother. So now I’m in a dilemma. I had a big argument with my mom.”

  “Wow, are you sure, Jacques? Sometimes when you are angry your eyes can play tricks on you. That’s a pretty big accusation.”

  “Oh, I do not even need a paternity test. Without a doubt, he’s his father.” I took the photo out of my pocket and the streetlight shone just enough for me to make out the painted whiskers on Hicham’s cute chubby cheeks.

  “Look, I got an idea!” Kylie said excitedly. “Want me to do some digging? Maybe I can find out something. Hospital records? Some sort of connection? I have access to a lot of databases now that I’m working with Vinc
e.”

  “There wouldn’t be anything there. My father claimed Hicham all his life. I have to be smart. I want to get everything together before I tell Hicham.”

  “Wait a minute! How did your dad die again?”

  She stirred up my own suspicions, so we made a plan to do some research. Kylie had some extra access to public and even private records that I couldn’t get a hold of. Now that she worked at Like a Fly on the Wall with Vince and Antonio she was ready to put on her detective hat. I gave Kylie all the information she needed to research Benny, my mom, and Hicham. She promised to report back within twenty-four hours.

  I started to walk to my mother’s, not looking forward to finishing the discussion with her. It started to drizzle again. I pulled my hoodie up.

  Hicham called me. “Yo, where are you? You gotta come back to Mom’s!”

  “I’m down the block. You’re there?”

  “Yo, just hurry!” he cried. “Hurry up, man.” I walked faster and then started to run. Panic filled me. My heart raced, stomach churned. I’d never heard so much fear in his voice. I saw an ambulance in front of the brownstone building.

  I ran past a cop on the stairs and raced to the apartment, where EMT workers were pulling my brother away from Mom as they put her on a stretcher. She was pale and her mouth hung slightly open.

  “I’m sorry, Mom. . . . I’m sorry,” Hicham said, sobbing.

  Fear clutched at my heart. “What happened?” I screamed at Hicham.

  “Nothing! I don’t know! I got here and she was on the floor. . . . There was a teapot going and she was on the floor.” He was sobbing wildly. Saliva dripped from his mouth.

  “Okay, calm down,” an EMT worker said. “We got a pulse. It looks like a concussion. We gotta move! Get her stabilized. Let’s go!” she said to her partner.

  I felt a sigh of relief, but when they lifted her, there was a small pool of blood behind her head. I saw a black cloud over her and then it faded away. My stomach churned as I looked at her limp body. Her life was fading. “Mommy, hang in there.” We followed closely behind the stretcher.