Just as Kehinde appeared.
Just like that. Out of nowhere. As only he could, without sound, with leather art portfolio tucked underarm.
• • •
The guards, who were white, looked at Dr. Yuki, who was pink, little hands and mouth trembling with rage beyond words. She nodded to them once, a Hong Kong mobstress to her henchmen, and was smoothing down her skirt to go when Kehinde caught her eye. She drew back the curtain to squint at his eyes, as if drawn to some dangerous light source, too bright. Kehinde, squinting back at her, could feel what Dr. Yuki felt, the barrenness, so sad for her. He bit his lip with worry. Dr. Yuki saw his pity, and he felt her stomach fill with shame.
Spinning on her kitten heels, she click-click-clicked away.
• • •
The guards looked at Ernie with genuine regret and shoved Kweku, without, to the sidewalk outside. Kehinde sort of stumbled next — too stunned to speak — through the revolving door, surprised to find the world, too, revolving.
Late afternoon.
Orange sun.
They were still for one instant, Kweku catching his breath with his hands on his knees and his eyes on his knuckles, and Kehinde beside him, portfolio to chest like a float, eyes wide with silence. The very next instant a Brewster pulled up, all assaulting red lights and assaulting red noises, and true to its nature the machine sprang to life as if nothing had happened (nothing important). Paramedics poured out of the back of the ambulance, emergency department residents from the building, en masse, even Ernie had his function: clearing visitors out of the way to let the stretcher (screaming woman, crowning son) come rushing through. From the curb where he stood, Kweku made out Dr. Yuki waiting, stone-faced, by the elevator as the stretcher passed behind her, either deaf or indifferent to the cloud of pure chaos that blew past her back. Getting in, going up.
Out of habit, without looking, he took Kehinde’s elbow. He did this — touched his family when there was chaos in their midst, just to feel them, feel their body warmth, to keep them close as best he could, as close as he came to physical affection — but the gesture felt preposterous now. He in his scrubs, beard unshaven, eyes wet, having been “fired last year!” and now forcibly removed: comforting Kehinde, so collected, spotless shirt tucked in neatly, pressed, always so impassive? Preposterous. He let go.
• • •
So many things Kweku wished in that moment: that he’d spent more time with Kehinde trying to learn to read his face, that the boy was watching him spring to life outside the hospital, saving lives and playing hero through the chaos in their midst, that he’d vetoed the art class (better yet, could afford it), that he’d parked a little closer to avoid this walk of shame. He was burning with the desire to say something brilliant, something wise and overriding, a burn behind the ears. But all he could think of was “I’m sorry you saw that.”
“Sight is subjective. We learned that in class.”
Kehinde looked at Kweku, his head slightly sideways, his brows knit together. An upside-down smile.
• • •
They got in the car.
Kind of Blue.
He turned this off.
He drove around the pond, the sun beginning its descent. He drove without looking, without needing to, from memory. Seeing instead of looking. He drove home by heart. Past the little public school, abandoned in the evening time, seen instead of looked at looking lonely somehow. Past the sprawling mansions — were they always this massive? Their house seeming suddenly so modest, compared. Past the teeming trees — were there always this many? Like ladies-in-waiting along the side of the road. Around the third of four rotaries (the pride of Brookline, gratuitous rotaries). Past a man and dog jogging. Past some point of no return.
• • •
The leaves on their street were ablaze in the sunset. He pulled into the driveway and turned off the car. He knew, though didn’t think it, that he couldn’t face Fola now (knowing, not knowledge), that he couldn’t brook the sight. To see Fola’s face on Kehinde’s for that instant was sufficient. To see his failure on Fola’s seemed too much to bear.
The light above the garage came on. All the lights in the house were on. Neither he nor Kehinde stirred nor spoke to acknowledge not moving. They sat as men do: side by side, facing forward, both silent and patient, waiting for something to say. “Do you want to see my painting?” Kehinde asked after a while. Kweku turned to him, embarrassed. He hadn’t thought to ask.
“Thank you, I would, please.”
Kehinde nodded. “One second.” He unzipped his portfolio and pulled out the piece.
• • •
Even in bad light it was breathtakingly beautiful. Not that Kweku began to know how to judge a piece of art. But it didn’t take an expert to see the achievement, the intelligence of the image, the simplicity of the forms. A boy and a woman, from the back, holding hands. Kweku pointed to the woman. “Who’s that?” Though he knew.
“That’s Mom,” Kehinde answered.
“And that must be you.”
“No, that’s—”
“Olu?”
“Um, no.”
“But it’s a boy, right?”
“It’s you.”
“Me?!” Kweku laughed. A sudden sound in the quiet.
“…” Stalling.
Still laughing. “But why am I so small?”
“Because Mom says she always has to be the bigger person.”
Kweku laughed so hard now he started to cry. “Genius.”
A small smile, fifteen seconds and not longer. “You like it?”
“I love it. Pure genius.” He caught his breath. “She does say that, doesn’t she?”
“With ‘don’t I’ at the end of it. I always have to be the bigger person, don’t I?”
Kweku laughed harder, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Right.”
Kehinde giggled bashfully and glanced at the house. “It was supposed to be for Mom. But you can have it if you want it.”
“I would love that. She won’t mind?”
“Mom? No. She has loads.”
“Right.” It was he who didn’t know that they had birthed a little Basquiat, not she. She was the parent. He was the provider. He stopped laughing. “I’d l-l-love it.” His voice breaking (other parts of him also). “How do I… take it?”
“I roll it. Like this.”
“Wait. Don’t you have to sign it first?”
“Only famous artists sign their paintings.”
“Only foolish artists wait until they’re famous. Do you have a pen?”
Kehinde was smiling too widely to speak. He reached for his backpack. Kweku stopped him.
“Use this.” He plucked the silver pen from his unused scrubs pocket (a graduation gift from Fola, for prescriptions, engraved). Kehinde took the pen and turned it over in his fingers.
“It’s so nice. Where’d you get it?”
“From your mother. Of course.”
Kehinde nodded, smiling. Another glance at the house. He laid the painting on the dashboard to consider where to mark. Kweku considered Kehinde with some wonder at the change in him: how at ease he became as his hand touched the paper, how his shoulders relaxed, breath released, standing down. He was the same with a body on a table, silver knife in lieu of silver pen. How had he missed it?
So often he’d confided in Fola at night that he just didn’t “get” this slim good-looking boy; unlike Olu who reminded him so much of himself, Kehinde was a veritable black hole. Fola always said something vague in reply about the inscrutable nature of the second-born twin or recited again with great jingoistic pride the Yoruba myth of ibeji.
The myth:
ibeji (twins) are two halves of one spirit, a spirit too massive to fit in one body, and liminal beings, half human, half deity, to be honored, even worshipped accordingly. The second twin specifically — the changeling and the trickster, less fascinated by the affairs of the world than the first — comes to earth with great reluctance and remains with greater effort, homesick for the spiritual realms. On the eve of their birth into physical bodies, this skeptical second twin says to the first, “Go out and see if the world is good. If it’s good, stay there. If it’s not, come back.” The first twin Taiyewo (from the Yoruba to aiye wo, “to see and taste the world,” shortened Taiye or Taiwo) obediently leaves the womb on his reconnaissance mission and likes the world enough to remain. Kehinde (from the Yoruba kehin de, “to arrive next”), on noting that his other half hasn’t returned, sets out at his leisure to join his Taiyewo, deigning to assume human form. The Yoruba thus consider Kehinde the elder: born second, but wiser, so “older.”