Chapter 22 Kal
22
KAL
I’m at a UPS store, waiting for my passport photographs to print, when I get a call from my father. “Congratulations, son!”
“On what?” I step out of the below-ground store and climb the steps to the street level. Part of me is praying that Abay has belatedly found out about my playing Antony. That was back in August, almost two months ago, but he moves on his own schedule.
“I hear you have married. When did you become engaged?”
My heart drops. Eske! “I didn’t!”
“I know. You jumped right into it. No engagement. My son! You remind me of myself, doing away with the protocols. Or were you engaged all this time?”
“No, Abay. Because I am not really married.” Only people who are entering into a sacred union become married. Blending clans, histories, grudges, genes. Miz and I had simply repeated a few words and signed some papers. That was all, my increasingly rebellious heart notwithstanding. “Who told you I did?” I’m giving Eske a very slim benefit of the doubt. News has a way of seeping through unlikely cracks.
“The police chief called to congratulate me on my youngest son’s good fortune in Canada.”
I say the man’s name, to confirm. “But why—” I cut myself off, piecing the rest together. Eske had to secure me a police certificate from Addis for the application. Not only would she have had to explain what it was needed for (and knowing her, she would have been very thorough in her explanation anyway), but she would have needed to pull on our higher-up connections to get it done fast.
“Abay.” I duck into a winter vestibule already installed outside a business next door, this October having been unusually chilly, to escape the street noise. “We married as an arrangement—”
“I was like you with your mother!” My father goes on seamlessly, not showing a hint of annoyance that I bucked tradition—no formal ask to Miz’s family for her hand. “We took off on our own, as you know. Didn’t need anyone’s go-ahead. When love summons, you obey!”
It has been years since I have heard Abay sound so delighted—there’s no stopping him. “I am pleased. My son has come back into life. Year after year, I have had to hear from your brothers and uncles and cousins that everywhere they used to take you, the restaurants, the clubs, the bars, everywhere, you behaved like a monk. I am so pleased that time is over now. And that it is a girl we know. Please give Mizan my congratulations as well.”
“Abay, you know she is just a friend, as she’s always been, helping me, her long-time friend,” I say. “She is only sponsoring me as a spouse so I can get permanent residence.”
Although only is not a fair word given the amount of paperwork we’ve had to do, not just for the application but to join our lives on paper to prove our fictional cohabitation: her having to prove her financials, her employment, and so much more. We were lucky Everest expedited the process of having me added as a tenant on Miz’s lease.
“She is not my friend . She is just my friend,” I enunciate louder, loading the first with the proper emphasis their generation gives it to mean partner . Were Miz and I foolish to have hoped—nay, expected —that this sponsorship would get taken care of without our families’ involvement? In this moment, I envy Miz’s tiny immediate family of three. They don’t get carried away at the first sign of anything romantic or matrimonial.
“Son, I am too old to go in circles with you. Miz is the one you’ve added to the family.”
I shuffle, looking down at my feet. “It’s just paperwork,” I say weakly.
“Is that what she also says?”
“That’s what we agreed on.” Though if she brought up moving in and sleeping on her couch for the duration of our case again…“You can ask her yourself.” And please tell me what she says , I think, because a part of me is starting to wonder . But he won’t ask her, of course.
It doesn’t matter. Miz doesn’t do marriage. At least, not the Miz I knew.
The morning after I slept over at Miz’s, I’d woken up to her gone, out on a run. I was putting away the photo albums when a piece of paper slipped out from one. A tearaway from a high school exercise book, with Miz’s handwriting telling a very different story of her than the one she has gone around telling of herself for years now.
Doodles covered the page, an outline of two hands, hearts everywhere, and Miz’s name written with the last name of the boy who got her sent to Ethiopia in the first place. They told of another Miz who had once dreamed of marriage, or at least cherished the idea of it. She had that desire, that flame once, but what she got for it was punishment. No wonder it was extinguished. Though she did keep that paper all these years. Was it possible that the flame was still present somewhere in the adult Miz?
I remember tracing the outline of the smaller of those hands, Miz’s, as if I had her living, warm hands underneath mine. I remember seeing in my mind’s eye her arms, her legs, carving through the air like when she is running. The first time I witnessed it was when I went to pick her up from running camp. Even then, I remember thinking, this is what an Ambassel melody would look like, the way her feet kiss the ground so lightly, barely stirring up dust, and her hair lifts and falls with each stride like the wings of a bird. An uncatchable bird, that yematibela wef of the old songs, which will scratch your heart to pieces should you try to hold her by the tail.
“Son-of-Legesse, I know you,” Abay says, snapping me back to the present. “A son whom we named vow would not marry a woman who was not his only, no matter what uncertainty and challenge he was facing in his life. Your former life here is not that abhorrent to you, is it?”
“No,” I say. I would never have gone as far as signing with a stranger, even if vetted by Miz.
“Choosing a life mate is not paperwork. Find a time to talk, truly, to her. Reveal the inner lining of your heart. In life, the best, most beautiful melody you hear will come to you when you don’t expect it, as a gift. Grab this song before she fades.”
“Abay, there’s…” But I can’t finish because I’m at a loss for words. You never know when the old folks are going to drop some heavy poetry on you. What argument can one make against that? Having said what he called to say, Abay ends our call shortly after a quick update on the anniversary party in January.
The image of that exercise book page flicks back into my mind. It is what made me a soft target for my father’s relentless conviction that what Miz and I have on our hands is a real commitment. It is what influenced everything I said, and didn’t say, that day we drove from location to location, taking our photos. I know it. It certainly was behind my daring move on the bridge, taking the initiative with that kiss, ensuring it was nothing like the missable peck at our civil ceremony. I remember her smiling dreamily at me after, as the sun set and that lady cheered.
I have been operating in a kind of daze ever since. Outwardly, we have been back to our regular selves. But it feels as if something has shifted between us.
They say you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. Is there a saying that you don’t know what you want until it’s in front of you?
If not Miz, for this, then who?
Frustratingly, there is nothing else in the application we need to do in person, so we haven’t seen each other in some time. Perhaps for the best. If my hunch (hope?) is wrong, it would make the coming months, years unbearable for both of us, if it did not completely destroy our friendship. Yes, best left alone. Unless she gives me a clear signal…