photo by Alex Lear
Wounded
All five of our children were sitting, their big eyes furtively looking around, each one both anxious and fearful to hear what I had to say. Tayari, her voice steely and cold, had told me I had to be the one to tell Asante, Mtume, Kiini, Tuta and Tiaji. And now the time had come.
The usually active siblings were silently, even sullenly, bunched at one end of the table, occasionally fidgeting, resentful like kids waiting for a whipping they all would receive because of something that only one of them had done. Tayari did not look up or at me. I sucked up some air, screwed up my courage, and proceeded to make the dreaded announcement.
The whole house on Tennessee Street had been holding its breath waiting on Kalamu’s proclamation, a statement that would signal permission to exhale. I don’t remember what I said, nor who spoke up when I half-heartedly asked if anyone had a question or something they wanted to say.
None of us knew what all was going to happen next nor what this rearrangement would bode for the immediate future.
After years and years of getting along, including all of us weathering and reconstituting ourselves following Tayari’s brain aneurism operation, no one at the table, surely not Tayari nor the oldest of the young quintet, Asante, now suffering through her sweet sixteen year, but also and paradoxically not even the man whose steadfast daddy had set the example for him of what it meant to be a husband and father, none of the attentive ears really wanted to hear Kalamu say that he and mama were breaking up and that he was leaving home.
When I uttered whatever fate-filled words I spoke I was determined not to go back on my declaration. I really can’t recall the specific syllables I muttered, but regardless of the haziness of my memory, what still shakes me is the repulsive feeling of self mutilation, even though at that time I rationalized my actions as corrective surgery.
Cutting loose was something I knew how to do. At various moments in my life, I have not hesitated when I decided to sever ties. I have become acclimated to dealing with the freedom of uncertainty even as I am certain that I will continue to push forward notwithstanding that too often my moving forward means leaving others behind.
Although six other people were present and feeling their own pain, none of them was aware of what I was really doing. I had pulled out the ever rigid knife of my pig-iron-strong willfulness, unsentimentally pressed the edge to my nostrils and proceeded to chop away at my big-ass nose all because I had come to the conclusion that my marriage had run into the wailing wall and had posted a big, red stop sign displaying a one word curse.
Divorce.
I was pulling the plug. Tayari and I were separating.
It’s over a quarter century later and the emotional wound still aches a bit whenever I place my finger on that unraveling.
Once you cut it off, your nose never grows back the same way it was before you amputated it in a vain bid to save face. Was living my life the way I wanted really worth breaking up our family? Regardless of the answer—an answer that varied from time to time over the last thirty years or so—regardless, the deed was done and never rescinded.
I do not like to think about that day but sometimes like a hurricane that unexpectedly turns or doubles-back, the awfulness of that day engulfs me in a flood of harsh, unforgettable recollections, forcing me to recognize just how deeply I wounded myself.
—kalamu ya salaam