by Wayétu Moore
“Mom asked me that earlier. Is this an intervention?”
Wi laughed and I was better for it.
“Did you find someone?”
“I mean, I don’t know. K becoming a shrink doesn’t mean it’s for everyone,” I answered.
“She means well.”
“Sure.”
“It’s just … it’s just that none of us have seen you like this,” Wi said. “You’ve had breakups, and I know this one was serious. And the dreams again. Mainly the dreams. I don’t know. It’s just …”
Nightmares were old friends. They started in Stratford. On that day, Mam made us wear three ill-fitting hooded black raincoats given to us by a member of our new church. She insisted that it would rain that day and we had no choice but to remain still as she pulled and tied the braided black strings so that the hoods hugged our chins. We were told to go to the bus stop holding hands, because although Connecticut traffic was nothing compared to what we had trekked through in Manhattan, Mam was convinced that the stillness of the Stratford town was more to be worried about than the taxis near Columbia’s campus. The stroll was uncomfortable because as the pair of long johns underneath my jeans and sweater rode up, I could not reach my hand into my raincoat to pull them down (for fear that Mam was still standing at the front door watching until we boarded the bus, and would punish me if I let go of my sister’s hand for too long). A honeybee stared at us when we arrived at the corner. Other than her peculiar shirt and pants, she wore black dress shoes with neon-yellow strings and a headband with two yellow cotton balls glued to the end of movable wire. A princess fairy joined her in ogling, raised her pink wand over her mouth as she whispered something to the bee with unbridled giggles.
We were used to being on the receiving end of suspicious looks by then. Barely one year in and our new country let us know, every day, that we were different. As the children made their way to the bus stop, all sniggering and abnormally happier than the day before, they stopped and examined us with what appeared to be extraordinary disbelief and disappointment. When the bus pulled up at our corner, a Native American chief with red pillow feathers wedded to his head by a rubber band pointed toward my sisters and me and snickered. Wi pulled K’s and my hands to the bus door and we followed her inside. We shared a seat in the front, two seats behind the driver. I reached into the arm of my raincoat and pulled the thermal down toward my wrist from the annoying bunch it had made underneath my armpit.
In my classroom, after taking off the dreadful raincoat, I was subject to the same attention my sisters and I received at the bus stop. Confounded as to why my classmates were still looking at me, even without the raincoat, I looked down at my shirt and inspected it for any stains. I made sure that my socks matched. I brushed the surface of my cornrows for food or lint that may have made beds there. A boy with two red horns jutting out from his head and a matching red bodysuit and tail rushed to my desk. I looked up at him from my seat.
“Who are you supposed to be?” he asked, his finger so close to my face that I could smell the potato chip crumbs stuck underneath his fingernails. I did not know what he was asking so I dropped my head and stared at my desk until he walked away. I had never seen any group of children as merry and energetic as the children in my classroom that day. I did not have any friends whom I could ask about what was so special about the day or why they were dressed foolishly, so I remained quiet at my seat in the corner of the room and eavesdropped on their fascinating conversations. As they spoke, I mimicked their words and intonations under my breath so that no one would hear me. After being consistently teased for my accent, I realized that I sounded as different to them as they sounded to me.
“Caaan-dy,” I murmured, extending the first syllable like the girls in the front of the classroom. I laughed to myself at how it sounded.
When Ms. Proctor entered the classroom, two boys who wore matching blue capes and eye masks ran up and down the aisles parallel to my desk.
“Okay, settle down,” Ms. Proctor said. “Sit down.”
She was a pale old woman with a long neck and gray hair that she tied into a bun behind her head. She showed no interest in my difference. But on the annual teacher’s day when our second grade class was allowed to bring gifts, when I nervously placed an apple on her desk (since I could not afford to buy her anything else) and I sat back down, I noticed that she was still smiling at me, in a way that only people who had told me they loved me had smiled at me before.
When the class was entirely seated, Ms. Proctor picked up a piece of chalk from the board and started to write something, but quickly erased it with her fingers. She wiped the chalk on her skirt and turned to face us with a smile.
“Okay. Who can tell me what today is?”
The lobster claws and superhero gloves waved in the air. I did not want to be the only student who did not have her hand raised, so following the lead of my classmates, I raised my hand as well.
“Oh, good. Yes?” Ms. Proctor pointed at me. My defeated classmates dropped their hands. At first Ms. Proctor smiled at the fact that my hand was actually raised, but after noticing the crestfallen look on my face, her face dropped and it was clear that she was sorry for her decision.
“Th-Thursday?” I answered, ashamed of the sound of my own voice, after a brief moment of silence.
Before I finished speaking, as expected, the entire second grade class fell back in their chairs in laughter. Some turned around and shook their heads at my obvious foreignness; others pointed and laughed until Ms. Proctor demanded that they get quiet again.
“Thursday?” one of the boys with a cape said, mimicking my accent. I was unaware that I sounded that way, and touched my lips while staring down at my desk.
“That’s enough,” Ms. Proctor said. “That’s enough.”
“I know,” a fairy gloated in the front row.
“Good,” Ms. Proctor said, wanting to get over the revelation. “What day is today?” She looked at the girl while rapidly batting her eyes.
“Halloween,” the girl said, and as I lifted my head she was turned to face me and looked as if she would never need to win anything again.
Ms. Proctor wrote the word on the board as the class spelled it.
“Halloween,” I murmured to myself and wondered if I sounded like them.
My sisters were also quiet on our bus ride home, so I imagined that we had all had similar experiences with our classmates. Mam stood on the front porch waiting, and at once we ran to her, impatient to share the news of the wondrous new day that had just entered our imaginations.
“It’s Halloween!” we said simultaneously, almost immediately after reaching my aunty’s yard. “It’s Halloween!”
“Yeh, I know. Come inside,” she said, holding the door open for us with a straight face.
“But—”
“Go wash your hands so you can eat, yeh? Then go to the basement for homework.”
I felt betrayed and wanted to inquire further, but instead I walked up the hardwood steps opposite the front door to the attic where my family slept to drop off my things. We had only been there for a few months and every day I waited for Papa to return from those embassy lines, those employment lines, those immigration lines where he was ritually treated like a nonentity, to tell us, finally, that it was time to return to Caldwell. But that day never came, and our second home was in an aunty’s Connecticut attic, an aunty who knew better than to stay in Liberia for as long as we did. We had two rooms facing each other. One for me and my sisters. One for Mam, Papa, and the baby.
We were told to be careful of stepping on the hand-tufted rug and discouraged from touching the glass windowpanes of our aunty’s cherry armoires. Mam preferred that we not sit in the living room, for fear that we would leave food and finger stains that she would be too embarrassed to explain.
“Go get your book bags and go to the basement,” Mam said as soon as we were finished swallowing the last of our snacks.
“Mam?” K said, standi
ng up from the coffee table.
“Ask me after your homework, yeh? Go get your books and go to the basement.”
I knew what K wanted to ask. Mam insisted on keeping a regular schedule, even though she knew what an incredible day it was. Fairies and bees and goblins all come to life. Princesses, toads, and tigers surrounded us that day, knew something we did not. My sisters headed for the attic to retrieve their bags, but I stayed and turned to face Mam at the doorway. I observed as she gathered our plates, laboring over the table. Still slender, still beautiful, with cheekbones that beckoned around corners. But changed. I thought of Torma and Korkor. Their promises that I would see Mam soon. That she would sing to me. That I would touch her again, hug her, sit in her lap. And how brief was that reunion. Where had she gone?
“What?” Mam asked, looking up from the stack of empty plates in her hand. “Go get your bag and go downstairs.”
In the basement we were allowed to sit on the sofas and couches, although Mam preferred we do our work at the coffee table in the middle of them. She monitored our progress, quietly. The doorbell rang and Mam did not budge. She looked up at the ceiling and waited for the sound of keys. When the bell rang again, she shook her head and resumed the supervision of our home assignments.
“Doorbell,” K said.
“Don’t worry, yeh? Do your work,” Mam said.
Shortly after, we heard a group of footsteps rush off of our aunty’s lawn. Through a rectangular window adjacent to the ceiling, I saw a pair of striped socks and what looked like a black cape walk past.
“Pay attention to your work,” Mam said.
“It’s Halloween,” K said for me, for all of us, finally. “They say trick or treat and dress up for candy!” The elucidation excited her.
“Pay attention, K. I know.”
“Are we going to go for candy?” Wi asked.
“No,” Mam said finally. “It’s not a good day. Some things in this country are not good. The people dress their children like devils and witches and take them around to beg for candy,” she said with a straight face. “It’s not a good day.”
In the bathtub that evening I instructed K to sit still while I covered her body with white soap foam. She laughed as I painted her body with the flattening suds and extended her arms out to either side of her so that I would not miss an inch.
“You can be a snowman for Halloween,” I said.
Later on in our attic room, I sat on the windowsill and looked out onto the front yard. Wi and K were on the floor in front of a game of Chutes and Ladders, and as I waited my turn, I peered down at the passing fairytale characters and their counterparts. They carried plastic bags and buckets with illuminated pumpkin faces, all overflowing with candy and other treats. They hopped around with their parents, who looked just as content with the unruly and cheerful night. The darker it became, more children emerged from their homes with buckets of sweets—laughing and dancing in the street. I imagined myself down there—one hand touching theirs, rubbing its whiteness for the Africa underneath, the other tightly clenching my candy bucket. I thought then that perhaps my parents’ understanding of this place, this America, was wrong. I doubt that they would have let us go outside and play with a horde of children all dressed as Gio devils in Liberia, but this place was different, and besides I would not have wanted to. But that night, I wanted to go outside. I wanted to walk with them; I wanted to exchange treats from their buckets, to sound and act and be like them, who seemed happier than I was, and at that moment happier than I would ever be.
“Papa’s here!” K said, interrupting my daydream. Thrilled, I stepped down from the windowsill and ran down the attic steps to the living room, where I heard his voice.
“Papa!” I ran to him. He was slow to respond. Again.
Over time as I raced the girls to meet him at the door, he was slower to pick us up, and the kisses on our foreheads seemed lighter than the day before.
“Your daddy’s tired, yeh,” Mam would say as he moved through the living room as if weights constrained his heels and walked straight upstairs, saying less to us as days and nights took turns passing in our new country. His eyes were different—sometimes bloodshot and sunken, as his head slanted into his palm during deadlock daydreams toward the afternoon news. And his eyes, once a whisper of “It will be okay” or “Papa is right here” or another blend of words that persuaded our peace of mind, now seemed to say “We are lost” and “They do not want me here but we must stay” and “Papa is gone. I am sorry.”
That night when Papa finally made it upstairs, all of the lights in the house were turned off except for those in the attic rooms.
“Okay, get in bed,” Mam said, coming in first.
“Today is Halloween!” I shouted.
“Didn’t I tell you girls already?” Mam said.
“I know,” Papa interrupted. He placed K back on the bed beside me and kissed my forehead. By the time he made it over to Wi’s bed to kiss her, Mam had already tucked us in under the covers and was shaking her head in disapproval.
“It’s not a good day,” he said finally.
My vision blurred with tears when he said this—because I knew that although America was new and different to them, by the way he said it, it was true.
“Why?” Wi asked.
“The people used to come out and worship devil long time ago,” he said matter-of-factly. “It’s not a good day.”
“Okay, that’s enough of this Halloween. Time to say prayers and sleep,” Mam said.
I didn’t want to speak to either one of them. When Papa was leaving the room, he turned around to me, sensing, I knew, the sadness of our exclusion from all things deemed normal and fun.
“I love you, yeh?” he said and disappeared in the darkness behind our closed door.
“Trick or treat,” K giggled under the covers.
“Trick or treat,” Wi repeated.
I closed my eyes to their muffled twitters until my body melted into the pink sheets and pillows. Their voices echoed in a dim and empty space until the laughter vanished and I stood on my bare feet on what felt like strewn pebbles. I took a step forward and I was back in Monrovia on a distorted dirt road with no end and infinite fields of yellow grass on either side. To the right of me, my father stood with his arms crossed and looked angrily ahead of us. He wore a torn shirt with mud and blood stains, and his body was reduced to a flesh-colored skeleton whose joints prodded from underneath his skin when he moved too sharply in one direction.
“Come,” he said and took my hand. His shoes were backward on his feet and like slippers they slapped the road as we walked.
“Papa, where we going?” I asked.
He did not look down or respond. His pulled me with one hand and swung the other.
“Come,” he repeated and squeezed my hand so hard that I felt it in my head.
“Papa, you’re hurting me,” I whimpered.
“Come,” he said again, still refusing to look down at my face.
“Please, can we stop?”
A wooden house with a broken front door appeared ahead on our right. A figure that I could not make out from where I stood appeared on the porch of the house. Startled, I stopped, but Papa continued walking, his eyes now on the house. The echoing giggles of my lost sisters returned.
“Can we stop?” I cried out to him.
“Come!” he shouted.
He stopped in front of the house and it disappeared. Papa laughed. A small boy, naked except for a red baseball cap that floated over his head, turned to face us as his penis wagged below him. Papa continued laughing as the boy gripped a shiny golden rifle. He pointed the rifle our way and I attempted to pull my hand out of my father’s grasp.
“Run!” I yelled, but he stayed still and concentrated on the young boy.
The boy lifted the weapon over his head and smirked. He then took the gun and, tilting his head back with an opened mouth, he slid it down his throat until it disappeared. When the boy was finished, he smac
ked his lips and vanished. Panting and crying now, I looked up at Papa, who appeared unmoved by what he had just seen. He stopped laughing and continued down the road, pulling my hand as I struggled to release myself.
Ahead of us several black dogs with drooping tongues barked viciously at us. Papa stopped walking and gazed at the large dogs.
“Run!” I screamed, and hid behind his back from the sight of the malevolent creatures.
“No. Come!” he shouted and took a step toward the dogs. They stopped barking, so he took another step. They then disappeared. When he took a third step toward where the dogs had challenged him, an army of rebels with guns and knives appeared in their place. Papa’s eyes grew so wide that the bottom lids dropped to his chin.
“Run! They’re coming!” I shouted. And still holding my hand, he turned around and ran in the opposite direction of the rebels. Dragged on my knees and bleeding as we ran, I looked back as the rebels gained speed and charged toward us.
“They’re coming, Papa! They’re coming!” I howled, and my father’s laughter, along with the laughter of my lost sisters, pressed onto my ears.
“They’re coming for us!” I belted and cried, attempting to gain footing to ease the blood from escaping my knees.
“Run. They’re coming! They’re coming for us! Run!” I shouted against the resonating cackles. I turned around again and a rebel’s heartless face and eyes, his cruel lips and tongue, were in my face.
“They’re coming!” I shouted again and he reached out his hand to grab my dress. I felt him gaining behind me and hollered.
When I opened my eyes, K ran away from the bed to stand with my Mam and Papa. The light glowered brightly above my head and my face and pillow were wet.
“Jesus,” Mam said and raised a quavering hand to her mouth.
I was dreaming, I realized, and had somehow woken up everybody in the house with my screaming. I rubbed my eyes to see their faces clearly. They stood watching me. I sat up in bed and Mam and Papa finally came toward me with outstretched hands, careful as though I had been newly injured and they were afraid of breaking any more bones.
