Fiction

One MRI later and they were seated in front of another doctor with the most monotone voice Esme had ever heard, like he’d sanded away all the bumps and filled in all the divots until he had a nice flat surface on top of which he could slap the diagnosis of the day and send it down the patient’s throat as smoothly as possible.

They were greyhounds mainly, wandering the neighborhood in groups, barking at cars and chasing plastic shopping bags caught in the wind. There was something otherworldly about them, their bike-seat-shaped heads, tails long and straight as pool cues.

The only physical difference, due to genetics or an act of God, depending on who you ask, is that while Kehinde had the brown eyes typical for a Nigerian who could trace his roots back to a time before Europe carved up the African continent like a goat, Taiye was born with pale blue eyes.

It’s embarrassing, admitting that your father thinks your dead mother has come back as a parrot. There isn’t a natural way to bring it up in conversation.

When we meet again for lunch at Swingers in Hollywood he has already been dead for three years. Still, I’d recognize him anywhere. The way he stands. His California slow smile. That stupid T-shirt I always hated, the one that says “Musicians Play Around.”

I murmur in the father tongue, I don’t know where to go. I shout in the mother tongue, estás ahi? The bedsheets bunch up beneath me as I tremble, they dampen with my tears as I beg to be held a final time.

My father was patient as I got used to the slick sphere, the frightening oddness of it there in my mouth. His encouragement was gentle, routine, no different than when he’d taught me to tie my shoes and ride my bike.

I checked my notes, wondering where to go from here since it seemed we were at an impasse. This was Day 94, and Dendro, as I had nicknamed it, had gone silent. At least, as far as I could tell from a tree.