“Feel like going to see your mom at her job?” he asked now. “Or do you have too much homework?”
Kenya loved being on Fortieth Street, near the Penn campus. She loved the trees and the busyness of it, the food trucks, the jewelry vendors, Marty’s Discount, where she sometimes got small toys or a soda, the students playing Frisbee on the lawn behind her mother’s library. Though it was nothing like her block, all black and fairly quiet, with its aluminum-sided fronts, and nearly a half mile away, she liked to think of it as part of her neighborhood. Sometimes it was fun to walk there with her father when he was in the mood to chatter about his school days or the characters he met painting houses. But heading down there from school and then walking back up to Irving Street could take a long time that would feel even longer on a warm day. It seemed breezier and calmer down by the library, brighter and sourer as they walked deeper into West Philly, especially on days when Johnbrown was silent.
But then Kenya imagined herself trapped in the house, crouched over long division. She opted for the image of her mother in her bright, silken weekday clothes, using her smooth work voice.
When they reached the second floor of the library, Sheila’s boss was at her mom’s desk. She beamed at Johnbrown’s approach.
“Heya, Susan,” he said, with an expression that Kenya couldn’t read.
“What a nice surprise. Hi there, Kenya!”
Susan Zabriskie’s body was a slapdash arrangement of lumps that Kenya found confusing. She had a gold tooth, floppy black hair with gray strands, and green eyes, which became extremely bright when she shined them on Johnbrown. Sheila sometimes teased Johnbrown about her boss’s obvious regard for him. (“Aren’t you the lady-killer?” she would say. “I’m about to be,” he’d answer, mock-waving his fist.)
“Hello, Mrs. Zabriskie,” Kenya said, remembering too late what the woman always said when Kenya called her “Mrs.”
“It’s
Miz
,” said Susan Zabriskie. “Don’t marry me off yet!” She blushed and Johnbrown made a noise headed for, but not quite arriving at, a laugh. Then he cleared his throat.
“Sheila went home early,” sang Ms. Zabriskie. “She wasn’t feeling well.”
“Is that right?” asked Johnbrown.
“I’m afraid so,” said the boss with a nonsensical laugh.
Kenya found herself looking at her father out of the corner of her eye, for the first time wondering what Susan Zabriskie saw. He was not sloppy or decrepit. He wasn’t much more either, just a slight man in clean clothes, with somewhat sickly-looking skin. The only thing distinctive about him was his beaked nose, of which Kenya’s was a less severe version, that and the fact that due to a peculiarity of his voice, he was sometimes mistaken for a girl on the phone. The question had always been how he’d snared her mother, so stylish and confident.
The boss continued, “Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing serious. She said she had a bad headache. Say, Kenya, do you need something to read? Or one of the new filmstrips? Have you watched
Really Rosie
?”
Kenya thought about Pierre-I-don’t-care in the lion’s mouth and was about to ask to see it again when her father spoke.
“We’d better go check on her mother,” Johnbrown said.
After chatting briefly about his day (more breakthroughs in The Key, all reported with a kind of fake cheer), Kenya and her father walked home in the boring and unsettling silence that she had anticipated. She wouldn’t ask him again what was wrong or anything else; it was too tedious. When Sheila was angry she let you know and she let you know why. The atmosphere around Johnbrown was a mist that might evaporate or turn into a rainstorm. It was as mysterious—and as bothersome—as bad weather.
Kenya tried to lose herself in other parts of the walk by studying West Philadelphia. She gazed without comprehension at the large, neat houses near the campus painted with Greek symbols, and wondered why the young white men sat shirtless on the porches. She and her father passed the Acme supermarket, where Kenya had spent many dreary hours, the stuffy Laundromat they frequented before Sheila defied Johnbrown and bought a washer-dryer on credit. They passed the delicious Koch’s Deli, where Kenya’s parents agreed they would never go again. After an altercation with a black customer who had left the store, the cashier had hissed to the guy making sandwiches, “He doesn’t know how it is! I could get him
lynched
!” Johnbrown never stopped regretting that all he’d done was walk out, claiming that he had been afraid of what he might do.
On days like this, Kenya noticed every pile of dog crap, every bit of trash, abandoned Hug bottles, newspaper sections. She wondered why her family couldn’t live closer to the campus, where the streets were orderly and cooler. Of course she knew—money and race—but still. These thoughts and her father’s droopy and ominous silence made her angry. His slow shuffle reminded her of Aslan moving slowly with Susan and Lucy to the stone table, where he allowed himself to be killed. But Aslan had made a deal with the White Witch to nobly sacrifice himself for the traitor Edmund. If Johnbrown was sacrificing himself, what was it for?
* * *
The house was in chaos. Papers and envelopes covered the floor; winter coats from the downstairs closet were piled on the couch. Nearly half of the books seemed to be missing from the shelves. Kenya tasted terror.
Her father stood behind her gripping her shoulder. He said her name in an alarmed way, as if he was about to give her an order. Kenya wondered if he had time to get his gun.
But then something changed.
“Oh,
shit
,” he said, moving Kenya aside and bounding up the stairs. “Sheila!” he called. “Sheila!”
Kenya followed him. They both stood at the top of the stairs, where they could see Kenya’s mother in her room, which looked hurricane-tossed. Sheila, who had been known to spend hours folding underwear to pack for trips to the Jersey Shore, was throwing things into her suitcase.
“Sheila?” said Johnbrown again.
She did not stop what she was doing. “What the fuck do you want
?
”
Kenya knew they had forgotten her. In a flash she was looking at the closed door of her parents’ bedroom. She heard the lock click.
“What is going on?” Johnbrown asked. “What—”
“You know what the fuck is going on!” Sheila screamed, her voice hoarse, as if she had spent the day screaming.
Kenya stood in the hallway picturing different ways to get into that room. She imagined banging on the door. She thought of falling down the stairs, but she knew she couldn’t do it loudly enough without seriously hurting herself. She imagined screaming her voice raw. Then it dawned on her that it didn’t matter. She could hear everything they said, though her father was speaking in a low voice. It was all wrong. Usually Johnbrown was the one screaming, and Sheila was the one you could barely hear. Kenya felt the floor tipping at angles and fell in a slump against the door.
“I thought you didn’t even
like
that bitch! ‘She’s not
my cup of tea
,’ you said! Remember when you said
that
shit? I should have known: you don’t even
say
that! You don’t even drink
tea
!”
“Sheila, it’s not—”
“Not what? It’s not what I think?”
“Let me talk, please. Let me—”
“Explain? Apologize? What the
fuck
is the point of that?”
“I was going to talk to you about this today. I swear, baby, I was going to talk to you about this today.”
“How could—?”
“Sheila, Sheila, it’s not what I wanted. You know it’s not what I wanted, but I think we can work this—ouch! Stop—now!”
They had never fought with their hands. Kenya stood up and banged on the door.
“Mom! Baba! Baba!” she yelled. No one answered her. She heard only an occasional curse, scuffling, and a slap. A dull thud. She slid down the door and sat on the creaking wood floor. She wanted to go somewhere else in the house and ignore them, or even walk out the front door. That would show both of them—if they ever came out of that room.
Their muffled voices started up again and she covered her ears and hummed. Then she started singing all of the songs she knew by heart; songs she liked (“My Cherie Amour”) and songs she hated (“Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now,” to which the fifth grade had to perform a humiliating dance on May Day), songs that made no sense (like
Here’s my chance to dance my way, out of my constrictions
). She was trying to sing a solo fugue when the door whipped open and she fell backward.
“Kenya!” her mother yelped, and then abruptly leaned down, pulling Kenya up into her arms. Her eyes were ringed with black. Kenya hadn’t known she wore eye makeup. It made her cry. “Shhhhh,” Sheila said. “Shhhhhhhh. It’s okay. I’m going to make dinner.”
“Hi, Monkey,” her father said. He still stood in the room, amid ruins.
“Are you going to get a divorce?” Kenya mumbled into her mother’s chest. She couldn’t believe she was asking this, that this was happening. She remembered how confident she’d been the year before when she’d comforted Charlena, how sure she’d been that Charlena’s family would fall apart, and that hers would stay together.
“I’m sorry you heard all of that, Kenya. We’re all going to sit down and have dinner and talk,” said Sheila.
Johnbrown and Sheila moved stiffly about the downstairs as if there was some danger of their touching. Kenya stood staring out of the window like TV characters did when they were thinking about something weighty. But all she could see were the boards on the windows. Sheila had gone from suggesting dinner in a calm voice to slamming pots in the kitchen, as if she’d just remembered reality. Johnbrown came over to Kenya and smoothed her cornrows.
“You’re my life,” he said.
But apparently she wasn’t.
It seemed that Johnbrown Curtis and Cindalou Matthews had fallen in love, and that Cindalou Matthews was carrying Johnbrown Curtis’s baby, Kenya’s brother or sister. At that Sheila snorted, “Half,” as they sat at the table, picking over spaghetti.
“Don’t be like that, Sheila,” said Johnbrown. “We’re not like that. We’re not like my mother.” It seemed crazy to Kenya that Johnbrown was still talking. She nearly emptied the canister of powdery Parmesan cheese onto her plate, stopping only when her mother said her name sharply.
“So
are
you going to get a divorce?” Kenya asked again.
Her parents looked at each other. Johnbrown cleared his throat.
“Well, now is as good a time as any to speak to you both about something I wanted to ask.”
If Kenya had been older, she would have seen her mother’s eyes fill with anticipation and the hope that whatever Johnbrown offered would save them all. As it was, all Kenya saw was a withering glare. Not that it mattered, given what her father said next.
“With your permission, Sheila and Kenya, I’d like for Cindalou and the baby to move in here. I’d like for us all to be a family.”
“What did you say?” Sheila asked. She dabbed at her mouth with a napkin and looked genuinely as if she hadn’t heard, as if she was asking for a small clarification:
Did you say “cream or sugar”? Lemonade? You want me to pass the lemonade?
“Well, Cindalou and I have been going to some events at the Yoruba temple and—”
“Oh, you actually go
out
? Of the house? Glad to hear
that.
”
“And I don’t think the temple is for me. I mean, organized religion is organized religion, but some of the families, in the traditional African—”
“Get back to the point. So you want to move that bitch and her bastard up in here? Where I pay the mortgage? I’m not understanding what this has to do with the temple. Because from what I know about traditional West African polygamy (Lord Jesus have mercy!), the man supports the family. No, brother.
I
make the money.” And here she laughed. “What you proposing is pimping and—”
“Sheila,” Johnbrown said.
“—I AM NOT A WHORE!”
Kenya was tired of crying. Her head hurt. She was thirsty but the thought of apple juice on her tongue made her nearly hysterical. Her mother looked at her across the table, her purple skin and wide brown eyes in a gorgeous blaze.
“No, Kenya,” she said, lowering the volume and sweetening her voice with a flourish, “your father and I are not
getting
a divorce because we never
got
married.”
“Sheila!” Johnbrown yelled.
“Stop saying my name.”
Kenya felt sure that she’d never been more miserable. Then, as if to make herself feel worse, to see how much she could stand, she fell again into the memory of Charlena and the girl’s fear about her parents breaking up. Kenya remembered how smugly secure she’d felt about Johnbrown and Sheila’s marriage.
Marriage!
Now Charlena’s mom was pregnant and their family was moving to a bigger house. Charlena might even have to transfer schools. Frankly, Kenya was more broken up about that than Charlena was. Now it was Kenya who sometimes proposed playing
Star Wars
, and a little desperately at that.
“But you—” Kenya tried again with her parents.
“We thought it would confuse you. Also, I don’t know that we ever agreed on the whole setup. See, your father, this principled man here, doesn’t believe in marriage. He didn’t see why the government had to be involved in our family life. He didn’t need a piece of paper to be committed to us, he said. But maybe, you know if I ever speak to that bitch Cindalou again, I should tell her she needs to
get that paper
.”
Johnbrown rubbed at his temples, staring down at his plate. “This wasn’t what I wanted at all. This wasn’t the way to go about this at all.”
“Go about what? Is there a way to go about cheating on your wife with her girlfriend? Oh no, you’re probably talking about some bullshit like the right way to propose half-assed polygamy to your family. Maybe there’s a strategy of some sort, or some literature I could have brought from
my job
! The one I keep to support this
family
.”