Chapter 31 Miz
31
MIZ
Friday evening finds me lounging solo on Dad’s balcony, my feet braced up on the stone, with nothing for company other than the background chatter of neighbours and passersby below, and the melodic calls and chants sailing through the air from mosques and churches. At least the Wi-Fi network is on point. And of course it would be, because on a Friday night, everyone is out having a life. I’m the one at home, fiddling with my phone because I’m too principled to go where I am wanted. That is, the “small” wedding-eve party at Kal’s. We talked again last night before bed and quickly this morning, but he’s been quiet since. Meanwhile, in my first day of being home alone in I don’t know how long, here and in Toronto, I’ve gone for a too-hot late run, taken a too-long nap, and watched too many hours of dubbed Turkish and Korean soaps. And I may have to repeat the whole cycle just to keep from fretting over why Kal is being so quiet. Has he never heard of magderder ? Has he forgotten that in our culture you’re supposed to make an offer multiple times? Sheesh.
It’s also been hours since Aimé emailed us both with a scan of Kal’s Open Work Permit, which had arrived in the mail at last. If Kal had seen it, he would have said something. Which must mean he hasn’t seen it. Which circles me back to the antsy-pantsy mystery of what’s got him so preoccupied? I cave.
Me: Guess what? Did you check email? Your wp arrived!
I send him a bunch of festive emojis and then groan. Who is this Miz, obsessing over a boyfriend? I don’t like her. And missing a party? What?! Miz doesn’t do marriage. Fine, we know that. But since when does she pass up any wedding-related party, much less one thrown by the Legesse fam? When technically, it’s not even a proper tilosh , since both weddings (the real and the fake) have come and gone, one of them forty-eight years ago, the other one three months ago. Which makes what I’m missing just your garden-variety party. Never thought I’d see the day. But still, I can’t help imagining how, if I was really Kal’s fiancée, tonight would be my night. This place would be jumping with music and dancing, packed with everyone from my side.
Another hour later, I’m so agitated I’ve turned into my own hostage negotiator. “You know what, why not get the full experience?” I say to my reflection in the bathroom mirror. “Well, full ish .” I look as if I’m cleaning house: hair sticking out of my wrap, dressed in a T-shirt and pyjama shorts. “Okay, so, hear me out,” I say to me. “Not that you signed for Kal because you were curious about marriage, but if you had, say you had, then why not go all-in, huh? You’re about to experience the actual big day, so why not the lead-up to it too?”
Besides, it makes more sense for me to sleep over there anyway, as long as we’re throwing tradition or protocol or whatever out the window.
I grab my phone before this latest tide of yes yes yes changes to but but but again.
Me: Come get me.
Without even waiting for Kal to respond, I jump in the shower for the second time that day to start getting ready. One thing I have no shortage of here is party dresses. I’ve left behind clothes after every wedding so I would have room in my luggage for Mom’s goods. But I end up wearing the dress I brought to wear to Kal’s parents’ wedding anniversary tomorrow, a silky green wraparound dress (very easy to get out of) and tie-on black strappy heels. As for my hair, there’s no time to do anything but slick it back. The final thing I put on, also a few hours earlier than I’d planned to and to complete the charade, is my wedding ring.
When there’s a knock at the door a little while later, I throw it open and am immediately thunderstruck. The Kal who’s come to whisk me away makes my breath catch. He’s leaning against the portico column, swinging a single red rose upside down by the stem, ankles crossed and one hand in his pocket. I behold him in the only way that does him justice, in a slow, sensual pan up. His long, sleek frame is sheathed in a fitted midnight-black designer suit, creases crisp as if he’s been professionally gift-wrapped for me, and his patent leather shoes are so shiny I can see my reflection in them. His skin, darker from one week in Addis, glows in the night. And that fade? When our eyes meet, I know the drunk desire I see in his is mirrored in my own.
He holds out the rose. I take it. He sees my ring. He pulls my hand in and kisses the back. I flip his hand over and reciprocate. “Come in,” I say. He does, turning me with him as he goes. And that swagger? “Ahem, were you always this fine in Ethiopia?” I say, letting him lead me back inside. I run my other hand up his back. I know that diaspora up their fashion game when they are here—not about to catch anyone going out in leggings and a baseball cap, hell no—but I can’t believe I deprived myself of him all week. “How’re you gonna top this tomorrow?”
He tugs the edge of his blazer lightly and slides his hand down his milk-white shirt—a gesture that nearly finishes me off. “Tomorrow is a mystery,” he says with a slow blink.
Whoosah. I’m not a gambling gal, but I feel as if I’ve hit the jackpot. This special edition Kal, my smooth stick-shift operator East African Bond is going to be mine all night and all day tomorrow? Mine. And not just today and tomorrow but…for life? Because he’s…my husband , I think, testing out the phrase in the soundproofed privacy of my mind.
“Only the present is known.” He closes the distance between us and plants a kiss…on my cheek. Boo. I pull my cheeks down in a pout. But still scrumptious. My response is to blatantly sniff the skin of his neck, from shoulder to ear and along his jaw and up his chin, coming around to his mouth—the only reason I haven’t put my lipstick on yet. “I missed you,” Kal says, pulling back.
“Where are my gifts?” I demand, my arms akimbo. The head of the rose taps my lower back softly. I swing it around and wag it at him. “You are supposed to be showering me in all kinds of gifts tonight, as your bride.”
“Is that so? Well, since I have neither gold, nor silver, nor perfumes, nor a week’s worth of party outfits for you, and since you already have a wedding dress,” Kal says, listing all the typical goodies I’m not going to get, “how about I…” Eyes hooded, he scans me hem to hairline, echoing my actions on the doorstep.
“ Indee! Hey, stop it,” I exclaim, feeling all kinds of ravished. “We better go before we end up not going at all.” I pick up the overnight bag I’ve put by the door. “I thought I would sleep over. Instead of Eske having to get up earlier to come pick me up tomorrow? We can all go from yours together, right?” I bite my lip, fearing I have overdone it. “Is that too much? Will she mind?”
He takes the bag from me. “If she does, she’ll have to deal with me.”
I bite the stem of the rose, shortening it, and stick it in my ponytail. Kal’s hand captive in mine, we head out. For the ride back to his place along roads now lit up like a Christmas tree that a child decorated—electric palm trees and all—he puts on a playlist of wedding songs. I don’t comment on it. I’m just so happy to be together again that I even acknowledge and wave back at the flirty young men and boys overseeing roadside fruit carts. One of the songs is “Ale Gena,” the outro of almost every wedding party, which, based on the crickets that follow, I had always thought of as marking the end of fun and the beginning of disappointment. Maybe it’s the happiness of being with Kal again, or my own self-talk earlier, but I find myself reconsidering the lyrics now as we groove along to it. How it says there will be more weddings yet, because everyone marries eventually. This wedding party is winding down, but this time next year, and the next and the next, all the single bridesmaids, groomsmen, their sisters and brothers and cousins and nieces and nephews and neighbours will, one by one, get hitched.
Am I everyone?
—
“What’d I say?” I turn to Kal as we walk into his yard, having had to park out on the street because of the overflow. “Ain’t nothing small about all y’all’s small parties.” There are easily fifty people, and that’s just out in the garden. The air is a heady mix of cigarette smoke, incense, coffee and liquor. Out back, there’s a full-on catered buffet and nonstop barbecue, even a big bonfire like it’s Meskel time.
“Hey, your songs!” I say, hearing Kal’s playlist in the background.
“Our songs.” He places our intertwined hands on his chest. “You helped me a lot with them.”
“Categorically untrue,” I say, looking around and taking it in, waving to the faces I know (few and far between). It would be overwhelming if this were all for me and Kal, but I remind myself it was originally intended for his parents. We’re just last-minute add-ons. It basically has nothing to do with me, right? I ask my twinkling stars in the pitch-black clear night sky.
Much later in the evening, when the atmosphere has mellowed out, people nursing their glasses of preferred digestifs around the bonfire, someone requests that Tsige, one of the guests, grace us with her music. Of course a professional singer would be among the guests at this Legesse version of a small fete. Just one of those legends that the family oh so casually has in their social circle like it ain’t no thang.
Tsige, regal and heavy-set as an opera singer in a loose blue robe, doesn’t need much goading. Cigarette drooping in one hand in a way that reminds me so much of Asni, swirling her tumbler of cognac, she slides from preamble conversation into “Ende Iyerusalem” within the same breath, no prep needed.
I gasp. Asni’s signature song! The crowd claps and snaps their fingers softly in appreciation. I immediately fall into the rhythm of her smoky voice, softly lip-synching to words I think are roughly about someone who is so near yet so far. Like Kal, sitting what feels like miles away on a lawn chair next to me. He is smiling at me knowingly. I want to climb on his lap, feel his arms around my hips, his chest against mine, his fingers digging into my hip in that way that makes my legs give out from under me.
Hoots and whistles erupt from the audience when Tsige phrases lyrics whose sounds are unfamiliar to me. “She’s improvising,” Kal murmurs, seeing my confusion.
“It’s like she’s channelling Asni,” I whisper back, noticing how every time she weaves another impromptu line, she lifts her downcast, mournful eyes and delivers it personally to one of the guests. Good thing she doesn’t know anything about me , I think, with relief.
“Well, she was her contemporary. Was actually a witness at her wedding.”
“Say what now? Asni was married?” How did I miss that in all the stuff I turned up during my googling to find an English translation of the lyrics to the song?
“Sure.” Picking up on my interest, Kal gives me a quick lowdown. The Queen of Krar , she who loved to love but looked down her nose at marriage, as far as I had gathered, was herself madly in love and married, once. “But it didn’t last long.” That tracks. “More later. Better yet, watch the doc,” he says, and puts his finger to his lips. A documentary?! What rock have I been under?
Tsige does a few more songs for us, then to much appreciative applause from her listeners, retires back to her guest status. “Ale Gena” floats into my head again. Everyone does marriage. Every girl, one day, holds the biggest bouquet, wears the whitest dress, stands smack dab in the middle of every photo, sits in one of the two thrones on the dais, has the happiest day of her life. So why not me tomorrow?
—
“Am I getting married married tomorrow?” I ask myself later, in yet another bathroom mirror, this time in one of the guest bedrooms, while brushing my teeth. “I mean, I am married,” I respond to me, frothy-mouthed. “Technically, but…” I rinse my mouth and, leaning in with my hands on the counter, face myself again, closer this time. So this is how six-time champion bridesmaid Mizan Begashaw, who does not do marriage (but has a misplaced engagement ring still in her possession, and a hidden album of her parents’ wedding on her phone and keeps finding herself in other women’s wedding gowns), lands herself married, eh? I can only guess what all those six picture-perfect brides whom I waited on hand and foot really felt inside. But if it is anything like this bring it on, why the hell not? fearlessness, then fuck it, why the hell not me too? I switch the lights off and go to my rightful bedroom.