Episode Three: The Other Woman

"The fierce buffalo
is the one whose hide
is used to make a shield."

From the song, Jane Macline,
by Daniel Owino Misiani (1968). One of my mother's favorite musicians.

:: ::

Several years later while landscaping an entrepreneur's start-up resort on the island beaches of Had-Rin, Panicker called from his London based travel agency, asking me about my US citizenship status. We talked as long distance friends do -- I told him about my work developing the three-acre, tropical stroll garden; how we constructed several miles of cracked glass patterned pathway that weaved effortlessly throughout the landscape, leaving the observer with a paradoxical sense of springtime ice cracking on a pond within a tropical green atmosphere.

"Sounds a little new-agey," He responded in his usual sarcasm.

I explained my inner struggle of building gardens for corporate owners. He told me about his business, his current diet, and a Churchill biography he had just finished. It was good to hear his voice. I had been missing him recently.

He and his wife were readying for his parents' annual visit, and his two children were still in school, which by the way, was the real reason for his call. "Richard," that was his American name, "is graduating in a few months. His student Visa is set to expire."

He paused a few moments, then continued, "Zule, I ask this of you not only because our family is deeply distressed, but also because I would be honored if you were an official member of our family. My daughter-in-law." He paused again taking a deep breath. "It would simply be a paperwork arrangement and I give you my every assurance, my son will never try to take advantage of the arrangement. You have my word."

As many young men his age and upbringing, Richard studied economics and computer science at the University. Unlike many, however, he also sang tenor in the Stanford Vocalists, something he neglected to mention to his practical-minded parents during their Sunday afternoon phone conversations. He was a serious and diligent student and, as Panicker explained, "his professors say he holds tremendous potential in his field." But, due to the economic deflation of Silicon Valley, his chances of landing a job immediately after graduation, were slim.

"It might take six to nine months. Maybe a year." Panicker explained.

"He's bright and I've discouraged him from just taking a job for the sake of taking a job." He paused to breathe.

"His student VISA expires three months after his graduation. After that, he'll be deported...back to my family's land."

As he began his next sentence, I interrupted, "Of course, my friend," mocking his characteristic turn of phrase. "Just tell me what I need to do."

From six thousand miles away, I heard Panicker sigh.

Mentally recalling my calendar, "We have a three day break in construction coming in two weeks -- it's the island's full moon party. It's crazy, 20,000 people show up for it. No one can work so we just decided to have a three day vacation each month. I was planning to head to Kuala Lampur but this sounds much more interesting. There's a direct from Bangkok to San Francisco."

"Really?" Panicker's voice broke from the growing lump in his throat, holding back tears of joy.

"I need Richard to pick me up at the airport. I'll only have about 24 hours...oh, he also needs to make the arrangements. I'll give you my credit card number for the ticket. I just don't have much free time on this job and the dial-up internet crawls. I can stay with a friend so I don't need a hotel." I paused, remembering Sam's flat, her fire-escape view of the ocean.

"Yeah, this will be fun."

"You are a beautiful human being, Zule. Thank you."

"Knock it off man. I already consider you family."

:: ::

My mother was a six foot, three inch, full-sized Kenyan force to be reckoned with. She gave birth to me the same month she defended her Master's thesis at American University in D.C.. It had taken years of struggle, numerous multi-paged applications, and other assorted forms and paperwork but, somehow she managed to receive her own student VISA and, years later, graduate with distinction from AU's International Development Program. With a newborn fatherless child and a Master's degree in hand, she returned to Kenya to begin her work on womens issues in rural districts.

Her first goal was to locate local government grants ("welfare grants" as they were affectionately called in Nairobi's multi-layered bureaucracy), which she successfully managed during the first three months back. One part of the original grant was used to develop a traveling workshop on breast self-examinations complete with rolls of meet packing paper to be used as mobile chalkboards and rolls of four inch masking tape to hold them to the wall; the other part, she used as seed money to pursue larger grants internationally.

She would often remove me from school and we'd travel the world: Berlin for the International Grants Expo; Bangkok for the Global Non-profit Alliance; San Francisco, New York, Tokyo, London. All hubs of the International non-profit network. We also visited the rural districts outside these large cities. My mother was always working, meeting with Women's Rural Networks, visiting hospitals observing the state of their equipment, listening to people who worked and stayed in these facilities. She was doing her real homework and listening more than she spoke.

The homework she received from my teachers would be completed on the departure flight. "To get it out of the way," she would say. But once the airliner's wheels blackened the runway's pavement and the seizure disturbance of the reverse-thrust had ceased shaking the fragile fuselage, like clock-work, she'd turn to me and say, "Now your education begins." My head would fill with the buzz of an arrival. My mother had a beautiful smile that revealed a quarter inch gap between her front teeth. Her lips always seemed a little chapped.

She taught me to wander, to observe foreign lands, landscapes, cultural patterns, to enjoy the natural beauty of life, existing undisturbed from outsider judgment. As travelers to another city, she encouraged me to imagine someone who grew up within its imaginary walls and who had left it. She would ask me to locate the things that they might miss the most. I learned to appreciate nature's central axis, and of course, its limb-like avenues of expression. We timed the sun's rise, its mystical descents. We recorded times and dates like archeaologists cataloging fragments of bone. In the cities, we'd sit in cafes, reading borrowed hardcover books, watching strangers pass. I learned how shadows dance through seasons, how the setting sun radiates, shattered mirror-like from a lake's surface, and how the rural night sky appears when it is undisturbed from the urban glow. She insisted that I learn the local greetings, the night sky's constellations, the names of trees, plants and animals, and that I keep track of all newly learned vocabulary in my writing journal, which also contained my own unfiltered impressions.

I was only nine years old when we traveled to her first interview with the Susan B. Khomen Foundation. She was determined. She wore her favorite and only business suit; the one that had been given to her by an heiress donor in Hamburg. The interview was a defining moment of her life, her work and her own personal struggle. Her courage navigating Manhattan's blizzard-like conditions and dedication to her cause inspired me. She returned from this trip energized, renewed, prepared to embrace her work of impossible hope.

The grant she was eventually awarded made it possible to begin hiring a small staff, to transform our eating room into a make-shift, truncated office space. Desks soon lined the three walls, leaving little room for extended movements. A newly purchased computer sat in the middle, like a monument to my mother's cause.

When she was diagnosed with her own breast cancer, her introverted heiress-donor anonymously paid to fly her for treatment in Germany. It would take one year before the doctors removed her left breast, and another before they removed her right one. She seemed to work even harder after her physical setbacks. But several years later, her body quietly surrendered. By then, the cancer had entered her endocrine system; her pituitary gland had swelled to the size of a ripened cabernet grape. It made it difficult for both of us to swallow, to eat. Her frequent headaches caused partial blindness. She often hallucinated in the darkness of her colorful mind. She began to speak in a broken English-Kikuyu-Swahili dialect. Words replaced sentences.

I watched my mother shrink to a fraction of her fully bodied self. Her skin hung from her frame as gravity exerted its pull. Eventually, she died quietly the same evening I began re-reading to her selections from von Hombolt's reflections on the flora and fauna of South America. It was one of my favorite books -- she had introduced me to it.

One of the last things I remember of her, at least one of the last things that I want to remember, was her telling me that she loved me; she mouthed it without much vocal volume.

My mother was not only saddled with a great physical weight, her entire way of being in the world was itself an education to those around her. Her original student visa to the United States made it possible. And it made me sympathetic to immigration/citizenship, VISA, bureaucratic paperwork issues. In one of my freshman sociology courses at Columbia, I remember my professor, Professor Santos, speak about citizenship, immigration, visas, and discrimination. At one point in a lecture, he spoke about creating a global non-profit modeled on Doctors Without Borders but called, A World Without Papers. I always thought that was an excellent idea.

:: ::

I boarded the San Francisco bound flight with my carry-on bag, containing the essentials: a change of clothes, passport, citizenship papers, and other basic necessities. I had learned early to travel light. Besides, most of my human trappings had, years ago, been stored half way around the world in a cold aluminum structure at Darrell's Storage Yard.

The Thai Airways staff welcomed me aboard with synchronized deference and appreciation, as I wandered down the bustling aisle to my bulkhead, emergency exit seat. Soft, atmospheric music filled the cabin at a volume level that distracted from the calm and serenity it wished to evoke. The movie screens on the back of each seat filled with images of flowing, cascading water and pine trees gently blowing in the afternoon's setting sun. The flight attendant inquired if I was able to perform the necessary emergency exit responsibilities. Remembering the Nymph, I wondered whether she was sleeping with the 'fucking pilot.' I spent most of the trip keeping to myself, reading Terence Young's cultural geography of San Francisco's Parks from 1850 to 1930. It was one of the few books that I lug around with me during my extended travels abroad.

Hours later the skidding sound of the plane's wheels made me turn my head to the white knuckled passenger seated beside me. As with every landing these days, I heard my mother's education proclamation. Its bittersweetness brought a smile to my face.

Richard stood beyond the wrought iron gate separating passengers from their handlers, holding a hand written sign. "Ms. Zule," printed in neatly etched block letters. I approached but his eyes were directed elsewhere. I asked, "Richard?"

It had been almost five years since the last time we met. Then, he was still just a bright high school student with interests in history, physics, movies, music, and numerous opinions about current events. He had grown. Physically. And, as I would discover later, mentally. As we spoke and made polite re-connections, I noticed that his voice bordered on the baritone but mostly within the tenor range. It reminded me of his father's. Richard's greeting was systematic. Organized neatly. He offered to take my bag, asking politely about the flight. We talked comfortably, exiting the airport's glass doors, walking into San Francisco's moist air.

:: ::

The ceremony was brief, and well attended by our sole witness, Richard's roommate who also studied economics at Stanford. We ate lunch at a vegetarian restaurant near the courthouse, catching up on life, his father, and my work. Richard planned to stay in the Bay Area for a couple of years, earning enough money to pay back his family debt, and then travel back to India to live, running his grandfather's farm.

"You should visit someday." Richard said before biting into a roasted egg-plant pannini. "My grandmother would love to meet you. Dad says she asks about you every time they speak. And now you're family. She's even more excited."

"How old is she now?" I asked forgetting the time frame of his extended family.

"Uhmm...93." His napkin wiped a crushed rosemary leaf from the corner of his mouth. His dark trendy styled, thick mane flowed effortlessly with the movement of the napkin.

"But she's actually 92 or 94?" I confessed, "I forget how it works."

"Oh right," he paused having to recall the difference between lunar months and western Gregorian calendars. "In terms of the number of days she has been on this earth -- they would equal around 92. But she's seen over a thousand moons so in India, she'd be 94."

Not wanting to push the issue, I let it drop, instead asking, "Panicker's brother runs the farm, right?"

"Of course, he's the oldest."

"So he didn't have much of a choice?"

"I don't think he'd think of it that way. He is the oldest son and that's just what you do. Not really a choice. It's just what you do as the eldest." The conversation fell silent for a few moments; the afternoon breeze signaled the oncoming fog. It blew across our plates, my back, and I reached for the penultimate button on my sweater's face.

Years before, I had spent a few months in San Francisco working on Golden Gate Park's Japanese Tea Garden. It was my first post-doc. During the day I learned how to rake sand, remove leaves, trim shoots, retouch paint, manicure rocks, and how to care for and maintain the several hundred varieties of plants and trees that decorated the landscape. At night, I continued my studies, reading an English translation of The Suketai with the head groundskeeper, a Zen Buddhist monk who lived modestly but comfortably in the Sunset District. The City reminds me of an European or Asian city. And, while many of its residents may lament the decay-like effects of gentrification, the rise of the chain store manufactured feel, and downfall of The City, I have always remembered fondly the gentle oasis of its garden parks.

After lunch, I took a cab from the courthouse to the park, walking its paths, smelling the pine, salt scented breeze. I was hard pressed to detect any of the complaints voiced by local authors or the make shift spray painted signs on the bus stops. Families gathered, children played, the evening's fog rolled between branches of the giant redwood structures, bursting at times like an overworked fog machine blowing moisture filled clouds into an audience at a warehouse rave.

I thought of Richard and our conversation, our arranged marriage. For him to gain the benefits of citizenship we would have to meet with US Immigration agents at some point in the next few months. I began to mentally schedule my next vacation -- at least a week in The City -- so I could settle the citizenship issue, but also to continue exploring the regions around this meca of earthly beauty. I created a detailed list of our 'supposed' daily routine together. When we awoke, where we lived, our friends together, and I realized we needed to add my name to several of his apartment's utilities -- just to make it look legitimate. Somehow two practical strangers would have to construct a life together and document our connections, economic and emotional. This would entail a considerable amount of energy but, for Panicker and his family, I would do almost anything.

:: ::

During our time together at the bookshop, Panicker naturally assumed a fatherly role. I knew my own father in the tentative way that children who are the result of a one night affair do; he was an interesting, quixotic character. The first time I met him, I saw immediately why my mother would be attracted to him -- his penetrating hazel eyes, his slender muscular frame, and thick wavy hair: all of which I inherited, but none of which I had ever seen in myself until the day I entered his University office.

When my mother met him, he was married, living with three children in a small Virginia suburb of Washington D.C.. My mother and several of the other graduate students were invited out to dinner after his keynote address titled, "Developing Space: An Integrity," delivered to the international development program. That night at dinner, she was seated next to him at the restaurant's family style table. She was impressed by his passion for, and knowledge of, global development issues and creative constructions of sustainable landscape. Often, during my travels with my mother, she would tell me stories about his work. She had written several papers about it.

The afternoon I walked into his office, I was an undergraduate at Columbia; I had taken the train from NY to DC. I explained the plan to my track coach and she supported my decision to miss practice that day -- she assured me that my starter status was not in danger and that my trip to D.C. would be good for me.

Growing up in Kenya, I had the benefit of meeting and training with several of Kenya's legendary generations of marathon runners. I found that distance running came easily to me but it wasn't until my coach in secondary school suggested that I apply for college scholarships that I realized I might be able afford to study in the United States. Several months later, I had offers from European Universities, universities in the United States, and even one in Canada, which still to this day seems strange to me. Nonetheless, I decided to attend Columbia as undeclared major with an athletic scholarship.

From my mom's desire to transform society, I gravitated toward architecture, and from my father, I was pulled back to landscaping. During my sophomore year, the same year I began my "coming out," as it was called in those days, I declared my major; during my junior year, and after my first real relationship heartbreak, I traveled to D.C. to meet my biological father. We sat talking in his office for hours. His memory of my mother was hazy but he remembered being impressed by her determination, her passion, intelligence, and physical strength. They went on three dates, "meetings" as he recalled, to discuss specifics of her master's thesis. Usually they'd discuss the thesis for about 40 minutes and then spend the next couple of hours talking about more personal things.

On the last of these "meetings" they became intimate and nine months later, she gave birth to me in a friend's apartment. Like thousands of international graduate students, she had no health insurance nor was she even a citizen. A fellow student who was previously a nurse before returning to school, told her she could deliver it easily. My biological father confessed that he had always had his suspicion about that night but his own marriage and children took most of his free time for thought. When I explained to him who I was, he didn't challenge me nor did he insist on blood and DNA tests. He said he could see his own reflection in my clearly. The resemblance was rather striking.

For the next couple of years, I visited him at least once a semester; after our third meeting he invited me to come home with him to meet his wife and my half-siblings. My eldest sister had several children of her own. After a moment of hesitation, I agreed to go.

:: ::

The family gathered at the parent's home awaiting the arrival of their half sister. My biological father, the professor, had talked to his wife about me after our first meeting. She knew about the one night affair with an international graduate student but like her husband was unaware of its result. After the initial shock of his revealed secret, she grew to understand. It wasn't the first time either of them were involved with other people. They married with an awareness that infidelity was real and there was no reason to hide it -- trust was more important than physical exclusivity. In ways that I had a difficult time understanding, their relationship had porous boundaries within distinct boundaries. He used a gardening metaphor to explain it. Although it wasn't the first affair, I was the first child from their dalliances. The night he told his wife about me, after she calmed from the initial shock, she said, "you always had a thing for Kenyan women."

After opening the third bottle of wine and well after their children had retired to their own respective homes, the professor's wife asked me about my mother. She knew the broad outlines of her life and death but with great appreciation and respect for my mother, she asked me about some of the more intimate details.

"Your mother was an amazing woman."

"You knew her?" I asked a little shocked at her abruptness.

"I met her the night of your father's speech." A second shock jolted through my nervous system. Despite my semi-contorted face, she continued, "A group of us went to dinner that night. Your mother listened and asked questions. They were the type of questions that many of the University's privileged students would never think to ask a professor. I saw the way Daniel looked at her. I watched my husband, your father, fall in love with her story and her understanding."

"I am so sorry." I responded thinking it would somehow make up for something.

"No, Zule," her voice softened, "your mother was amazing. I fell in love with her as well."

:: ::

As I lay among the guest room's 1000 thread count sheets, I imprinted into my memory the faces and names of my newly discovered brother and sisters, their spouses, my nieces and nephews. I was stunned by how well adjusted everyone seemed to be to my presence. "Was it real?" I remember thinking. Or, were they just acting on their best behavior? I wanted to believe and trust they were genuine.

After graduation, during the period of my own travels and acceptance to graduate school, my biological father and I began to communicate less. When I landed in Dallas, eventually entering Panicker's world and being accepted into his family, I began forming bonds that had previously been attached to the professor and his family. Panicker and I became close friends, his family welcomed me, and I realized I had replaced the doubts of biological bonds with authentic attachments to a truly loving family.

Little did I know at the time that I would one day marry into it.

But as I left the grounds of Golden Gate park, hailing a cab from outside Amobea Records, hours after speaking my vows to Panicker's son, I felt an intimate connection to my friend and surrogate father-figure.


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Panicker's Travels
Episode Four: The Summer of Sam