My brother, Mark, his wife, Tracy, our niece and nephew Maya and Calvin, and my sister-friend Alondra are sleeping in the house with us. In the morning Ficre gets up first as usual for a Sunday, and I go to Alondra’s bed and get in to chat, and then Mark comes and sits at the end of the bed and we go over all the wonderful details of the party. “Fratello! Mangia questa!” Mark said Ficre kept exclaiming, as each pizza came out of the oven: roasted red pepper and sweet sausage; fresh tomato, garlic, and basil; goat cheese, fig, and caramelized onion. The two loved speaking Italian together. I tell Mark and Alondra how he fell asleep with a smile on his face. They cannot get over it.
That evening, something urgent and sharp comes over Ficre: he has to leave the house, right away, he tells me. He has to buy a lottery ticket; he has a number, and a feeling. He is agitated, so certain is he his number is going to win, and win big. I tell him gently he is being a little silly and let’s just have dinner but he jumps in the car, runs off, and comes back with what I later discover is a stack of lottery tickets. “I have to win it for you,” he says. “I have to win the lottery for you.”
The next day, Monday, he is still not quite himself, running something in circles in his head. I say, why don’t we meet at home for lunch. Mangia, mangia is my solution to most infelicities. He never eats lunch in the studio; maybe he just needs something to eat, I think. When we meet he is still mired in his strange, edgy mood. I thump his chest and say, spit it out! He looks relieved. “I feel better,” he says, and we eat our green salads with grilled chicken in the backyard, where it is cool and fresh. His head seems straight. We each go back to work.
When he comes home, he is tired but I urge him to continue with his plan to shop for fixings for his sugo alla Bolognese with which to prepare his ravishing lasagna, for Easter comes this Sunday. We are hosting the extended family, arriving from various points in our particular African diaspora: Nairobi, Kenya; Oakland, California; Aberdeen, Scotland; Geneva, Switzerland; Montpelier, France; London, England; Montclair, New Jersey; Washington, DC; and New York, New York.
This is what Ficre puts in his Bolognese:
Diced pancetta
Diced prosciutto cotto
Ground veal
Ground beef
Fresh marjoram
Carrots
Onions
Celery
Whole milk
No garlic
Tomato
He makes the sauce, leaves it to cool, and then freezes it. We both sleep quickly and put the strangeness of the day behind us.
The next day, Tuesday, I have to be at the University through the evening, showing Charles Burnett films to my students. One of them is When It Rains, a short I have always loved that I first saw with Ficre in Chicago in the early days of our relationship. It is a parable set in another point of the West African diaspora, Leimert Park, Los Angeles. An urban griot and community wise man comes to the aid of a woman who is behind on her rent. African drums are ambient throughout the film, and the solution to the woman’s dilemma is ultimately to be found in an obscure jazz record of incalculable value. Ficre loved what he called the film’s “Africanity.” It shows an urban American village filled with Africanisms and offers faith in simple resolutions, acts of kindness, and the curative power of black art, in this case, jazz.
I come home late. The boys are asleep and Ficre is on the couch watching television, waiting for me, drowsy, but wanting to know everything that happened. I am exhausted but we enjoy remembering that beautiful film.
He has promised Solo a sleepover. He and the boys operate in close proximity and cherish each other’s nearness. He and I kiss each other. He goes to Solo’s trundle bed and I go to our bed, and we call out good night to each other down the hall. How beautiful, the way that children sleep so deeply and peacefully that their parents’ voices do not wake them.
The whole family sleeps and the house is still.
The next morning Ficre wakes exhausted, but happy. “This is the most comfortable bed I have ever slept in!” he says.
Then sleep some more, I whisper, and delay leaving home, puttering, so we can be together.
He feels better when he wakes again. We drink our coffee and chat, as on a million mornings. He drives me to work. I’ve just heard about a poetry reading on campus from a book of new translations of the sacred poetry of the Kabbalah, but it is scheduled at the same time I’m supposed to pick the children up from school to take them to the orthodontist.
“You have to hear the sacred poetry of the Kabbalah!” Ficre says to me. “You are an artist, and you need it—I will take the children to the orthodontist!”
And so I say Yes. And Thank you.
I love you, I say.
I love you, he says.
Have a wonderful day, and Ciao Ciao, we say.
How many times have we parted and said those words?
Six
At four, I go to a reading and conversation on the sacred poetry of the Kabbalah between the poet and translator Peter Cole and the campus rabbi and resident wise man, James Ponet. The room is packed; the words resonate and sound to me oracular and true, though their meaning is mysterious.
Windows of worship
Windows of beckoning
Windows of weeping
Windows of joy
Windows of satiety
Windows of hunger
Windows of penury
Windows of wealth
Windows of peace
Windows of war
Windows of bearing
Windows of birth
And he saw—
Windows without number and end