I shovelled in the bean and rice slop, its mushiness pleasant against the roof of my mouth. The lump in my throat made way and I swallowed it down with the food. I consumed the cake in three greedy swallows.
∆
Having an unknown father marked me as different, even more different than I already felt as a light-brown-skinned daughter of a white single mother in a town where it seemed no one had a family like ours. Mom didn’t like talking about him. I think it exposed her as someone she didn’t want to be: the sort of girl who got pregnant with a visa student she’ d known for only a single afternoon; the sort of girl who was sloppy about taking her birth-control pill; the sort of girl who had to turn her back on ambitious academic plans to raise a child.
When she did speak about him, her stories were designed to help me avoid the same choices she’ d made. The more detailed the story, the more serious the warning. Some were told and retold, with each recounting further embellished to properly highlight the specific lesson to be absorbed.
The night of my prom, Mom confessed that she’ d met my biological father a few days after she’ d been dumped by the boyfriend she’ d been with all through university, a guy she’ d expected to marry. Their ending was abrupt and humiliating and he’ d begun dating someone else a few days later. So, when this exotic-looking guy showed interest in her, she impulsively asked him back to her place.
My heart was broken, and he seemed kind.
This was her lesson about rebounding.
She also admitted that she’ d been too shy to talk about condoms with him.
Prophylactics, she’ d called them. I’d laughed nervously and Mom shushed me, urging me to pay attention.
I should have told him to wear one. I hadn’t been consistent with the pill since the breakup..
She followed this admission with rushed reassurances about how glad she was that I had been born. About how if she could go back in time, she wouldn’t change a thing, that life is a gift and other such clichés. And then she warned me to never trust a man with my body.
Don’t believe it when they say they’ll pull out.
I felt squirmy, like a dozen spiders crawling up my back. I didn’t want to picture her under a panting man.
And you can never be too safe these days with AIDS and chlamydia and warts. Trust me.
Later, I stood at the school’s bathroom mirrors, Usher’s “You Make Me Wanna” wafting in from the gym. Rifling through my purse for lipgloss, my fingers brushed against a ticker-tape length of multi-coloured condoms. I showed my friends the rainbow rubber disks, and they laughed at Mom’s stealth. They misinterpreted her deepest fear as her being a progressive mom. I distributed them, tucking a purple condom into my wallet, imagining it might taste like grape.
For years I wanted a better story. Perhaps if he was dead, even. A car accident, a tragic illness, a random shooting all would have been fine. I pined for a narrative that would provide closure and elicit sympathy, while leaving me intact, a child who was planned for, loved, even if I was still left. But Mom didn’t know basic details like his exact height, what subject his PhD was in, or the name of his hometown. I wanted more. Needed more. What I had instead was an absence, a mystery, a relationship that never existed.
My ideas changed when I met Malika and other university friends who were brown girls with white mothers. Being different was no longer the same sort of problem as when I was a kid. Turned out, it was kind of cool. I finally had an identity that I could say in one sentence: I was the mixed-race daughter of a strong single mother. Period. I could almost forget that I didn’t know my biological father’s surname. Almost.
Mom caught me off guard when she raised the question of searching for him. I was in fourth year, nearing graduation. The same age she was when she met him.
“Have you ever wanted to know more about him?” She pulled out a tube of lip balm and ran it around and around until there was a thick, globby layer coating her mouth.
“I don’t know. I don’t need him. He’s a stranger, right?” I gazed at her, gauging her reaction. She exhaled and applied another layer of lip balm.
“Well, you never know,” she said hesitantly, as though she didn’t want to believe her own words, “you might change your mind one day.”
“I don’t think so, Mom. You’ve done a great job being a mom and a dad.” While my reassuring words were true, I just wasn’t ready to risk my durable identity turning flimsy again.
∆
I helped myself to a glass of milk. Then I cut myself a second slice of cake and carried both to my table. This time I ate slowly, wanting to extend my mealtime.
The murmurings of wait staff and employees arriving for their dinner felt like company. The cafeteria filled in around me, and a group of gardeners claimed the table next to mine. Ruben, the nice older man who mowed the grass in front of my building, beckoned me to join them. Did I look sad, sitting there all alone? I waved back, gesturing that I was finished eating, then left the cafeteria.
Azeez
∞
Satiated by chicken korma and a rum and Coke, I dozed after the movie. Meena had dropped off half an hour before me, her head in her mother’s lap. There was little turbulence. I felt safe and lucky and on my way home.
A few hours later, I awoke to a breakfast tray sliding onto my table. My seatmate opened the blind to reveal a pink sunrise. I checked my watch, which I’d already corrected for London time, our next stop. It was just past 6:00 a.m. and I knew we were soaring above the Atlantic, though I couldn’t see anything through the blanket of clouds. I rubbed my eyes, relished the fresh pour of steaming chai, and dug into my eggs.
Meena was awake but groggy and picking through her meal at her mother’s insistence.
“We’ll land in London soon,” I told her.
“I know. I’m getting triangle chocolate at the airport.” There was a dot of strawberry jam on her chin.
“Triangle chocolate?
“Toblerone,” Meena’s mother clarified, and then wiped her daughter’s face with a cloth napkin.
“Will you share some with me when we board again?”
“You can buy your own there, too, you know,” she said earnestly.
Our trays were cleared and I opened A Passage to India, a novel my supervisor’s wife had pulled off her shelf when, after my defence, I’d joked that I didn’t want to think about chemistry for the rest of the summer. I laughed at the title and said it would make perfect airplane reading.
I was in the middle of page one when it happened. An enormous boom vibrated through my chest and skull. A Passage to India took flight and before I could catch it, I fell forward, my head knocking into the hard plastic of the seat in front of me. Everything turned sideways and I slid down into the aisle and against a man with terrified eyes. I lost control of my bladder, an embarrassing gush of urine soaking through my pants leg. There were yells and screams and prayers and curses. The smell of burning bananas and fear. I craned my neck to look for Meena, but couldn’t see her. I hoped she was wearing her seatbelt. Frigid sunshine cracked open the airplane and there was a deafening buzz that killed all other sound.
And then there was a black silence.
I cannot explain it, but the next thing that happened was that there were two of me. Or perhaps I split into two halves. One part drifted upward into the clouds while another fell headlong from the sky. From above, I watched the other body strike the water. Miraculously, I was still breathing, although very broken and numb. There was no pain, no fear, only a peaceful submission. I sank and then the frigid ocean swallowed me, filling my nose and mouth and lungs.
There was a sudden jolt and I knew the end had come. Some part of me left