The Blackbirds (21 page)

“What do you mean by that, Mother?”

“You had two boyfriends at your party. And everyone saw. Everyone whispered.”

“That's not what is going on, Mother.”

“But as your mother, I do not like to see so many men my daughter has dated in one gathering. People talk and rumors are spread regarding your character. It makes you look bad, Indigo. It makes American people think you are some sex-craved West African stereotype.”

“Who are they to judge me?”

“I know. No one wags their finger at themselves.”

“I didn't think Olamilekan was coming. I told you he said he was not available, and then he showed up after we had had an argument, and I had no idea he would bring so many gifts.”

“An argument on your birthday regarding what?”

“Do not ask another question.”

“Idowu Yaba brought gifts for you like you were a queen.”

“So did Olamilekan.”

Her mother smiled. “Your father likes Yaba the best. He hates that you broke up with him.”

“My father wants free tickets for the rest of his life, especially tickets during playoffs.”

“That is not a nice thing to say regarding your father's character. I like Yaba the best too.”

“Because you would love to wreck my insides giving birth to tall grandbabies.”

“Is that all you think you are to us? Do you think your father and I are that shallow?”

“I am a girl child. You and my father would sell me for a goat.”

“You are almost as beautiful as you are intelligent. You are worth two goats.”

“You're a two-goat woman yourself.”

“Three goats, four camels, and six chickens. I have degrees and speak six languages.”

“I'm cuter and I am younger and I can do more squats than you can.”

“I'm the better dancer.”

“You were a dancer, so you should be.”

“And you will never be as beautiful as I am. Concede to the truth.”

“Whatever. Guess I'm just a two-goat girl in your eyes.”

“Does Olamilekan want to marry? If not, does Yaba want to make you his bride?”

“Mother. Take the batteries out of this aggravating conversation, please.”

“You need to make the plan to start having babies soon, Indigo.”

“Are we going to have this same discussion again? Unless you plan on being a surrogate at this point, we really should table this issue, as for me it is truly a nonissue at this point.”

“Family is never a nonissue. Family is the only issue that should never end.”

“Look. I am waving a snot rag in surrender. You win. You win. You win.”

“But you say you are dating Olamilekan, and not Yaba, yet you spent more time on your birthday with Yaba than you did Olamilekan. You are wearing the watch that Yaba gave you as a gift. And you are using the iPhone Yaba gave you as well. Yet you claim Olamilekan as your boyfriend. It did not feel like a relationship when I saw you with him. I saw lust and disrespect.”

“Yaba and I parted ways. I moved on. I am trying to figure it out with Olamilekan.”

“Will Olamilekan Babangida marry you at some point? Other than touching you on your personal areas each time he passes by you,
and in front of your father,
what is his intention?”

“I have no idea.”

“If Olamilekan does not mention marriage, if family is not part of his discussion, then that is all you need to know, Indigo. Maybe he thinks you are too American for him, or maybe he has become too Western for you. It's time to move on and find a suitable husband.”

Indigo coughed. “Why won't you stop talking? So many words are exiting your face.”

“You should let me choose your husband.”

“When the British invade Vatican City and set fire to Monaco, you can choose.”

“I have told two wonderful Nigerian men, professional men, about
my wonderful daughter. Alamieeyeseigha is a doctor here at Cedar Sinai and Chukwumereije is a barrister in London.”

“Now I know what this conversation is about.”

“I am looking out for your best interests.”

“You don't get to choose the egg fertilizer, Mother. That is illegal.”

“Oh, I may not be able to legally choose whom you marry and create my grandbabies with, but I get to choose who inherits what your father and I have built. Choose badly, inherit the wind.”

Indigo coughed a few times, found tissues, blew her nose, washed her hands, and said, “On to business. It's Kwanzaa's birthday tonight, so I will need to get some rest.”

“I should make a call to Dr. Alamieyeseigha and have him prescribe something proper.”

“Not today. When I leave here I'm going to exercise and try and sweat it out.”

“You need to be in bed taking the proper medication and resting, not exercising.”

“I promise I will rest tomorrow. But today I have to help cook Kwanzaa's dinner.”

“Sit. Let me put makeup on your face and wrap your head. I will wear gold and azure, plus an embellished kaftan, gold neckpiece and matching bracelet, and pair it with a gold head tie. I will look humble, but classy. I will be as gorgeous as the first lady of Lagos State, Mrs. Bolanle Patience Ambode, and you will be as beautiful as Genevieve Nnaji. It is time to call home and I will not let them think that I am abusing you and not taking care of my daughter.”

“Mom, we're just calling relatives. You are not President Muhammadu Buhari addressing leaders at the United Nations Assembly in New York. And I don't need to look all Nollywood.”

“To our relatives, we are just as important. We will not look like Western paupers.”

*   *   *

Indigo initiated Skype to call their relatives abroad. Her mother always used the television to Skype, and the relatives had a view of the
immaculate home. A dozen relatives had gathered for the call, and some had driven two hours in horrible traffic just to be able to see that view. Indigo had pulled it together. She and her mother looked like fashion models.

When the Skype session was done and Indigo was preparing to leave, her mother came up behind her. Her mother hugged her, sighed, then handed Indigo a black credit card.

Indigo asked, “What is the meaning of this?”

“My secret credit card. The one I use so your father will not see the bill.”

“I know what it is. Why did you give this card to me?”

“Buy the extra phone like his, Indigo. And program the phone to mirror your father's information. I want to have access to his text messages and email. I need to know the truth.”

“May I buy two, Mother?”

“What is going on?”

“Mother, with Olamilekan, there was a girl. A South African insulted me.”

“Was there a confrontation?”

“I taught her to not disrespect me.”

“Be careful with your choices. Men are not worthy of half the battles we have.”

Indigo said, “If you are a girl who won't, they will find a girl who will.”

“For any woman, other women have always been an issue. They will do what you will not do. But if you feel as if you need to understand Olamilekan better, buy the second phone.”

“Now, say it out loud. You have to say it out loud.”

Her mother hesitated. “I think your father is having another affair.”

“We will find out what is going on. We will not allow him to embarrass this family.”

“Almost a decade ago, he bought me this large home as an apology.”

“I know.”

“He begged me to not take you and go back to Lagos.”

“I know.”

“He fell on his knees, promised to be a better husband and father.”

“He did that in front of both of us.”

“Men pursue you, marry you, then suddenly they feel trapped and have to act out.”

“Why is that, Mother? Why is that?”

“They become boys and try to continue to collect toys. There are two kinds of men. Those who cheat and get caught, and those who don't get caught.”

“There are no absolutes. Not all men are cheaters.”

“I think men see cheating as a bonus, as some earned reward. Maybe being loving, calm, and gentle becomes boring, but they never realize their wives are versatile. If you are a wife who won't do particular things, they will go on the Internet to find a girl who will.”

“Between Viagra and that damn Ashley Madison, we don't stand a chance.”

“Marriage, children, work, maybe a man feels trapped, but he acts foolish and refuses to be honest about who he is, refuses to give you your freedom, does not know how to let go of what he is destroying. I stayed because he made promises, and I wanted to keep the life I have, the job I love, my dignity, my friends, my accumulated wealth and my home, your home, our home. But you are a woman now. I will leave him if I have to.”

“Mom, don't get ahead of yourself on this issue.”

“I have to continue being a good example for you, even with this . . . this . . . this . . .”

“Is this why you have been looking for a second home in Lagos? You said you wanted to have a family home for us there. Is this why you are looking at property on Banana Island?”

“This is why. But if needed, I will move to the Seventh Arrondissement in Paris, or if you're not leaving as well, then maybe to La Jolla. If I did not have you, the first time I would have left on a plane, flown to Tokyo, and moved into either the Shibuya or Roppongi neighborhoods. I have stayed to maintain family. Women always stay to fix that which men foolishly destroy in search of that which they already have at home. No, there is no proof, but I sense something. Each time he goes away,
he brings me back expensive gifts, as if he is apologizing for that which I do not know. I hope for the best, and prepare for the worst. He needs to understand how serious I am this time. A woman makes idle threats and a man laughs a thousand times.”

“Do as you have trained me, wait until there is evidence to prove your case. Be an attorney. You keep being the good mother, the good wife, and don't let him know you suspect a thing.”

“If he has not honored his word, if she knows he is married and has done this willingly, we will hold her panties high over our head, then I will deal with my husband in my own way.”

Indigo coughed a dozen times, then shushed her mother. They hugged, held each other for a long time. Indigo trembled as her mother shuddered, unable to hold back tears.

“Heed my words, my daughter.”

“Yes, Mother. I am listening to you as if you are the Ghost of Christmas Yet-to-Come.”

“My child. Never let a man use you only to cure his insomnia, because then you will become the one with the restless nights. No deceiver can deceive a person two times. If he succeeds in doing so, it is not that he is so wise, but it is due to the foolishness of the deceived. Do not be foolish, Indigo. Do not be foolish.”

“Stop talking, Mother.”

“And if you start a relationship fighting for a man, you will always be fighting for him.”

“I know. I know.”

“A wife may have to face degrading situations that are brought to her door. At times she may feel like she has no option, as if there is no alternative, but you are not married and there is no need for you to do the same.”

“Please. Mother. I am already feeling despondent regarding Olamilekan.”

“You are better than me, Indigo. You are better than me in every way. You are the woman I admire and adore. Don't let a man kiss you and turn a princess into a frog.”

I drove my dad to Kaiser's Sunset facility, sat in the oncology waiting area with him, textbook in hand in case I found time to study. Today we were the wisecracking hipster and his jovial daughter in skinny jeans, Chucks, fedora, Wayfarers, and a black T-shirt.

I looked at the people fighting some form of the same battle, some for the second or third time. Everyone was in the middle of personal warfare. Dad knew most of them, considered them his fellow soldiers. They wore T-shirts with slogans.
LIVE TO WIN. YOU ARE NOT
ALONE. FUCK CANCER
. One bald girl around my age had on a shirt with a scowling bulldog across the front.
CA
NCER MAY HAVE STARTE
D THE FIGHT, BUT I WI
LL FINISH IT.
I wondered if this was my destiny as well.

Once they had regular appointments, patients befriended others scheduled around the same time. People who ordinarily wouldn't have said two words to each other on the streets, didn't matter if they attended a church, synagogue, or mosque, were like family in the oncology waiting room. There was no talk of bombings on the Gaza strip, inhumane treatment of minorities around the world, or whether lives of all colors and backgrounds mattered.

It's a shame people need a common enemy to open their eyes to friendships.

The common enemy here was the clock on the wall. Here everyone looked up at the clock, or at their phones, like they could hear it ticking, counting down one second at a time.

Dad's radiation treatment lasted eight minutes total, but with the
prep they had to do, it took as long as forty minutes for him to be done. Doing homework made the time fly.

Afterward, I drove my hipster dad back home, battled traffic as he closed his eyes.

Back at the townhome, I crashed on the sofa. Needed to close my eyes for a minute.

I yawned, then said, “I'm starvin' like Marvin. What's here in this boring house to eat?”

“Ribs, chicken, brisket, sausage, and Memphis-style spaghetti and slaw.”

“When did you cook all that delicious-yet-fattening food?”

“Yesterday. I was here, watching TV, and got bored. Knew you'd want some.”

“This is why I keep gaining weight. I will have to eat and run to the next job.”

“You're working too much.”

“Working is in my Jamaican blood. You have to thank my mom for that.”

He called to me from the kitchen. “You've talked to Carmen?”

“Me and my prodigal mother talked yesterday. She's kicking it in New York. Her friend Lola Mack is on Broadway. She went to the opening. She'll be back home in a few days.”

I looked up at his walls. There were images of me in every phase of my life, from infancy until I was a teen. I stared at the shrine, looked at my photos, and remembered when I was that child, that little girl, and closed my eyes for a moment, needing to shake off the fatigue.

I dreamed I was sitting in a chair, facing the little girl I used to be. She was scared of me. She ran away. I chased her, calling her name, yelling my name, our name.

Minutes later, Dad shook me awake. Our plates were on the table. I grabbed my backpack, yawned, took a seat, opened my backpack, and took out work for advanced chemistry and differential equations. That was how we stayed bonded. This was my father and me, as we had always been, even before that night that ruined our world. I was a daddy's girl to the bone.

I sent the Blackbirds a group message, asked them to drop his medicine off sometime this evening, and I wanted it done today, even if Kwanzaa had to do it on the eve of her birthday. She was going to listen to music later and then meet the rest of the Blackbirds back at the fourplex. My dad would be up late, so if someone had to drop it off late, it was no problem.

My dad was their second dad, as Indigo's father and Kwanzaa's true dad were my second dads.

After we ate, we sat on the sofa together, dad and daughter streaming
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
. When Dad got up to go use the restroom, I yawned and sent Hakeem a stream of girly emoticons, hearts, sunshine, teddy bears, smiley faces with the tongue out, regular smiles, the in-love emoticon, and a devil emoticon that meant horny. The smiley face with the tongue out meant I missed his tongue being in a very special place. Most of all, I missed him.

He didn't respond. That was a first. My man was busy being a mechanical engineer.

I smiled.
My man.
He was my man. I was in a relationship. We were a couple.

We were also the fear that set fire to my soul. He was hooked on Kismet Kellogg.

I sent Hakeem a message.

Thinking about you and I'm feeling naughty, like I need you inside of me. Also thinking about giving you fellatio until you explode. I might let you come on my face. Maybe in my mouth. I could try to be your quaffing queen.

So.

Drink a lot of mango juice and eat a lot of sweet stuff, but no asparagus or anything acidic. Maybe I will try to swallow, see
what that's all about. Others girls do it. Some girls say there is no point of sucking if a girl's not going to swallow.

It's on my mind right now.

Or maybe we could try anal. I want to take this to the next level. I love you boo. Imagining us living together, sharing the same space, and being a real couple. I want to cook for you. I do cook, believe it or not, just not every day. You have me smiling. I miss you. Want you inside me. I'm getting excited, wet, nipples are aching while I am typing this. So, blow job to completion or anal. If we did one, ONE, which would you prefer first? Pick up more condoms too. Condoms prevent minivans. I'm so tired I'm rambling. Gonna nap awhile, then study. Books before boys because boys bring babies.

There was no immediate response as usual. I guessed my
mu-fukin'
king was busy.

Two shakes of a leg later, I felt uneasy, read over the message I had sent, read how explicit it was, and wished I could untext that sexual text. Some things should be said face-to-face. That message had been from Kismet. That had been Kismet sending a naughty message, sending words that showed she had bonded, words meant to excite her man.

That was not from Destiny. Destiny would never send a message like that.

I put my phone away. Being two people was becoming too much.

I wanted to tell my dad about Hakeem.

I wanted to tell my dad I had met someone.

I wanted to tell him what I had done, about Kismet, and ask for his advice.

He'd like Hakeem. I knew he would.

And I knew Hakeem would like my dad.

I needed us at the same table, breaking bread, telling stories, and laughing.

Dad pulled a chair into the dining area, then came back with his hair clippers and several razors, as well as shaving cream. He grabbed towels, turned on hot water, motioned toward it all.

I said, “Serious?”

“If you're serious, I'm serious.”

The TV was on. We started watching
Sliding Doors,
a film starring Gwyneth Paltrow before anyone in the public knew her well enough to not like her. It was a sci-fi rom-com number about choices, about fate. Walking through one door, or not walking through one door, changed everything. I wished I had never crept out of my bedroom window that night.

I said, “Dad, do you think there really are many universes?”

“I think there are. Based on scientific experiments, and what little we know about the universe in which we live, there could be many universes, some a duplicate of this one.”

“So, do you think there could be many versions of us?”

“An infinite number of us.”

“Do you think we make all the same choices?”

“No, I don't. We'd have different brainwashing. We make choices, or walk through different doors, have different paths, meet different people. In one universe I might be president.”

“President Jones.”

“In another your mother might be the ruler of America.”

“Queen Henrietta Kellogg aka Carmen Jones.”

“In another we could be homeless, or I could have died from some disease during childhood. In one universe the black man could have enslaved the white man. In another the idea of slavery never took root. In another the dinosaurs are still alive and man is all but extinct.”

“In another the Native Americans and Arawak rule.”

“In another it's an altruistic society, not capitalistic. Still another has no word for murder, because there is no murder.”

“And no word for cancer, because that is not an issue.”

“In one, Hitler could be the ruler.”

“Godwin's Law, Dad. Godwin's Law.”

“Sorry, but that was only as an example, not as a comparison. In one universe the twenty-five thousand blacks that had been taken to the Rhine could have risen up and defeated Hitler's madness.”

“I've never heard about black folks being over there during that era.”

“Without the presence of truth, only propaganda remains.”

“I would hope the rest of the universe would have kinder denizens across the board.”

“Maybe in some universe, there are better people than the ones here on this planet.”

“In one universe, it's a perfect world and nothing bad ever happened to me.”

“One universe is our utopia where nothing bad ever happened to us as a family.”

“In one universe you and Mom are happily married.”

“I suppose so. And in one we never met and never married.”

“And you might have more than one child in a different part of the multiverse.”

“I suppose so. All the combinations and permutations are possible.”

“I would love to see that version of me, the one who didn't go through this, the one who didn't put her parents through what I put you through, the one who loves to take pictures, the ones boys want to be seen with. I'll bet that Destiny is happy and has no idea she's happy.”

“You can be happy too, Destiny.”

“I want to, but I need you to be happy too.”

“Don't worry about me.”

“Then don't worry about me.”

“Stop it.”

“You stop it.”

“I'm happy when you're happy.”

“And I'm happy when you're happy.”

Probably triggered by our conversation talking about multiple universes and endless possibilities, Dad fired up the television and used the app on his Fire Stick to find a movie called
Rheinland
, a film about being black in Germany in the year 1937, when the Nazis ruled. While it played, I used the clippers and cut his hair as short as I could, then put hot towels on his head before I lathered his crown. I shaved my old man's head until it was smooth as a baby's butt.

When I was done and we were cleaning up the mess, I said, “Wow.”

“Do I look funny?”

“You look pretty good, Dad. No gray here and there. You look younger.”

Soon I kicked back on the sofa again, and saw something shiny sticking up between the cushions. Dad always rested on the sofa and coins would fall out of his pockets. I dug between the pillows and what I pulled out wasn't money. It was an earring, a sterling-silver post earring with a rose crystal ribbon, the symbol for cancer awareness, for fighting that unrelenting beast.

It was the earring Ericka had been looking for the last few weeks.

I said, “I just found one of Ericka's favorite earrings between the pillows of your sofa.”

“Really? Wonder how that ended up there.”

“She dropped off the medicine last time.”

“She sat on the sofa when she stopped by.”

“Must've come off when she was here.”

“If you found it there, then I guess it did.”

“She stay long, or just dropped off the package?”

He ran his hands over his baldness and shrugged. “Not too long. She was in and out.”

Dad didn't make eye contact when I asked him about Ericka.

I asked, “Are you dating anybody?”

“Nope. You seeing someone, Destiny?”

“Nope. Destiny is not seeing anyone.”

“I understand how it was for Ericka when she was ill. People want perfection.”

“But I don't want you to be alone.”

“I'll be fine.”

I dropped Ericka's earring in my pocket, then found oils and massaged my dad's scalp.

He said, “You're a lot happier these days. You're smiling more, laughing a lot.”

“I know.”

“Bow chica wow wow.”

I laughed. “We are not having that conversation.”