by Kia Corthron
“Monkeys though,” says Lem.
“Monkeys!” Eloise’s eyes dance.
“Red pandas,” Safiya contributes.
“Pandas!”
“Snow leopards,” says Dawit.
“No,” Safiya says.
“Yeah,” Dawit affirms.
“Cows?”
“Cows?” all but me query the child. I can’t speak, just looking at them all. My family. What did I ever do to deserve this?
“Cows!” grins Eloise. “Moo moo moo moo.” She makes no attempt to sound like a cow.
“Cows on a farm,” says Rett.
“I used to wonder,” Dawit muses, “is there anywhere in the world cows would be exotic enough to be in the zoo? When do they get to be the stars?”
“Cows!” says my wide-eyed spoiled great-niece, the star of the room and happy to be it. “Moo moo moo moo.”
**
My roommate got the chattiest people, chatter chatter. I don’t mind, cuts through the quiet, somethin beside Wheel a Fortune. Nice colored family, nice be aroun happy people. One time he hushed one a his for givin away the TV answer, stealin that opportunity from me. I’m blind! I cain’t see the puzzle! I had me a little chuckle over that.
I don’t mind leavin, I been ready a while. What’s to stay for? my mine half gone. Sometime I repeat myself. You already said that! somebody say an I wanna slug em, but eventually enough people claimin it I come to see muss be true. But ain’t it disconcertin, this story weighin heavy on you, need to get it outcher system but everyone snappin You jus said that, ole man! Only one who missed the story you told was you.
I don’t mind leavin, I been ready a while. What’s to stay for? Erma gone. Benja gone. B.J. gone. An Randy gone too soon. Nineteen years ole, wa’n’t nothin but the whole future ahead a him. Wrote to Leslie Jo years back, Benja’s oldest, try to make some family connection but no reply. Did let me know bout Benja’s funeral but after that guess she figgered our relationship was done. When I come here they ast bout next a kin, I didn’t know nobody else so put her name an number down. She might jus leave em to Potter’s Field me, well. I prolly be in good company.
Oh gimme that remote, I hate the damn commercials, soap for the dishwasher. They had dishwashers at Oldham’s. Hardware store but they carried a few appliances. Funny I remember it, hardly worked there a week fore it all ended but I sure had the expertise: planks an plungers, paint at long last a job I fit in so shoulda known be over quick. That thing. That thing what happened, don’t even recall what all the fuss was about no more. B.J.’s hans flyin on the witness stan, oh I like this show! That Tavis Smiley, he cares about poor people!
Lookit at boy go! How he run like that, Monique? Sure didn’t get no athletics from me. Maybe from my pa, he was the All-American, I’m a chess man in a checkers town, Ma wail: It woulda been my first baby! That’s jus why women shouldn’t go into the military The War to End All Wars model Sopwith only 98¢!
“You think I can maybe have a little more a that medicine? Oh. Well when you think I can? I’m hurtin. All over. All over!” Why they gotta hole back that morphine? My liver cancer done spread head to toe, think gettin addicted bout least a my worries now.
I sure am sorry to tell ya this, Randall. You wouldn’t believe what the niggers done to my sales, their goddamn boycott. An even some a the damn coward white folks, actin goddamn embarrassed. This never woulda happened my daddy’s day Resolved, that the territory of Hawaii should be granted statehood I’m jus gonna lay low a while. I’m gonna put a ad in the paper sayin Oldham’s been sold to new management, that’ll fool em! Watch em come runnin back, so happy thinkin they got ridda me. Francis Veter laughs. I’ll be a fine reference for ya, Randall.
“His people gone, ain’t they? Then maybe you wouldn’t mind changin this bedpan again? Sorry for the trouble.”
Awake now. Sometime out the blue my mine come back sharp, clear. I recall was a hullabaloo but still it escape me, what the whole damn thing was about. Erma even more a mess than usual, cryin, cryin. No more employment I was gonna get local so off to Texas we go, Texas where she got about a dozen-dozen people, one cousin sayin we could stay in their basement till we get on our feet. Ma couldn’t even speak to me without bawlin, seem half relieved when I come tell her the plans. Sell what we can, pack resta the furniture in the pickup, fourteen-hour drive an Erma sayin nothin. We’d leff four in the mornin, she’d fried chicken we ate in the truck. Roun five that evenin we finally pull off to a diner an even then only words come outa her mouth was the order to the waitress. Not till near enda the meal do Erma finally speak. I wanna whole new start. I know now we ain’t never gettin to Paris France like I wisht so I’ma be Paris France. My name is Monique. An that’s how I got my second wife.
’Eighty-nine I’m sixty-one, her fifty-nine. Down to Galveston, firs vacation we ever took our whole life together you don’t count visitin her sisters an cousins. Quick learner, got my boatin license right before the trip. So we rent us a little cabin cruiser, feel like we livin high! Middle a the Gulf she drinkin peena coladas like they goin outa style an my wife don’t drink. We on vacation! she keep sayin an I agree. Her sunnin on the deck high noon. I go down below in the cool, readin the paper, fall asleep. Half-hour later come back up: no Monique. Runnin all over! down, up but this a tiny little boat, nowhere for her to go, she ain’t here! Pantin, I holler to the waves: Monique! Monique! Erma!
Shakin, the police questionin. I’m a wreck, don’t care if they lock me up, come close to smartassin em: I tried to kill her wunst an it didn’t take so I ain’t bothered with it since, but keep my mouth shut. Back in Shelbourne it haunt me: She jus pass out, slip off? Or dove in an too drunk to resurface? Maybe she decide she gonna swim to Paris an keep goin, goin. On the third week she wash up some shore. I go down, identify the body. Bloated, but her. This all déjà vu, another time I recollect a picture, somebody all water-deformed but at the time rack my brain I couldn’t come up with who it was. Jus shock I guess, Mr. Alzheimer hadn’t taken occupation a my mind yet.
After she leff me I weren’t much good for a long while. I don’t mean the fendin for myself, cookin n cleanin. I missed her. Erma had been a clingy thing, not to me but to appearances. Always tryin to keep up, feelin like she’s hearin the whispers behine her back. But soon’s we crossed over into Texas, that Monique. Different person. Acceptin. Of me, of herself, of the life been laid out for us. Hard times, but on the regular: no complaints. She was a good friend to me.
Lass couple years at the factory things gettin darker, the peripheral went first, gradually movin the blackness all over. Too many tiny pieces, too much close work. Shoulda made retirement ’94 but it all folded ’91, disappeared, no pension, nothin. My landlord says, You know the blind industries? Makin the nurses’ uniforms, they put me in the cuttin, the threadin, liftin boxes a fabric fifty, sixty pounds. Part a my job description was keep a steady walkin pace which tired me out sometimes. An the crazy overtime. Flip side, as my vision losin all light they gimme a nice walkin cane, learnt me to use it.
Got the bad diagnosis couple weeks ago. What I wanna go through chemo for? It’s time. Still, the days I got leff, what I’ma do with em? I decide: see my brother. I know he died, I ain’t holdin onto that no more. Jus wanna be close to him again, for a day. So I hop a bus like that other time, I remember the address, 53rd Street. Stan outside. Some a the people comin out, I say, My brother B.J. Evans lived here. You knew him? Deaf? Nobody did. Cheap hotel tonight, tomarra I’ll head for Prayer Ridge, figger that be final destination this life, die home. But then I feel some big pain I cry out, fall. Wake up here. I don’t mind leavin, but. Guess I jus wisht it wa’n’t all alone. Heard my neighbor say he checkin out today. Thought for sure I be gone before him, jus sleep it away. Well guess long as I got these machines, don’t know why I don’t jus say turn em off, now I gotta go with nothin but the damn TV for company? Eighty-two years co
me to that?
I know I made mistakes. That thing. Don’t quite recall what that thing was but sometimes I think. Sometimes I wonder when Erma finally conceived somethin carried to term. Was it that very mornin after? And if so that mean Randy’s life cursed from the start? If there is a God I can’t believe he be that cruel. Whatever sins I committed was mine, that boy nineteen years ole nothin but the whole future ahead a him I don’t mine leavin Erma gone, B.J. gone pain! Oh the pain, nurse! Where the button be? God! Oh help me, God!
“Thank you. Oh thank you so much, this shot. This shot”
You my big boy. You like this bunny, Randall? You want Ma leave it in your crib? Ma loves you! Ma loves you! Model train go roun the bend And now for a very tragic accident Margaret Laherty knocked up big as a house Randall! B.J. teachin me to read! Deb Ellen crash that jar the fireflies flutter We live in a time of war. As we eighth-grade graduates of Prayer Ridge School chiken make bj deaf Until we are all free none of us is free Moo moo moo moo.
**
Dawit has volunteered to cook my welcome home dinner, an Ethiopian meal, enlisting Safiya as vegetable-chopper. He learned the technique three years ago, during his first return since infancy to his birth country. When he announced to his fathers his planned destination for his college junior year abroad, we were hardly shocked, though any foresight did not mitigate our terror. Reports at the time indicated the region was not exactly stable, to which Dawit easily countered with all the countries wherein Lem had worked that weren’t exactly stable: checkmate. So we became addicted to Skype, helpless pawns to the vagaries of international telecommunication. I gaze at him now, frowning in concentration at the batter he just poured into the skillet, and I remember his many stories from that year. His mission was to assist impoverished communities as they improved infrastructural living standards, while Lem and I observed his own rapid personal growth before our eyes. Our son: an exemplary product of the New York City public school and New York state college systems. We certainly had our battles: the ridiculous standardized test obsession, the charter school that moved into the fourth floor and proceeded to usurp his high school’s supplies and space. But I am overwhelmingly grateful that these were our struggles with our millennial child, as I am acutely aware of his hairsbreadth miss of the last decade of the twentieth in the Big Apple and its prevalent gang violence. I don’t think I could have survived another brutal death of a loved one. There was a time when I questioned the selfishness of adopting so late in life, risking my child losing a parent while he was still very young, but we’ve brought up a fine young man and whatever regrets I have in life, fatherhood is not among them. It took way too long for me to learn that while it’s a beautiful and remarkable thing to live by our consciences as my younger brother always did, it’s pointless and indulgent to live by our guilt.
The meal is vegetarian as are Lem and Dawit, and me nearly so. It’s lovely sharing the same platter in the Ethiopian style (Eloise sticks with her macaroni and cheese) and all’s fine until Dawit, typically, picks a political fight. Rett dares to comment that he feels encouraged by some recent announcement of the president and my son is all over him: the sixteen percent black unemployment rate which is vastly underestimated by not counting the forty-four percent of prison inmates who are black and let’s not even go into the racially lopsided death penalty and racially motivated police killings and then his snide “I guess you think with a black president we live in a post-racial era.” “Alright,” Lem says and our cynical son grudgingly backs off. Orneriness: Dawit knows damn well that the perpetual and unjustified prosecution and persecution of African Americans is hardly a controversial subject in our home. When the meal is finished we assure self-critical Dawit that the food was just as delicious as at the Ethiopian restaurant, Rett being the most appreciative, and while my grown child knows we’re all lying he nods his gratitude, smiling sheepishly at the cousin he’d attacked a half-hour before.
After dinner Rett, Eloise, and I sit on the couch and enjoy Babe, a movie Dawit adored growing up and that Lem and I still love. Toward the end she’s yawning, and as Rett is putting her to bed, Dawit’s old room, I glance in on them. He tells her a story, acting out the parts, her smile broad in anticipation of a tale that has obviously been relayed to her a thousand times. Rett portraying a playful bear begins to tease and tickle his child, she squealing in delight, and I’m moved to finally witness such carefree happiness in my ever heavyhearted nephew.
When he emerges twenty minutes later, Dawit instantly hits him with a proposal: they will go to Africa together, a plan he has just been outlining to his parents. Rett stares, seeming as confused and unsure as that twenty-one-year-old who came to stay with me in San Francisco so long ago. Dawit is as spontaneous as Rett is reticent. Finally my nephew speaks. “I can’t. My daughter.”
Dawit frowns, having not considered this obvious factor. “But you can visit me for a couple of weeks. Togo?”
Rett quickly turns to me, and I’m not sure if he’s feeling betrayed. Clearly I’ve told Dawit how his cousin’s youthful desire to travel to that particular West African nation has as yet remain unfulfilled. But before my nephew can say anything, Dawit is chattering excitedly about the mud architecture, the markets, riding a camel, and Rett can’t help but be drawn in, daring to imagine. For better or worse, Dawit is a boy who makes things happen.
This morning, after a nice breakfast with Rett and Eloise (my son and girlfriend having departed last night to return to their separate apartments of multiple roommates), my nephew and great-niece head off to the Brooklyn Children’s Museum (as a dinner debate about the zoo proved inconclusive), thus lunch is a quiet affair with just my husband and me. Yesterday evening Lem had calmly offered Dawit whatever advice he needed with regard to his prospective trip, but as always in private he confides his concerns to me.
“He has to keep his wits about him, you know how his mind can wander. Of course he did fine in Ethiopia. Still.”
I’m nodding my agreement. A tiny chip on the edge of my dish. We’ve been together twenty-four years, there must be a chip in every plate. A daisy engraved into my fork, I never noticed that before. The spoon’s design matches but the knife is plain. Lem’s left hand suddenly on my right, holding it firm. “What is it?” and I realize my hand is a clenched fist.
“I guess. I hadn’t time to think about it. With everyone here.” I put down my fork. “Remember yesterday, when the nurse came in to shoo you out?”
He nods.
“The doctor didn’t come right away, and I dozed.”
“Yes. You told me there was a delay.”
“I dozed and when I woke. When I woke a man was standing at the foot of my bed. An old white man. Plenty of hair on his head, gray, white. He stood very straight. Distinguished. He had a cane, and was holding the hand of a little black boy. The man stared at me. Then he looked at my water pitcher. My name. Then he looked back at me. He saw then that I was awake and he was startled. Embarrassed. The nurse came in and said, ‘He’s right over there,’ turning the man to show him. As if the man had come to visit my roommate but was confused.” I’m quiet a moment.
“Maybe he was confused,” Lem suggests. “Old man.”
“The only visitor my neighbor had. He walked over and sat in the far corner near the window. He kept his eyes fixed on my roommate, who was asleep. The little boy sat on the floor, took out some coloring books and crayons and began to work quietly. The boy and man said nothing, but were clearly very familiar with one another.”
I fall silent again. Then, “You saw him! As we were leaving, when you came to take me out in the wheelchair. A tall man, though perhaps you couldn’t tell with him seated.”
Lem shrugs. “I suppose. I didn’t really pay attention, love. All I was thinking about was bringing you home.” But he must see the frustration on my face because he goes on. “What does it matter?”
“He was not confused! He s
tared at me because he does know me! I know him! I just can’t remember how. As a younger man I knew him.” I look up at my husband. “Before you.”
A frown crosses my life partner’s face. It’s the first time I’ve ever glimpsed anything like jealousy in his eyes. He’s always known about Keith and never felt threatened by his memory. But now I see worry. I’m sure he’s unaware that his hand is clutching my fist tighter, uncomfortably so, and he repeats: “What does it matter?”
“If I could remember that,” I say softly, “I could remember him.”
We’re silent a moment. Then Lem collects himself, reining in the emotion that had surprisingly manifested, loosens his grip and taps my hand affectionately before retracting his own to pick up his fork.
“Please eat, D. Your quiche is getting cold.”
**
Year since I lost all light an still I ain’t use to wakin up the dark, no matter what time, 7 a.m. or noon, no matter how wide I stretch my eyes, dark.
Scratchin. What’s at? Somebody writin? Nurse?
“Who’s air?”
It stop. I heard it close, my neighbor gone, I heard it close to me, my side.
“Who’s air!”
Breathin. Swear I hear—
“Ernest.”
A child? “Ernest?”
Nothin.
“Who’s Ernest?”
Nothin. My throat tight.
“Ernest? You come visit me? Somebody with ya?” My heart risin an a fallin.
“Paw-Paw.”
“Paw-Paw? Mean your granpaw?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Your paw-paw got a name?”
Nothin.
“Ernest!”
“B.J.”
Oh! cry outa me. “B.J.?” Breath my breath heart so fast. “That you, brother?” An like automatic my hans movin with the words. “You gotta get over here, I cain’t see! I did the close work all them years, it turn me bline, you gotta get close to me, brother, lemme feel ya!”