"Ernest" by Munawar Abbas
When I still only reached my mother’s waist, she’d sometimes take me to see the neighbor above us while my father was at work. Those were the days we were still in that first apartment in Sheepshead where, during the later afternoon and with the shades drawn, the living room would be covered by a green shadow that made time slow, that made walking to my mother a crawl like walking underwater.
Those were also the days when, if I asked, and sometimes even if I didn’t, my mother would cradle my head in her lap and run her fingers through hair that was still coarse then, moving them so slowly that I’d close my eyes and move them along with her circling fingers.
On occasion, if there was enough time before my father came home, she’d take me to see the white man that lived alone in the apartment above. While hearing my father’s snores in the other room, I’d hear this man’s footsteps above me when in bed, trying to trap the sound of his feet with my eyes, imagining the life of his that happened when I didn’t see him.
She’d take me with her to see him and she’d take food, too, the rainbow sweet rice with raisins she always fed me for dessert, and other things I’m sure as well. He’d sit in his blue shirt and green hunter’s vest, and he’d have the rice and say it’s so sweet and delicious. I’d sit across from him and watch his iguana as it crawled along the couch behind him, my early eyes still sharp to catch the green goosebumped skin.
Across from both, I’d see him smile at her and say thank you, the words and gestures the only English she understood. She’d lower her face and I’d see the upper line of her teeth, her downcast smile turned away from both of us.
Later in my bed, when I’d watch the ceiling and follow his footsteps, I’d remember the green hunter’s vest and blue shirt and call him Ernest, like the man in the movies, and their faces would meld into one for me. And I’d hold on to that after he left the building the way some people leave, without a word and gone forever, like a wisp of mist that melts away unseen.
I should say, it was really just the one time that it had happened. But it couldn’t have been and if it weren’t, it doesn’t seem fair that it was just that one time I remember. I’ve tried lying to myself, conjuring more days so they exist in multitudes and stretch further and wider than just that one day. In one, I hold the iguana and feel the scales, the webbed feet, my fingers tracing the bumps along the length of its green body, the goosebumps crawling over to my skin like a trail. In another, Ernest smiles but says nothing, and in another, my father is there and is the only one smiling.
But in another, my mother and I switch places so it’s her who sits across from Ernest and when he tastes the rainbow rice and says it’s so sweet and delicious, she doesn’t lower her face but looks across and smiles.
Munawar Abbas studied at Hunter College and Stony Brook Southampton. His Pushcart-nominated work has previously appeared in Scoundrel Time magazine. He lives in Brooklyn.
