“For Esmé”

by Rayne Affonso (Trinidad & Tobago)

In my tea leaves last Wednesday was the swooping stroke of calligraphy. My mother raised her eyebrows, the question unasked, but years of preparation allowed me to keep my face aloof. I wonder what that means, I said innocently, at the same time making a mental note to skip the daily cup of chamomile, to walk straight past my mailbox for the rest of the week.

Now on my kitchen counter the lace-trimmed edges of the cardstock mocks me. My name, all six letters you fought for, is hand-written in rich black ink. I trace the loops with my fingernail. There is a melodramatic streak in me that longs to cross my kitchen in three strides, strike a match, call it catharsis tomorrow over mimosas with my friends. Even without knowing you, they would accept my lie. They are crass, flirtatious with misandry – they would not call me on my obvious copout. I am entertaining this thought when my cell rings.

“So yuh going?” my mother asks by way of hello.

I sigh. “You should open a practice.”“It wasn’t the tea that sell you out,” she says.

“This time it was just you.”

I left Trinidad vowing to be a different woman when I returned. Time is different once you stop being a child, every two years a full cycle of reinvention, heartbreak and fatigue. Itmay not have been that long, but I have been half a dozen people since you last touched me. Each of them ran me dry until all that remained was a hollowness in my midsection. I left as a tall, lanky, sinewy apostrophe. I come back thinner, as though my skin has stretched over the distance I put between myself and home.

My father is waiting for me in Piarco. I am certain that my own face mirrors the disappointment in his as we appraise each other’s sameness. He has managed to defy the passage of time unlike every other Indian man in old age in a way that I know you would find both impressive and unsurprising. As he crosses over to meet me I imagine him every morning in front of the mirror in his dim lit bathroom, forbidding the wrinkles and grey hairs through the force of his will.

“How yuh still looking like sixteen so,” he greets me. “Like yuh mother don’t feed yuh there?”

“Yuh didn’t have to come for me.”

The Creole rolls off my tongue so easily even though I haven’t spoken it in years. Even in the most intimate of bonding moments with my mother it is a line I do not cross, something I withhold just to punish her.He ignores me.

“That is all yuh bring?”

“I only here for the weekend. I leaving Sunday night.”

There is a flash of something across his face that vaguely resembles sadness. It is gone just as fast, and I revel in his grumbling as he carries my small suitcase through the car park.You had always admired that my father was the kind of man that would not turn a beggar away. You often spoke of the time when we were eleven years old, sitting in the back seat of his Peugeot, the window cracked as we sat in rush hour traffic leaving Port-of-Spainafter he picked us up from lessons. A vagrant tapped on the window and we jumped. Wordlessly my father handed the vagrant a crisp hundred dollar bill. We were incredulous: here was the man who refused to tip someone for pumping his gas, who would rather drive fifteen minutes to another gas station just to do it himself, giving away a hundred dollars like it was nothing.

You asked, with an edge in your voice, “What if he use that to go and buy drugs?”

My father only shrugged.

“Plenty people getting pay from they job does do that too.”

It was one of the few times I felt something close to reverence for him.He pulls up in the driveway now after a silent drive from the airport. The house has been painted orange in my absence and he has hung a small hammock in the gallery. Our avocado tree is bearing, the branches hanging low with the weight. He carries my suitcase inside and leaves me to roam the yard searching for proof of my childhood.I tick things off in my head, dizzily: This is the tree stump I tripped over and burst my lip. This is the flower bush where I hid your favourite book for a month and forgot until rainy season and the pages had been soaked through. And lastly, this is where we stood when I told you I was pregnant.

Up there I only ever made two Caribbean friends and it was in my last year of high school. Annika was from Jamaica, had migrated with her parents two years prior. Jess’ parents were from Guyana but she had never been.

The first time that Annika and I used the phrase pitch marbles Jess asked us what we meant and I thought of you. There was no way I could explain that colloquial phrase without referring to one’s youth and there was no way I could speak of my youth without referring to you. After telling my mother the gory details it was already an unspoken decision I’d made not to say your name any longer. I let Annika explain, but for the rest of the day I stood with you, in this spot in my father’s yard, even as I shopped at Claire’s for navel rings.

Inside, I find my father in the kitchen stirring coffee grounds into a company mug. The interior of the house is unchanged save for minor paint touch-ups and some light fixtures. I expected nothing less. Despite the fact that he can more than afford to, my father has never been interested in remodelling. He says that it is because people in our country like to make their house too coskel to prove they have money, that they want to impress their neighbours in one breath and worry about warding off maljo in the next.

“Your bag in your bedroom. You must be tired,” he says without glancing up.

“So yuh not even going to ask me how I going?” I blurt out. “You ship me to off to some stranger six years ago and can’t even watch in my face and ask me how my life went?”

“I ship you off to your mother.”

“Back then that was the same thing.” We regard each other in silence for a moment. Then he motions behind me, at a painting hanging on the wall above the wooden dining table.

“Yuh like it?”

I shrug. It is the only thing in the room that is different but it adds an entirely new feel. Spanning a large canvas, it is a recreation of my father’s favourite beach in Toco. The seascape is gorgeous but I am too slighted to admit it.

“It’s okay. Not my style.”He chuckles. “If the painter asks, make sure to answer better than that.”“Why would the painter ask? Who’s the painter?”

For the first time he holds my gaze, steady.

“He might ask. After all, yuh only comeback home for his wedding.”

That night I do not sleep. I am seeing you today for the first time in six years. By now I hoped to be fearless, hoped to at last understand those big words you would use in the poems you published in the newspapers under your pseudonym, Derek Cobain, a crossover inspired by your favourite poet and musician. The first time the Express accepted one of your pieces,your mother cooked buljol and coconut bake because it was your favourite. She wrapped some in foil and sent you across the street to bring for me and my father. He never told you, but he cut that poem out and clipped it into a folder.

At church that Sunday, she stood up and publicly thanked the Lord for giving her a son who wanted to spread his light. The reverend made you stand up and recite it. You blushed, embarrassed, but by the time you were finished every single one of the parishioners knew what I had always known. You were going to be a phenomenon.I always assumed that it was publishing the poem that gave you the bravery to kiss me for the first time. You joked that I only started to like you for your fame, and I replied, “It’s just the Express. Not The New York Times.”

You shot back immediately, “Not yet.”

So I was unmoved when Annika sent me the link to the article two years ago, that a twenty-one-year-old boy from that little twin island where Nicki Minaj was from had penned the poetry collection that was ranked #11 on The New York Times Best Poetry Books of the year.

She texted: “Is that him?”

“It look so,” I answered, and we never spoke of it, never acknowledged that although I ignored your persistent emails and calls from the day my plane landed at MIA, I scoured the Internet almost monthly for news of your success. My fingers had muscle memory from typing in your pseudonym. I would be at work, exhausted, about to Google something and find myself entering Derek Cobain into the search bar. Little did I know that you had stopped hiding behind that name.

My mother told me, “Yuh father say that yuh little friend from across the road doing big things.”

I feigned disinterest. “Is he?” She gave me a wet steups.

The morning of your wedding there are two mugs of coffee sitting on the kitchen counter. If my father heard me toss and turn all night, to his credit, he does not mention it. He looks slimmer in his navy blue suit that I am certain he bought solely for this occasion. Last night I crept out of bed to examine the painting that you did. There is a tiny bit of script at the bottom, almost unnoticeable: Thanks for being like a father to me. I waited for the envy but it did not come. Unlike me you would have done the right thing, as he called it. Unlike me you have never given him a reason to take his love away. Before we leave he tells me that I look beautiful in my blush pink dress, only it comes out like, “Yuh looking like a strawberry Flavourite lolly.”

Our church is air-conditioned now. I make small talk with the aunties I have missed about living in foreign to avoid the moths flitting around in my chest. Although he stands a few feet away, I feel my father side eyeing me as I answer the questions he has not cared to ask. The aunties are impressed with my job as an accounting intern. I know they would be just as impressed if I was cleaning toilets as long as it was not here, so I do not take it personally. Your mother finds me and gives me a tight embrace.

“He wasn’t sure that yuh would come,” she says, her eyes teary.

Because she knows me, I do not lie. “Me neither.”

You enter and the building sets on fire but no one else notices. You no longer walk withthe ease of a boy who believes that confidence is only about keeping promises to yourself. Your hair is cropped short, your jaw uneven. I would not recognize you in a crowd and it unnerves me. Your mother puts her hand on mine at the very same time that we lock eyes. I have never been more aware of the concave of my insides, the emptiness that refuses to leave me, the ways I have tried to fill it. You smile and I return it. The bridal chorus begins, your mother’s gentle squeeze around my fingers a kind reminder. We are facing the church entrance but she might as well be whispering, “Dat boy is not yuh own anymore.”

Your bride has her hair swept up in a high updo adorned with tiny flowers. Her makeup is natural and minimalist, as is the fashion these days. I think of us playing wedding as children, you in my father’s shoes and me in the blue mermaid-style gown belonging to your mother. In the third poem of yours that was published, you wrote:

Long before the cicadas sang I grew gills but no tail /Half-stifled by the call of sirens old as God.

It was the one you gifted me on my sixteenth birthday. My father invited you and your mother to go out to dinner that night at Hyatt. He said it was a birthday to celebrate, even bought me a red dress for the occasion. That night long after our parents fell asleep, you tapped on my window and said, “I wrote something for you.”

Afterwards, we lay beside each other in my bed. You idly brushed your fingertips along my ribs. The next morning my dress lay crumpled on the floor like a pool of blood, a warning.

When they announce you husband and wife I clap along with everyone else. My father puts an arm around your mother, who is sobbing tears of pride. I trail behind them as they follow the dispersing crowd to the church yard to take photographs.

“Let me get one with yuh,” my father says.

At the reception, I sip on my champagne while your wedding party gives their speeches. Your bride’s family is loud but endearing. They adore you, even as they poke fun at your writer’s income and your big ears. The maid of honour tells the story of how her little sister came home one day and said she met her future husband at twenty, a painter-poet with a single mother.

“I tell her don’t link one of them creatives,” she says, steupsing, and everyone laughs. “But then I meet the boy and I say, alright. We could do without them ears, but alright.”

“Yuh wouldn’t mind these ears on your nephew soon,” you respond with a smile, and I suddenly feel older than I ever have.As the aunties begin to gyrate on the too-small dance floor, my father and I approach you and your bride to give our congratulations. She launches at me with a firm hug. She is a little tipsy and it gives her face a pleasant glow.

“I so happy to meet yuh,” she squeals. “He used to talk about yuh all the time, the girl that grow up like his sister until she get too big for Trinidad.” I am taken aback but I good- naturedly compliment her dress before my father pulls her away with some small talk, subtly leaving us face to face for the first time in six years.

“Hi,” you say, beaming. Your dimples are even deeper than they were as a child. “Congratulations. I’m happy for you.”You take one of my hands and press your lips to it. A warmth creeps into me. “Thankyou for coming.”“Of course.” I take a deep breath. “I know it’s been a long time, but I hope yuh don’treally think I ever got too big for you.”You chuckle. You are still holding my hand. “If anything, I got too big for you.”

“I saw that. Congrats on The New York Times.”

“Thanks. And you doing alright?”

You phrase it casually, but your eyes are trained onme, searching for the things you know I will not say. I want to tell you that every day I did not call scraped away more from me than I ever thought possible. I want to tell you that you look like everything I ever lost come back to me. I want to tell you that every flying thing inside of me wants to land on your light.

“I’m alright.” You nod awkwardly. We both look at my father and your bride, your wife, as they pose for a photo.

“He missed you,” you tell me. “I know he wouldn’t tell yuh, but he did.”

“Glad you two stayed close.” It comes out with a bite I did not intend. I feel your posture stiffen.

“Don’t hold it against him forever,” you say. “Him sending you by yuh mother. He was doing what he thought was best.”

There is a tiny scar on your forehead that was not there before. I stare at it, avoid your eyes, when I reply, “So was I.”

You give me the softest smile I have ever seen on your face. “I know that.” You let go of my hand. “And Esme know that too.”

“Esme?”

Blushing, you drop your eyes. “I don’t know why I always thought it was going to be a girl.”

I step closer to you. Press a hand to your cheek. I know that when I pull away I will snap every thread that has held me together for six years, but I do it anyway, right after telling you that I am so proud of you. Your eyes are on my back as I take my father’s arm and let him guide me home.In my childhood bedroom I rummage through my suitcase for my most prized possession. Your poetry collection is dog-eared, the spine cracked in a hundred places, heavily annotated with all my interpretations written in the margins. The pages are fatter from all the times I had conversations with words you long put to rest. I flip to the dedication page where I once scribbled a line of question marks next to the two words. It was the name of someone I did not know, could not find by obsessively stalking your Facebook friends or sorting through my memories. I feel the hollow in my belly as it echoes with nostalgia for the future I denied myself.

For Esmé, it reads.