Blood on the Brain

The last time I saw my father I was seven, and I don’t remember much about his leaving. But I do remember the last time I heard from him. Sweet sixteen, or close to it. A week before my birthday, I found out my prep school friends were throwing a surprise party for me; I accidentally overheard the girls discussing the ideal time to call my mom to coordinate the details. My best friend Nisha, whose mom worked as a doctor at the same hospital where my mom was a nutritionist, knew my family better than the rest of my buddies and was the only one who’d been to the birthday parties my mom usually threw for me. My mom’s parties were huge events that involved Ghanaian aunties and uncles and cousins, in addition to other family friends who weren’t Ghanaian but close enough—perhaps Caribbean or Indian or Filipino. The ticket was that you had to be an immigrant, not for any reason other than the fact that many of the adults had been drawn to the familiarity of each others’ otherness.

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“All we have to do,” Nisha said to the other girls from their place a few spots in front of me in the lunch line, “is get Akosua’s mom to trick her into thinking that she’s planned a big Ghanaian party or something—make Akosua think she’s going to a sweet sixteen family affair at one of her aunties’ houses, but then—surprise!—her mom actually drives her to my house and we’ll have everything set up, and she’ll be so freaked to have a real party for once without adults around.”

I had to clasp my hands over my mouth to keep from shouting out my friends’ names and running over to hug them right away. I loved them for planning something for me, but most of all I loved Nisha for understanding that it wasn’t the Ghanaianness of the parties I’d grown tired of; I loved the smells of kenkey and jollof rice cooking, the bright colors of my aunties’ dresses, the smattering of pidgin and Ewe and Twi mixed in with English. I just wanted to feel like a teenager, to have a celebration that did not include a bunch of adults to whom I had to bow my head and speak my polite yet halting Ewe.

To give my friends the space to continue to plan my party, I decided to leave the lunch line and hang out in the computer lab. I logged into my account, not expecting to find anything other than junk mail in my late-nineties, newly-minted Netscape inbox. Instead of junk mail, I discovered a message with the title, HAPPY BDAY, AKOSUA from a sender called Agbe.
I assumed it was a relative from Ghana, that maybe my mother had given out my email address to a cousin or some other relative I barely knew. But then I clicked on the message.

Dear daughter, I hope you are well and that your mommy is well. I understand you are celebrating a birthday this month and wish you a fine day. Your daddy.

I started to shake so much that the kid next to me asked if I was okay. My leg would not receive the message my brain tried to send it to stop rattling the computer table. I closed the email and nodded, crossing my legs to keep them still. The trembling that remained was mostly on the inside, where no one could see it. In the first couple of years after my father had left us, my mother purchased birthday and Christmas gifts and told me he’d sent them, but she stopped the charade when I grew old enough to know that his never calling, writing, or visiting pretty much invalidated any gifts he could send me. He never contacted me or sent me so much as a birthday card. He never tried.

And now I was glad he never had. “Celebrating a birthday this month,” he’d typed, as if he didn’t know which birthday I was celebrating or on what day. Imagine if every year I’d received such a half-assed effort?

I told myself it was good that he’d made a clean break. I deleted the message without replying, and whenever I found my thoughts drifting to him, I swiftly reigned them in. It was easy, the promise of my upcoming sweet sixteen the perfect distraction. A week later, at my birthday party, I feigned surprise when I arrived at Nisha’s house, and really was surprised when I discovered that half of the kids in our grade were there. I played the role, laughing at jokes I didn’t get, dancing to music I didn’t like, flirting with boys I knew didn’t like me, all the while wondering how Nisha had bribed this many people to show up for me. Nisha has the nicest mansion in our grade. That’s why they’re here. Some girl I barely knew passed me a tiny bottle of vodka. “I’ve already had too much,” I lied. I was a fraud, sober and lame, but she seemed not to notice. No one ever did. On the outside, I know I looked calm, sedate even, but on the inside, I could always feel the blood rushing through me. I wondered if I’d always feel that way.

*

Tonight, even after speaking to my mother on the phone, I am not calm on the outside. I am hot and restless, unclean and slick with sweat. Living in this city, I sweat. In the summer, in the subways, I sweat. Now it is winter, and my walk from the Housing Department to my graduate apartment five blocks away made me sweat, even though it was cold outside. Perhaps it is because I ran more than I walked; perhaps it is because, even after speaking to my mother, I cannot shake this shakiness in my gut. In the Midwest, where I lived until I came East for school six years ago, I drove everywhere. You didn’t have to run, so you didn’t have to feel sweat trickling down your back. Or maybe I didn’t sweat because I was younger then and had nothing to be in a hurry about. Or nothing to run from. All I know is that I need a shower now, like I always need a shower, like I can never get clean in this city.

In the bathroom, in the mirror, I’m disturbed. Not because of what I see, but because of what I can’t see. I’ve taken off my contacts but my glasses are in the other room on my dresser. Didn’t I stop going to my annual eye doctor’s appointments to avoid yet another stronger prescription for these myopic eyes? I figure if I don’t let my eyes get used to the idea of seeing better, they won’t get any worse. Yet here I stand, my reflection mottled, like someone spilled acetone all over a painting of me and the colors have run together. I can’t see myself clearly anymore, even though I’m just a few feet in front of me.

But I know that the 20/20 view isn’t great, though it’s not bad. Actually, it’s nice: I’m naked. Not that I am so comfortable looking at myself naked, but the fact remains that I look okay undressed. I raise my arms perpendicular to my body, palms facing down. Though I can barely see them now because of my terrible eyesight, I know they’re there: trim upper arms. But if I turn one palm up to face the ceiling and use the other to jiggle the arm fat, the fat will oblige. And the belly points toward the mirror, slightly rounded, unnoticeable beneath a T-shirt or even a reasonably tight sweater, but I know

it’s there. Wisdom started noticing it months ago, teasing, poking, pinching. I promised him I’d lose it, but I only ended up gaining a little more, even after I cut back on stress-eating chocolate. In truth, my arms and stomach don’t offend my sensibilities much; I have other assets, I suppose. Height, hips, bust, wide black eyes, a white smile. And legs that get whistles on the few occasions I wear skirts or dresses, legs that feel like jelly right now from all the running they’ve just done to help me escape my thoughts. Plus the important assets, the ones I’ve lived my whole life striving toward, the nebulous qualities of my mind and heart. Right?

I attempt to slip into the shower without touching the mildewy shower curtain, an art form I’ve perfected in the three months since I’ve washed it, but my trembling body is not so agile right now. I’m trembling because of all that running I did, I tell myself. Not because of him. Not Wisdom, not Daniel. Not my father.

But it doesn’t matter why I’m shaking. I just am, so much that my legs give and I slip and fall in the tub. I hit the back of my head on the edge of the tub so hard that when I try to sit up, I feel the urge to vomit. Each hair on my body stands on end; all the blood in my body courses toward the back of my head. I lie back down and close my eyes and watch stars dance against my eyelids.

I don’t know how much time passes before I haul myself up and stumble to my bed. I am not in good shape. All I want to do is sleep, but soap operas and medical dramas have taught me that’s the last thing I should do. I reach over to my bedside table for my glasses and my cell phone, and I start to call my mom, but that makes no sense. She is hundreds of miles away and I don’t want to hear her laugh at me, however gently, for falling.

I consider Daniel for a moment. But not for long. I see red smudges and feel sharp pain behind my eyes when I hear Daniel’s words. My cousin says your father is a very nice man. Because nice men leave their wives and children and never look back? If I’d said yes to Daniel’s offer to give me my father’s phone number, would I be calling my father for help right now? Maybe hitting my head is enough of an emergency to transcend years of abandonment and neglect.

But probably not. I call my friend Ella, who doesn’t pick up, so I leave her an incoherent message. And then, because he’s the only other person I don’t mind seeing me naked, I call Wisdom, who says he’s coming over, already breathless because he’s rushing out the door to me. For me.

Wisdom is an Ewe, like me (though, unlike me, he was actually raised in Ghana, is authentic in every aspect that matters). There are many ways to tell this, but the fastest way is his name. Wisdom has an Ewe name (Selom), an Ewe day name (Yao, which means he was born on a Thursday), speaks Ewe (with a waning accent). He has doe-like eyes that make him look innocent rather than wise. But his parents had already named their firstborn daughter Innocent, and somehow when they looked at his baby face they had reason to believe he’d someday be wise.

Wisdom still has a key to my apartment and barges right in, his eyes huge behind his black-framed glasses. He looks intelligent in them: fitting, since he is intelligent. He doesn’t have the muscles Daniel has, but his arms are the only ones whose feeling I’ve memorized. As he lifts me from the edge of my bed to reposition me in the center of it, I think that he is the kindest person, man or not, that I have ever known.

“Daniel Cobblah and I are dating,” I find myself telling Wisdom as his arms surround me.

He covers me with my bed sheet, pushes all my junk off the bed. “Are you cold? Let me stay with you.”

“Daniel from Housing. Daniel from the Volta Region.”

“Well, where is he now?” Wisdom checks the back of my head, touches the pain gathering at my skull, and his hands come back clean. No blood. He takes off his pants and climbs in bed with me, wearing boxers and his blue Oxford dress shirt.

“What are you doing?”

“Let me stay with you. I know what I’m doing, remember?”

Wisdom is in med school. His long lashes brush against my cheek and he pulls the blankets over us. He hums me to sleep. It doesn’t seem particularly medical, but it is good, and I close my eyes and fade away knowing it is safe to do so.

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From Blood on the Brain by Esinam Bediako. Used with permission of the publisher, Red Hen Press. Copyright © 2024 by Esinam Bediako.