Chapter 6 Miz
6
MIZ
The highlight of the rest of my week is taking Mom shopping for an outfit to wear to her retirement party, even though chances are she’s just going to wear one of her regulation traditional dresses. But one can hope. I also wanted to pick up something to wear to Kal’s afterparty. I figured that having Mom along would help me get something more modest since I was semi-considering trying out Kal’s advice to take a break from dudes . And what better way to ensure I don’t hook up with anyone than by showing up looking as if I came from Sunday service?
Daniel was still bugging me about coming over, and I was still playing dumb as if I assumed it’s because he wants to make up, and responding along those lines: I still need time (Monday night). Maybe it’s for the best (Tuesday afternoon). I’m sort of talking to someone (midnight Wednesday). What was I supposed to say? Sure, come on over, but can you make sure to bring your gym bag with you? That’s not suspicious at all. Hey, at least I was responding. Meanwhile, my bedroom has become a guilt-ridden radioactive zone, and I am losing more of my self-respect daily. But he’s backed off since Wednesday. Being the daughter of a woman who’s worked in the insurance industry all her life, I wonder, hope, that he’s gone quiet because he had the ring insured and decided to make a claim.
When I was shopping with Mom, I started to ask her, in a very roundabout way, how one goes about doing that. But I backed off immediately when she asked me point-blank, You have something? What I heard was, You have someone? (I.e., a boyfriend.) I seized up so fast that I almost flattened a whole mannequin display. Quickly, I redirected back to talking fashion, convincing Mom to get something she would never have picked out on her own (and ditto moi ). But by Sunday evening, I realize that, new no-dating resolution or not, I won’t be caught dead in something so blah. The calf-length button-down dress is the fashion equivalent of a eunuch, Kal’s role in this play. As I shower to get ready for the show, I sound out the word as I had done last spring when I rode along on another one of Kal’s outings to research his upcoming role.
We went to a hookah lounge because the eunuch fires up a water pipe for Cleopatra in one scene. I remember Kal on the cushion perpendicular to mine, elbows on the low armrest, making a slicing motion across his lap to explain the idea of a eunuch.
“Ow!” I covered my lap with my hands, gently sucking on the pipe to get it going.
“Job requirement for serving the royal ladies back then. We call it seleba , castration.”
“Mm-hmm,” I blew a thick plume of green-apple-flavour tobacco smoke in Kal’s face. “So, how are you going to achieve that, ahem, I got robbed of my junk effect?” I’d asked, purposely not attempting the new-to-me Amharic word. I knew all too well the galaxies of difference that a misplaced or mis-stressed syllable could make in spoken Amharic.
I waved the pipe toward Kal’s crotch area. “Because there are videos out there on how to tuck that away. I can send you some links.” His hairline scurried back a full inch. “I mean, I wouldn’t want you stumbling across stuff that you can’t unsee.”
“That you, however, have seen?” he said, arching one eyebrow. I fluttered my eyelashes innocently. “But it has to be a good video. I have a lot to put away,” he said, puffing himself up.
“Puhleeze!” I passed him the pipe. “Men! Did I imply that you didn’t?”
I carefully apply liquid eyeliner in perfect extra-long lines at the corners for my Cleo look. And, oops, a scandalous dress after all: li’l black sequin number that hangs by a strap laced asymmetrically across my back. “Wow, are you going to a show or trying to be the show?” I say to myself, winding my hips in the mirror when I am done. I look like a slice of Addis night sky, if I do say so myself. Am I a little overdressed for sitting on the grass in a park? Yep. But a girl has places to be afterward, hobnobbing to do.
My dollar store beach mat slung across my back, fancy clutch tucked under my arm, I slip on a pair of flats, toss my heels in a shopping bag for later, and head out. At the park, I rent a cushion to put over my mat and stand at the lip of the amphitheatre, combing the sea of people for Kal’s and his roomies’ friends so I can sit with them. I see the absurdly tall director, Oliver, from afar and wave hello. When I can’t see anyone else I recognize, I give up and wind my way down to the very front of the spill of bodies and snuggle up on a patch of grass next to a friendly looking lady about my mom’s age. She offers me a corner of her blanket and some Korean dried jujubes. We’re nibbling and chit-chatting, me humble-bragging about knowing someone in the show, when the lights start to dim. I take out my phone to silence it but get sidetracked into checking socials while the pre-show overhead announcements drone on.
Until my ears suddenly catch on the words Kalkidan Legesse .
“What? Huh? What’d they say about Kal?” I say to my new friend, Betty, feeling panicky that something has happened to him. She shrugs. I whip my head around, searching for Oliver, but of course, it is too dark by now. I’m about to call him when bam , the lights come on and Kal is suddenly in front of me, close enough to touch, all up on Cleopatra in way-too-revealing ancient pyjamas but throwing a line directly at me, it seems, instead of her.
Something-something love that can be reckoned.
Eh? I understand the individual words but not what they mean in that order. What’s going on? I actually mouth this to him as if he’ll respond to me from the stage. Why is he…Antony? I stare open-mouthed, feeling all tingly. In no time, I become lost in Kal’s performance in a way I never have been. How could I have been, with his sprinkling of one-liners?
But tonight is an avalanche of fancy words pouring out of him in such a state of constant sweaty, frothy passion, churning through all the emotions, talking talking talking, oh my god so many words. Letting himself be so obviously emotionally manipulated by Cleo. For a lady whose name is half the title, Cleo is absent from big chunks of the action, but when she’s onstage, she does plenty of damage. The more I witness Cleo purring all over Kal, then shoving him away, then luring him back to her, the more I want to storm up there and smack a bitch. Kal too. Knock some sense into the idiot. Can’t he see she is using him? Why are men so freaking dumb ?!
And then, as if the practically see-through togas (yes, he had a lot to put away; shut me up) weren’t enough, Kal rolls up dressed in a breastplate . Pecs, abs, and lats galore. I haven’t seen anything of Kal’s body other than his extremities since…must have been when we all used to go swimming in Addis back in the day, but I’m pretty sure he’s not chiselled like that under the hood. And a leather skirt ? Over knee-high laced sandals ?
Kinky outfits aside, I do start to zone out when the political manoeuvrings and reports of battle drag on.
But then Kal starts to die.
I know it is all make-believe, but it hits me hard, watching him die, slowly, agonizingly, by his own hand, for the love of a woman whose love for him is suspect. Incapable of maintaining disbelief, I straight-up sob. Betty, looking pretty rough herself, hands me a tissue. I thank her and mumble some jumble about being so emotional these days because I just got out of a messy relationship. For the rest of the show, she grips my hand like only a mother could. And by the time the ordeal is over, I’m so wiped out that she’s the one who has to help me up.