Marcela Adeze Okeke
Pop and I had been riding over the few hills of Lake Shore Drive listening to Prince moan about his family’s failures and dove tears, when he lifted his hands high above the steering wheel. Singing his own accompaniment, Pop pushed his chest out to the distance as if he was pleading with anyone in Chicago to take his heart. I wonder if this was how he acted when he was young. He and my mother, racing away on the expressway in an effort to avoid being tied down. Perhaps they knew that their love would not last—a passion like theirs too great to be sustained.
On the final chorus I asked Pop if he would ever ride like this with my mother again.
He curled his fingers around the steering wheel.
//
In Chicago the lake chose to lie east, and I guess the city consented. So instead of watching the setting sun, we only saw its light fade away over the water. As the beach welcomed us with its breeze that kissed the parts of our bodies we left bare and damp, my mind swept to a time that past summer. A friend and I huddled under stained picnic blankets here. Her boyfriend had just broken up with her—he used a simple excuse, something like he wanted to focus on his homework, or his mother didn’t approve of the way my friend ate at her dinner table. I remembered how the blanket smelled of leftover french fries; how sugar stuck to our hands and mouths from our melted popsicles. I remembered how I sucked at the romance of her sadness, like it was somehow tethered to me; she sobbed, and I would watch the reaction of passers by to see if they also caught the appeal.
//
Usually when I am quiet, Pop fills the void with why he believed my mother left him. He once admitted that he thought she needed a salvation, but when I didn’t respond, he quipped that she probably just wanted him to throw his problems at another woman.
//
What was the last phrase he said to my mother? Did he try to persuade her? Did he choke? I wonder if she listened before she closed the door to my childhood home for the last time.
//
How could you just leave me standing?
//
Pop asked me what I was thinking, so I sighed and pressed my back on his shoulder, letting my head hang until it fell into the crescent hollow of his ear to collarbone. I peered in the direction he gazed and noticed the curve of a small cloud falling into a larger one colored a purplish gray. The small cloud’s edges were a sunlit gold.
//
The lake became darker than the sky it once reflected, layered in its own complications and then another’s. The waves lapped on the cement. Pop twisted his sapphire ring to either side of his finger.
//
When my parents fought, I would listen to Prince’s Purple Rain. I would shiver at the guitar shrills instead of my mother’s cries. I would raise my arms to Prince’s high sighs before I knew the reason anyone could grieve out of love. And as I rolled my hips to the blasting sound from the CD player, my body moved in ways I dreamed only grown folks could. My body exhumed the innate in a way which led me to believe my body must know more than I do. Maybe Pop’s does too. I see it in his eyes, yellowed, rotting, or like a setting sun.
//
I have been a boy all my life. Your mother just grew up before I did, he continued to twist his ring around and around. I noticed the sapphire on his ring was the same color as the sky.
//
On the way home we rode with our lips sealed. We rode listening to the rain surrounding us. I saw in the furrow of Pop’s brows and the drooped corners of his lips that he did not notice the romance of the world mourning with him. Outside it had begun to rain, and I wondered if holy is just the name we call what another man has blessed. The rain was the type of pouring that draped her body across windows and tumbled in beats. She was smearing every Chicago light into a kaleidoscope of halos, and maybe this was the reason my hand reached for the window and opened. Pop’s words washed away as I watched clouds hang taut in their suspension like a woman’s back arched by the grace of her lover. My face was kissed by a thousand waters.
Marcela Adeze Okeke is an artist of many forms. One time she met a flower that told her its loveliness won’t last long, so now she likes to write about the things she loves before they start to wilt.
