Chapter 35 Miz
35
MIZ
Now that the secret’s out about their…affair (what else am I supposed to call it?), my parents drop the act of Dad “working late” every day and Mom having mystery plans every evening. Dad just stays on at Mom’s hotel, leaving me the whole apartment to myself now that I have no one to share it with. Still, I keep hoping that each day will bring Kal to my door. I don’t dare reach out to him. The kindest thing I can do now is shut up and wait for him to accept that I’m right so that we can start figuring out how to be a normal girlfriend-boyfriend couple, who just so happen to be married to each other. On paper.
All that weekend, I creep photos and stories of the anniversary-wedding party on socials. The event went off beautifully without me. I’m impressed by how fast Weyneshet and her crew swerved back to the original protocol. No one would ever have guessed there was supposed to be a whole other couple there. Or that Kal was anything but a proud and happy son. I feel horrible, thinking of the kinds of questions he must have got because of my absence from those who’d known about us. Or worse, not questions but looks and whispers instead, for being dateless at what was supposed to have been his wedding celebration too.
During the week, I ignore multiple calls from Eske, Bini and numbers I don’t recognize. Kal is the one person I want to hear from. A call, a text, a visit, anything to say he understands. I wait for him to respond again to my last text to him: Come get me . But he continues his cold silent treatment. I double my runs, going out in the morning and evening, to destress. But no matter how hard or long I go, I can’t stop replaying our conversation in the coffee shop.
Now and then, a sinkhole of sadness gapes open inside me, and I have to have a good cry at the thought of what that day could have turned out like had I never crossed paths with my parents that morning. Had I gone on blissfully believing in the fantasy that that day was mine and Kal’s too, that we had miraculously leaped into happy-marriage land. Had I worn the makeup, put on the dress, held the bouquet, posed for photos—gone through all the motions, in full faith that I could be like everyone else. But then the sinkhole fills back up, and my insides level out again, and I calm down. No. It was fated that I would cross paths with my parents so that I wouldn’t fall any deeper into being a fraud, a total imposter. To not cross paths with my parents would mean that everything leading up to that point would need to not have happened, going as far back as meeting Kal at all. And I refuse to imagine that. Kal and I were fated to meet in that parkette and to have stumbled into this version of us , so many years later.
Other than running and stuffing myself afterward with burgers and fries from the compound restaurant—miraculously unchanged after all these years—and passing out to my dubbed soaps, I go out only twice: on the obligatory souvenir spree with Mom, and to donate all my old running shoes that I hauled here. Each time, even though we always take hired taxis, I come back home grimy, exhausted and practically exhaling diesel dust. I am haunted by the sharp contrasts more than ever—the merchant women squatting by the roadside, protecting their tiny piles of tomatoes and peppers on plastic sheets from the shuffling feet of the long lines of government workers waiting to get sardined into aging city buses, while high above, on the rooftop bar of the mall above everyone, expats, diasporas and what Dad calls “private sector types” mingle over happy hour and tapas.
By the end of my time here, I am not sorry to leave any of it. In another mind-blowing first, both Mom and Dad see me off at the airport the next Saturday. I bawl like a child leaving home for the first time. Inside the terminal, I brace myself to see Kal at last, expecting that here we will have no choice but to interact. The flight will force us to talk this shit out. What’s the alternative, taking a sixteen-hour nonstop flight without speaking?
Throughout pre-check-in security, check-in, passport control and the three additional security checks and two document checks before reaching the exclusive US and Canada departure gate zone, I keep an eye out for Kal, but he’s nowhere to be seen. By the time my group is boarding, I assume he’s running late, because the only other possible explanations are that he’s upgraded to business class or changed his travel date. All that to avoid me? The thought feels like an actual body blow, so I dismiss it while I let everyone board ahead of me.
Then I see him. He’s at the last document check, a simple table and chair setup just a few metres beyond the first row of gate seats, but that might as well be the Pentagon. The agent flips through Kal’s passport too fast to be noticing anything and ignores the additional documents he’s offering her. I hate seeing Kal’s bent, deferential posture. What the hell is there to question him about? Kal’s work permit, like his temporary resident visa, still has a month on it. But he’s warned me that, at the end of the day, any visa holder is at the border agent’s mercy, no matter the validity of their paperwork. But Kal has the documentation of our sponsorship process on him. We both do. And I assume he printed out the scan of the Open Work Permit that Aimé emailed us. What else does the fucker want, Kal’s firstborn?!
My breathing has become fast, choppy; my body pulses with fear. Immediately, I want to call my dad. When things get hairy here, it’s either him or Kal I turn to. But no, I’m a big girl. Handle it! On shaky legs, I start walking to the desk, but a commanding voice stops me.
“Is there a problem?” A man, off to the side. He looks official, but who the fuck knows? I keep walking. The tension between Kal and the agent at the table is really coming off in waves now. The man snaps his finger and claps at me. “Hey!”
Fuming, I stop to glower at him as much as I dare to. He points at the gate, his steely eyes fierce with real threat. “Boarding that way!”
I’m terrified. It’s as if all the stories I’ve absorbed about horrible altercations with figures of authority are surfacing at once, making me sweat so bad I actually start to stink sharply. Do people still get disappeared nowadays? Fuck if I know! I want to call out to Kal so he knows I tried, but it’s as if my throat is packed with sand. And I don’t want to add to his trouble. Feeling like a total useless shit waste of space, I slink away and board the plane. He’ll be in shortly , I tell myself. We’ll have all the time in the world to talk.
But he doesn’t board. This scares me so much that the only dialogue I end up having for the rest of the flight is with a whole lot of itty-bitty red wine bottles, and with the flight attendants. After I do a full circuit of economy to make sure Kal isn’t in a different seat, I annoy the shit out of them by asking, different ones at different times, whether I could do a walk-through of business class, real quick, just once . I’m lucky they still left me my breakfast tray while I was knocked out and drooling. By the time the plane lands, my lips look tattooed, and I have a splitting hangover. Which is why, when I catch a glimpse of Kal walking far ahead of me down the tunnel at Pearson Airport that leads to the customs hall, I think I am hallucinating. My first response, after confirming he’s not a mirage because of his interactions with people around him, is relief. But then it turns into What the fuck? He was on the flight? What the hell? He did upgrade. Jerk!
I hurry to catch up, losing sight of him now and then, barely restraining myself from breaking into a run for fear of drawing attention to myself in an airport. In the customs hall, he blends into a five-lane-deep passport control lineup, and I get stuck too far behind so that we can’t even end up side by side as the line folds back in on itself. I see him step up to a border agent’s cubicle. Within seconds of their exchange, he stiffens, starts making hard gestures with his hands. Their conversation drags on. This is not happening again . Well, at least here I speak the language, literally and otherwise. I excuse me and pardon me through the winding queue, tucking my stuck-out hairs back behind my ears to make myself presentable, agitation already shortening my breath and sending sweat trickling down the middle of my back. I step into the open area in front of the border agents’ booths.
“Ma’am, back of the line!” a security officer barks at me.
I point at Kal. “I’m with him.” The officer waves me on.
“I’m with him,” I say again to Kal’s agent, handing over my passport. “We’re together.” Oh god, I reek of day-old sweat, but Kal is wearing that perfumy sweetness of business class. I smile at him even though I want to kill him. Upgrade? Really, Negro? Mr. Business Class doesn’t deign to meet my eyes. But to the agent, he grants a smile, even if it’s one tighter than Addis rush-hour traffic. Slowly, he lifts his left hand to show the officer his wedding ring. Since I am, of course, not wearing mine, that might as well be a middle finger to me. I pull his hand down beneath the counter, trying to make it seem like a loving gesture. The agent opens his mouth. Between Kal’s coldness, his hand limp and lifeless in mine as if I am a stranger, and the fear of all the potentially entrapping questions the agent is about the ask, I feel a buildup of tears. I bite the inside of my cheek, tightening my death-grip on Kal’s hand. The tears escape anyway, and I purposely don’t wipe them away.
“Ma’am. Calm down,” the agent says with the slightest kindness in his voice. He taps the work permit in Kal’s passport. “This expires next month.”
I let more tears freestyle down my fattened cheeks. “He has—”
“Ma’am,” the agent warns.
Without a word, Kal lets go of my hand and pulls out a printout of the scan Aimé had sent, just as I’d hoped, and dryly explains his situation. Oh god, if he’s this robotic at our interview, we’re fucked. Miraculously, the agent lets us through. Kal walks ahead of me and steps on the escalator to go down to baggage claim.
“Phew, huh?” I say on the step above him, tapping him on his shoulder, wiping my face with my sleeve.
He doesn’t turn around completely. Just offers me his quarter profile. “That’s your strategy, isn’t it? Crying. To get your way. Well, I was handling the situation fine on my own.”
I see red. It’s all I can do to not push him down the steps. “You know what, you’re right. I shouldn’t have stepped up to sign for your sulky, spoiled brat ass . Excuse me,” I say, shouldering him aside and barrelling down the rest of the stairs. I do not need this. What I need is a shower, a bucket of Shanghai noodles from Swatow and my bed. No, my couch. Burn the damn bed. That’s what started all of this shit. Who buys a fucking mattress for a friend?
At the luggage carousel, far away from Kal, I switch my phone on. The screen spits up a whole bunch of texts, a lot of them spam, and a lot of them from Daniel. Same with the missed calls. Fuuudge. Ever since I hooked up with Kal, I have been straight up ignoring Daniel’s messages, not even pretending to try to arrange a time for him to come by anymore. In December, Daniel had gone quiet. Since the real estate market is dead in winter, I figured he’d gone out West for the holidays. Or Naomi dropped him, so he had no more need for an engagement ring.
Daniel: Hey.
Daniel: Miz, are you around?
Daniel: I’m passing through your area later.
Daniel: Babe, pls ping me I’m back.
Babe? I’ve pushed the poor man to the brink. I plop down on my cart, too tired of myself to stay upright.