Fiction

A carrot, a turnip, my tumor: objects that can reach fifteen centimeters without being too much. I grew the tumor slowly, the way a woman cradles a pregnancy inside her, long and slow until the baby is ripe.

D blurts out the truth: they’re here to rob her. Cash jabs D in the stomach with his elbow, as if D has divulged information that isn’t already obvious. Marie rises from her recliner. She offers the boys coffee, tea, at least a glass of water.

With Hamza, Sakina had been fabulous—funny, unpredictable, utterly nonconforming to expectations—but only to the extent allowed by his disapproving gaze and after their big fights, when they weren’t on speaking terms and she was temporarily released from his influence.
Without him, there would be no limit to what she could be.

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.”