Parts Unknown

by Davidson, S. P.

  They covered it up pretty well, but my parents were barely middle class. They owned a few single-family home rentals, along with Dad’s pay as a city council member and Mom’s seasonal work as a substitute librarian. They made sure to look and act as wealthy as they could, without actually spending much money to do so. Mom and Dad might write our private-college tuition checks, but they used the special checkbooks from our trust accounts to do so. They paid for college with Uncle Paulie’s money.

  They’d had a plan once, to make a lot of money without a lot of work, but it hadn’t worked out. It had been a total disaster, in fact, and nothing at home had ever been the same again.

  ~ ~ ~

  I was jolted out of my reverie by the sight of a smiling face peeking out from around one of the doors. “I’ve been waiting to meet you. Josh has said so many wonderful things about you,” said a very dark man with a lovely meld of an African and British accent.

  “Hi, you must be Trevor,” I smiled back. “I’m Vivian.” He was impeccably dressed in an ironed white polo shirt and navy-blue shorts with a sharp crease down the front.

  “Welcome,” he said. “I must cook you dinner tonight. If Josh has been feeding you . . .” He shook his head darkly.

  “What, a person can’t live on pizza and noodles alone?” I laughed. “Thanks for the invite. Josh is working tonight, so I’d love to. What can I bring?”

  “Just yourself, of course,” Trevor assured me.

  I was unreasonably excited. Josh directed me to the local Sainsbury’s, and I walked up and down its bright aisles for a long time, looking for the perfect accompaniment to an African meal. The food in England was all so lusciously foreign—trifle in single-serve containers, chestnut-flavored yogurt, and muesli in big bags. The frozen foods aisle featured single-serve steak-and-kidney pies. I was so in love with this country now, the leftover pound coins in my pocket my passport to all this.

  At last, I decided on a properly British dessert—ginger cake, brown and shiny, in a paper wrapper. Counting out my change confidently to the store clerk, I felt like I finally had the hang of things—until I realized I was meant to have brought my own bag. Was nothing free in this country? Grumpily, I paid for a plastic bag in which to tote my cake, and headed back to the safety of that row house.

  Trevor was preparing the meal. I poked my head in. “I’ve got dessert,” I told him, presenting the cake. “My favorite!” he said politely; he would have been equally polite had it been his least favorite kind of cake, I was sure. “Now please, refresh yourself—I will call when dinner is ready,” he instructed. I waved goodbye and headed happily toward the stairs. A strange clanking sound was trailing from Boris’s room. What did he do in there all day? I stopped and listened. Now it sounded like cutting—scissors struggling to slice through a heavy piece of cardboard. I shrugged, and proceeded upstairs. I’d yet to meet the final flatmate, whose room was across the hall from Josh’s. I sort of hoped I wouldn’t—I wasn’t certain how thin the walls were, and I’d been rather noisy, the past few nights.

  I opened Josh’s door with the spare key he’d given me and looked in; he was gone for the evening shift. I wandered out to the tiny bathroom at the end of the hall. Squinted at myself in the mirror—hard to make out my face in the hazy glass with the dim light bulb. I made some experimental funny faces, pulling my lips back ridiculously far, then, bored, went back to Josh’s room. Poked around his toiletries for a bit, trying to gauge his personality from the anti-perspirant he used. Speed Stick—hmm. I hadn’t a clue. Thumbed through his books. Inspected his BUNAC Student Exchange Employment Programme work permit, with a deer-caught-in-headlights blurry passport photo that barely looked like Josh at all. A gray rectangular stamp proclaimed HOTEL AND CATERING TRADES EMPLOYMENT SERVICE.

  Then, I scouted around for a secret journal; couldn’t find one. I did find some folded-up pieces of lined paper scribbled with poetry I couldn’t understand:

  The palimpsest

  Writes the writer

  A roundelay in close quarters

  As the children outside

  Play in the sand, erasing

  Stick drawings as they make them.

  I had a feeling this poem wasn’t very good. I found a few blank notebooks, some with fancy covers that must have been never-used gifts. Apparently, Josh was a blank slate, just as I was. All possibility. No follow through. Yet.

  Finally, inevitably, rummaging through my duffel, I pulled out the sketchbook. The girls twirling around the fountain, the light glancing off their hair. Forever incomplete, because Josh had pulled me away from that moment, and into his. I started sketching—still life with anti-perspirant container—then stopped. Lay back on the bed and fell asleep.

  A knock on the door woke me for dinner. I hastily smoothed my hair and slipped on some flip-flops, then scuttled down the hallway, bumping into a tall, olive-skinned man with masses of dark curly hair along the way. “Sorry!” I exclaimed.

  “So you’re the new live-in, huh,” smirked the man over his shoulder.

  “What?” I gasped, confused.

  “Just joking!” he returned, grinning at my shocked look. “I’m Dov. I’ve heard about you. Well, we’ll get to know each other over dinner.”

  Trevor was smiling, waiting for us at the bottom of the stairs, his hands encased in oven mitts. “I hope you’re hungry,” he said happily. “I have been cooking all afternoon. I wanted you to try some proper Nigerian food.”

  “I’m so excited, Trevor,” I said warmly. “I’ve never eaten Nigerian food before.”

  “Well, you are in for a treat.” He gestured us toward the kitchen table, transformed into a low-rent dining destination with a wilting dandelion in a jam jar, three mismatched placemats, and bright pink paper napkins. I hugged him impulsively. “No one’s ever cooked me dinner before, either.”

  He patted my head. “Sit, please.”

  Dov tossed himself into a chair. He appeared not to have shaved in a week, and reeked of cigarettes and another, deeper odor—pot, probably. He was wearing a reddish stretched-out T-shirt that appeared to read “Coca-Cola” in Hebrew. “So how do you like London?” he asked.

  “It’s gorgeous!” I enthused. “I haven’t had a chance to see much yet, but it’s so beautiful—the buildings, and everything. And the parks. And . . .”

  “Admit it,” Dov chortled, “You’ve been spending most of your time in Josh’s room, haven’t you? I’ve been waiting to catch a glimpse of this mysterious love interest Josh is all gooey-eyed over.”

  I blushed. “That’s me, I guess. I’m not so mysterious, though.” Ask questions, I instructed myself, pleating my napkin nervously in my lap. “So how long have you been in London?”

  “Since January, actually. I don’t want to go into military service in Israel, and I’m lucky enough to have a British passport, because I happened to be born here. So I’m going to stay away from Israel as long as possible. I don’t want to go back.”

  His English was perfect, his Israeli accent giving it a slightly French sound, the r’s swallowed. His eyes were dark but guileless. “I work at Council Travel. Not my life’s dream, but it’s a job, you know? I’m saving up money to maybe travel the world. Who knows.”

  Meanwhile, Trevor was serving, ladling soup into bowls, and then handing them around. “This is efo,” he explained. “It’s a smoked fish soup.”

  I tasted, dubiously. It was an acquired taste, but good too—hot and spicy and salty. “Yummy . . . What’s in it?” I asked.

  Dov put a hand up in warning. “You don’t want to know.”

  “Oh, please—tell me, Trevor. I’ve never tasted anything quite like it.”

  Trevor, tilting his bowl to slide an unidentifiable piece of meat onto his spoon, said, “It is a dish full of surprises. For example, do you see that red feathery plant in the backyard?”

  “Celosia,” I said. “My mom grows it in her garden too.”

  “Yes, it is one of the ingredients. Also a few othe
r items from the backyard.”

  “Snails!” howled Dov, tickling the back of my neck with a cold hand. I shrieked in surprise, then hastily squelched my outburst, not wanting to be rude. “I would never have guessed,” I said lamely, chewing more slowly on the rubbery morsel in my mouth.

  “Also, smoked fish, tomato, chilies . . .” Trevor enumerated.

  “Thanks Trevor,” I said weakly. “For going to all that trouble. It must have been very labor intensive.”

  “Especially the part where he had to catch the snails,” Dov said. “They tried to outrun him, but our man Trevor is fast.”

  I snorted. “You remind me of my little brother,” I told Dov, and he smirked. The front door squeaked open. I turned to see Boris come in (when had he gone out?), bearing two enormous pieces of shiny blue construction paper. Nodding brusquely in our direction, he entered his room and slammed the door so hard the entire kitchen vibrated.

  It was as if a ghost had shimmered through the kitchen, upsetting the easy balance. It took a moment to recover equilibrium; then Trevor brought over the next dishes. “This is ogbono. It’s a meat dish, very tender. And some okra, for the side. And rice.”

  “No snails in that one,” said Dov in a stage whisper.

  “Thank you, it looks delicious,” I said, and asked him, “I was wondering--how’d you end up here?”

  “In my country, my father was a chief—a big man. But we did not have much money. And I had many brothers. I am the youngest. Not much left over for me. So I chose to come here. Maybe make a better life.” He sighed. “It has been a few months. And I like it here, but it is so cold. And job search is hard.”

  “So what do you do,” I asked, “When you aren’t job searching?” I found my voice automatically falling into Trevor’s deliberate, rhythmic cadences.

  “I run,” he said. “I run a lot.”

  I looked around the table. There was Dov, being a typical messy guy, slurping meat and holding a beer at the same time. And bright-eyed sad Trevor, and me. Were we all here to escape being someplace else?

  After dinner, Dov suggested drinks at the local pub, and I immediately agreed. We treated Trevor to a pint of bitter at the Lamb and Castle, a couple blocks away, and chatted idly. “Trevor sounds so British,” I said. “Are many Nigerian children named Trevor?”

  He laughed, white teeth flashing. “No, actually! My real Nigerian name is AbdulRahman. But it is difficult to spell, and confusing. I would like to be called Trevor while I live here.”

  “And you, Dov?” I asked. “Any secret names you want to fess up to?”

  He opened his arms wide. “Dov Bar-Ilan. That’s me. What you see is what you get.”

  I sipped my cider, letting it flow smoothly down my throat like water. “When I have a child, I’m going to name her something interesting. Alizarin. Or Viridian. A name no one else has.”

  Trevor looked upset. “There is something to be said for fitting in with other people, though. Don’t you think? Will the children not laugh at your daughter, for her name?”

  “You have a point. But I think the names are beautiful. They’re paint colors. Alizarin is this deep, deep crimson color. And viridian is a bright green. You can’t use them alone—they’re too bright. But if you mix each one with any other color, that color takes on an amazing depth. They’re two colors I can’t paint without.”

  “Brilliant that you’re an artist,” said Dov. “That means you can really be one of us. Trevor and I have voted ourselves least likely to be gainfully employed this year.”

  I reached into my purse and pulled out my new pack of cigarettes. Inhaling deeply, I said, “Thanks, glad to be part of the club.”

  “There’ll be hazing later,” Dov warned, and Trevor cuffed his shoulder.

  Eventually Dov extracted a deck of cards from his back jeans pocket. “Anyone up for poker?” he asked.

  I stared blankly, as did Trevor. “Okay, you babies,” he groaned. “How about something simple—Crazy Eights?” I reached back into the recesses of my memory, and remembered childhood games. “Crazy Eights it is!” I enthused.

  And there we stayed, till the pub closed at 11 pm, playing Crazy Eights, and Go Fish, and Gin Rummy, laughing, drinking pints of Guinness and cider. We played table hockey with the Strongbow Cider coasters, and as conversation lulled, I asked Dov curiously, “So, what will you do, really, after Council Travel? What’s next?”

  He shrugged loosely, after several pints his words slurring, the soft consonants rounder and slower. “I dunno, girl. I just take it day by day, you know? Things will figure themselves out.”

  Trevor nodded energetically. “I am always hoping. Hopeful. One tries one’s best.”

  I swirled my cider, avoiding Trevor’s earnest look, his strained British pronunciation. How well would his British act work out for him? I wanted desperately to hope it would, for this kind man.

  And I was convinced that at last, my luck had changed.

  Part II

  Los Angeles

  2008

  Chapter 5

  “I won’t do it! I won’t! I won’t!” Lucy was in a rage, her face beet-red, her dark-brown eyes so dilated they appeared black. “I’m not going to, and you can’t make me!” She jumped up and down, ablaze with fury. Then she began flinging stuffed animals at me. I caught them, laughing, because if I didn’t laugh, I might cry, or worse, scream, hit her, run out of the apartment and not come back.

  “Honey.” I forced my voice to be as quiet and gentle as possible, the way one would speak to a rabid bunny. “It’s cleanup time. We do it every day. The toys on the floor go in the basket. The books go in the bookshelf. That’s all. Then you can watch Curious George.”

  She was lying on the floor now, pounding it with her fists. I thought despairingly of Mrs. Schusterman downstairs. Unfortunately, Lucy’s room was directly above her living room.

  “I’ll help you. It’ll be so fast, you won’t believe it. We’ll do it together, okay?”

  It was too late, though. Lucy was past listening, lost in a tangle of fear and anxiety, her tantrum shrieking to its inevitable climax. I pragmatically checked the ceramic clock on her wall, a concoction involving a cow, a moon, and a tick-tocking spoon underneath. Four forty-five. Tantrums usually lasted about fifteen minutes. I walked out her door, locked it from the outside—the reverse lock a hard-won battle with George—and wobbled to the kitchen to pour myself a glass of wine, my hands shaking. Down the hall, Lucy was flinging herself against the door, hollering “Nooooo! Noooooo! Mommy, let me out! Let me out please, Mommy, please, I’ll be good, I promise!” I peeked around the kitchen opening. Lucy was kicking her door with such force it was shaking in the jamb. I sipped some wine, staggered to the kitchen table, put my head in my arms, and closed my eyes. I was just so tired.

  Eventually the kicking subsided, then the shouting, and all I could hear were muffled, heartbroken sobs. She must be lying on her bed then, her face in the pillow. The tantrum was over. I gulped a last swallow of wine, then walked the gauntlet of that dark hall, unlocked the door, and stroked her light blonde hair. “Better now, honey?”

  She peered forlornly up from her damp pillow, clutching her favorite stuffed monkey in one hand and a pulled-off Barbie leg in the other. Other pieces of Barbie were splayed in a disjointed huddle across the room. “I love you, Mommy.”

  “I love you too, Lucy.” I hugged her tight. This was the best part, the moments after, when she was exhausted and almost baby-like. She lay boneless in my arms, a rag doll.

  “So we’ll clean up now, okay?” I gauged her face. It was limp and acquiescent. I sang softly, “Bunny goes here, and Where’s Baby’s Belly Button goes here.”

  She sang along with me, “Fairy girl goes here,” throwing a nude Barbie fairy-themed toy in the basket, “and The Little Fur Family goes here,” carefully sliding the book into the pink bookcase with flowers painted down the side. When we were done, I picked her up and kissed each cheek. “See, that wasn’t so bad. No
w you can watch TV, and I’ll make dinner.”

  She wiped her nose on the back of her hand, then swiped her hands on her red corduroy overalls. “Yeah, Mommy.”

  Back in the yellow-tiled kitchen, I checked the clock. Five fifteen. A whole hour and forty-five minutes till George would be back. Maybe he’d come home early.

  For someone who seemed to subsist solely on crustless slices of bread and pieces of cheese, Lucy was an impossibly energetic three-year-old. Most days, she was like some miniature teenager, bent on defiance just for the sake of saying no. Television kept her quiet, though. After a blessed hour of PBS, and a quick dinner—we both had toasted cheese; there was no point being fancy, with just the two of us—she refused to take a bath.

  I had no reserves left. I contemplated throwing her bodily in the tub and forcing her to wash, but I didn’t have the energy. “Fine, you can have a bath tomorrow,” I countered, “But you have to go to bed now, then.” It was 6:30. I could not wait for the day to end.

  “But Daddy, I need to see Daddy!” Her voice was rising to an ominous wail.

  “He’ll peek in when he gets home, and he’ll say goodnight to you.”

  “No, I need my Daddy. I need my Daddy now.” I furtively swiped exhausted tears from my eyes. Half an hour till George got home—I didn’t think I could make it.

  We compromised—she put on her pajamas, long johns patterned with pastel bunnies, and I brushed her teeth. And then we read story after story—treacly Disney Princess books, and a tale about a talking dump truck, and a few about Barbie mermaids and fairies, until at last, all the way down the hall, I heard the lock click back, and George was home. I was saved.

  ~ ~ ~

  It had been such a beautiful day on that April Sunday in 2002. I’d lived in Los Angeles for two years, and was visiting the Getty Museum for the first time. It felt so luxurious, sitting back in the museum tram as it toiled up the steep hill to the top, having a whole afternoon to myself to explore. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t found the time, before. But I’d been so busy, just getting by, flinging myself exhausted into bed every night, my calendar bristling with blacked-in and crossed out dates.