It was a nice, normal afternoon until the Bureau of Child Welfare picked us up. I was looking forward to coming home from school because I knew we had orange ice cream in the fridge and Chips Ahoy! in the cupboard. I wanted to get a bowl of that ice cream and stick two cookies on top and watch cartoons. This was all I could think about, and even now it’s the strongest memory I have of that day. What I didn’t know was that BCW had stopped by our school earlier in the day. Because my mother taught there and was in the building, she’d been able to cut them off before they pulled us from class; she begged them to pick us up from home instead so that our classmates wouldn’t see.
I’d just put the ice cream back in the freezer when two agents knocked on the door. Ahmed and I were taken by a black woman with curly hair and another person whose face I can’t pull from my memory. He must’ve been white and male. Ahmed and I were separated and taken to different foster homes. He went to a big family somewhere in Queens with parents who were nice to him (they took him to IHOP). I went to more of an Annie kind of foster home run by a pair of identical twin sisters. They were identically mean and each had a son the same age as I was. There were two other boys there and one teenage girl who refused to talk to anyone. The twins threatened to spank us if we didn’t do what they said. And even though they fed their biological kids hot meals every day and night, the foster kids got only peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. That’s true abuse. The twins cut my hair and put ribbons in it for picture day at the new school they enrolled me in.
It was awful. To this day, I don’t know if I was in Brooklyn or Queens. I didn’t know my way home. I didn’t know what I’d said to end up there. I didn’t know where my brother was, or if I’d see him or any of my family ever again.
Alice was blindsided. Of course she wasn’t abusing either of us. Ibnou had only said that to hurt her. When he called BCW, he imagined they’d remove Alice, that he’d be punishing her. He didn’t expect them to take me and Ahmed. In order to get us back, both Ibnou and Alice had to endure an investigation. Alice left work every day and went straight to the courthouse with every scrap of documentation she could think of that would help to get us back. After we were in foster care for almost three weeks, BCW agents took us home, and only then did we learn what had happened, that Dad had done this to us. After that, I was finished. I was officially over him, and I started my campaign for Mom to get a divorce. But Alice was biding her time. She wanted out of that marriage, but she knew she had to do it in a way that would keep Ahmed and me safe. It was around this time that Alice started giving Ahmed and me safety drills. She told us to kick and scream if Ibnou or a friend of his ever tried to pick us up from school when she hadn’t discussed it with us first. She told us to kick and scream if we were ever with Ibnou and he drove us to the airport without her knowing it. The eighties were so crazy, y’all!
Now fast-forward a couple of years: Ibnou is asking Alice to write a letter to Tola inviting her to America, and Alice is finally seeing her opportunity approaching.
The summer after Tola joined us in America, Alice and her Cotton Club band were asked to perform at a festival in Morocco. She wanted to go but knew my dad couldn’t take care of us on his own as he had to work and Ahmed and I were too young to stay by ourselves. So it was decided that Tola would move back into our apartment to take care of us while my mom was gone. There I was, back to sharing my bed with a fully grown woman.
The night before my mother was scheduled to come home, Ahmed and I did something we used to do a lot back then: we woke up in the middle of the night and met each other in the hallway to discuss the dreams we’d been having or whether or not cartoons were on TV. But that night, the night before Mom came home, I had something else to discuss.
“Tola’s not in my bed,” I said.
“Have you seen her?”
“No. She’s not in the living room, either.”
I looked past Ahmed to our parents’ room. The door was closed. I knew then that Tola and my father were sleeping together. It was the first time the thought had ever entered my head, but I knew I was right. I knew that Ibnou was super boring and straight up the worst, but the idea that he would cheat on my mom with someone he introduced to us as his cousin had never occurred to me. That was some soap opera shit that didn’t happen to real people. Ahmed, still innocent, had no idea what was going on. It’s not that he’s dumb; he’s just sweet and more willing to let people live their lives. He’s like Mom that way. Me? I’m like Ibnou—suspicious of everyone and personally offended by everything.
When Alice came home the next day, I was so happy to have her back that I decided to enjoy the moment and wait on reporting Tola’s disappearance from my room. I didn’t have to wait long. Tola spent the night (again) in my bed (again); after all the celebrating, it was too late for her to go home (I guess). Alice and Ibnou made love (or whatever, GROSS), and they both went to the bathroom afterward to take a shower together (Eeewwwww! Just more GROSS!). Tola walked in on them and had a breakdown. She started crying and yelling at Ibnou in Wolof. Then she ran out of the house. Ibnou explained to Alice that Tola was just shocked. Married people having sex? Weird and gross! I get it, Tola!
Alice knew what was going on and took advantage of the moment to force the truth. She went after Tola and cornered her in a hallway.
“Tola, are you sleeping with Ibnou?”
“No, no! He’s just my cousin,” she lied.
“Is he your husband?” Alice pressed on.
“No! No! He’s my cousin! That’s it!”
Alice thought for a second, and asked about Tola’s baby, Malick, left behind in Africa.
“Is Malick Ibnou’s bastard son?”
If you know Muslims, the word bastard is a strong trigger. My entire life, my father told me never to bring home any bastards, that pregnancy out of wedlock was a sin worse than most, and that the shame it would bring would be irreversible and I could never bring him that shame. Calling Tola’s son a bastard was a knife to her pride and dignity.
“NO! He’s not a bastard! We’re married!” Tola answered.