IT WAS JUST OCCURRING to me that Dirk and Charlotte thought I was from Thailand, or maybe even that Thailand and Vietnam are the same country, and that was why they’d taken me out for Thai noodles, when the big, racist waiter arrived.
To be clear, I am not like the waiter. I am not racist. I appreciate Thai food. I appreciate the curries. I appreciate the noodles. I appreciate the spring rolls. I appreciate all the little dipping sauces. I especially appreciate them when someone else is paying, which I thought Charlotte was from the way she invited me. I don’t mind being Thai for an evening if it means free spring rolls. So, until the big, racist waiter arrived, there were no problems.
“How’s everybody doing over here?” he asked, standing over our table. He was a new waiter, not the one who’d taken our orders. “Does anyone need a refill?” Then, noticing the child in its highchair, he grinned a big, happy grin. “Oh, hello there! What a cute baby!”
“The child” is what Dirk and Charlotte call the child. The first time I ever saw the child, I made a mistake. I asked, “What’s his name?” Actually, I thought it was a girl, but I sometimes make mistakes with English.
This was a big mistake.
“She’s not a he!” shouted Charlotte.
“And it’s not a she!” shouted Dirk.
“We’re not imposing any genders on it,” said Charlotte. “Not until it’s eighteen. When it’s old enough to choose.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry. I just want to know, what’s its name?”
“We’re not imposing any names on it, either,” said Charlotte. “It can choose for itself when it’s eighteen.”
“Oh,” I said. “I see.” I didn’t see, but I was interviewing for the tech support position at Children’s Cybersecurity International, and I thought Dirk would like me better if I said, “I see.”
The job was supposed to pay two hundred thousand dollars, but that wasn’t why I wanted it. My first job in America had paid me pretty well before the layoffs, and I’ve never been much of a spender. I didn’t need money. What I needed was another employer to sponsor my visa. I’d already used four of the sixty days that I had to find a new job by the time I saw the listing. By the day of the interview, which was at Dirk and Charlotte’s house because, as Dirk explained, it was a home-based international cybersecurity firm, it was seven days; and by the time the big, racist waiter arrived at our table, it was forty-one days. I still didn’t have a visa, or even a first paycheck, but at least I was going to get the free spring rolls.
“Excuse me,” Charlotte said to the waiter. “What did you just say?”
Dirk leapt to his feet. His chair crashed to the floor. He was half as tall as the waiter, but he always says that being short is a good thing because it means he has a lower center of gravity, and also his face is in just the right place when he hugs women. “How dare you?” he demanded. “How dare you, Sir?”
“I’m sorry?” said the waiter, flustered. “I just said she’s a cute baby.”
“You said that because she’s a white baby,” growled Charlotte. “You wouldn’t have said it if it were a black baby!”
“Or a brown baby,” said Dirk. “Or an Asian baby.”
“Or a Native American baby.”
“Racist!” Dirk pointed a finger at the waiter, raising his voice loud enough for everyone in the restaurant to hear. “This man is a racist!”
“I just said you have a cute baby!” said the waiter. “Literally, that’s all I said! Literally!” He was trying to whisper so that Dirk and Charlotte would also whisper, but it wasn’t working.
“You better stop racializing our baby,” said Charlotte.
“Yeah,” said Dirk, “and you better leave us the hell alone! We made an awesome baby, and now you want to racialize it, and kidnap it, and do disgusting things. That’s right. I know what you’re up to. I know all about those disgusting things. I run a cybersecurity firm. I protect children.”
The big, racist waiter backed up into another table, where an old couple was sitting. The woman had to grab their water pitcher so it wouldn’t topple over.
Dirk thrust his chin forward, stabbing the waiter in the chest with the tufted brown tip of his beard. “By the way,” he said, “I know Jiu Jitsu.”
The only sounds in the restaurant were the burbling of the fountain by the entrance, and the plunk-plunk of piano music, and the big, racist waiter’s mouth-breathing.
Then someone said, “Enough!”
It was the hostess: a little Thai girl, no bigger than Dirk, and just as scary. “Sir,” she said, putting herself between him and the waiter, “You have to leave.”
“Fine,” said Dirk. “But we’re not paying. And you’d better reign in this animal.”
The big, racist waiter looked like he was going to cry.
“It’s okay,” said Charlotte. “Just bring me the check. We’re leaving.”
“Two checks,” Dirk said. “Two checks! Bring us two checks!” He picked up his chair and sat down. His face was bright red. He was fuming.
The hostess came back a minute later and dropped the check in front of Charlotte. Then she stood beside our table with folded arms.
“This is ridiculous!” shouted Dirk. “Why just one check? Why?”
“This dinner was supposed to be for Bao,” said Charlotte.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I pay. No problem.” I was very frightened.
“You will not pay,” said Charlotte. “Don’t even worry about it.”
“But how are we supposed to build wealth,” demanded Dirk, “when you’re going around and buying dinner for illegal immigrants?”
“I am not,” I said, making eye contact with the hostess and shaking my head side-to-side. “I’m not illegal.”
“If you do this,” said Dirk, “I don’t want to be in your life anymore.”
“I pay,” I said, reaching for the check. “I pay, I pay!”
Charlotte snatched it away from me.
“I’m going to kill myself,” said Dirk. “Our child’s going to grow up fatherless because of you.”
“It’s not even going on your card!” said Charlotte.
“Okay,” I said. “Okay, okay.” There were two spring rolls left on my plate. I’d been looking forward to reheating them for breakfast, but now all I wanted was to get the hell out of there. I pushed the plate toward Dirk. “You have my takeaway.”
“Fine,” said Dirk. “Whatever.” He pulled the spring rolls toward him. Then he grabbed Charlotte’s plate, which still had some noodles on it, and pulled it toward him. Then he grabbed the big bowl of green curry in front of the child and pulled it toward him. The child had taken some of the sticky rice and smeared it on the plastic tablecloth, and on the arm of her highchair, and some of it had even ended up on the floor, but she hadn’t eaten any of the rice or any of the curry. She was one day less than two years old. I knew because her birthday party was tomorrow. I was invited. “Go ahead and pay,” Dirk said to Charlotte, “but I’m taking the leftovers.”
“Whatever,” said Charlotte. “You don’t even eat leftovers.”
“Did I say I was going to eat them?” Like a king looking out over his land, Dirk surveyed the four plates before him. “I never said I was going to eat them.”
By the time we got out of the restaurant, I’d made up my mind: I never wanted to see another spring roll. I never wanted to see Dirk or Charlotte or the child again, either, but Dirk said he had some compromised equipment at home that he needed my help with, and could I come over for half an hour, and the problem with being in a desperate situation is that you end up trusting people even when you know you shouldn’t trust them. I knew that Dirk was never going to give me a pay check, much less sponsor my visa, but I only had nineteen days left, and a small part of me was still hoping.
Compromised equipment is what I’ve been helping Dirk with ever since my first day at Children’s Cybersecurity International. It’s the reason he hired me. I didn’t think the interview had gone very well, so I was feeling pretty nervous when he called, but he didn’t tell me to go hell. Instead, he said, “If you can fix this stuff, you’re in.”
When I got to his house, a big house in the suburbs, I found a bunch of guys in the living room, all without shirts on. Charlotte was there, too, in the kitchen, cutting carrots for the child, but Dirk told her it was time to go and get her mani-pedi.
“The computers will be on soon,” he said, leading her down the hall by the arm. “I don’t want you to see what we see every day. It’s a lot for a woman.”
The smell of her perfume reached me as she passed me in the hall. It was nice perfume. She also smiled at me, which may be another reason I took the job. For the rest of that week, I kept thinking about her, wondering what it meant that she had smiled at me, even though I was the only guy there with a shirt on.
When she and her minivan were gone, Dirk gave me the grand tour.
“This is our headquarters,” he said. “This is the kitchen. That’s the bathroom over there. Those are the stairs. That door is to the child’s room. It doesn’t know about business. If it gets into one of the rooms that we’re using for business, we’ll have a problem with the IRS. That’s why we keep it in there.”
Then he showed me the compromised equipment. There were a bunch of desks pushed up against one of the walls in the living room, and on the desks were half a dozen computer monitors, all black and lifeless.
“Compromised,” I said. “Yes. Have you tried plugging and unplugging?”
“Huh?”
“Plugging,” I said again, more slowly this time, “and unplugging.”
“Your accent,” said Dirk. “Your accent’s crazy thick, bro! Like, thicker than Matt’s girl.”
All the guys started laughing. Even the one who was Matt.
“Plugging,” I said again, making one of my fingers into an electrical socket and the other one into a plug, “and unplugging.”
This made them laugh even harder.
“Me so horny!” one of them shouted, bouncing up and down on the sofa and slapping his thighs. “Me so horny!”
“Okay,” I said. “No problem.”
There was a power strip on the floor beside the power outlet. Every cord I could see led back to that power strip. That was the problem. The power switch was not turned on.
“Master switch,” I said to myself, crouching beside the power strip. As soon as I flipped it, things began to whir. “Okay,” I said. “Try now. See what happen.”
One after another, the computers started coming on.
“That’s crazy!” Dirk pounded his fist into his palm and ground them against each other like a mortar and pestle. Then he clapped me on the shoulder and turned again to face his team. “This guy is legit.”
“You just plug and unplug,” I said, hanging my head a little so that they wouldn’t see me smiling. I knew that there was nothing to be proud of, but I couldn’t help it. “Switch, un-switch.”
“Bro,” said Dirk, “you need to be here all the time. I hate plugs. I hate electricity. I want you on the team.”
“You sponsor H1-B visa?”
He took me by the hand and squeezed. “Hell yeah.”
That was how I became Children’s Cybersecurity International’s Chief Technology Officer. The listing was just for tech support, so I was surprised to receive such a big title, but Dirk said it was because Charlotte was the one who’d made the listing, and she didn’t know anything about the business. She just kept the books and filed the taxes, but she didn’t know about cybersecurity because she was a woman.
On my way home, I found myself sitting up straighter behind the wheel and smiling more than I’d smiled in seven days. I’d been expecting the lowest position. I was ready to be the guy who makes the coffee. Now I had a title that would make my mother proud.
That night, I called her on WhatsApp and told her the news. I’ve never seen her with such a big smile, not even after I got my first job in America. When I said I was starting right away and wouldn’t be able to visit her in Vietnam, she pretended to be sad, but she couldn’t hide how she was really feeling. She said I was her precious treasure, and that she couldn’t wait to tell her friends and neighbors and everyone at the country club that I was doing important work in America, saving the children.
Of course, I knew that I was lying to my mother, and I felt bad about that, but I couldn’t feel all that bad because my mother, frankly, is a person who likes to be lied to. My brother, for instance, once lied to her for three and a half years, telling her that he was a manager, when all that he was managing was a strip club and a drug gang. When she found out, it was clear to me that she would have preferred to go on being lied to.
My brother is a disgrace to the family, a reprobate and a criminal, but he’s also been quite successful in his line of work. If the US sends me back to Vietnam, even if I don’t need money, I’m going to end up working for him — if only so that I don’t become what he calls a “loose end.” This is not what I want or deserve, not after all the hard work I’ve put into learning English, and mastering technology, and making my mother proud. I would rather work for Dirk in America than for my brother in Vietnam.
If I was going to make the best of my time at Child Cybersecurity International, I knew that I would need a plan.
Luckily, Dirk is the kind of guy who makes your plans for you.
Sure enough, a few weeks later, he called me. “Bro,” he said, “I need you. We’re putting in a security system.”
By that time, I’d been to his house three or four times, always to plug whatever needed plugging and to unplug whatever needed unplugging. This had given me a chance to confirm my suspicions: there was no international cybersecurity company. The whole thing was a scam. The guys would call random numbers until they got an old person or a stupid person. Then they would say that they were from the FBI, and they’d detected suspicious activity on the person’s device, activity related to child pornography. Sometimes, they would talk the person into letting them access their computer. Then they would steal their passwords and empty their bank accounts.
Whenever they weren’t busy scamming, they were playing videogames, or using drugs, or watching pornographic movies.
Mostly, it wasn’t child pornography. But some of it was.
Charlotte knew about the drugs, and the scamming, and maybe even the pornography, but what really upset her was the videogames. This was because, when she’d registered Children’s Cybersecurity International as an LLC, she’d promised the IRS that they would only use certain parts of the house for work. If the IRS sent someone to check on them and found them playing videogames in the living room, she said, they would be in big trouble. But the guys said they had to play videogames in the living room because that was where the monitors were.
Charlotte was also afraid of what would happen if the IRS found the child in the living room, but she’d already solved that problem using a doorstop and a piece of rope.
When Dirk said he wanted my help putting in a security system, I knew exactly what to do.
When I got to the house, there were no cars parked along the street. In the driveway, there were just Dirk’s jeep and Charlotte’s minivan. The door was unlocked.
“Hello?” I said, poking my head into the front hall.
It was empty.
On the kitchen table, there was a big cardboard box with a handwritten note taped to it. I couldn’t read it because of Dirk’s penmanship, but I knew he was telling me to set up the home security system.
I tiptoed down the hall, found a knife in a drawer, and was about to cut the package open when I heard voices coming from the top of the stairs.
Dirk was saying. “Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.”
Charlotte was saying, “Yeah, sure. If you can.”
Then Dirk shouted, “This is your fault! How am I supposed to get hard when you won’t even give me your ass?”
That made me think about Charlotte’s ass — which was not convenient.
“Your pussy’s not even tight anymore,” said Dirk.
“It is, too!” snapped Charlotte. “It’s tighter than it’s ever been!”
That made me think about Charlotte’s pussy — also not convenient.
“You’ve been fucking other guys,” said Dirk. “I know you have.”
“I have not,” said Charlotte. She sounded as if she were about to cry.
“Just let me in your ass. Come on.”
“How are you supposed to get in my ass when you’re not even hard?”
That made me realize that I was hard. Not convenient.
“You were trying to give me your pussy,” Dirk whined. “How am I supposed to get hard when all you give me is your pussy? You know I only fuck asses. Only gay guys fuck pussies. Jesus fucking Christ, Charlotte, it’s like you don’t know me at all. It’s like you’ve been married to someone else for all these years. I bet you wouldn’t even miss me if I were gone. I bet if I killed myself, you wouldn’t even care. Maybe I’ll do it, Charlotte. Maybe I’ll kill myself.”
The next thing I knew, his feet were coming down the stairs. I quickly turned to face the package on the table, my back to the stairwell, so that he wouldn’t have any reason to think I’d been listening.
“Oh!” Dirk came to a halt at the foot of the stairs. “Bao?”
Over my shoulder, I said, “Yes, Sir?”
“When did you get here?”
“One minute,” I said. “Just one minute. I set up security system.”
“You know what?” said Dirk. “Why don’t you just go fuck my wife? I know she wants it.” He leapt off the bottom step and crossed the living room in a few quick strides, heading for the door where I’d come in. Then, halfway there, he stopped in his tracks and spun around. “You better not,” he hissed. “You better not, you fucking c——k. I’ll leave you in a fucking ditch.”
He stormed out.
I stood very still, my heart pounding furiously, my erection pressed against the table leg. Outside, a car door slammed.
From upstairs, behind a door, I could hear Charlotte’s sobs.
Making as little noise as possible, I sliced open the cardboard box and began removing the plastic-wrapped cameras and sensors and the Styrofoam packaging and inflated plastic baggies, arranging them all on the table in rows.
Then I heard Charlotte’s voice behind me: “Bao?”
My head hung forward like a flower, heavy on its stem. In my pants, my erection jumped a little.
“How much of that did you hear?” she wanted to know.
“Ma’am,” I said, raising my head and smiling brightly at her reflection in the microwave, trying to sound as cheerful as a robot, “nothing!”
“Oh,” she said. “Okay.”
Then her image in the microwave sank out of frame. When I turned, I saw that she was sitting on the bottom step, quietly shuddering, her head in her hands.
“Nothing,” I said. “No problem. I put in home security system.”
She patted the carpeted step beside her, as if she were calling a dog.
My erection and I crossed the room together and gingerly lowered ourselves onto the step beside her, taking care that no one’s arm hairs brush against anyone else’s arm hairs.
“I’m sorry,” she said through her hands. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “No problem.”
“It’s just,” she said, “it’s just… I feel like you’re the only person I can even talk to.”
Then she started telling me everything. How Dirk only ever fucked her in the ass. How they couldn’t even remember how she’d gotten pregnant in the first place: something must’ve trickled out of one crevice and into another without her knowing, and now they had the child, and she felt bad about tying her — it, that is — up in its room all day, but she didn’t make the rules, she just played by them, that was what it meant to be a businesswoman, but maybe, if they had a second child, then the first one at least would have someone to play with. Dirk, she went on, after pausing long enough to blow her nose into her cardigan, was always taking drugs and watching porn, and that was fine with her, she didn’t mind, but she still knew how to get wet after taking drugs and watching porn, whereas he didn’t know how to get hard, and he was always blaming her. Every time they tried to have sex, they ended up arguing, and every time they argued, he threatened to kill himself, and she would divorce him, but she couldn’t because she was too scared of being like her parents, who’d gotten divorced when she was twelve; and then there was also the IRS, which might, at any minute, come knocking on their door.
“That,” she sniffled, dragging the back of her hand across her nose — it came away covered in slime — “is why we need the home security system.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. I put in system.”
My erection had subsided by this time. My desire for Charlotte was gone. I wanted to put my arm around her and rock to sleep, and maybe stroke her hair. I felt very sorry for her.
Then it occurred to me that because I am a softhearted person, I had just made a horrible mistake. I’d heard her entire confession without bothering to record a single word.
While Charlotte washed her face and fixed her makeup in the bathroom, I went back to setting up the security system. I routed the audiovisual feeds to Dirk’s and Charlotte’s iPads, as instructed, but I also gave myself permission to access those feeds from my phone.
That night, Charlotte called me. I knew she was calling someone because I could see her at her kitchen table with her phone, but I was startled when mine started ringing.
“Bao,” she said, “I’ve been thinking. Our talk today… it was really special. It made me reflect on a lot of things.”
“Yes.”
“You’re kind of amazing,” she said. “I want you to know that. You’re the only man who’s ever listened to me.”
“Yes.”
“Bao,” she said, “I want to ask you something. A big favor. I really hope you’ll say yes.”
“Favor,” I said. “Yes.”
“Will you be the child’s godfather?”
“Godfather?” I repeated. I didn’t know godfather, except for the Marlon Brando film, The Godfather. My brother and I used to watch it together. It was his favorite film. I said, “I am not like godfather.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “What matters is that you love her. If anything happens to me and Dirk, you’ll be there to take care of her. A white child can still have a Japanese godfather.”
“Okay,” I said. “No problem.”
After we got off the phone, I looked up which streaming platform had The Godfather. It was on Hulu.
What I remembered was that it was a gangster flick, with lots of action. I’ve never been a fan of action movies, but I used to watch them over and over anyway because it was a way to spend time with my brother. He memorized all the actors’ lines. He even did their voices. He was good at voices. I still remembered some of those lines — “Leave the gun, take the cannoli,” and “In Sicily, women are more dangerous than shotguns” — but not what was going on in the film when the actors said them, or what emotions they were supposed to make you feel. Rewatching The Godfather, I didn’t expect to feel any emotions, but the next thing I knew, I was sobbing.
Not because of the story. I didn’t care about the story. I started sobbing because the movie brought back memories of a time when my brother wanted to be a gangster, and maybe even thought he was a gangster, but there was no way he would ever become a real gangster. A time when he was still getting excellent grades. A time when he kept his school uniform ironed. A time before cocaine.
Of course, that was also before my mother started smiling at me, before she started telling everyone about my accomplishments, before she started calling me her precious treasure. Those used to be honors reserved for my brother.
When the film was over, I sat alone in the dark living room, wondering whether, if given the power, I would rewind the clock and return to that time. Part of me thought that I would, and part of me thought that I wouldn’t, and the biggest part of me was glad I didn’t have the power, glad I didn’t have to be responsible for what was done.
The next day, Charlotte called me again, this time to invite me to dinner. She wanted to welcome me into the family. That was how we ended up at the restaurant with the big, racist waiter. She also invited me to the child’s second birthday party.
I was thinking about all this in the car, following Dirk and Charlotte back to their house.
The compromised equipment turned out to be the security camera in the bathroom. It had gotten pushed to one side so that it faced the corner, which was a problem because if someone broke in through the bathroom window, Dirk wouldn’t be able to see his face, and if Charlotte went to use the toilet or put in a tampon, Dirk wouldn’t be able to see anything worth seeing. Charlotte knew about the camera, so maybe she was the reason it was facing the wall. I rotated it to face the window above the toilet again, and then we went downstairs, and I tried to excuse myself, but Charlotte put herself between me and the door.
“Here,” she said. “I want you to try this.”
It was a tab of acid.
“No,” I said. “No drugs for me, thanks.”
“You have to do it,” she said. “You’re part of the family.”
“The guys are coming over,” Dirk said from the kitchen, where he was crouching in front of the refrigerator, making space for his leftovers. “You’ve got to party with us.”
“If I party,” I said, “I will be compromised. Who will plug and unplug?”
Dirk thought about that for a minute. “Okay,” he said. “That’s a good call.”
Pretty soon, there were parked cars up and down the street, and music was blasting, and the living room was full of guys, all without shirts on. I think some of them have never even owned shirts. Maybe they were half-nudists.
All I wanted was to get home and sleep, but one of the guys had parked behind my Kia, blocking me in, and Charlotte wanted me to stay, and I realized I didn’t have much of a choice. While Dirk and Charlotte and the guys crowded into the kitchen, passing pills around and rolling joints and popping beers, I went to the living room and sat on the sofa, facing the dark monitors, in which my image was reflected, and the image of the party behind me.
“To the child,” one of the guys whooped, and then they all raised their glasses above their heads, pumped their fists, and shouted, “To the child!”
From where I was sitting, I had a clear view of the child’s door.
Someone put on a party playlist. Pretty soon, they were all gyrating their hips, crashing into each other, and spilling their beers. I thought about putting on a videogame, but my heart wasn’t in it. Instead, I went out to my car.
From the front seat, I could see through the window, past the monitors in the living room, all the way into the kitchen. They hadn’t even closed the blinds.
After a while, I moved to the backseat, stretched out, and fell asleep.
It seemed like just a few minutes had passed when Dirk started hammering on my window, but I knew it was more than a few minutes because there was sun in my eyes.
“Hey, sleepyhead!” he shouted. “Rise and shine!”
Strands of drool ringed my mouth, and soaked my collar, and glistened on the upholstery. My mouth tasted of insects. My head was full of what felt like a hangover, even though I hadn’t been drinking. The sky was that bright, harsh shade of gray that’s hard to look at. My phone said it was 9:15. I never sleep this late, not even in my own bed. I must’ve been exhausted.
“We’re going to the park,” Dirk announced when I opened the door and planted my feet on the concrete driveway. “Can you pick up the cake?”
The only people in Walmart before 10:00 a.m. seemed to be the employees. I passed two of them on my way to the bakery: one with her head on her side and her phone on her shoulder, talking in fast Spanish while putting clothes back on a rack; and the other pushing a big, heavy cart, wearing headphones. The overpowering smell of processed sugar led me to the cakes. I picked out a nice-looking one.
“I am godfather,” I said to myself at self-checkout, running my credit card. Then I said it again: “I am godfather.”
The receipt printer was out of ink. It gurgled and whirred and spat out a long, white, empty tongue. I took it anyway and crumpled it in my fist on my way through automatic doors.
By the time I arrived at the park, all the guys were there, still with no shirts on. One of them was using a big, red helium tank to fill balloons. Now and then, after every third or fourth balloon, he would pause, take a hit from the hose, and say something in a Micky Mouse voice, making the other guys standing around all jump and chortle and slap their thighs. Most of the balloons he’d filled were bobbing above them, caught in the branches of the trees.
One of the guys had fired up a charcoal grill, which was in the park for anyone to use. He had a cooler, and on top of it, a glass tray, and in the tray was a raw steak. While I watched, he cracked open a beer and poured it over the steak, and then cracked open another one and started drinking.
Between the grill and the guy with the helium tank was a small stand of trees, and in the shade beneath those trees were four more guys, one of the them practicing nunchucks, the other three Hula-Hooping. They all had cigarettes in their mouths. Two of the Hula-Hoopers appeared relaxed, but the third and the guy with the nunchucks looked as if they’d forgotten all about their cigarettes. They wore intense expressions.
Not far from those guys, without a cigarette, but with the same intense expression on his face, was Dirk. He had a pair of wooden billy clubs, the kind with the handle, and he was trying to juggle them.
Between the parking lot and the trees, beside the footpath, was a picnic table. Charlotte was sitting at the picnic table. On her lap, she held the child.
“Cake,” I said, placing the cake before her. Then I added, stupidly, “For birthday.”
“You’re amazing.” She gazed up at me with a dreamy smile. She was very tall and thin. I’d never hugged her, but I’d always imagined that if I did, it would be just like trying to climb a utility pole. Her eyes were sky-blue. Her hair was shoulder-length and dirty-blond. She had a nice face, except for the acne. With makeup on, she was a very pretty woman.
“You untie her,” I said, taking a seat across from her.
“It,” said Charlotte. “I untied it. Because there’s no IRS here.”
“I see.”
“Where are the paper plates?”
Blood rushed into my cheeks. This was the child’s birthday. I was the godfather. The plates were my responsibility.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I forget them.”
“And the Pepsi,” Charlotte went on, still with that gentle, dreamy smile. “And the cups for the Pepsi. And the napkins. And the plastic spoons. How are we going to eat the birthday cake without spoons?”
“I don’t know,” I said, looking at the ground through the cracks in the table so that she wouldn’t see I was ashamed. “Maybe we eat with our fingers?”
“Do you think I can just give this to her?” she wondered aloud, removing something from her purse. “Or do you think I need to crush it up first?”
Pinched between her fingers was a small, white pill.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Just something from one of the guys. He said she would like it. It’s for her birthday.”
“No,” I said. “You no should give pill to baby.” The hiss of the helium, the crackle of the flames on the grill, the thump of bean bags on the Cornhole board, and the rustle of branches — all the background noises seemed to fade. “It’s not good,” I said, staring at Charlotte, the child, the pill. Everything else was becoming unfocused, a blurred periphery, an unimportant haze.
“It’s not a baby anymore,” said Charlotte. “Can you believe it? We’ve had it for two years now! It’s already two years old!”
Somewhere behind her, deep in the unimportant haze, Dirk yelped and doubled over, clutching his elbow. One of his billy clubs lay in the grass.
“No pill,” I said, shaking my head. “No pill for baby. It might kill her.”
“Oh, come on.” Charlotte lowered her chin and fixed me with a look that said I was the crazy one. “It’s not like we do this every day. It’s a special occasion.”
“You should know what pill is first,” I said. “You should not give to her.”
“I just gave her some acid a minute ago,” said Charlotte, “but she couldn’t keep it under her tongue. She swallowed it. I don’t know if it’s going to work that way.”
Behind me, a woman’s voice said, “Is that your baby?”
There was a couple on the footpath with a stroller, I saw when I turned: a black man, a black woman.
“Of course it’s my baby,” said Charlotte. “I’m holding it, aren’t I?”
The woman was smiling, one hand raised against the sun. “I just had to stop and say that she is a beautiful baby,” she said, putting all the emphasis on the word beautiful, shaking out the first syllable as if it were a sheet, then folding it shut with the second and third.
Charlotte clutched the child to her chest, her arms as thin as seatbelt straps. Her face grew darker. “What did you just say?”
No change came over the black woman’s expression, except that her smile, which had been bright and spontaneous seconds before, seemed to lose some of its suppleness, some of its luster, like an old piece of bread left too long on the counter. “A beautiful baby,” she repeated, but this time her voice was flatter. The husband’s stood beside her as if against a wind.
“Fuck you,” said Charlotte. “Fuck both of you. You wouldn’t say that if it were a black baby.”
The woman reeled back, her eyes widening. “I beg your pardon?”
“What did you just say to my wife?” barked the husband. “What did you just say?”
“Racists!” shouted Charlotte, leaping up from the bench and aiming a finger at them. “White supremacists! Neo-Nazis!”
“Oh, hell no,” muttered the man, digging in his pocket for his phone. “Hell. No.”
“Come on, Bao.” With the child in her arms, Charlotte summoned me. “Let’s get the hell out of here.” Striding in the direction of the parking lot, she raised her voice, calling out to Dirk and all the shirtless guys, “Let’s go! We’re leaving! There’s too many racists!”
The cake was still on the picnic table. The man had his phone out and was filming.
“White girl’s crazy,” said the woman. Then locked eyes with me. “You stick around with her?”
“I go,” I said, picking up the cake and clutching it in front of me as if it might protect me. “I just Chief Technology Officer.”
Charlotte had her fob out and was clicking by the time I caught up with her. “Did you see that?” she demanded, pushing a strand of hair out of her eyes. “Did you see? I mean, come on! Fucking unbelievable!”
The child’s head was resting on her shoulder, bouncing with her stride in a way that made me think whatever teeth she had must be knocking together. Her eyes were open, but not really focused on anything, not really seeing. A strand of drool hung from her mouth down her mother’s back. Her eyes, I noticed, were blue, like her mother’s — or maybe just like the reflection of the sky.
“Maybe,” I said, catching up breathlessly, matching her stride, “there is problem. Maybe is not okay.”
“Of course it’s not okay!” said Charlotte. “Racism is never okay!”
Behind us, the guys were gathering up their bean bags, their Hula-Hoops, their nunchucks, their beer cans. All but the one by the grill. He was still grilling.
“Maybe is medical emergency,” I said. “Maybe we call someone.”
“Totally,” said Charlotte. “Totally.” Her car blinked. She was finally in range. “It’s an epidemic,” she said, “in this country.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay. I am godfather.” My mouth tasted dusty. My heart was beating hard. When I was getting my visa to come to America, I learned that if you ever call 911 and there’s no emergency, you will be arrested. You will become the emergency. But I knew that there was an emergency. “I call,” I said. “I am godfather.”
There was a rosebush growing near the parking lot, next to a handicap sign. I stood beside the rosebush, far enough from Charlotte to be out of earshot, while the phone rang.
“Medical emergency,” I said when the dispatcher answered. “This is medical emergency.”
“Can you describe your emergency, Sir?”
The guys were filtering into the parking lot, chuckling, muttering, tossing bean bags in the air and catching them. Car doors were opening and slamming: chunk, chunk, chunk.
“We are in park,” I said. “It is birthday party. But they are giving drugs to baby.”
“They’re doing what now?”
“Drugs to baby,” I said. “Drugs to baby!”
Dirk stood by on the far side of the minivan. His billy clubs were dangling, one from each hand, and his head was cocked slightly to one side, and he had his eyes fixed on me.
“Sir,” said the dispatcher, “I’m hearing dragster baby.”
Shoulders hunched, head lowered, I turned away, not letting Dirk read my lips, tracking him in my peripheral vision. “They are drugging baby.”
Chunk went the minivan’s door.
“Someone is dragging a baby?”
“In the park!”
“Which park?” asked the dispatcher. “I need the name of the park, or the address. Can you give me the name or the address?”
The engine came to life. I couldn’t see anything through the minivan’s tinted windows: just the red of its taillights, washed out by the sun, and the light glancing off its white paint as it backed out, angling in a turn.
“Name of park,” I repeated, searching my memory. “Name of park?”
Charlotte had told me its name just that morning. It had been in my GPS. But now it was not in my mind.
“Sir,” said the dispatcher, “do you need a translator?”
“Translator?” I said. “For what? Name of park?”
“You’re supposed to press two if you need the Spanish translation,” said the dispatcher. “Marque dos. Do you understand me? Do you need to marque dos?”
There was a sign beside the entrance to the parking lot, I saw, about fifty meters from me. It was facing the road. I started walking, even though I knew that it would be too late before I got there. Maybe it already was.
“Sir,” said the dispatcher, “what I’m going to have you do, if this is a real emergency, is have someone call us back for you. Okay? But if it’s not a real emergency—”
“Is real emergency,” I said. “Is real emergency!”
“Sir, I need you to listen. I need you to stop talking over me. If this is not a real emergency—”
“Fuck you,” I said. “They are gone!”
She hung up.
I stood there in the middle of the parking lot, surrounded by rippling heat waves. My heart beat like a fist against a door. When I closed my eyes, there was the child, like a sack of something draped across her mother’s shoulder, where the darkness should’ve been.
I felt everything at once then: all the love, and all the sorrow, and all the guilt, and all the rage. I wanted to throw my useless phone and hear it shatter. I wanted to scream. The weight was settling on my shoulders like a bird of prey — of everything I’d done; of everything I should’ve done — even though I never asked for any of this: never signed up to be godfather; never signed up to love the child; never signed up to love anyone, really, not even my brother; but who doesn’t love his own brother?
All I ever wanted was to lead a quiet life.
That, and make my mother proud.
— ITTO & MEKIYA OUTINI
Itto and Mekiya Outini write about America, Morocco, and all those caught in between. They’ve published in many literary magazines. They’ve also received support from MacDowell, the Steinbeck Fellowship, the Edward Albee Foundation, the New York Mills Cultural Center, and the Fulbright Program. They’re collaborating on several books, running The DateKeepers, an author support platform, and co-hosting the podcast Let’s Have a Renaissance. They live in Kansas City, Missouri.