Speak No Evil Page 14

  How have I made it this far? When I stop, I feel the full force of my breathlessness. I know these streets but I am unsure of how I arrived here. Each house on this tree-lined cul-de-sac stands as an island in a sea of impossibly green impossibly level grass, except for one at the very end where yellow dandelions pop up in random spots and clusters. I place my hands on my knees as I search for breath. My legs vibrate and my joints throb from the run. I should turn around and go home, or find a shaded spot where I can sit and wait for an Uber, but my feet move me forward, slowly. There are water marks in concentric parabolas on the white paint underneath the gutters and the black paint on the shutters has faded and peeled. Blinds cover each window. From where I stand, I can see the front door is ajar. I freeze in place as a man emerges with his chin tucked to his chest. His unkempt hair is completely white and frizzes like a halo around his head. He walks a few hesitant steps to the Range Rover idling in the front drive, opens the door and steps a foot inside while holding himself steady on the frame. Suddenly he leaps out and dashes back to the house, then back to the car which he finally backs slowly down the drive. It abruptly stops and he dashes to the house again, fumbles at the lock, disappears inside and closes the door behind him, leaving the car running. It sounds like it needs servicing.

  Six years have passed, but I can still feel the police car vibrate beneath me. I feel things more than I see or hear because I don’t want to see and I don’t want to hear over and over the pop, pop, pop, pop—yes four—his hands slapping the pavement, his horrible, rasping breath. I don’t want to see that officer’s shell-shocked but determined face. I feel so cold, then hot, and I feel someone’s jacket on my shoulders and a wet towel wiping my mouth. I feel my fingers stick together with blood that is not my blood and stick to a phone that is not my phone even though I hold it like it’s my life. I feel the voices as they try to comfort me. They ask me if I’m hurt. They say an ambulance is on the way. They ask for identification but my card says I am Amy from Maryland. They keep repeating Amy as if saying that name will make me feel less alone. But Niru is no longer with me and I am very alone. This world is flashing red light and blue light and menacing silhouettes. I want to scream as they take me away from him. Instead, I close my eyes.

  Then I cannot open them fully because the light is too bright. It makes my head hurt especially where Niru slammed me against the brick wall. I see people as blurred shapes swimming around in a shower of fluorescent light. I focus on voices and touch, slowly parsing this blip from that bleep, curtains sliding on aluminum rods, and footsteps from nurses whose sneakers squeak differently from physicians’ clopping shoes. I hear different flavors of Caribbean accent and think of my childhood nanny Ms. Simpson who always smelled of cinnamon and roses, who wiped my nose in a way that made me sneeze. I hear different flavors of African accents that Niru’s friendship has made easier to discern. Where is he, where is he? I ask the various people who enter my pod. They respond with some version of the same platitudes—everything will be okay, you’re safe here—before busying themselves with the cold compress against my forehead and the different machines and monitors around me. They say, get some rest but when I lie back I can’t breathe. When I sit up, I can’t think. My stomach fights against my lungs and my throat burns deep in my chest. There is a tube in my arm secured by white tape. My legs rest beneath a white hospital blanket. I have no shoes. If there were ever a time to cry, that time is now, but I can’t figure out how.

  Where is he?

  I know one answer, that he is not behind the next curtain, a drunken shout away, and that means something very bad. It means I didn’t get to say, don’t close your eyes, please hold on, stay with me, as people who are close to people say in all the movies. It means I will never tell him how much I love him. I didn’t know a person could bleed out so fast but I never knew how fast people bleed when shot. I remember an Iraq war veteran who spoke to us at a school assembly. It’s not like the movies, she said. She wore a black, formfitting mini dress that revealed a titanium prosthetic attached to a muscular leg amputated just above her knee. I got hit in the back too, she said and turned around to reveal a mottled budge of scar tissue in the deep scoop of her backless dress. There is no describing that pain, she said, all you want is to close your eyes and have everything be over.

  A nurse says, this has been ringing. Her name tag reads Moyo and she hums religious praise songs while she works, taking vitals, inserting lines. She holds up a clear plastic bag with a few accessories, my small black purse, my iPhone with a freshly splintered screen and Niru’s black Nokia that sings Satie. I look at the screen. It says Daddy. I answer because the word makes me feel calm. Who is this? Meredith. Oh Meredith, hi, how are you, Niru’s father says, trying to sound normal, but I can hear worry and rage inside his extreme calm. I want to speak but can’t find words. My lips stay closed, sticky with my own dried saliva. Meredith, are you there, okay good, where is Niru, is he there with you? I struggle with the sound of his voice as I push my brain to do the work necessary to open my lips to give the right response, any response. Are you there, okay well if he’s there with you, tell him that we really need to speak with him, his voice cracks and I can resist no longer. I clutch at my hair with a free hand forgetting the spot where my head hit the wall and wince. Nurse Moyo catches the phone as it slips from my hand, ever ready as if she’s been through this moment a thousand times before. Sir, she says, your daughter is here in the GW emergency room, she’s in good hands, and she will be fine. I can’t say much more but it’s better that you come. Her face crunches, your son, hmm, I’m not, I don’t know, hello, hello? She looks at the phone for a moment and places it on the bed next to my legs. She says, he’ll be here soon, I’m sure. I hug my knees to my chest and struggle to catch my breath.

  Then he is here, all of him so very present. He is not calm. He does not wear a suit. His navy-blue golf shirt has large pink wounds from an encounter with the wrong kind of laundry detergent and it is only half tucked into wrinkled khaki pants. They have already told him. I know because he can’t breathe. He gasps for air as he stands supporting himself with one hand against the wall that flanks the bay where they placed me. I struggle to slide upwards against the angle of the bed and the pillow behind me. Niru’s father fluctuates in size and is sometimes more an abstract shape than an actual thing and that is just fine. A clear view to his shattered face patched and held together by sheer force of will is too much in a situation that already surpasses superlatives.

  What have I done, I think. I clench my teeth and bunch the sheets in my hands. Meredith, he manages to say before he slumps against the wall and crouches down to the floor. He starts to cry and pound the wall with his fist. I listen to him and try not to watch because it hurts to look at things for too long and because Niru would have found this show of weakness unbecoming.

  What do you say to a grown man in tears? Dad cried when his candidate lost the election. That is understandable—all the tense hours, all the sleepless nights, the thought that such devotion nearly cost him his marriage. Mom held his hand and I hugged him around his waist while we sat with a would-be senator that I wouldn’t have voted for even if I had been able to vote. It’s okay, Dad, there’s always next time, I said.

  With death, there is no next time.

  It’s all my fault, I say softly. If Niru’s father hears me, he gives no sign. His shoulders shake. He clutches the back of his neck. It’s all my fault, I say unsure what to do next, this is all my fault.

  When he finally turns to face me with red eyes and a shining face, he asks, do your parents know you are here? I shake my head no. Well I guess we’d better tell them, he says, but he doesn’t move.

  4

  Sometimes I wonder if my parents like me. I know the laws of nature and genetic self-perpetuation demand that they love me, but it has never been clear that I am integral to their lives. They’ve had each other since Mom literally ran into Dad on the steps of the Harvard Law library however ma
ny years ago when Dad was adding a JD to his PhD and Mom was starting her first year of law school. Dad wants to be a Supreme Court Justice, that’s why they moved to D.C., so he could clerk and then work at the Justice Department, and eventually the White House, getting to know the people he needs to know to be the next big thing. It’s why Mom has always worked in corporate America, because someone must pay the bills—and then some. I don’t know that he’ll ever make the Court now, the politics have changed considerably and he’s not getting any younger, but also there’s me and my baggage. In his most frustrated moments my boyfriend says I think of myself too much. I don’t disagree. I tell him that’s what happens when you date a younger woman and he is quiet. He says he doesn’t get me, that I’m a mystery. Because I don’t completely get me, I say. This current me is a young wannabe photojournalist trying to start a career in a world inhospitable to photojournalists, the kind of woman who has made certain choices in support of my ambition without fully understanding the why behind my ambition, who is too proud to ask my parents for money, but not too proud to stay on their insurance or to cohabitate, temporarily, with a man ten years older because I contribute in my own way even if he pays the rent—and besides Dad is ten years older than Mom. I know Mom disapproves because she doesn’t ask about my personal life. Everything about me now doesn’t fit her image of the strong woman. She has never relied on anyone to support her existence.

  My life was supposed to be very different. Niru and I were supposed to go to Harvard together. He was supposed to become a doctor, the cool kind—a trauma surgeon who saves lives in difficult places. I was supposed to become a lawyer, the cool kind like Amal Clooney, who prevents genocides while wearing Louboutins. We were supposed to live in an apartment in New York, then a row house in Dupont Circle, and settle in Foxhall or Kalorama with our beautiful biracial children, an older girl and younger boy. We would name them Nigerian names and use our one car to take them skiing in Vermont. But then I kissed him and that loosely woven fantasy unraveled. Most of life since has been a mystery to me.

  Mom and Dad eat take-out salads in the kitchen. Dad stands at the island counter in dad jeans and a T-shirt while Mom sits on the floor, her back against the fridge, legs stretched out in front of her, balancing a plastic plate on her lap. The biodegradable take-out bowl and two tall plastic cups of lemonade with mint leaves bunched inside rest on the countertop. Mom pushes kale leaves around her plate and watches the brown tail of balsamic dressing slide around the blue plastic. She spears a cherry tomato on her fork and brings it to her lips. Can you believe we’re leaving, Dad says to no one in particular, but he looks at me. We’re really moving on. Eat something Meredith, Mom says from the floor. You’ve been here how many days and I don’t think I’ve seen you put food in your mouth once, I mean you can get something else if you’re not interested. I use two black plastic forks to dish kale and chicken onto my plate. Dad squints because he can’t see faces if he’s not wearing his glasses. This was such the perfect place, he says. I remember when we first saw it, your mom, Texan that she is, thought it was way too small. Would have been too if we’d had more kids, thank God we didn’t, says Mom. I guess I’m all you ever needed, I say. All we could handle, Mom says. Mom, I say. She sets her plate down and groans as she pushes herself into a standing position. Sweetie, she says, I’m just joking, do you want some lemonade? Now that we don’t live together, she’s much more affectionate than she used to be. Sweetie is a new thing. She pushes Dad’s lemonade and a red plastic cup across the counter toward me. I’m going to miss this kitchen, she says, so much life has happened in this kitchen. For a second I think she’s going to cry, but she doesn’t. We’ve really got to get packing, she says before she leaves the room.

  The balsamic dressing stings my lips. I slice into the chicken and watch its flesh separate around the plastic knife, releasing warm oils and a sweet smell that should be enticing, but my stomach is tight.

  Niru and I spent the morning after he came out to me in this kitchen. We wore winter coats and wrapped ourselves in blankets huddling together against the gas oven because the blizzard knocked out the power and this was the only way to get some heat. It felt like the beginning of the end and the zombies might throw themselves against the glass-paned kitchen door at any moment. I asked, does it feel real? He said, I feel numb, I feel scared. So many people are gay Niru, it’s not that big a deal, I said. That’s just a dumb thing to say, nobody is watching you Meredith, nobody. Everybody is watching me. Then he laughed. I had to laugh too even if I hated him a little bit. Laughing made us warmer.

  Now that we’re leaving D.C. you’ll visit us more? Dad asks. He sighs as if there is more to say that he doesn’t know how to say. You know we’re still your parents, he says, some things just don’t change. Then he turns and follows Mom.

  But some things do change. Niru’s father has changed and that is at least partly my fault. I have also changed. I’m older and more sensitive now. I know more of the world. Maybe that makes me a better person, or maybe I just know more.

  The next day I run back to Niru’s house. Perhaps it’s foolishness that brings me back here to watch the sprinklers spray a fine mist on either side of the black asphalt drive. It’s why the grass remains a lush green even if no one tends to it. Sunlight bounces off the wet patches and the years of car oil trapped inside shine in intermittent distorted rainbows. I move towards the grit-streaked white columns at the front entrance and the old-style black lantern hanging beneath. Cobwebs stream from its rusted chain-link fasteners and it has no bulbs inside. Niru said his father liked the design because it reminded him of the White House. Now the luster is gone.

  There are three packages on the steps, alongside a stack of old newspapers melting into a pulpy mass from rain and age. The potted plants on either side of the door have died and there is a forgotten coffee mug beside them filled with water and dead potato bugs. This place looks abandoned but I know his father still lives here. When I woke up this morning, my course of action was abundantly clear, a small voice said, you must go to him, and then nothing else. I bundled up Niru’s windbreaker and left the house before Mom and Dad woke up. Now I am here, my finger suspended above the yellowed doorbell button. Stay or leave? That is the question. I look back at my tracks across the wet grass. The sprinklers chirp and whir relentlessly.

  Six years ago, I come to apologize because that is the only thing I know how to do. There are numerous cars on the street and crowding the drive as their passengers linger in the dimly lit windows alone and in pairs, heads bowed forward, movements slow. I can do this, I tell myself as the sprinklers spit and the night fills with a chorus of cicadas and frogs. They have told me to stay home, stay quiet, stay out of sight, but this feels like the right thing to do, that something good will come from public supplication to the mourners inside. A slow sad song muffles through the front door, off-key and yet still harmonized. I am still for a moment as sadness washes over me, then I press the doorbell. The light inside the plastic goes dark, then the noise, ding but no dong. I feel for the written note in my pocket. I have practiced its words multiple times in the mirror. I wipe my forehead with the back of my hand. My sneakers are wet. I have crossed the Rubicon. OJ answers the door. I have never met him in person, but Niru’s stories and his pictures make him intensely familiar. There is no mistaking them for anything but brothers. Their eyes, their nostrils, their jaws follow similar curves and they both favor the simple sharp definitions of low-cut and freshly edged hair. He wears a simple white T-shirt distinctly stained in the two spots where it has been used to wipe now red eyes. The space between his nose and upper lip glistens. His face is blank as he searches my face, and then he realizes who I am. He opens his mouth as if to speak and his lips move but no words come out. I step backwards immediately forgetting the steps behind me, and unsure of my footing, I tumble down onto the wet pavement. Junior, I hear Niru’s father say, who is at the door, before his body appears in the doorway. What the fuck are you c
oming here for, OJ shouts at me. Junior, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, his father says. I push myself up to my knees. I have skinned my palms and both of my wrists are sore from the unexpected impact. I massage my tailbone with a free hand. Rods of pain shoot down my spine and into my legs. Let go of me, OJ shouts as he pushes toward me. Let me go.

  I watch the two men struggle with each other, dark shadows silhouetted by the light behind. Niru’s father holds OJ in a bear hug and whispers something into his ear while he bucks. There is little besides interlocked fingers and soothing words that prevent OJ from moving towards me with his full force and I swallow the blood trickling inside my cheek with a sense of relief. Still part of me wants him to break free, to hit me.

  OJ sounds like Niru when he cries, a word here, a gasp there between soft moaning. Bodies fill the space behind them, dark figures crowding the doorway, jostling each other as they reach forward with quivering arms to pull them inside. Niru’s father shouts, Ify as he steps toward them with OJ slumped against him crying into his chest, holding his hand away from his body like he is afraid of what else it might do. It’s okay, take him, take him, please, Niru’s father says, pushing OJ towards the arms which quickly pull him in. Please everybody, let’s go back inside, it’s okay, let’s just go back inside. Close the door please. His shirt is wet where OJ sobbed against him. He pulls me up. His hands are firm and his palms rough. This close, I can see he has new wrinkles in his face and brow. Why did you come here, he asks. I came to say I’m sorry, I say. You’re sorry? Young lady, do you hear what they are saying about my son? You think your sorry will fix that? It wasn’t like that, I say, he never would have done that. He didn’t like girls like that. Let me tell them he wasn’t like that. He doesn’t say anything. The door opens and a young boy peeks his head out. Uncle Obi, he says. Go back inside Chidozie, Niru’s father says waving him away with his hands. He presses his palms together, puts his fingertips to his lips, and steps back. Do your parents know you’re here, he says after a long while. No? I’ll call you a taxi, he says, you can wait out here.