Chapter 3 2003
Sometimes I wonder what might have happened had Boodo not had a hair appointment that day, if things might have turned out different.
“The gaal calls, and everyone jumps,” Farts Often said when he finally pulled to the curb in his old truck.
Gaal is not a nice name. It means “outsider,” and some Somalis use it to refer to white people.
Tiny thanked him for coming and opened the passenger door. I climbed in after Tiny and pinched my nose against the smell I knew was coming. Farts Often lived up to his name, and his truck stank like a porta potty, cigarettes, and sweat.
Because he’d taken his time coming to get us, the Lincoln was already parked in front of Kendall House when we got there.
And because it wasn’t in Tiny’s nature to think of such things, she and I walked inside with me still in my painting clothes—a yellow flowered dress, black-and-pink zigzag leggings, and blue snow boots.
And my hair was still styled in the six box braids Boodo had woven it into three days before.
Profe and Mother were in the living room.
Mother sat on the couch, her head leaned back on a pillow and an arm draped over her eyes.
Profe was in the armchair beside her in his driving clothes, a black suit with a crisp white shirt and thin black tie.
On the coffee table was an amber pill bottle and a half glass of water.
Profe stood when we walked into the room, and Mother pushed herself up with a groan. She looked mostly like she did when she’d left a month earlier, her trademark chin-length gold wig in place and her lips painted Pink in the Afternoon, the same shade Audrey Hepburn had worn.
On reflection, she might have been thinner and seemed more tired than usual, though I also recognize that the mind is apt to paint the past with prejudice of what we come to know. So I could simply be remembering what I now know to be true. Mother had come home early because she wasn’t doing well.
She blinked several times before running her laser blue gaze over me, a frown forming as she took in my hair, dress, leggings, and boots. Her eyes returned to my face and settled on the left side, avoiding the right as they always did.
My throat grew tight.
“Happy, you may go,” Mother said to Tiny.
Mother had never bothered to learn the names of Boodo’s three daughters, so she called all of them Happy, though none of them looked alike.
As Tiny turned to leave, she touched my hair, the briefest of gestures, but I appreciated what it meant.
When the front door clicked closed, Mother said, “For the love of Peter, what are you wearing, and what have they done to your hair?”
I looked at the rug between us.
“Your grandmother is rolling in her grave.”
Profe said, “Your mother would be pleased to see your daughter so healthy and well.”
“And looking like a gutter rat,” Mother scoffed.
“I will take her to get cleaned up,” Profe said.
“Thank you, Andres,” Mother said.
Profe was also a nickname, one that only I used, short for “professor” in Spanish. His full name was Andres Osvaldo Marcel, which I thought was a very beautiful name.
With a gentle hand on my shoulder, he guided me from the room.
When we were safely in my bathroom, the tears I’d been fighting escaped from my eyes.
“You’re okay,” Profe said, his voice low. “Save those tears for someone who deserves them, which is only a person who would not make you cry.”
In his quiet way, he was seething, which made me feel a little better. Like Boodo, he was reliant on Mother, which meant he needed to be careful. Mother was temperamental and fired people all the time, sometimes over nothing more than a perceived slight or small misdeed.
Carefully he unraveled the braids and, using his fingers, brushed the tangles from my hair.
When he finished, he huff-laughed. “Splendiferous!” he said, the word borrowed from one of his favorite authors, Roald Dahl.
He pointed to the mirror, and I stood and looked at my reflection and, despite my mood, giggled as well. My hair poofed out as wide as a tent. But then my eyes caught on my birthmark, and the smile dropped.
Chocolate brown, furry in spots and lumpy in others, the congenital nevus covered the right upper quarter of my face, except for a small moon of flesh that smiled beneath my eye.
Boodo said my nevus was the Somali in me trying to get out.
Profe said it was God’s way of marking me as special.
To me, it was mostly something I didn’t think about—the same as my nose or my feet—except when I met new people or when I was around Mother.
Then it was plainly something so blinding and awful it was impossible to see past.
Profe’s dark eyes reflected off the mirror into mine. “Oh, Cielo,” he said. “Someday, you will see what I see. I look forward to that day. It’s the beauty within us that makes it possible for us to recognize the beauty around us.”
He started the bath.
“Why is she home?” I asked, sitting on the toilet beside him.
“It’s only for a night.” He tested the temperature of the water. “In the morning, I am driving her to Saint Paul.”
Profe and I visited Saint Paul often. It’s where the University of Minnesota is as well as several museums.
“Your mother’s going through a bit of a rough patch and has come home for a tune-up.”
I had no idea what that meant. Once a year, Profe brought the Lincoln to the repair shop for a tune-up. He and I would sit in the small office with car posters and watch through the window as a man in a navy-blue uniform lifted the hood and worked on the engine. It usually only took an hour.
“How long does a tune-up on a person take?” I asked.
“Hard to know exactly. For some, a few weeks, but it’s possible it could take longer. It depends a lot on your mother.”
He turned off the tap and stood with a groan. Profe was old. Most people mistook him for my grandfather, which was fine by me. Like Boodo, he was family, regardless of whether we were related.
“I’ll set your clothes outside the door,” he said.
I took an extra-long time in the bath, scrubbing every inch to make sure no paint remained and washing my hair twice to smooth the frizz from the braids.
Then I dressed carefully in my Kendall House clothes—khaki pants, white collared polo shirt, and white Keds tennis shoes.
I checked myself in the mirror from every angle to be sure nothing was out of place, then walked down the hall to greet Mother again.
A few steps from the living room, her angry voice stopped me.
“Unacceptable!” she barked. “I pay you to look after Vivien the way I intend for her to be looked after, here, in her home, and not willy-nilly as you please.”
“Yes, ma’am, I understand.”
My heart leaped at the sound of Boodo’s voice. Tiny must have called the hairdresser, and Boodo must have left straight away.
“Do you?” Mother retorted and did not give Boodo a chance to reply before continuing, “She is a Kendall, and I expect her to be raised as one.”
“Yes, ma’am. It was not my intention—”
“I do not care about your intentions. I care about my daughter.”
Every nerve in my body was jumping, my loyalties torn between the rush of love I felt for Mother with her concern for me and my deep devotion to Boodo.
“She was painting with my granddaughter. They were making Christmas gifts. I didn’t want her to ruin her clothes.”
This was a lie. When Mother was gone, Boodo let me dress as I pleased, and I chose to wear the same bright clothes as Astur.
“Making Christmas gifts,” Mother scoffed. “My daughter doesn’t need to make gifts. If she needs gifts, she can buy them.”
My skin flushed. I’d set aside the largest tin for Mother and had painted it pale pink to match the color of her lipstick. The design was three hearts, one inside the other.
“It will not happen again,” Boodo said.
“No, it won’t,” Mother snapped back. “I’ve made a decision.”
My breath stopped, worry for Boodo and her job rushing through me.
“It’s time Vivien went to school,” Mother said.
The statement was so far from what I expected it took several seconds to register.
Profe had always been my teacher, and it had never occurred to me that Mother would consider any other option.
My heart pounded with both fear and excitement.
Astur was in second grade, and I would be in first, but we’d see each other at recess and lunch.
And I could make other friends. I knew all the games, and finally I’d have things to talk about other than Profe and Blue House.
“Ma’am,” Boodo said, her voice slow and measured, “I don’t think that’s a good idea—”
“I’m not looking for your opinion,” Mother interrupted. “As I said, Vivien is a Kendall. I went to Gaines, as did my father and his father before him.”
My heart sank with the one-two punch. First that Boodo didn’t think I should go to school.
And second that Mother wasn’t thinking of sending me to regular school with Astur and instead wanted to ship me off to the school she went to as a girl, the boarding school that she claimed had stolen her childhood.
“You can go now,” Mother said dismissively.
Instead of leaving, Boodo pressed on, “Dhoola is doing so well—”
“Her name is Vivien.”
Mother loathed nicknames. Dhoola, which means “smile,” was what my Blue House family called me on account of the extra “grin” my birthmark gave me on my face. My actual name, Vivien, Mother had chosen because she claimed we were related to Vivien Leigh, star of Gone with the Wind.
When I was five, I asked Profe if we could watch the movie so I could see her. The film was so long we needed to watch it over three days. Scarlett was very pretty but also selfish, and the entire movie I wished I’d been named Ann for the actress who played Careen instead.
Bravely Boodo continued, “Kids at Vivien’s age can be cruel—”
“She’ll be fine,” Mother said. “Now, go. This whole thing is making my head pound.”
“Ma’am, please—”
“Have you forgotten your place?” Mother snapped.
Terrified for Boodo and her job, I hurried from the shadows.
“Here I am! All clean!”