Last week, Mama Sesay told her daughter that she no longer dyes her hair black. Yemi imagined all the tufts of kinky gray and white hair sprouting from her oiled crown. Her mother was finally settling into her sixties. At least that is what Yemi told her over the phone. Either that, or she had given up and accepted the fact that she could no longer dance goombay for six straight hours at the hi-life dances anymore. Yemi only told Mama Sesay the part about being comfortable with one’s age, not surrendering to it. She firmly believes there are two kinds of truth in the world: the better truth and the reality. The better truth is always easier to accept.
Yemi’s reality is rarely shared during the weekly calls home. Mama Sesay does not need to know that her daughter lives in a quaint one bedroom in Brooklyn spending nearly two grand a month on a place her real estate agent revealed to her as “a complete steal” in a conspiratorial whisper. And what good would it do to know that one of her neighbors was a woman named Kristin, a white liberal from Boston who never seemed to maintain a steady job. Why bring up the subject of gainful employment when one works as a stand up comedian? The better truth about French bulldogs is simpler. Yemi tells her mother that her neighbor Kristin totes her French bulldog in her pale arms or a small stroller. She calls the dog Diabla, a fitting name for a pet that rediscovers her love for barking whenever Yemi is on the phone with Mama Sesay.
She could almost hear soup bubbling up in the background amidst all the pleas from Kristin to sit, stay and be a good girl. She remembers hearing her father shout in glee after Arsenal scored a goal. Mama Sesay on the other hand was quiet for a solid minute and a half before she responded to the better truth about aging. “If you say so,” she said before a hurried goodbye and a return to the serious matter of frying fish and boiling meats. Yemi put her phone down comfortable with the fact that there are certain things she speaks to her family about and certain things she does not. This Thanksgiving, Yemi decided to try to speak a little bit more. It has been three years since she has been to her parent’s home in Virginia.
Yemi sits on a black stool in her mother’s kitchen. Tops hop on boiling pots behind her mother’s back. Her mother pounds fufu in a large mortar and pestle in front of her. With every slam of the pestle, the tops of the cookery jump. Yemi’s twin sister Fifi is in the dining room nursing Sigismund, her third. Yemi hopes it will be her final child.. Kwabena, Fifi’s husband, watches soccer with Papa Sesay in the living room. There is a small bowl of akara between them. Yemi remembers each of her sister’s pregnancies by her own stints in various comedy clubs. An exact nine months was the duration of twins Esther and Bernard in Fifi’s womb and her time at The Funny Farm in Greenpoint. Sigismund was eight and a half months at The Jubilee in Morningside Heights or Harlem or whichever name brings more people to the show. For eight and a half months she worked at The Jubilee—. She was fired the day her sister gave birth to Sigismund and did not see it as an opportune moment to mention her professional blow during such a happy occasion.
Next to Fifi and the baby are the twins. From the same bowl they eat boiled yams and butter. After each bite of yam, they say “yum.” Back and forth and back and forth. Yum. When Yemi was in middle school she was given the name Yummy Yemi for kissing Victor Sarpong. Victor wasn’t a particularly bright boy, but he was talkative. After Yemi learned that she had been given the title of class slut she made sure to always fix Victor a plate of food at the parties their families would attend. She would tell him she made it especially for him and she would watch him refuse the plate and not eat anything for the rest of the night. She loved how miserable he looked in the festive atmosphere, sucking down a cup of sweet ginger beer to celebrate her victory. After graduating middle school, Yemi lost the title of school sanctioned slut but always wondered if things would have been different if she had been named Alisha or Kaliyah. You couldn’t find dirty meaning in American names, right?
When Maria became pregnant with her twin baby girls, she had basked in the opportunity to choose their names: Yemi and Fifi. Proper African names. Over the fuzzy phone connection between Accra and Woodbridge, her husband Kenneth clarified things for his father Kwame. Gone were the days of African people needing to fear their own culture. It was 1984. Jesse Jackson was running for president. Yes, these children would have proper African names, names that spoke of their home. And Yemi would be a fine name. Maria always did like Nigerian names. She often suspected her own Nigerianness in the rare stories her mother Miatta Kanu told her about her father. But Yemi and Fifi’s grandmother did not have the time to reminisce over a man who left. Mama Sesay’s father's name changed too many times over the years, but she was sure her mother had called her father Kehinde twice and that was sufficient confirmation for her. Maria was, in fact, a Nigerian. And her children were Nigerian by extension.
Yemi watches her mother pound away at the fufu with a wooden stick. The white mass hops up and down. Her mother, feeling her daughter’s eyes on her, looks up from the bowl.
"How is Peter doing?"
Yemi had been dating Peter on and off for the past three years. She was sure her mother would cite her relationship with Peter as one of the few normalizing facts about her other daughter's life. That her daughter had been pursuing a career as a stand-up comic for the past several years was something she preferred to not bring up at church, the farmers markets, christenings, baby showers, weddings, the car wash, or town council meetings. At the very least, she could whisper Peter’s name to an acquaintance at the local pharmacy. “That’s right sister Edith. My daughter has found someone.”
"Oh, Pete?” Yemi is well-known to pose an unnecessary question to stall for time. “He’s in Vermont."
The pounding of fufu stops. Her mother, holding the long wooden stick in mid-air looks up, in what she believes to be the direction of Vermont. The untrained eye will not be able to see Maria’s lips part and the slight shift in the air as her prayers for her daughter escape. Yemi is no stranger to her mother’s waves of religiosity. Maria is sending a small prayer to Pete Wilson in Vermont. And since her mother has sifted out some pride in her daughter’s patchworked thirtysomething years of living, Yemi remembers not to tell her mother that Pete had stopped talking to her again after she rejected his marriage proposal for the third time. A better, more basic truth: Pete was in Vermont, at The Wilson Estate, probably, hunting duck, eating cheese, and doing other very white things.
Yemi’s legs cross and uncross in her high chair. Her three year old niece and nephew approach her stool. They are investigating Yemi’s face. On the edge of twenty dark brown toes, they attempt to figure out why their Auntie looks more like their mother than they do. In worn jeans and a hoodie, Yemi is clearly not Mama.
Fifi walks into the kitchen, somehow managing to have her brightly patterned Dutch wax skirt billowing behind her, baby secured on her back with a thick cloth that wraps around her breasts. Despite three children, Fifi still dresses impeccably, cooks the best scotch, speaks four languages, and genuinely enjoys family time. Fifi had been excused from cooking with the family because of her recent delivery. So naturally, Fifi prepares multiple meals for the family. Her scotch eggs set in the oven. Her jollof simmers gently on the stovetop, wafting through the air victoriously. Baby in one arm, wooden spoon in the other, she stirs the tomato-infused rice. She spoons a small bit of rice into her mouth. Her face is serious. She adds water to the rice and then covers it again. Yemi’s offering to the family meal is a dish of homemade cranberry sauce. By the time she reached Maryland, she realized that half the container had poured into the backseat. She salvaged the rest. Her father, opened the door to let her daughter in, muttered a quick Tenke after he placed the half empty bowl on the kitchen counter and returned to watch a European soccer game.
The baby is chewing on its own arm. It strikes Yemi as odd that whenever her nieces and nephews pull bizarre acts like licking their own feet or leaving pepper chicken wings under the couch it is usually followed by a collective “aw.” Mama Sesay walks over to pinch the baby’s arm. “Look at my grandchild.”
Fifi and Yemi had been the same until high school. Fifi had started going on dates and Yemi began to write jokes about the fact that she was not going on dates. Now Fifi had three children and Yemi had rejected three marriage proposals. Ultimately, she still blamed Victor Sarpong for the shambles of her life. When she looked him up on Facebook she learned that he had married a Sierra Leonean-British woman and lived in Oxford. His profile picture was of the two of them eating at a West African restaurant. Yemi presumed that he overcame his fried stew fears.
“Mama, this coconut rice is too sweet. What have you put in here?” Fifi was dishing a small bowl of rice for herself before dinner. Oh, please. As both Fifi and Yemi know, their mother is too stubborn to accept compliments. Mama Sesay excuses herself upstairs to freshen up before the guests come.
The charade continues. Fifi walks over to the living room and sets the baby down on Kwabena’s lap. “You are lucky that I learned to cook like Mama, right Kwabena?”
Kwabena is the type of man who is always taking calls. His right ear remains glued to a bluetooth at all times and he is never exactly sure where he is. His baby is in front of him, so is his wife. Arsenal is behind them both. He simultaneously exists in a boardroom, a soccer game, and his in-law’s sofa. He nods his head vigorously and continues eating akara at a slow pace, not wanting to be too full before the main course.
After her performance ends, Fifi picks up the baby again and presses the baby to her breast. The smacking sound disturbs Yemi. The fact that her sister can breastfeed so openly has never made her feel comfortable. Of course, she had seen women breastfeeding before in New York. It was legal for women to walk around topless there, but that didn’t mean she was okay with it.
Fifi’s eyes shift onto Yemi.
“You still with that white boy?”
“Pete. His name is Pete. And yes, Pete and I are still dating.”
“Hm.” Fifi rubs her baby’s back.
Yemi walks over to the living room to sit with the men. Basic truths needed no elaboration.
Once the dinner table is set, Mama Sesay asks her grown daughter to sit between the twin children. Once the turkey is placed on the table, her Uncle Kevin and Auntie Elsie show up an extraordinarily reasonable forty-five minutes late. And once seated at the dinner table, Uncle Kevin asks her mother what Yemi is doing with her life. Mama Sesay responds. “She is preparing to take the GMAT.” Yemi’s grip tightens on the chair’s arm rest. She had taken the GMAT years ago and had done well, applied to many schools and was accepted to many. And then she had changed her mind. She bites into a Scotch Egg, trying to remember the childhood giddiness of eating her favorite food. She is no longer five years old and it is better to not really want things. For some inexplicable reason, her right calf begins to moisten. She looks down to see her nephew confusing her human leg for a turkey one. His large eyes dare her to protest.
Fifi reaches over to Yemi and pats her arm. “Oh, he’s just a baby.” She picks up a large spoon to serve her children and husband.
Kwabena maintains enough decency to look slightly outraged. But he is not sure whether to set boundaries for his child or defy his wife. He weakly beckons for the baby. “Sigi, come over here.” The baby’s gums remain on Yemi, small arms clutching to the back of her leg. An infant’s nails provoke a distinct registry of pain in willfully barren women. Yemi sees herself in the crystals of the dining room chandelier. She sees the half full container of cranberry sauce and wonders why she even bothered at all.
“Pick up the damn baby.”
Within seconds Fifi drops the serving spoon and picks her baby up. There are no voices heard in the dining room, only the clacking of silverware against porcelain. The occasional smacking of greasy, small lips on the end of nipples, both plastic and real. Fifi never excuses herself from the dinner table when she breastfeeds. Yemi wonders if her mother ever breastfed them at a family gathering before.
"Auntie Yemi, you should tell us a joke."
Yemi looks at the dinner table around her. She sees her mother staring at her expectantly. Her father craning his neck for an impossible glance at the television. Her nephews and niece looking at her, the whites of their eyes like small fufu balls. It is impossible to say “no” to children who believe turkey is supposed to be stuffed with jollof rice.
"You want to know what they used to call me in middle school?"
Fifi's back stiffens in her wooden chair. The baby yelps. And a better truth slips out.
Contributor Notes
Soek Fambul is a Southern writer with roots in Ghana and Sierra Leone. In May 2019, Fambul was selected as a recipient for the Miami Writers Institute scholarship. In 2018, Fambul was a VONA Speculative Fiction Fellow and Finalist for the Speculative Literature Foundation’s Diverse Worlds and Diverse Writers Grants. Her essays have been published in The Establishment, Pens and Needles, FanSided, and forthcoming in Restless Mag. Currently, she is a James Michener Fiction Fellow at the University of Miami. “Better Truths” is her first fiction publication.
