The Parking Lot Attendant

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  To my grandmother who grew me with stories

  To my mother who loves me with and through everything

  To my uncle who gave me the courage to leave

  And to my father who gave me the humor to survive it all

  PART I: ON THE SUBJECT OF HOW MY FATHER FOUND US A HOME AND I FOLLOWED HIM THERE

  My father and I are the newest and least liked members of the colony on the island of B______. My first memory is of vomiting upon contact with the ginger-drenched air. When I told the others at dinner, I was informed that it happened to everyone, I was nothing special. No one has yet discovered the origins of this heady perfume, and the search gives my days a purpose that is all my own. The house provided for us is the farthest from the water, located in the deepest pocket of ginger odor, and contains not a whit of storage space. Nothing can be kept on the floor, partly because the house floods and partly because spiders will crawl into our clothing and give us boils, or so claims the Danga’s letter, delivered to our door after the tense welcome ceremony.

  The Danga was initially unwilling to accept us or even see my father when he arrived a month ago. They were certain that additional people would only disrupt the equilibrium of the existing twenty. As I waited for news in our empty Boston apartment, he finally succeeded in procuring a meeting, where they hid behind a black screen set up in one of the houses, and he struggled to speak on the other side of it. He asked that we be granted a trial period, offering my womb as a sign of friendship and a tool of creation. Later, confronted by my anger, he would explain that false promises were at the heart of every negotiation.

  “Do you want to become extinct? Like the Shakers?”

  “We are already different. We remain still during services. We do not make furniture.”

  “You can do better.”

  “There are already children here.”

  “Not enough of them.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It’s in the nature of children to not be enough.”

  They refused him. They barred him from seeing the other colonists, they demanded his immediate departure, they reminded him that their constitution (signed in blood by all inhabitants) authorized them to hang trespassers and throw their bodies into the sea. My father asked for three days before his execution. During those three days, he learned how to fish.

  On the evening of the third, he pled for one last meeting, which eventually took place in the official residence of the Danga, all brick and cement like they still do it in Ethiopia, the crooked paisley curtains an atrocious contrast. My father sat in what seemed to be the living room; the Danga occupied an adjoining nook. Slender children served coffee, eyes riveted to the floor.

  “Why can’t I see your faces?”

  “Most people never get this close.”

  “Why do you go out of your way to be so mysterious?”

  “That doesn’t concern you.”

  “I take it your decision hasn’t changed.”

  “You are to leave tomorrow morning.”

  Although supposedly all members of the Danga were present, a single woman’s voice responded to or posed questions. We would soon learn that it was she who acted as the Danga’s spokesperson. My father hesitated only briefly.

  “My daughter was friends with him.”

  “Who?”

  “She helped Ayale with much of what happened in Boston.”

  “Who’s Ayale? What happened in Boston?” The tone had become challenging.

  He told them my name. The silence was exquisite and unbearable.

  “It’s because of your daughter that Ayale was almost caught.” The voice had hardened.

  “It’s because of my daughter that it was ‘almost.’”

  A moment of what felt like irresolution; my father pressed on.

  “We need your help, but you need ours, too.”

  “Go on.”

  “You’re losing confidence.”

  The reply was swift.

  “Vicious rumors.”

  “You’re making this all up as you go along.”

  “We’ve been chosen.”

  “By whom?”

  “Get out.”

  “The truth of the matter is that one of your own broke faith; you may not trust us, but you don’t trust each other, either.”

  He named another name. An intake of breath from behind the curtain. My father continued.

  “I can make and fix anything.”

  “Your daughter?” The voice sounded resigned.

  “She’s a storyteller. Every empire requires a good origin story: at the beginning, the people did this, the people killed that, the people spun these lies into those truths into present glory, etcetera, etcetera. She can create the legend you need for legitimacy and to make people forget.”

  “How do you know that we won’t betray you?”

  “I don’t know anything. The blessing and the curse of it is, neither do you.”

  He sipped from his cup. The coffee was undrinkable after it got cold.

  “How soon can you both move here?”

  “Yesterday, if you like.”

  My father walked from the eastern edge of the island, where the colony is located, to the western corner, a total of forty-eight miles, where he knew there was a pay phone. By the time he called, I had rewatched Robert Redford: Collection and had spoken to no one but our landlord; I was afraid my father wasn’t coming back.

  “The money is under my bed.” His voice sounded calmer than it should have.

  “What did you tell them?”

  “I shared some thoughts.”

  “Were they angry?”

  “Did you send in the deferral letter?”

  “There’s no point.”

  “Just do it. I’m not going anywhere.”

  Twenty-one hours later, I was standing next to him at the border of the colony, wondering what I had gotten us into and if we would ever find our way back out.

  * * *

  The Danga’s introductory letter went into minute detail regarding the routine to which everyone was expected to adhere, which gave us, at least initially, an almost shocking amount of joy. We’ve both excelled at procedure and have learned that when the rules are clear, from the very beginning, no one makes mistakes, and no one gets hurt. This applies to colonies, families, immigration, parking lots. Each colonist must be present for breakfast at seven in the Convocation Palace, the former counting house of B______’s last royal family, where the perpetual draftiness distracts from the perpetual lack of food. Volunteers distribute memoranda to our assigned chairs, and those who are employed leave at eight in the Land Rover with which the Danga came equipped. The rest of us clean first our own and then each other’s houses, in an attempt to attain the highest levels of cleanliness and community.

  At noon the workers return for lunch, always seafood and grocery store brown bread
. At twelve forty-five they leave while we wash clothing and use a plaster solution that my father invented to seal cracks. We’ve tried to barter for whatever the natives of B______ hunt, but the locals are nobody’s fools: they can see we have nothing. A Danga-approved schedule determines who will cook and tell stories each night. My father and I have yet to be asked to participate.

  We eat dinner at eight, still together, always together. The Danga leads us in prayer over a cleverly tricked-out public address system, via which we can both hear and speak to them. This is followed by an hour of nothing, then bed at ten. We’ve been told that structure is key.

  In our spare time, we write letters to embassies worldwide, explaining our position, requesting recognition and money. Those with artistic talent create posters to accompany these letters. My father has started making busts of each colonist, which he hopes will be given places of honor in their homes. Those with business acumen concoct money-making ventures. Those with organizational know-how devise plans for how to spend our hypothetical money. There has been talk of house maintenance, the building of a hospital (we have one doctor, who promises that he can train some of us to become nurses, no problem) and a school. Everything will change when we relocate to Africa, our true land. There, we will not live under such ironclad conditions, but having freedom later means eradicating it now. This, the Danga explains, is how it has always been.

  We are creating a new version of B______, every day we live in it. The Danga has struck up a deal with the B______ government, wherein we pay a monthly tax and they leave us alone. I have heard that the people of B______ are big-eyed and friendly but also that they split open their children’s scalps to clean the insides, hence the stench that everyone whispers about but that I’ve never detected, too distracted by the ginger. The rare natives we see refuse to meet our gaze, which I prefer. I’m tired of people looking at me.

  We speak exclusively in Amharic. It’s difficult to ascertain where each person comes from, but the accents help distinguish ethnic backgrounds. My father and I are the only Amhara, though any superiority we might be tempted to feel is tempered by the fact of who we are. I still miss skyscrapers, Mexican food, air pollution, brunch, Ayale.

  There are no birthdays here because when we were born doesn’t matter. This is an indication of our rebirth along with that of our nation. Nevertheless, I’ve always loved my birthday, and as I approach my eighteenth year, which no one will acknowledge because my father often forgets and the others don’t know, I mourn that, no matter what he says, I will never see Boston again.

  My father and I have been told to await the Danga’s three-month review of our progress to learn if we are to accompany the settlement on its final move. I don’t dare to think what will happen if we are not.

  * * *

  The island of B______ is more than six hundred miles away from any known landmass in all directions. These surrounding regions, when owned by other countries, kingdoms, and principalities, in other long-ago time periods, would occasionally declare war on tiny B______, attacks which, judging from the lack of anything to gain, seem like suspicious attempts to prevent boredom. The closest neighbor to the west once declared, waged, and won a war against B______ in under two days, while B______ remained none the wiser. This is now known as the Battle for Good, another clue that the altercation held no actual purpose. One gets the feeling that these decades of on-and-off, mostly one-sided skirmishes occurred because the others knew that B______ was there and couldn’t stop picking at it, the topographic equivalent of a pimple.

  The settlement is situated on the easternmost portion of the island, with the western edge given over to resorts, hotels, three-tier pools, and the like. Journeys between the two sides are rare, and the Danga is pleased that we have claimed the east, tickled by the fancy that like the sun, we shall begin our rise here.

  B______’s climate is defined as “subtropical,” which means that it’s often humid and never cold. To my mind, the best wardrobe choice would be constant nudity, which is a laugh, seeing as how the one book allowed to us so far is the Bible, in Amharic. The island has a reputation for hurricanes, but there hasn’t been one since the founding of our colony, which the Danga has interpreted as God’s approval, apparently forgetting that hurricanes are hardly daily occurrences and they’ve only been here for two years. I wonder how much Ayale knows about what they’ve done to his vision, and make no mistake, it was always his. Everyone else is crashing a party that they didn’t even know was happening in the first place.

  B______ is part of the British Commonwealth, although the last state visit occurred just before World War I. From what I’ve gathered, B______ enjoys the legitimacy of association with an important country, without having to deal with the usual nonsense of maintaining good relations with it. I still don’t understand why B______ would agree to take us on as an official settlement, what with our treasury comfortably resting at rock bottom. (One of the colony’s tenets is that we shall allow ourselves no dependence on the United States or Europe, no matter how beneficial that alliance might be.) B______ itself is, inexplicably, obscenely wealthy.

  Each of our houses has been constructed using a windfall of driftwood that was discovered just north of the area we occupy. The Danga encouraged the first settlers to accept this gift from the angels, forgetting that saltwater and sand are not the best playmates for wood. Tools and nails were found on the breakfast table one morning, and the result is that our houses are full of cracks, coming apart, and, frankly, “houses” only in the loosest sense of the term. My father has been doling out minor improvements and advice, but the problems remain massive and he’s no architect.

  The only source of fresh water is rainfall; my father has designed and constructed two dozen water-collection vessels, which most inhabitants keep affixed to their roofs, all of which leak, rendering the project a seemingly deliberate plunge into redundancy.

  It hasn’t escaped my notice that while the others persist in treating me like a plague victim, my father has only to tinker with an object for ten seconds before, hey presto, he’s the goddamn Messiah. I don’t like that people are gravitating toward him, asking him for counsel, blatantly fucking liking him. I’m sorry, but that’s not who we are and that’s not what we do: we’re supposed to be ignored and all the better for it. Nonetheless, he continues to betray me with his popularity. I don’t know why I expected otherwise. I don’t know how I could have forgotten and let myself love him so recklessly.

  During my second week on the island, I woke up in the witching hour between night and day and saw the sky divided into pink, orange, and gold. The lines between each were jagged but distinct, and I realized that this probably happened all the time, I’d just been sleeping through it. It made me hope that I would have something to look forward to.

  When I indulge in this crepuscular glory (the colors always differ, the patterns are sometimes less defined) it’s easier to believe that I’m here by choice. It’s only when the sun comes out and my father silently rises from bed that I know I have once again been fooled. More infuriating is the knowledge that come the next dawn, I’ll be fooled once more.

  I’m beginning to feel old.

  * * *

  I’ve never liked sand. I don’t like how it gets into your clothes, your shoes, your hair, your eyebrows, your eyes. I don’t like how it’s nearly impossible to remove. I loathe its irritatingly unique quality of chafing body parts that were never supposed to be exposed to its abrasive virtues in the first place. I once read that Picasso and all the others who tried to be like him would mix sand into their paints to achieve a certain effect. I don’t see what effect would be worth the discomfort.

  The only good thing about the sand in B______ is that it’s white and, as far as it’s possible for sand to enjoy this quality, fluffy. There’s something seductive about it, especially when compared with the pebble-strewn gray-brown harshness of my childhood. This former sand made me remember how human hair and nails continue to grow
after death; I could believe that places like Cape Cod were the compost heaps for these perpetually elongating pieces of ourselves, to be enjoyed by children we would never meet and who wouldn’t care about us if we did.

  Our house contains a single bedroom, no closets, a small living area, four stools, and a toilet room; a showerhead is attached to the outside by a flimsy-looking piece of tin. The kitchen puzzles us since we’re not allowed to create or participate in individual repasts: all meals are community meals. The consequences of disobedience will be dire because all consequences here are dire.

  After dinner, my father and I usually return to our home and sit in the growing darkness and absence of words. We have no books because the Danga is still debating whether outside literature will encourage or stymie our own literary pursuits, and so our hands remain idle in a manner that would have been scorned by the women of yore who embroidered tapestries while waiting on their ladies, waiting for witches, waiting for changes in the moon. It was on our second night, when he mentioned missing our television, that I had him laughing with my imitations of our favorite sitcom characters, even though I’ve always been horrible at impressions. I marvel at those who have made a living out of seamlessly appearing to be someone other than themselves. I haven’t done a particularly bang-up job of being me, and if I can’t manage that, it seems unlikely that I’ll ever do better by taking on someone else. I suspect that on the whole, I am untalented at the art of existence.

  Due to my general lack of ability in the household arts, I’ve been put to work with the children. There are three of them, aged two, almost four, and five. I’ve never liked children—I’m starting to realize that I don’t like a lot of things—but at least it’s something I can do. The two-year-old is a champion crier but can usually be forced into submission with food, brightly colored toys, or strange mouth noises. The almost-four-year-old makes up words and definitions that seem more important than those with which I grew up; one of the first, meskotemetfo, means someone who is only a little bit evil, and I agreed that we must start naming the degrees of wickedness, since it’s the in-between villains that we’re most likely to encounter. The five-year-old builds forts and runs around with imaginary pirate bands, and so we see very little of each other.