1. My oldest memory of Rev. was of us in a car. I was maybe four,or five. We were still in Nigeria then. It could have, in fact, been the eve of our departure from the country—or the days leading up to it—I am no longer sure because we never went back. But this memory, in the car, in traffic on the way home from a water park, where I remember riding on his shoulders to the car, and then on his legs in the driver’s seat, clutching the steering wheel, making driving noises with my mouth, splattering spit all over the dashboard, whenever I searched far back enough, was how I remembered him.
I must have been so happy. I imagine that he was, too. I can’t remember. And it all bothered me now. All of it, the irony of the two of us in this car now, quiet, our roles reversed, he child-like, me grown with a child inside me still aching for the memory of a joy I am not entirely sure was ever there. I glanced at him through the rearview mirror, his shoulders slightly hunched above his head. He had all ten of his fingers dug into a roughly shaved scalp. He seemed to be running his fingers through the absence of the full head of silver hair that had been there earlier this morning. The hair was no more now, nor was the big strong man I had always known. In his eyes, I could barely find the man he used to be. The illness had done its bit. It had dried him up into a soft sack of skin draped over a lean set of bones.
I coughed;he looked up, caught my eyes through the mirror and smiled. A beautiful smile. Teeth in rows, skin pleated from the corner of each nostril and down his cheeks. He had aged so delicately, in spite of everything.[1] I kept my eyes off the road a fraction longer, watching him smile. It was the most beautiful smile I’d ever seen from him, yet it appeared strange. There was a vacancy there, on his face; a fullness of joy there that was so unaware of the yoke that used to be. This should have been a good thing, but this brief bliss came with so many contradictions. A man had slipped away, a skin had been shed and a shadow was left behind. A sweet, mild, smiling shadow.
I smiled back. This was not the way he used to be, and it shouldn’t bother me, but it did. It bothered me so.
2. Rev only became Rev after he arrived in America. Not in a fraudulent way. No. We loved us some Jesus. The white American type with somber dead eyes and raw pink lips. Though it would become his whole identity; I’d never been fully sure of Rev’s devotion to the life of a cleric. There were stories of a life in the past in Lagos. Nights of easy drinking into the night with mother, full of laughter and abandon, tempered with the heat of cat-fish pepper soup and the waft of suya. Rev was an accountant then. But all the African accountants he knew in America did their accounting from the front-seat of a cab, evoking the profession like a chant to exorcise a shame no one knew, cared, or asked was there. But to cross the ocean was to serve a new god; and for new gods, Rev preferred the ones with the least battle scars. He said it meant they were less stressed and answered prayers quicker.
So, after trying a Black church—which loved tithes too much—and an African church—which loved tithes, offering, sanctuary-building-offering, and whathaveyous just as much as it loved gossips—Rev settled for an all-white Baptist church two blocks down from our first apartment in Galveston. They loved tithes too, but they asked nicely, and while they were at it, served tea and muffins before service, and cornbread and chili after. People smiled at you like you were a spectacle. Twice a month, they told you about their very kind grocer, who also happens to be from the Congo. They reminded you that they did mission work in Mombasa or rode an elephant in the Safari. And though Rev—nor Mom—had never seen any of these places, Rev enjoyed filling in with a story; like an ambassador, he enjoyed being the representative of exotic Africa. It was a welcoming feeling, one special and tailored for him.
For mom, the food was as bland as the service. She missed the rapturous praises and worship—which became her mainstay in Rev’s church when it launched—of the charismatic Nigerian churches back home; however, she also had enormous gratitude for the congregation. Excessive as they were, they were our support system. When Yejide was born, they did everything: brought pies, bought gifts, donated toys; baptized her in front of the congregation to which—Mom once said—the pastor announced with glee that Yejide was their first “black baby.” The statement, to either parent then, remained apolitical; in fact, it was almost a thing of pride—until it wasn’t.
One Sunday many months later (Yejide was two. I was about six at the time), a lady offered to help mother straighten Yejide’s hair—which mom proudly styled into a huge Afro back then. Still in that spirit of extra-ness that had begun to bother Mom, the woman leaned over into our pew like a thief over a fence, her voice lowered into a conspiratorial whisper, fingers picking at Yejide’s hair. Mom shouldn’t let Yejide’s hair become “untoward like those of the blacks,” she offered, smiling a not your kind ofblack smile at Mom. Mom had thanked her—or was about to—when the woman raised a hand to Mom’s perm. Stone-built, old churches with tall ceilings must have been built to swallow small sounds and spit them back out because the twack from Mom slapping this woman’s hands was so loud it stopped the whole church.
I return to this moment as my first reckoning with race in America, and as crazy as it sounds, I remember it as the moment of the undoing of my father and the making of Rev. On Mom’s part the slap had been nothing more than reflex, a sudden push-back to an overreach, but the American translation crossed so delicately the profound politics of race, and hair, and religiosity. It demanded elaborate appeasements for the graveness of meaning it carried. Everybody apologized. One woman even cried. The pastor apologized personally, and then collectively in front of the church, made a sermon out of it. Mom apologized, too. To the church; to the lady. It would have been ungrateful of us, after all the church had done for us, to consider any of them racist. It wasn’t her intention.
Apologies are apologies, but they don’t rebuild shattered bridges. After the slap, a slight tension hung between us and the congregation. The lady, after a few months, altogether left the church. People were still nice, but something had shifted. Something which Rev then pursued to fix. Gradually, he poured himself into the church; we weren’t church goers anymore, we served. Mom joined the children’s church; Rev led Sunday-school, and then became the youth pastor—at first a paid part-time job then full-time. His contrition became everything, driven to forever apologize for either being an ungrateful immigrant or troublesome Black. A week after the slap, Rev shaved Yejide’s hair in the bathroom—as a precaution for future incidents. I remember. Single swoops; the humming clipper; hair falling off Yejide’s crying head. I remember crying because Mom was crying.
3. The call came three days ago from an Arizona number. I assumed it was a spam call—it had been Taipei before that, and Czechia before that one—so I didn’t take it. Not while I was driving, not while I was certain I didn’t remember knowing a single soul from Arizona. But spam calls hardly called back and this one did, so I picked. It was a woman. Eastern European lilt, a silvery hoarse voice aged by smoking. She spoke softly but quickly. She found my number in an old coat pocket in my father’s suitcase. Rev was in a care facility. His condition—she didn’t say what it was, guess she assumed I’d know—had gotten worse. He’d been walking off, she said. Then she quickly added, as though it was some novel idea, that residents were encouraged some freedom at the facility.
I hadn’t noticed the beads of sweat swell over my head until a drop trickled into my eye. I pulled my car to the shoulder of the road to hear the rest of her message. It was the first I heard of Rev being sick, talk less of deteriorating—talk less of being in a nursing home. I felt ashamed. I wanted to explain myself to this stranger, make a case for why I wasn’t a bad son. “He has not had anyone come to see him since I’d been here,” she said—how long she’d been was left to assumptions also. “I’ve called the number listed for him, your sister, a few times. Nothing. I saw your number; I thought you might want to know.”
“Thank you,” I managed. There was a cherry-sized knot stuck in my throat. Not knowing what else to say, I offered my email. “Please send me your information,” I said, too hurriedly, then in a wave of utter panic, I cut the call. Look, some things hit you in ways you never expect. And this one certainly did. Rev and I were estranged. The last time I saw him, three years ago, I had taken Katina, my fiancé then and wife now, to meet him. Our relationship had always been difficult. I never measured up to Rev’s expectations: I had proclivities which were certainly not of his Christian-Nigerian raising. I warned Tina. Our visit wasn’t so that Rev would accept her. No, I couldn’t care less that he did. I’d spent most my life worrying about being a failure to my father, then I had spent another stretch of my life taking pride in being his failure. Tina being American, and Black; Tina with her locs, tattoos, astrology charts, and guidance cards, and cresting moons, the crystals on her neck tucked away for the meeting, was far away from Rev’s standards.
I’d only wanted them to meet for Rev to know I’d found someone, found love. That I was happy, and beyond ruin. I’d hoped—foolishly—that something such as that can be enough when people grow apart and find each other again. Boy, was I wrong. I texted before we left Maryland and he’d only replied “congratulations,” to send me spiraling. How we rehearsed, Me and Katina. For days. Kneel when you greet. Don’t shake hands. Don’t say hi or hello; always good afternoon. Not-always-afternoon. Good-whatever-time-of-the-day. Never wave at elders. Abomination! Preferably “sir” at the end of each address. Nice to meet you, SIR. Heard many great things, SIR. Don’t smile too much; it’s too American, too plastic—no one is ever that excited. You can’t refuse food; not likely he’ll offer any, but in case he does, whatever it is, please eat, say thank you before, thank you after; oh yes, wash your dishes, wash his, too, it’ll certainly make him happier.
After mother left us, when I turned twelve, Rev began leisure drinking. Half cup of Guinness, quarter cup water, quarter cup evaporated milk, mixed in clear glass. Good for the blood he’d say back then, feet stretched in front of him, eyes fixed on Billy Graham or any other sweaty white preacher with fish-tank pebble-color for eyes. It was the same place he fixed his eyes while we sat across from him that day in the living room of my childhood home in Texas, looking away from us the whole time, sipping half and half Guinness and milk we brought with us—to make Tina a bit endearing, a bit funny. Time passed, squeezing through the airy, quiet room like paste in a tube. Me and Tina talked to each other to smother our shared embarrassment. Two hours later, I got up, and Tina, bless her gracious heart, knelt again. So nice to meet you, SIR, she said again and then followed behind me.
Rev said nothing.
So, though I’d last seen Rev three years ago, it had been five years since we last spoke. You’d think you’re truly done after five years, right? Then one day a call comes, a message, some silly bird singing in a tree, in a certain tenor, in a certain note, and like a magical password, you feel a chink in your armor, that armor molted, hammered, and whetted over five years, crumples like aluminum foil. So, that call swept me. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, the way they shook. I dialed my sister, Yejide’s cell, but it didn’t ring. After her office phone rang for the fourth time without a pick, I found myself tipped over the edge. The space inside my car ballooned into an endless universe, echoing of emptiness and want. I grabbed the steering wheel, afraid of how far down it possibly was to fall off the front seat of a car. Then the tears took me. I cried until my body shook, and my mouth quivered, and my nose blew bubbles. I put a hand to my face, pinched my burning eyes for realignment, desperate for the ground to hold true to its integrity. The street became a blur of nonsense for a minute, watery shapes on an after-rain tar, glossed with the dying shine of 4pm sunlight.
A woman passed me. A new mom with a stroller, skinny, hair tied up, black sports bra and leggings. She glanced at me, a dry smile stamped on her face. She had not done anything in particular. Nothing other than see me, but that was all it took. Perhaps, it was the news about Rev, the shock, the imbalanced state of my emotions, but a wave of fear consumed me. For some, our body, even in devastation, isn’t privileged to spill over wherever it wants. Not down these neatly demarcated streets, the driveways, the lawns, the hoisted flags, and insignia pointing to some moral or political allegiance. Significations of suburban Americanness—each piece neatly placed to make clear things—persons—that don’t fit.
I imagined how pathetic Rev would have found me at this moment. Another failure of his to somehow raise the blackness out of me in America. I swelled with another heave of tears, a second wave triggered by how this feeling, the paradox of my being, prohibited by my father as though I could have opted in or out of becoming afraid of America and its racial politics. It was indeed pathetic. To have to feel like I had chosen to be this afraid. As though this feeling wasn’t real, acknowledged or not by my father—who said when I asked him at seven if I was Black sternly replied you’re not black in Jesus’ name; you’re covered in the blood of Jesus. That was, if anything, pathetic. To find myself this broken by Rev yet again.
I rubbed my eyes; the caking tears and snot wiped down my pants. I slowed my car back on the road home, still two blocks away, past the pronged US flags, the vote candidate X or Z lawn signs; past a BLM poster leaned on a large glass window—just like my neighbor’s, Mrs Bromley who came to us to “personally apologize” when Freddie Gray happened in Baltimore. Whatever this was, grief or guilt, whatever it was, it would have to wait until I was home.
4. The property was a large colonial style mansion, two floors high, dropped in the middle of vast ranch land in Sonora, Texas. It looked expensive from afar, exclusive even, but on close inspection, the white polish of the walls showed a blemish of age and abandon. Inside smelled like antiseptic, the air stiff with despair. I wondered how much Yejide paid to get Rev the space. A lot, I imagined, the way she had spoken about it: “Rev’s doing good at The Ranch,” or something to that effect.
She had called back that day. Late past midnight. She was in Europe, leading a surgery team for a soccer player she couldn’t name. So far as the professional destinies of children went in a Nigerian home, Yejide was the dream. I was a disgrace to the family. She subtly reminded me of this each time we spoke (we didn’t speak much) by counting off the celebrity athletes she had cut open and made whole again.
“Rev had a mild stroke,” she casually offered when I eventually got around her gloating to my reason for calling. Yejide had this flippancy about her, an over-dramatization of the disaffected erudite. She often spoke down, always measuredly like there was a scarcity of words in the world. [2] The charade was mighty irritating, but with the mix of sleep and the raw-heartedness I felt from the evening before, I had no reaction left in me.
“He called me from the hospital when it happened,” she continued, “Thought he called you, too. Told him to.”
“How long ago?” I asked, more confused than curious.
“Well, it’s been past a year now.”
A year. I had nothing to say to that. It was incredulous how they had—she had—not told me. I was almost numb to respond; not until she said the thing about The Ranch. “He’s got excellent care at The Ranch.” Yeah, that was how she had said it. That was what set me off. I’ve crawled through the winding maze of my childhood in therapy and it has led me to empathize with Yejide. It was futile to understand her. I couldn’t. That was complex. But I could at least see us for what we were, the home that made us. We were cooked in the same pot, the same broth, same emotional ingredients of excesses and inadequacies. Broken the same way but shattered differently. I empathized with that, but acting like she was beyond our experience, beyond our past, I just couldn’t have that.
“If you don’t see the foolishness,” I said, “…the foolishness in this, Yejide, then I don’t know what to tell you. How am I just finding out, called by a stranger mind you, that our dad has been in a nursing home for over a year. But here you are, your Colorado-mom suburban barbie doll impression at full scale, casually recounting this to me like it is no big deal.”
I had more to say but I stopped. I could hear her breathe; a bit shocked perhaps because this has never been my usual conduct with her. Quite honestly, I was intimidated by Yejide, her success, her brilliance. And though I was older, Rev never failed to impress that Yejide’s achievements, her money, her unmistakably glowing prospect, even since high school, made her the elder. She was strong, a model of an immigrant’s dream in America. His pride. I was not. This was a wound I carried.
“He told me not to tell you,” Yejide said, still flat but a bit softer.
“Cool. And so you didn’t?”
Silence. “—He said not to. He was specific. Of course, it would be useless to go into those details now. They are as ugly as you’d expect from Rev. Plus, I didn’t see the point—” she stopped short of finishing and then went quiet, allowing a pause that lasted about a minute. What she wasn’t saying was that our father quarreled like death. He always won, eventually. If Rev didn’t want to see me, there was really no point. It hurt like hell. It hurt that Yejide, who had never bothered to care, never pretended to care about anything or anyone but herself, was let in while I had neither a door nor a window open to me. It hurt, but all the same, I felt all my anguish dissolve. It was quite disarming. Yejide becoming quite scattered with her words. Rev managing to be himself even at such a critical state. Or me, after all this, with my mind already set to take the trip to Texas; to burrow into this place of want again.
“I haven’t had much time, but I should check on him,” Yejide said.
“Yeah, no shit.”
“Look, I should have told you. Regardless of what Rev said. I am sorry. I have no excuses.” She expected an apology in return. Characteristically, I expected myself to offer one, yet I did not.
“I’ll call when I get out there,” I said instead.
And I did, but Yejide, his favorite child, didn’t pick up.
5. Inside, I was led to what could have been, in its original design, a ballroom, still fitted with an old, small, faintly lit chandelier. Colorful couches lined along the walls, and a scattering of few round tables with small stools. Some residents sun-bathed by the sliding door looking out to a garden with Astroturf grass. Mounted in a corner was a precocious nod to the ranch’s exclusivity, a Starbucks coffee machine, and a water dispenser, with a table beside it for a variety of tea and condiments. I walked over and made tea as Nurse Titi, the CNA who showed me over idled along with me. She was an older Nigerian woman, and I imagined her African-aunty instincts tingled with unsolicited advice. “You speak Yoruba?” she asked after a while. I wasn’t wrong.
“Yes, ma,” I said, inflected in Nigerian-English. It was an invitation. She took it.
“Pele, dear,” she began. She sized me up, glanced at my locs, as though to consider whether her advice could swim through the forest of hair on my head. “Olorun a fun won lalafia. And you say he was a pastor, abi?” It wasn’t a question. She was pointing to Rev’s spiritual standing. Rev’s situation was somehow beyond what a servant of God deserves.
“Mommy nko?” She asked barely before I answered the first question. “What of mommy,” she asked again in English; she was really asking for the women in the family; the designated caretakers. As a son, I was a stand-in at the most.
“She is in the US, abi?”
“No.”
“Back in Nigeria? Shey Daddy o le pada ni? He, too, can go back home. So, mommy can takiaroffim.” She frowned with worry as she spoke. Rev’s situation, as I ought to understand in our momentary shared Nigerian-ness, was sacrilegious. The lonely contraption of the American care-system was no place for an African; not for a father with children, not with a homeland awaiting a triumphant return—and perhaps any sort of return if all fails.
“I don’t want to involve myself in your family business, but this kind of place is just not good for him. Daddy is a very good person so is better maybe ti won ba pada si Nigeria pelu mommy.”
Her assumption that my mother was in Nigeria waiting with open arms for Rev couldn’t be more wrong. Mom was in Florida with Abdulla whom she left Rev for. Abdulla was a great guy. Funny as hell. Kept a smile on mom’s face. Made her happy. Their story was beautiful, finding love when they did, Abdulla being a widower, and mom being married to Rev—who was more married to his religion than to her. Then, they lived just two streets from us, which made it more embarrassing, more painful for Rev and perhaps provoked his bitterness. Sophomore year of high school, mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. Rev never let us see her; we could talk to her on the phone. My senior year she relapsed; the second time harder than the first. This time, Rev forbade us from speaking to her even on the phone. He never said this directly, but he spent loud moments praying or meditating on sermons about how God was fighting his battles, calling for the repentance of the wicked—if only they would repent. I’d consider blackmailing your ex-wife with the choice of Jesus or Cancer as quite wild, even for Rev, but I wasn’t going to sit for the callousness. I took Yejide with me on the bus, and we went over to see mom at Abdulla’s. I didn’t want to compound mom’s worry, so I lied that Rev dropped us. Abdulla must have called to thank Rev because he found us out. Rev beat Yejide that night but didn’t lay a finger on me. As though I was worthless of reprimand, which somehow hurt more than if he had beaten me. After mom recovered, her path never crossed Rev’s again. No fault of hers at all.
“Mommy is not in Nigeria,” I told Nosy-Nurse Titi. “She’s dead,” I lied, enjoying the shock and embarrassment in her eyes.
“Ah, am so sorry…” her gaze dropped. She clapped her hands together. “Am really sorry o. The Lord is your strength.”
“Thank you.” I said.
“Am sorry. This place is not best, but God will give you strength,” she said again, more empathetic, less judgmental: of myself and our family womenfolk. “Your children will takiaroffyou, too in Jesus name,” she was saying, but I’d dropped my gaze inside my cup of tea. I didn’t look at her again until she walked away.
6. I found Rev seated facing the window, a long blank stare searching beyond a horizon of scraggy hills, and immaculate blue skies, lost in the arid Texas vista. That was all he ever did lately, the CNA who called me—Natya was her name; Natya from Romania—explained. She was jovial, in a way that stressed the fragile balance between unprofessionalism and warmth. She had a lot to say about Rev; they had a keen friendship—even after he’d fallen to this silence.
“Father-in-law,” Natya called to him, and then turned to me with a smile. “He called me ‘our small wife,” she explained. “He said he would marry us,” she said in a whisper, then raised her left hand to flash the ring on her finger. “I told him it was too late,” she added and laughed. “Rev,” she called again and began to walk inside. I followed. “Look who’s here to see you. It’s my husband, your son.” Natya’s joke jabbed at me. Dementia or not, Tina never existed for him, but the possibility of a Natya did.
“Care work wasn’t always gracious, and the cared for aren’t always grateful,” Natya explained. “But Rev is sweet—unlike the ones who were bitter, entitled, or just plainly unkind.” I thought it would hurt to hear this different side of Rev which was often missing from my life but I found myself eager, excited even to gather this side of him.
Natya mock-whispered as she spoke to me. Rev had told her about his beloved daughter, the orthopedic surgeon, his church, and his beautiful congregation. She specified that he was mostly proud of his “global church: for whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians,” and most importantly, “led by an African.” She laughed infectiously, and it was funny because it was barely true. Mrs. Chow, an old Chinese lady, was the only Asian person who worshiped with us; the “Hispanics,” were the Ramires’, my friend from school. They only came once. The 50-70 or so regular people that made the congregation were all black—mostly African, lightly African American.
“He spoke about you a lot, too. The writer with a book. He said you’re a bit scandalous and you put all the family’s story in a beautiful book. His words not mine.” I blinked hard and swallowed some tea so I wouldn’t have to speak. I could not believe he read the copy Tina forced me to send to him. “He said you painted the best picture of his wife, your mother, and he could not believe you had only done so with words,” Natya said. “He was so proud—”
“He spoke of our mother?”
“Yes. All the time. I am so sorry,” she said.
“About?”
“Her death,” she stammered. “Must’ve been hard for all of you. Rev raising you two since you were young. In this crazy country. Not an easy thing for us immigrants. So sorry.” I didn’t know what to say; if I should shout, or laugh, or cry. I sent silent affirmations into the void, sending life and joy to my mother. It had been the second time two men in her life had pretended she was dead. The shame wouldn’t let me speak. How much my father had not changed; how sometimes I can so easily become him.
It was why I had come all this way, it seemed. To purge myself of this sameness; to prove that I was capable of forgiveness; yet it could also mean that I’d so much looked to corner him, at his most vulnerable moment; to show him he could ask to be forgiven. I denied it, but it was the truth, a very shameful reckoning.
“Rev,” Natya called again, this time, a hand on his shoulder. He slowly turned around and faced us. His face was blank, his body gaunt, his hair which I had not fully reconciled from his back now facing me, wild and full.
“He was so proud of you. All of you” Natya turned to me again. “You were all so beautiful, especially your mother.” Natya said. Indeed, he would.
7. Clumps of hair fell to the floor, over his shoulders, over the absent eyes that looked on in the mirror. Natya had suggested casually that I could take him out, for a drive, a walk, for the night if I so wished. And that was it. Rev came back to my hotel with me. I had intended to take him on a drive, not to stop at my hotel, but I couldn’t face him with his hair, so wild, so out of his control. We stopped at Walmart on the way, walked hand in hand through the aisles and picked a clipper. Like the last time I saw him, he had not spoken a word. Only this time the words were lost, not withheld out of malice. So, I spoke to him, a sort of monologue of two. If he needed to sit. If he was hungry. The room temperature was colder than I remembered he liked. I adjusted it. It was a bit cathartic. The two of us are in the same room again. Time had passed but beneath its ruffles there used to be me and Rev. I remembered going with him on his contracts when he had the landscaping business.
After the Yejide hair-pisode, Rev’s work in the church had included “doing the lawn,” and that led to him doing work at church members’ residents and, later, a few companies. Two of us, on long drives, listening to Orlando Owoh or Sunny Ade on the stereo—learned most of my Yoruba this way, singing along. I don’t remember what we talked about, if we did, but I remember how we’d make pit stops. We loved gas station corndogs. I really enjoyed being with him, even after the hair thing happened. I’d just turned 11, going to middle-school, when we moved to San Antonio. It had been such an exciting time because Rev was starting his own church: a double stall on a strip mall on i90. It was a slow, dreary complex, bordered by a worn-out Dollar Tree, a Mexican restaurant called Marco-Taco, a Jamaican place called Big-Jerk, and an electronic repair shop.
The idea of our family starting a church was exciting to all of us. I remember working the space with our hands that summer. The rubbery smell of fresh paint and cheap fabric filling the room as mother unrolled them by the bundles and ribboned them against the walls. The old church in Galveston donated an old glass pulpit, rows of pews, bibles, and what seemed like an endless stack of red-tapered cushioned chairs. We polished, wiped, and oiled, and then when we were done, we stopped at Big-Jerk, all four of us in a booth. Rev would complain about the grimy booth and the bad customer service, and then he would joke about how he’d never eat there if anything were different. We would all laugh, and stuff our faces with microwaved spicy beef patties while we waited for the main course.
One of those days while we laughed, Jenna, the store owner, walked up to us. She was a tall, strong lady with a tooth gap wider than an inch, salt and pepper hair, and a permanent no-nonsense scowl. She said we looked beautiful and then suggested we take a photo, a small black instant camera already in hand. The photo turned out beautiful. Mother, and father on one row, and us on the other. Yejide hugged my head into her body, mother had a hand over Rev’s shoulder. We all had big smiles. At that moment, none of us could have known how close we were to the ceiling of our joy as a family. Two weeks after, Friday of the opening weekend for the church, Mom and I arrived home from the barbershop.
Rev had cut my hair for as long as I could remember; American barbers cost too much, and I had no problem with that for the longest time. I was young, it was great, but then you grow up, and the shame of arriving on the first day of school with a slightly crooked line-up becomes a life-or-death issue. The Monday after was my first day at the new school, a new city, so I begged mom for a styled cut: a high-top worth the whole summer’s hair growth, the sides tapered bald, two gashes on the sides. I was gorgeous, I saw it in Mom’s eyes. She said it, too. New church, new school, new haircut, I was on top of the world then we arrived home and I fell off it.
“What the heaven is this on your head,” was the first thing Rev said when we walked in. “Deola were you not there when they cut his hair?” He turned to Mom, he was seething but his voice was cold, so cold that a certain kind of terror engulfed me. Mom explained it was the new school, that all my peers wore similar styles, but that only made things worse. “Go and wait in the bathroom for me,” Rev said, turning away from Mom as though she wasn’t even there. “And bring out the clippers from the cabinet.” The words hit me as I walked on, my heart shattered in pieces. As I waited in the bathroom, tears running down my eyes, I heard them argue—mom was uncharacteristically shouting. Dad was saying he was not going to raise children like those Akata in America, not in his house; no lawless, rudderless, godless children. The noise got louder, time slowed as I waited, and then Mom walked in. She pulled the clippers cord from the socket and slammed it against the wall. “Get in the bath and take a shower,” she said and walked out.
If she had won that battle, the war was only just beginning. I was allowed to keep the hair until it grew out, but the longer I wore it, the more I hated the hair—and mom. She had ripped apart the harmony between Rev and I, and I was bitter. He spoke little to me; said nothing at all to Mom. It was so insufferable that I longed for him to cut my hair again; and only after did Rev ever speak to me again. All this had only lasted three weeks but my anger towards mom would not dissipate. The year after, when I saw her kiss Abdulla—a peck on the cheek, really—after we’d stopped at his shop returning from school, something burned inside me. I did not know things were already sour between her and Rev; I didn’t know that the friction of Mom slipping through his hands had already burned; I wanted to gain his love; I wanted to hurt Mom, so I told Rev what I saw.
I’d thought I was doing right by him, but you grow up and you learn how fragile a man’s ego is. How complex relationships are; how it was one thing to feel a lover leaving, and it was another thing to know that they are already gone—worse even that they are still there. He was a scorned husband, and I was more than a dumb child. I was the bearer of all bad things. I doubt if he ever forgave me. If he ever forgave himself. If I ever forgave him for the path he took after that, the one which led us down this road.
About the Author:
Timilehin Alake is a writer from Lagos, Nigeria. He is currently a Ph.D. student at Washington University in St. Louis, where he is currently working on his debut novel. He is the winner of the 2022 Four Palaces writing contest, and his works have appeared in The Florida Review, The Kalahari Review, and Contrary Magazine. Find Timilehin on X:: @cuetimmy
Isele Magazine 