"Had
a rough time your first week, huh, Baba Olu?" Mother said.
Names are unimportant. Mothers are all mothers, and these three
stared at me intensely.
"No,
I was in control from day one," I said, fully aware that
African fatherhood was at stake.
"The
two toddlers have diaper rash," Mother continued.
"You
have to change them on schedule," said another.
"Peanut
butter and jelly is not something children should eat every
day all day."
"The
walls are not Crayola canvases."
"The
couch pillows are torn apart."
"The
carpet may have to be replaced. Drool is the worst stain."
"The
VCR, CD player, TV, and radio must all be taken to the repair
shop."
John Coltrane's
cosmic music played in my aching, elephant-sized head. I took
each blow to the lower extremities like Ali took Frazier's left
hook to the jaw. Like a man. I fell and stood up in one motion.
Most people agree Ali should have stayed down longer. Like Ali,
I said nothing. What could Father say when his manhood, like
Ali's jaw, was broken?
The mothers
conferenced among themselves as I sat before them in the father-zone.
Continually, they used the word "experiment." Experiment?
Was I a summer experiment? Who were the guinea pigs? Who were
the scientists? Me or the children?
"Where
is Ife? Ifeee!" Ife is my three-year-old.
"There's
a little girl in the lake!" screamed a bearded man, pointing
his walking stick at Lake Michigan.
I rose
like Robo-Cop, stepped away from my untouched tossed salad,
and looked into the eyes of Abike, my six-year-old for a millisecond.
It was her assignment to watch Ife while I focused on the twins,
Abiodun and Awodola, who were twenty months.
"Abike,
where is Fe Fe?" I shouted as I ran. Abike sat looking
like Mantan Moreland.
I ran to
jump in Lake Michigan. I knocked down ten people. At the stone-bank
of the lake, a blue-eyed woman with scalelike skin held me by
my wrist.
"Look,"
she pointed. "The child is swimming. Come, dear."
She reached her arms out, pulled Ife to her bosom.
I looked
stupid, like I'd just heard a James Brown lyric.
"What
a great father you are," the woman told me. "I told
my lazy son-in-law just this morning that every father should
teach his babies how to swim." Not only had I not taught
Ife to swim, but I'd drown in dishwater.
"Thank
you kindly, ma'am," I said.
She handed
Ife to me. I smacked her to my chest like a wet platypus catfish.
She grinned and chuckled and the world was back in focus.
When Ife
and I reached the outdoor cafe, Dun and Dola were red with catsup
and fries. Abike was gone. Her lemonade stood half emptied on
the table. I did not crumble like a cracker. I was wet. I sort
of wafted like a cookie in milk.
With Dun
and Dola in arm and Ife marking our trail with wet tracks, we
set out to find Abike. Once again, many eyes were upon us.
There is
nothing scarier to a parent than when a child is lost in a crowd
of thousands of people. Every horror crossed my mind, every
prayer mumbled from my mouth. I am neither Christian nor Muslim,
but if Jesus and Allah could bring my baby back, I'd shout Amen
and assalaam-alaikum. I prayed in tongues, many different tongues.
We walked
the two-mile Navy Pier dock with a trail of security officers,
policeman, and a host of caring people who had joined the crusade
to find Abike.
Tears exploded
from my eyes that were itching from summer allergy. I went into
hysterics, screaming, "Abike is big sister and she knows
better." I felt like I was out at sea, overboard without
a life jacket. The council of mothers would have my head. How
could Abike watch Ife when she can't watch herself? they'd say.
I love my children. I had been loving them all summer. More
intensely now. Now I knew what it felt like to love them, not
as a father, but as a mother.
A crowd
of almost 100 people cried and prayed for Abike. They surrounded
me as if I were in a womb. My water broke and I cried and cried.
It had been one hour.
"Baby
Orishamola, come to the information desk," the loudspeaker
exclaimed in a demanding voice. I didn't know if I had miscarried
and would never see Abike alive again. I would give my life
for my daughter, as mothers do bit by sacrificial bit every
time they birth a baby.
The children,
my sympathetic and empathetic cohorts, and me, climbed two flights
of concrete steps. At the top, standing next to the information
desk, flanked by the biggest Ferris wheel in all the world,
was the most missed child in history, my Abike.
She ran
to me and clutched me, as a rag doll. She had been just as worried
as we'd been. Before I could speak, she began wiping tears from
my face with the yellow flower on her buba.
"Baba
Olu, I was trying to find the water. You told me to watch Fe
Fe," Abike said.
The tears
on her face flowed into the tears of the father who, for the
summer, had become a mother.
