Serrated

Joseph cursed his face in the cab’s rearview mirror. A mix of old and new betrayed the convergence of time. Grayed goatee and riverbeds of crow’s feet; salt and peppered hair. When he smiled big, dimples sank into his laugh lines. A hint of boyhood lit Joseph’s eyes. He had little else to show for his twelve years in the city.

At 5:17 a.m. it was still dark. But there Maryam was, behind the counter, making a first batch of the dark roast. Joseph would have to go inside the café. And no matter how their talk went, whatever she might say, he’d stop in for coffee tomorrow and every day after that. He had no reason to end it, other than he’d lived long enough—forty-five years—to know when things just weren’t working. Maryam was a sweet girl. At twenty-eight, of course she was, with no kids and Joseph helping to pay her rent. What she might have hoped for with him, he couldn’t say. His not asking, even after eight months, was deliberate. He didn’t want the work of knowing and then having to give it. Joseph held the steering wheel and waited out the dawn.

 

The contours of Joseph’s morning rarely changed. The routineness of it, the busyness it made in his brain, helped him forget all the things he hadn’t yet achieved. Sleep offered sweetness that bittered as soon as he woke. He’d chosen the most grating alarm setting to counter his wishful dreaming.

Back pressed against the toilet lid: ✓

Sink water pooled in his palms: ✓

A tight smile to check brushed teeth: ✓

House slippers switched for driving shoes: ✓

Joseph did these things each single day.

 

Two summers ago, he’d discovered the African club scene: a Tuesday and Saturday night of afrobeats and reggae in a rented auditorium with a DJ that played rock and hip-hop on the other nights. Joseph was leaned against the wall, waiting for the bathroom, when he heard a girl asking another girl to pretend to know her so the “creepy old dude in the suede jacket” would leave her alone. He turned to look at the man that had been described, and he was about ten years younger than Joseph.

“Ugh, like you would even give him the time of day,” the second girl said.

“Right? It’s always the ones old enough to be your grandpa.” On grandpa, the first girl had held eyes with Joseph, and he instantly understood he was the prototype they hoped to avoid. Then the girls high-fived and laughed, heads thrown back. Comfortably—no longer strangers.

Joseph went back. Not to that club, but to the two others in the city. He left his leather jacket at home and assumed his actual role: a mostly attractive middle-aged man hoping to meet a woman who would spend time with him. Beyond time, he didn’t know what more to want; the years had dulled the brightness of his longing.

Two or three of the women he’d met at the clubs were young enough to be the daughter he didn’t have, and by the third coffee date—because that was all they’d agree to—they were sure: Joseph, this isn’t going to work. This was after their teasing about Nigerian scammers and observations that Joseph is such an easy name to pronounce.

And then he’d met Maryam—at the café where he bought coffee on the way to his morning shift.

“Maryam.” She’d said it plainly like that and held out her hand.

He thought it might be a sign, biblically, since his name was Joseph. Nothing else was remarkable about their meeting, but when one decides something is meant to be, everything surrounding it must be exaggerated for emotional effect.

Being with Maryam had been easy. Their time was spent doing together the things they would have otherwise done alone. They brought each other along for walks and food in the tiny places the locals called holes-in-the-wall. With his pocketknife, he’d carved her name into a tree.

Joseph liked that he didn’t have to put too much into the dating thing with Maryam. And he liked that she didn’t mind at all. As the months went on, Maryam gained with him the confidence of a woman expecting to take first place. She’d imagined the hovering and elbow-pushing of faceless women also vying. Except there were none. Joseph just had the ease of a man who was happy with what was, not needing more.

An African, a Nigerian, a Yoruba man his age—never married, no children, and living alone in America: an affliction past shame. His condition was best tackled with prayer and scripture. Joseph’s mother mailed to him, express from Nigeria to the city, three plastic bottles of imitation spring water; with them, the handwritten instructions:

Joseph—
1.) Hold the bottle firm in your right hand.
2.) Begin to walk around your apartment, stepping with authority.
3.) SPRINKLE THE WATER ON EVERYTHING!
4.) Read Psalm 35: Shout it very loud, exactly seven times.
5.) The prayers will seep into every crack of your life, hallelujah!
6.) You must open all the windows when you do this, Joseph.
7.) Satan and his minions will flee in the Mighty Name of Jesus.
8.) Each curse against your potential marriage has been broken,
AMEN.
9.) It is well with you, my dear son.

Joseph laughed because what else could he do? He put the bottles in the fridge and tucked the piece of paper into the pocket of his workbag, just in case.

 

Twelve years since he had arrived in the US and still, he hadn’t obtained citizenship. He’d applied for the visa lottery back home, hoping that in America he could go further with his Master of Engineering. The UK had been his first choice—until he heard that Nigerians were doing even better in Louisiana. The ones already there helped the newly arrived with a place to stay and a minimum wage job that didn’t require too much talking. Joseph loved that about his people: at home they were ruthless, but abroad, they’d look after one another, few questions asked.

“Americans! They like to pretend they’re deaf when they hear your African accent,” his cousin had said. “Even if your English is better than their own, they will act as if you’re speaking in tongues. But don’t mind them. My son, George, he’s making a good life for himself there.” George repaired cars for taxi companies while putting himself through school, Joseph’s cousin had said.

“Drive a taxi? Ah, that’s easy. I’ve been driving since I was twelve.” It wouldn’t be as easy to tuck away his engineering degree, he’d later discover, but back then, Joseph was a beggar unable to choose. His cousin promised to get in touch with George and see what could be arranged.

George, it turned out, was a talented and busy mechanic. He and another young man from home, Rashid, operated the garage. By their third year in business, half of the taxi companies in the city took their cars to George and Rashid’s Auto. Once the main business was full, they started a side one: renting out cars as unregistered cabs to anyone unable to meet the city’s licensing requirements. Of course, it was illegal, but George had the right contacts, and he paid enough for them to remain quiet. The way he’d said I just want to see my people get ahead stroked the persisting melancholy of the newly arrived. I mean, as
Africans—he’d held the center of his chest—I want us to prosper, you know? And that is what happened: every driver—mostly Africans—that worked for George and Rashid’s made a good living. Bills were paid, families were fed. And anyone who knew anything about the shenanigans looked the other way.

But for Joseph, in those early years, what could come—driving a taxi without the proper license—kept him shy of peace. He’d imagine a police car at the edge of the road; before his next breath, he heard his heart inside his ears. This wasn’t back home, where a timely offered bribe could avert legal consequence. He’d slow down, giving one less reason to be stopped. A few blocks distanced, he settled again into the comfort of his body.

Years on, the taxi wasn’t his. He made payments to George and Rashid, both to rent it as transport and to own it outright. But Joseph wanted more freedom than he could yet afford, and for that, he couldn’t remain consistent with payments, however much he tried.

Of the jobs he could have taken, this one let him be free. Picking up and dropping off passengers, he could add another entry to his journal of All the People I’ve Met, which, at last count, were from thirty-two countries, forty US states. Driving alone, he saw the city as he wished to be: forever moving, in and out of the presence of others. Houses in their jewel-toned grandness, black iron balconies like ornamental webs, and those ceiling-high windows!

This wasn’t the America of his childhood dreams; it was better. He hadn’t thought he would see people who looked just like him, and—in the way he heard them talking, in the tone of Yoruba—sounded much like him. Joseph drove, just to be a part of the city.

 

On the morning he was actually pulled over, Joseph hadn’t spotted the police car on the side of the road. The abruptness of the lights in his mirrors, the way the street slowed in motion, the loudness of sirens over everything. In all the times Joseph had rehearsed the stop in his thoughts, it hadn’t been as frightening as this. If he said or did the wrong thing, if he said and did everything he was supposed to do—he could meet his end just the same. He rolled down his window, pulled off the road, and gripped the top of the steering wheel. His fingers slid from sweat. He held on and pressed down; he prayed to the air.

The officer knocked on his window. Joseph was careful—with his left hand, he rolled it down, slowly, the rest of the way.

“License?”

Joseph asked if he could reach for it.

The officer said that he could.

He handed his license to her. Despite the armor of uniform and the confidence of stance, she didn’t look older than twenty. But there was the gun in its holster, within fingers’ reach.

“Kunta Kinte, abracadabra!” The officer dipped her head into laughter. “How many names you got?”

Joseph’s face went hot. About this, too, he’d been warned: the making fun that Americans do—of African names, of words unfamiliar, of things they had to stretch their minds and tongues around to comprehend.

“All of ‘em is a mouthful. You African?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah,”—she nodded—“I knew it! I know an African at my church, uh huh. From Kenya, I think. You from Kenya?”

“No.”

“Your name sure is a mouthful, though.”

Joseph nodded.

“You know why I stopped you?”

Joseph shook his head.

“Some knucklehead drove off in a cab after fucking up someone’s car. You heard anything about that?”

“No.” He watched her face for a hint that she might request the credentials of his taxi. Then he’d have to rifle through the glove compartment.

She stared at him a long few seconds. “Well, alright then.” She held out his license.

“Thank you, officer.” He looked from his side mirror—waiting for her to get back inside her car—and wouldn’t move until she did.

Joseph was one of his several names, though just three had made it onto his license. He’d had six, at birth. The funniness of them to a white person, he guessed, had been his saving grace—from death or arrest, he’d never know.

 

Two weeks earlier, before this morning when he’d end things with Maryam, Rashid had shouted, over the opened hood of Joseph’s taxi, that Esther’s daughter, Amina, was coming to America. That simple announcement buoyed Joseph’s spirits, as if nothing in his life had ever been wrong. He’d felt so good, he thought he might cry. Though Amina’s arrival had nothing at all to do with him, he wrapped his heart around it and set it apart—purposed it as something to anticipate.

More than twenty-five years since he’d seen Esther, Joseph knew little about Amina, except for the nebulous bits he’d heard between stretches of time. The shadow of his remembering, of Esther, had been with him. His aloneness lessened, thinking about that day with her—the watery spice of pepper soup, the candied scent of frying plantains, the way she’d touched his hand without looking. Amina would be something, flesh, Joseph could connect back to that time.

They might never cross paths. But should someone point out to her that he was Joseph, the one who’d loved her mother once, he hoped she’d relay something back to Esther—even if it was just that he was still alive. From the day Rashid delivered the news, Joseph built what he wore, how he groomed, and where he moved on the possibility that Amina might spot him somewhere in and around the city.

 

This early morning, after the toilet, his teeth, and the slippers, Joseph drove to the café in the waning dark. In the rearview mirror, he surrendered to his aging face. What else could he do? He was there for coffee and—if the flow of conversation allowed—to end things with Maryam, finally. He rehearsed the breakup aloud. Not so loud that someone passing might think he was crazy, talking to himself. Just enough to ensure his tone was acceptable.

The coming of Amina had infused his days with unfamiliar excitement. There could be more to this life than dating Maryam and driving a taxi—what, he didn’t yet know. Still, he’d felt it, and that feeling led him to this morning.

Some man passed the front of Joseph’s car and went into the café. Joseph would wait—a breakup wasn’t something a stranger should overhear. He popped the glove compartment and flipped through his wallet. He turned back to the café. He couldn’t believe it: Maryam leaned over the counter and pulled the back of the man’s neck. They kissed—and kept kissing. One-two-three-four seconds, Joseph counted. Maryam came out from behind the counter and hugged him: one-two-three-four-five-six.

Joseph was hot, sitting there. And it wasn’t the heater at his feet. It was in his bones, the rage that spurred how quickly he unlocked everything and jumped out of the taxi. As if stopping that man from kissing Maryam would prevent the aftermath: her telling him the next day, while he sat outside of her apartment door, that she wasn’t in love with him—Joseph. That they needed to hurry up and finish the conversation because she was running late to meet her new boyfriend—Frank.

Joseph was already out of his car, arms tight at his sides and frantic about what he might do. He went back to the glove compartment. There, his serrated pocketknife. He walked up the curb to the man’s car and began to stab. Sharp and deep punctures in each tire—quick, quick—he didn’t have the time. He scraped the side of the car’s bumper, peeling the paint like pencil shavings.

Joseph sat in the taxi, chest heaving, eyes burning. He turned the lights off and s-l-o-w-l-y pulled away from the curb. Minutes later, just at sunrise, the officer stopped his cab.

 

He went to confront Maryam the next evening. She shook her head the instant she walked up and found him waiting on the steps of her duplex. “I told you not to come. My answer won’t change.”

“A text message? After all these months, you’d think I deserve more than that.”

Whatever Joseph was looking for, Maryam said, it wasn’t her. “I wish you well, I really do.”

And because it was no longer possible, Joseph now wanted Maryam. He sulked in it—the impossibility of his wanting. Since yesterday, when he had seen her kissing Frank, being with her had become important. More so than Esther, a memory of years buried. “Please, Maryam.” He held her arms. “Think about it.”

She looked at his hands. “Some lunatic slashed Frank’s tires at the café yesterday morning. Don’t tell me it was you?”

Joseph stepped back. “Of course it wasn’t me.”

She nodded. “You should be ashamed of yourself.”

He felt something more than that. Regret: for what he did at the café and almost getting caught; for losing Maryam, as he would, just as he did Esther, all those years ago.

He left Maryam’s apartment and went straight home—straight to the fridge and to the bottles of water his mother had mailed. He pulled the paper from his workbag and read the instructions again. He mouthed a prayer or scripture; he couldn’t tell which—it’d been so long. Perhaps there was more wrong with him than he’d thought. And if something could save Joseph, this might be it.