Chapter 30 Miz
30
MIZ
MONDAY, JANUARY 7, 2019
11:00 A.M.
Kal: Melkam Gena!
Me: Merry Xmas to you too!
Kal: What’s your plan?
Me: With Dad until after lunch. Then to Mom’s for overnight. U?
Kal: Whole clan here all day. Except you
8:00 P.M.
Kal: How was your day?
Me: just passed out at Mom’s hotel.
Kal: Lol what happened?
Me: Let’s just say I am glad these two people live on different continents. How do divorce kids do it?! I am emotionally and physically exhausted with all this
Kal: ??
Me: Ping-Pong, you know, one parent to another same day. Too intense for me. I’m all knots.
Kal: Oh! Need a massage?
Me: Nah, just lots of
A massage sounds amazing, but I’m not about to admit that. Going to spas for “cheap” mind-blowing massages is the number one diaspora activity we used to partake in plenty, but I know that maintaining distance from Kal (and Eske, by extension) is for the best. We weren’t expecting to see much of each other anyway. Not that it will make any difference to Saturday, which is still happening. But it does make me feel as if I’m reining Kal in. Controlling the situation without really controlling a damn thing about the actual situation. Less time together is for the best. I still plan to break things down for him—yes to togetherness, no to husband-wifey shit—but later.
TUESDAY, JANUARY 8, 2019
9:00 A.M.
Kal: Got time for ?
Me: Aw, already dosed up on my Starbucks instants. Spending day w Mom.
Mom being in town actually works out nicely for my little keeping-distance strategy. Since Dad is back to work for the rest of the week, my plan is to get up early enough to chill with Mom during the days until she leaves for up north, then be with Dad in the evenings.
But day one of “chilling” with Mom turns out to mean not café-hopping and spa treatments and shopping to take in what’s changed around the city. Instead, it is tagging along to house after house, making very belated condolence calls for people who have died in the time she’s been away. People who I don’t know from Adam and I’ve never heard Mom mention. Worse, at each visit, she hears news of more passings that she must pay respects to, so our itinerary keeps growing. The thought of more of the same cracks my resolve. Who am I kidding? I need my boyfriend.
4:00 P.M.
Me: Save me. I’m literally dying in leqso bet.
Kal: Mourning? Who died?!
Me: Who didn’t?! F if I know. I’m on fourth house.
Kal: Come to dinner with us tonight?
Yes yes yes I want to say. But no. I’ve got to stay strong. Think of the long term. The big picture. Sure, I’d love to plaster myself to him, but I have to let us breathe a bit. So with regret, I leave him hanging, waiting to text him back until after Mom and I return to her hotel, where she insta-passes out on her bed, resting before some evening plan that, thank God, I’m not invited to.
6:30 P.M.
Me: Going back to Dad’s.
I feel like a total loser cooped up in here, getting ready to go home to get cooped up some more, when I should be out. But even if I miss Kal, it’s more important that I clear my head as much as possible, so I embrace it.
Kal: Want a pickup/drop-off?
Me: No, I’m good. Dad’s getting me.
Not. Once again, Dad is working late, so I am actually taking a RIDE home. Mom had been really suspicious of the ride-hailing app until I showed her it is literally the same thing as Uber.
Kal: We’re going out after…check on you then?
A flash of heat rips through me as I imagine all the homegirls in the club swarming Kal like migrating butterflies. I know the deal. I wish I didn’t, but I do. I groan in frustration to myself. Why do I care so much? Besides, Kal is the opposite of the cheating type. Man stayed loyal to an ex long after she moved on, and then some!
Me: I should hang with Dad.
Meaning, the bygone version of him in his photo albums. Like Dad and I did on my first night here back in ’96, I go through an old album of my parents’ wedding and their marriage certificate tucked into the last page. I have since taken screenshots of all of it on my phone in a hidden album, but when I come here, I still like to flip through the originals. Just a little jet-lag ritual of mine, which I do usually in that first week when I am up half of every night anyway.
Between how often I’ve gone over these fifty-three photos, only nine of which are in colour, and all the anecdotes Dad has (repeatedly) told me about their wedding, I know more about this day than about the day I was born. I pore over Mom’s floor-length wedding dress, with its long sleeves, high neckline, and empire waist, which Dad had emphasized was “imported straight from Italy.” Forgetting I’m not looking at my phone screen, I try to zoom in on the exquisite beadwork on the bodice and laugh when I catch myself. I don’t need to zoom in though; I’ve memorized every detail. I study Mom’s face. The way she gazes up at Dad. Man oh man, if it weren’t for the facts of science, I could easily believe that that was the moment I was conceived.
I put the album away. How does a marriage start out looking so right only to go so wrong?
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 9, 2019
10:00 A.M.
Me: How was the clubs, stranger?
1:00 P.M.
Kal: Sorry, I was out. Can you talk?
I dial his number right away. The three hours of silence from Kal, taken up by more depressing belated bereavement visits with Mom, were like a dose of my own medicine—very unpleasant. In that time, my mind has jumped to multiple scenarios, which all involve Kal leaving me for some beauty he connected with at the club. I excuse myself and step outside to the front yard, wandering all the way across the paved car park and a neat lawn bordered by leafy greens and pink roses until there’s nowhere to go unless I scale either the cinder-block wall or the water tower ninja-style.
“What’s up?” I say, when he answers.
“Sorry, I was out,” he repeats. “We went to the mausoleum.”
It takes a second before I remember that one of his must-do things when he returned for the anniversary was to see the new marble cover of his mother’s crypt. “Oh. How was that?”
He sighs heavily. “Hard. How can the place where I feel it hardest to believe she is gone also be the place where I feel her the most?”
I swallow, tracing my hand along the groove of the dried cement gluing the cinder blocks together. “I don’t know.” And here I was whining about too much time spent with my mother, too many dead people we had to mourn. Fudge.
Kal continues. “I wish you had seen Abay though. The rest of us were all crying, but he was so relaxed because he is with her in his mind. His face was peaceful, joyful even.”
“That’s so…beautiful,” I say, feeling my eyes sting a little bit, remembering, for some reason, the night I watched Kal “die” as Antony onstage and how that got me so worked up. What if something happens to him here while I am so busy avoiding him for reasons that make sense only to me? I’ll never forgive myself, forever wishing that I should’ve been there. Like a good girlfriend.
“They were asking about you. I wanted to tell you something.”
“Yeah?” Please say that we don’t measure up to them, that we have no business being all up in their big day. Please say you’re content just being my boyfriend.
“Standing before Emay’s crypt, observing Abay, I realized that my parents’ marriage, the kind of bond that extends into the hereafter, that is the kind of love a person could only humbly aspire to, not arrogantly assume will pass on to him as a birthright, like their features and mannerisms, you know? That had been my attitude when I was young, when I was with…why I took it for granted that us being together since grade eight equalled lifelong marriage.” I startle, realizing he’s talking about him and Muna. “Now I know all anyone can do is accept that we have no control over whether we are destined to be among the lucky few who find that kind of timeless, spaceless bond. We can only try. I want you to know I plan to try as hard as I can.”
I sink down to the grass, floored by this. I don’t know what to do with it. What else could a person ask for, really? I shake my head. I mean a person who is actually married married.
“Am I being too heavy?” he says, when I don’t respond.
“You?” I say, finding my voice. “Never!” But I don’t know what else to say.
“I did ask Emay to send a sign that you and I have a good shot, if it’s not too much trouble.”
“And?” I genuinely want to know if we do. Does anyone do well skipping over an entire phase of a relationship?
“Well, they move on heaven time up there, so we have to wait and see.”
“I hope it’s quicker than Black people time.” I mentally curse my stupid humour as an emotional crutch, and a nearby rose stalk takes the punishment as I choke and swing it roughly.
“But I think Saturday will be a kind of good luck charm.” Aaaand we’re back to Saturday. “When am I seeing you? I’m losing sleep.”
“It’s called jet lag,” I say. Eye roll. He waits. “Well, tomorrow Dad is taking me to Sululta,” I say. “He has to go for work, but I’m tagging along since we haven’t seen much of each other. So I guess Friday? Brunch?”
“Make it lunch, then you can stay on for the evening thing!”
“Huh? Stay on for…?” I don’t remember committing to a Friday thing, though if it is just us two, I’m very open to it, of course.
“The eve get-together. Eske didn’t mention it?”
“All I know is she is supposed to come get me early Saturday morning for hair and makeup.”
“At our place. I assume you’re not having a tilosh at your place,” he says. A bridal wedding-eve party? “It’s just a small fete.”
“Legesse-small,” I say. “Anyway, I’m not supposed to be there, Friday night of all nights. Might I remind you there isn’t supposed to be any mingling of the bride’s and groom’s camps the night before a wedding? Especially of the bride and groom themselves!” Why am I talking like this, enabling the madness? Although lord knows I do miss…mingling with Kal. We’ve been apart three days, going on four. I’m feeling all stiff, and I really do miss him. “The bride at the groom’s house on the eve. Tsk tsk . Scandal,” I say, hoping I sound firmer than I feel.
“Didn’t you take anything away from the talk over lunch last Saturday? Tradition is under renovation,” he says.
“But I’ll need my beauty sleep.”
“Oh, I promise you a beautiful sleep.”
“Goodbye, Barry White!” I say, feeling mixed up again, and end the call.