by Issa Rae
My mother looked around the kitchen, at the mess we had left behind. Then, she paused and frowned at us and said, “You didn’t make me any?”
As my mother stood there, I realized this hadn’t even occurred to any of us to do. What was wrong with us?
“No . . . we—” I started.
“Never mind.” My mother shook her head angrily, rushing to her room. I exchanged glances with my brother and sister and braced myself to go to her bedroom and apologize. There she sat on her bed, crying to herself, wiping her own tears. I hugged her tightly and apologized, coming to terms with the fact that she needed us just as much as we needed her.
Several months later, my siblings and I grew accustomed to and even began to take advantage of the weekend visits with our father. We’d spend the night at his apartment and then we’d wake up to McDonald’s breakfast orders for us in the morning. After we happily wolfed down our meals on his television trays, he’d resurface with an offer for the day’s plans. “Do you all want to go to the bookstore?”
We were always game. There were certain things my dad didn’t bat an eye about spending his hard-earned money on for his children: education, books, Senegal, and technology. In that order.
“Hey Dad, can I get money to go to the movies?”
“No. You don’t need it.”
“Hey Dad, can we go to Senegal?”
“Sure!”
We could always count on an unlimited budget for books and would spend at least an hour at the bookstore, each making our deliberate selections (sometimes reading them, in the store, before we purchased them only to read them again). Then we’d go home, go to our separate corners, and disappear into our individual worlds. That was how we bonded.
Whether out of guilt or his yearning for a new car, my dad left me with his 1997 Saturn. So when the provisional part of my license expired, my teen angst was freed and I was at liberty to visit my dad, my friends, and my new boyfriend. I chose the latter two far more often, but during one particular weekend, I decided I wanted to pay a visit to my younger cousin, Aida, and gossip about some boys in Senegal. She and her mother had just come in from Senegal and were staying with my father in his two-bedroom apartment. My father had always made it abundantly clear that we were always welcome in his home, so I didn’t feel the need to announce my visit to him beforehand.
I knocked on the door and Aida answered, surprised to see me.
“Oh, hey, Jo-Issa.”
“Hey, girl!” I stood in the doorway and saw my dad sitting at the bar, facing the kitchen, where my aunt Mame Aissa was cooking. Behind them, in the back of the room, I saw a woman I didn’t recognize standing near the balcony door, talking on the phone. She looked in my direction and then held the phone closely to her mouth, uttering the words, “Oh my God.” Not in the frightened sense, but in the “shit is about to go down” sense. Then she walked out onto the balcony and continued her phone call. There was a look of knowingness in Aida’s eyes that disturbed me, like she was searching me for recognition or understanding of some sort.
This all happened within the span of four seconds, and it would take another couple of hours before I fully processed the scene before me. What struck me as immediately odd, however, was that my father, though pleasant, greeted me with, “Heyyy! You don’t call?” His tone suggested a joke, but his stiff demeanor said the opposite. I looked to my aunt, who had the same searching eyes as my cousin. Something was going on. For the first time, I felt unwelcome in my own father’s home.
Pretending to laugh at my dad’s rhetorical accusation, I remained standing in the doorway. I told them I had just come by to talk to Aida. My dad, most likely finally sensing how awkward I felt, waved his hand and said, “Come in.” But it was too late. I already felt like unwanted company. I shook my head, smiling.
“What did you want to talk to me about?” Aida asked me. To maintain airs, I told her, “It’s gossip. I’ll just call you and tell you later.”
“Are you sure?” she asked.
“Yeah,” I said as I backed away, looking one last time toward the balcony, where the stranger whose presence eclipsed my comfort snuck glances. Then I said good-bye to everyone and left, my mind racing and replaying the moment the door opened, over and over again.
When I got home, my mother was undressing in her room. I knocked on her door. “Mom, are you busy?”
“Just a second!”
I considered how I was going to present my findings to her. I didn’t want to be wrong in my assumption that dad had moved on so quickly, especially given her sensitive state. How would I tell her without hurting her feelings? But then, I remembered, she had been the one to end things, so maybe she wouldn’t even bat an eye. Maybe she’d be happy for him. I was prepared to be, if she was. Either way, I needed to know what I had just experienced.
My mother slid her door open. “Yes, my sweetie?”
“Can I talk to you?” I asked. My mother’s smile grew uneasy. Given my tone and her reaction, I’m pretty certain she assumed I was going to tell her I was pregnant or had HIV, so maybe my actual news would come as a relief. I sat down on her bed and she sat next to me, expectant.
“So, I just came from Dad’s . . .”
Her shoulders relaxed slightly, but not much. “Yeah . . .”
I told her every detail of the story, including my cousin and aunt’s reactions and the strange woman’s ominous “Oh my God.” I watched as my mother listened, taking my words in, processing them. Then I asked in a lighter tone, as though presenting her with what I was certain was an educated guess, a deduction at best, “Is Dad seeing someone new?”
My mom took a second, looking at me, contemplating. It was my turn to search her eyes, looking for a revelation of some sort, but I was also relieved not to be the bearer of any bad news when she nodded and said, “Unh-huh.”
“Oh.” She did know, I thought, exhaling, glad that was out of the way. As I revisited the scenario in my mind, something about the flashback and my mother’s calm confirmation alarmed me. I could feel my heart pounding as the pieces started coming together. An overwhelming dread hit me and I gasped out loud. When I turned to my mother, she was already watching me, waiting.
“Is that why . . .”
My mother nodded, solemnly, before I could finish my question. It was as if she had transmitted her emotions to me. The tears came immediately, instantly, as though even they had been waiting for me to figure it all out. A sound escaped my throat that I didn’t recognize as I bent into my lap and covered my face. What? My dad? Was my father even capable of this? How? Why? I felt my mother’s arms around me, trying to hug the rock my body had become.
“I’m so sorry. I’m sorry, sugar . . .” she said softly.
“Who is she?” I managed to stammer through tears.
She shook her head. “She works at his office.”
“What?! How long?” I had worked at his office for an entire summer when I was fourteen. Did I know her? Did she know me? How come I didn’t recognize her face?
My mother rubbed my back. “I still don’t know. I’ve been trying to find out.”
“Do Amadou and Malick know?”
“Yes, I told them. But your father and I decided we didn’t want you, Lamine, and Elize to have a bad image of him.”
I started thinking about the image I had of my father and the deception I felt. He didn’t even deserve my sympathy! All that time, I had been so concerned with him being alone, when my mother, my poor mother . . . I couldn’t stop sobbing from the pain of the truth. I never would have imagined my peaceful, patient father could be capable of causing so much pain.
I stopped going to his apartment on weekends altogether, making excuses that were purposefully flimsy enough to make a statement, but sturdy enough to not tip off my younger brother and sister. I couldn’t make conversation with him. I stopped asking him for things
. I didn’t want anything from him. If he noticed my distance, he didn’t acknowledge it, which made me even angrier.
As far as my mother was concerned, my discovery had opened the floodgates of detail. As she pieced together the history of his affair, she learned how callous the woman he had chosen to involve himself with was. My mother had met her on very few occasions, but in every instance, she smiled in her face, while her actions spit on the past of which my mother had once been so certain. I had never hated anyone as much as I did her. I had never hated anyone, period. I’m never one to be bitchy for no reason. I actually sympathized with the stepmother in The Parent Trap (the Hayley Mills version), because I never thought the twins gave her a fair chance. And so, even after my discovery, I was prepared to give this other woman the benefit of the doubt. Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe my father was a master deceiver and had been two-timing them both. Maybe she was remorseful, but too in love to back out? Maybe there was a justification for all of this hurt. But when I finally worked up the courage to ask my mother how and when she found out, I decided the other woman was undeserving of my empathy.
My one-sided rift with my father continued through my freshman year, slowly subsiding by the winter of my sophomore year with my decision to temporarily “stop out” of Stanford and take filmmaking classes at the New York Film Academy in Los Angeles. My decision required convincing both my parents, but especially my father, who was paying my tuition and who was not convinced that I would return. Convinced I was serious about my education and that he could count on me to still finish in four years, he felt a bit more at ease with my choice. After that, I decided that my anger toward my father required far more energy than I was willing to expend. I had to find a way to move on, especially since once I moved to Los Angeles for film school we’d be back in the same city for a while.
We didn’t speak about her and I didn’t bring her up again until my senior year, when I put on my fourth and final college production, a Motown adaptation of Grease. I invited all of my family living in Los Angeles up to see it, including my father. I heard through the family grapevine that my father was going to bring this woman up to my school to see my show. Aghast and indignant, I decided to write him a polite, respectful email, expressing my discomfort with her presence and general existence, reiterating that I had wanted to invite only family. Then at the end of the letter, I asked him outright not to bring her.
In a move that defecated on my feelings, my father, in so many words, reminded me that he was the father and I was his daughter. He wouldn’t take orders from me, and if she couldn’t come, then, well, he was sorry, but neither could he.
My nose crinkled with the tears that I refused to shed. I was shocked—and further convinced that this woman had him under an evil, rancid vaginal spell. My mother was livid and so were his sisters, who scolded him for his misguided allegiance. By the time of the show, my family arrived to support me, without him. The morning of the show, Lamine handed me an envelope from my dad. Inside, there was a check for five hundred dollars with a note that read, “Good luck. Love, Dad.” I asked my brother to return it to him, which I honestly went back and forth about because Lord knows I was a broke-ass college student.
He did eventually come up a month later for my graduation, without her. With my older brothers, my mother’s sister, and my grandparents present, I’d like to think he put more thought into it.
As the years followed, and I found myself in New York and then back in Los Angeles under my mother’s roof, I started to visit my father more frequently, especially since a few things had evolved. One, he had moved into a house in Ladera Heights, and while his new whore would stay over occasionally, she still kept her mansion in the marina to herself. Also, my brother’s studio was in my father’s house, and he would find me there every Sunday, shooting episodes of my second web series, Fly Guys present “The ‘F’ Word,” a comedic mockumentary starring my brother and his rap group’s attempts to “make it” in Los Angeles. Despite my father’s complaints about the occasional noise, I could tell he enjoyed having us in his house, particularly when Lamine, Elize, and I would be there together. By that time, the three of us were well aware of the extent of the “cultural differences” that had transpired between our parents. Lastly, in 2009, the summer I moved to L.A., my sister and I took another trip to Senegal to see my family and to have some Sene-fun. During that trip, I realized it’s nearly impossible to be in my father’s home country, amongst his family, and not be appreciative of his existence. The respect people there have for him and for all that he’s done for them is overwhelming. Repeated proclamations of “Your father is such a great man,” and the excitement with which “Oh, you are the kids of Dr. Diop!” was uttered, restored some of the pride I had in my father as a man. Finally, I had to come to terms with the fact that my father is not a bad person. He’s just . . . a flawed man.
As the schedule for shooting Fly Guys became more consistent, and my dad started to grow more accustomed to seeing me on the weekends (and often during the week), he started to bring food home for me, sometimes calling in advance to ensure I was there or leaving it in the fridge for me to come claim. As broke as I was during those times, it was always appreciated. On one of the evenings, our schedules aligned serendipitously and we were able to eat together. I sat and ate at the kitchen bar, discussing international news with him while he watched MSNBC on the couch, when suddenly I had a bout of déjà vu. Nothing dramatic, just a tingle and mild dizziness that reminded me I had been in that particular situation before. My déjà vu is pretty useless. It doesn’t provide any insight other than, “Oh hey, you went through this at some point in the universe’s spectrum of time. Don’t know when, or how, or what this means, but just thought you should know.”
I came back from my two-second zone-out and casually muttered, “Déjà vu,” and that’s when my dad nonchalantly decided to expose me to my potential powers.
“Oh, you know that runs in our family.”
“What?”
“Déjà vu. It’s our family gift. Your grandmother had it. Her grandmother has it. Some of your aunts have it. I had it, but I didn’t want it.”
He took a bite out of his sandwich, the Brie and cranberry dripping out onto his plate. I looked at him with the skepticism I always did when he joked about abnormal things.
“You’re joking, right?”
“No. Ask your aunts. You could have it, too, if you want to.”
“How did you know you had it? What does it do?”
“I just knew. One day, when I was in school, my friend and I were walking at night, down a steep hill. There was an alley at the bottom of the hill which ends at the corner. I had déjà vu and my friend asked, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ and I said someone is going to come around that corner from the alley on their moped and they’re going to fall. My friend laughed and said, ‘You’re crazy!’ A minute later, someone came on a moped, turned the corner fast, and fell. My friend put his hand on his head and said, ‘Oh my God!’ ”
My dad laughed at the memory of his bewildered friend as I sat frozen, forehead bewildered.
“So . . . you don’t have it anymore?” I asked.
“No, I didn’t want it. Some people know what to do with it. I didn’t want to think about it.”
I thought about the famous line from Spider-Man when Uncle Ben tells Peter Parker, right before Peter indirectly causes his death, “With great power comes great responsibility.” My dad didn’t want to be held responsible. Little did he know back then that he would be held responsible (financially) for many of my family members in the future. For the sake of his bank account, he should have tapped into his déjà vu to see that shit. Or at least turn it on and off to see which decisions were worth making and which weren’t. Who knows what direction life would have taken him.
Recently, my dad has been trying to spend time with my younger sister and brother and me in the form of mon
thly lunches. He will usually send us an obscure text that says “sushi???” or “Korean BBQ???” out of the blue, and my sister Elize and I will coordinate to include my brother Lamine, who is often forgotten because he works at my dad’s office every day and thus sees him all the time. These family lunches are a highlight for me. Not only because of the laughter and inside jokes my siblings and I share, but also because they are an opportunity to get inside my father’s mind. We learn something new at each session. Without our prying too deeply, he’ll occasionally volunteer information to us.
“I’m going to sell the property I have in Dakar,” he said at one lunch, as he flipped a thin slab of raw beef onto the hot grill in front of us.
Many times, the information that he offers reached us long ago, through my mother or other family members. But to hear it from him directly is always to hear a more toned-down, “it is what it is” version.
One winter day, we were sitting at lunch—me, Elize, and my father—eating at Hillstone (even though it was his idea to go to a steakhouse, he ordered the trout). I had the book on my mind and decided to fact-check.
“Dad, did you and mom meet in Bordeaux, France, or in Senegal, first?”
My sister jumped in, like we were playing Family Trivial Pursuit. “France, right? Even I know that.”
“Yes, it was Bordeaux,” my dad answered, taking another bite of trout.
“Okay, and then she went to Senegal?” I confirmed.
“Yes, she didn’t go to Senegal until later,” he said with a nod.
Then he stopped cutting, and acknowledged something that had been bothering me for the twelve years since they broke up.
“I guess we never really had a conversation about what happened, did we?”
I froze. UH, F***ING DUH!!! Rapid-fire flashbacks of tears, unanswered questions, missed college performances, and pensive diary entries raced through my head. Was he really about to use his words and not only acknowledge the divorce, but talk to us about what happened?
