Chapter 40 Miz
40
MIZ
The following week, all I have energy for is dragging myself to work and back in Ubers as if I’m made of money, passing off my injury as the cause of my antisocial miserableness (other than when I’m with clients). I am so glad that Omar doesn’t know I know he knows about Kal and me being married, because then I’d have to pretend worse than I already am that everything is copacetic. Since he left me splattered on my floor, I haven’t even tried to reach out to Kal. I bailed on him in a bad situation. He bailed on me in a bad situation. Are we even yet? My only excitements in life come from Aimé publishing a new blog post, and planning for when Mom comes home.
“ET 500, right? Or is it 501?” I say to Mom on the phone, sprawled on my couch, scrolling through Netflix. “Unless you have a stopover?” She is due back in seven sleeps! “Mom?”
“Um,” she says.
Um ? Since when does Mom say um ? My antennae perk up. “What? Dad?” I say, assuming I’m on speaker phone, because of course every call is a three-way conference now.
“It’s just you and I,” she says.
“Did something happen?” I sit up, ready to go UFC on Dad from all the way out here.
“Mizu…” she says with the drawn-out upward inflection she uses when she wants to ask me to do something for her. I don’t realize how bad I’ve missed that lilt in her voice until now. “I have good news.” Okaay. “I am going to stay.”
“Until?”
“No until . I will live here, with my husband, from now on.”
Buffering, buffering, buffering. “Eh? Who?”
“Mizu!” Sharp, fast this time.
“Just to be clear, you’re talking about…Dad?”
“Of course!” she says, shocked.
“You’re moving…I mean…you’re staying there? With him? For good?”
“Yes.” I can practically see the smile on her face, as if she’s accepting a proposal.
“But…” We were supposed to return together. The thought sounds whiny and childish in my head. Some part of me will always be expecting to take the return leg of our trip, the one we never took when I was two after my heart got fixed.
Dad comes on the line. “Mizan?”
My breathing has become rapid. I think I’m going to cry. Stop it, girlie. Leave your parents and their Bobby Caldwell playlist alone. One of my older clients at work had finally put me out of my misery, telling me what that song was that had been nagging me since the hotel room. “Hmm?” I squeak. Don’t cry don’t you fucking cry. They deserve to get their vintage romance on.
“I hope this means now you’ll be visiting more often, yes?”
And then it all floods out. I tell Dad everything: that Kal has been in Toronto since 2010, that I signed for him four months ago when his sponsorship fell through, that we had become involved in a real relationship afterward (leaving out the sex part obvs), that we were supposed to have a piggyback wedding wedding in Ethiopia, that we are not speaking now.
“Married but not together,” I finish off. Like you guys , once upon and for a long time.
“Where did this Kalkidan come from?” Mom says. I am briefly mind-blown at how wild it is that she’s completely oblivious to a person who is such a huge part of my life.
“Dad?” Help.
Long pause. Then I hear Dad lighting a cigarette. Oh, thank God. Choosing his words carefully, as if he’s building a case for a client who looks very guilty on paper but is actually quite law abiding and innocent, he loops Mom in about this Kalkidan . From Mom’s intermittent tiny gasps and sounds of surprise, I fear Dad might be landing himself in the doghouse for having allowed a boy to become my guardian of sorts in Addis all these years when a boy was the exact reason that Mom shipped me off to him in the first place.
Everybody caught up, Dad then turns on me. “Mizan,” he says. “The signing was not wise.”
No shit, Dad. I’m just glad this convo is happening when I’m too old to get in trouble with them. Where you gonna deport me to now, huh?
“We could send astaraki to the Legesses’ house here,” Mom says.
Mediators? Oh, hell naw! That’s for married married people!
“That is the way of our generation,” Dad says.
Also that too .
“Mizan, don’t be too proud,” Dad says. “Don’t waste your years like your mother and me. You don’t know until the very end of life what was for the good and what was for the bad. The way things seem now is only how things are now. Not how they will be in the future. Only at the end of life do we know what was really bad or good. Understand?”
“Uh-huh,” I say. What? I don’t know why I bothered. Not one piece of what they’ve said feels helpful. Am I supposed to apologize to Kal? File for divorce? Suggest our own big wedding? Turn myself in to the authorities? Why did I think I could get advice from these two?
I wish them a very belated congrats on their now truly official reunion and get off the call, planning to get in touch with Kal. But I can’t bring myself to tap his name on my screen. And I’m not about to barge unannounced into his house either. I put my phone away and continue scrolling through horror film options on Netflix. After the interview. This damn interview that we were supposed to ace in our sleep. Yes. When the admin is over, then we can deal with the personal part. One thing at a time, girlie.
—
“Still nothing from him, huh?” Aimé says on the phone, weeks later, while I am on my way to the interview in an Uber, the red binder on my lap.
“Nope,” I say, running my fingers along the tabs on the binder, each like a cut to my soul. “Imagine if I’m the only one there.”
“He’ll be there. And it’ll go fine,” she says, her voice choppy from running.
“How are you so sure?”
“Come on. Even when you two weren’t together, you looked like you belonged together.”
My heart warms at that. “So now you’re spitting flat-out lies, huh? Nice.”
As my ride pulls into the parking lot of the Service Canada Centre, I see Kal, bundled against the polar vortex, coming from the direction of the subway station. “Let’s do this,” I say to myself. I put a neutral face on and step out of the car, limping more out of habit than pain, lugging the monster red binder with me. I enter the building without waiting for him, as if he’s someone I used to know but hope won’t recognize me. We line up at security, show ID and our interview notification letter, pass through the metal detector, sign in and enter the crowded waiting room full of couples, all without exchanging a single word or look. Kal’s manner is so detached, his eyes so vacant, as if we have already bombed the interview and he’s been given a leave-by date. He sits one chair away from me, so I put the binder on the seat between us.
Thirty minutes later than our appointment time, the interview officer calls us in a dull monotone.
“Mizan Begashaw! Kalkidan Legesse!”
When Kal and I stand up, the officer tilts his head, closely wrapped in a dark indigo turban, just a tiny millimetre in surprise. Oh no. We already messed up. We shouldn’t have sat apart. I remembered reading somewhere on the forums that couples arriving for their interview are assessed on CCTV from the moment they enter the building. If there is any truth to that, Kal and I might as well go home now.
In the windowless interrogation room straight out of Law & Order , camcorder and all, we stand for the swearing in. Then the officer invites us to take our seats opposite his desk. He takes off the blazer he has on over a black turtleneck and hangs it over the back of his chair.
I hope my face does not show any trace of the resentment I started to feel the moment we entered the room. No one should have to go through this bullshit. Who is this rando to judge whether what Kal and I have is real or not? But I put on my most cooperative smile and angle my body toward Kal, even though my knees are killing me this morning and it makes it worse.
Meanwhile, Kal, Chief Knee-Kisser, is just a few shades short of hostile. Making zero effort to not look as if he’d rather be anywhere but here. What’s worse, I wonder, being like dummies or being overly affectionate? Hopefully, the officer will take our formality for cultural modesty, respect for authority. Or hell, for exactly what it is: a couple having a really bad moment…if a moment is almost six weeks. That’s as much proof of a true relationship as being all lovey, right?
Don’t hold it against us, mister , I plead silently. Believe me, we are in a true relationship.
The officer adjusts the materials on his desk. Landline phone, biometrics equipment, Bible and our file: the hundred-plus pages of forms, documents and photos we submitted last November. Plus a few printed pages, face down. Those must be the interview questions. The officer picks them up and taps the edges against the desk.
“Congratulations on your marriage,” he says flatly. No smile, nothing.
Silence.
“Thank you so much,” I say, grinning enough for all three of us. I’m sure I look deranged.
Kal nods, clears his throat unnecessarily.
“As we proceed, please answer only questions directed at you. Do not answer for each other.”
I nod, palms flat on my knees to keep me emotionally steady.
Kal nods, legs crossed, arms crossed, like a damn human pretzel.
The initial questions, all directed at Kal, are softball ones about me. My birthday, educational background, when I came to Canada.
Kal mentions only the year of my arrival, not the reason why, answering strictly what he has been asked, not a syllable more. “Oh, when the revolution came,” the officer says, assuming, as everyone does, that Mom and I also fled Ethiopia because of the revolution, our big bang that created the universe of diaspora.
“Why did it take you so long to propose to her?”
“ Huh? ” I say, my shock making me forget the rules.
The officer turns cold eyes on me, piercing greenish eyes that I’d decided meant he was kind but now I’m not so sure. “Ma’am. I’m asking him,” he says, jabbing his pen in Kal’s direction. “Was it you who proposed?” he adds condescendingly.
Well, yeah. But I pinch my mouth and shake my head. The officer runs his hand once over his moustache and switches focus back to Kal. “You’ve known her since childhood. You’ve been in Canada going on nearly a decade—”
“Actually, eight—” Shit.
“Would you be more comfortable to wait outside, ma’am?”
I zip it. Call me “ma’am” one more time though.
“I was waiting…” Kal says, and exhales deeply.
Oh, sweet Jesus, where’s he going with that? After a beat, the officer finishes his thought for him. “To be sure you couldn’t get permanent status another way? Was she a backup for you? Mere insurance?”
This motherfucker! Who’re you calling an insurance policy?! But Kal keeps his cool. In fact, his face becomes bare, open with sadness. “I was waiting for my heart to be free of an old pain. It takes as long as it takes.”
The officer’s breath catches. Oh, so the brother’s been there himself. Ouf , even I felt all the hurt behind that. For a few moments, nobody moves. Then the officer tugs at his ear and shifts his body toward me, resuming his authority. I sit up. “Meanwhile,” he says pointedly. “How long had you been thinking about, hoping for, marriage?”
I pick at my cuticles, twist the wedding ring I shoved back on my finger this morning. I steal a glance at Kal. Now he looks eerily at peace, as if he’s given up the fight to stay and is just here to finish the process out of concern for the complications it could cause if he left it hanging. For who? If for me, I’m touched by his thoughtfulness, even in the midst of his anger. He’ll make a great husband someday. I so miss the light, the kindness in his eyes that I had instinctively responded to as a sniffly, lonely, heartbroken fourteen-year-old.
Truth is the only way to salvage our relationship. Maybe not the romance but the friendship we had. And this is my only time to say the truth. I may never have another chance.
The truth is I’ve been thinking about marriage all my life. About not being in it. Even when I was in it. “Never,” I say.
The officer, who’d been toying with his pen, holds it still. “I beg your pardon?”
“I never thought of marriage.”
He jabs his pen in the air toward Kal. “You didn’t love him?”
“That’s not what I said.”
I shuffle up more in my seat, sitting up straighter, and lift my chin. Here goes nothing. “I’ve always loved him. But what I wanted was to date more.”
More like date, period. But no need to barf out all the truth, girlie.
“I wanted to take our time, figure out what’s developing between us. Not define anything yet. And definitely not become husband and wife when I was just beginning to get comfy as girlfriend and boyfriend.” Comfy is also a little truth-adjacent but whatevs.
The officer touches his files. “But you said he proposed, by the bird sculptures, in the dog park…”
“Yes,” I say, affirming the false version of our story. “But there was a time before that…”
“Oh, so there was an earlier proposal?”
“Uh-huh. You could call it that.” Oh god, I don’t know how much longer I can keep up this improv. “Which I turned down. Because I wanted to take it slow.” I am quivering with the wild thrill of rewriting our history on the spot, to what I wish it had been, in front of an officer of the government no less! I stare at my feet, too scared to look at Kal. What if, back in September, after Nardos and Samri left the café, we had just had a good laugh about my wild idea to find him a sponsor, finished our pastries and gone home? Some part of me believes that we would have got around to seeing each other as more than friends eventually, even if it had to happen long distance. A window of opportunity would have opened up somewhere along the line, one we never had because Kal has been deeply taken, by a real girl or by her phantom, for as long as I’ve known him.
The officer turns to Kal, expecting him to corroborate this story.