I like to find myself in works of art. Sometimes I see my sister in them too—our relationship at different times captured in different moments. My life is in the paint and clay I see before me at the Dallas Museum of Art. My sister fails to see it though. She stalks and paces the exhibits as I meander through them. The paintings shout to me as they whisper to her. There is one that I think would stop her in her tracks as much as it did me. I bring her to one in particular. I want her to see us reflected back.
“It’s pretty,” she says.
“Don’t you think there’s something special about it?” I ask.
“Should I?”
I don’t know what to say or how to teach my feelings. I could say look at where they look, how the lines don’t match. Look at the dog’s one uncomfortable eye staring at you past the canvas. Notice it. Instead, I say, “Look at the title. Read the description.”
She reads the title aloud, “Portrait of the Comtesse de Montsoreau and Her Sister as Diana the Attendant.” After that, she notes how long of a title it is, then reads the description. I wait, holding my breath without even knowing. I only realize when I let it out.
“Isn’t it a bit sad?” I ask after tiring of waiting.
“How?”
“They’re sisters, but one gets to be the goddess and the other is….” I search for a word. My sister eyes me sideways.
“The other is less,” I finish.
My sister focuses her attention back on the painting. “Sometimes that’s life.”
“Sometimes it’s intentional,” I say. I look at her; she glances at me, then back at the painting.
“Sometimes it is,” she says.
I don’t care to see much of anything else after that. I ask her if she’s ready to go.
“We’ve still got some time, Ayo,” she says. “Why don’t we look at that gallery you love so much? Unless you have somewhere to go?”
I shake my head. “Let’s go.”
We leave the Diana portrait behind and make our way toward the exit. I turn back to get another look at it and see two high school girls posing for a photo as Diana and the attendant. Their heads tilt at differing angles as they smile wide. One’s dark, the other’s light—just like me and my sister.
Our next stop is Dallas Contemporary. We play the same roles there as at the DMA. I ruminate. She does not.
“What speaks to you?” I prompt. We’re in the part of the gallery devoted to the works of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, American artists born in the former USSR. The exhibit is titled Paintings about Paintings.
Audrey bites her lip. “I’m not sure,” she says. “I guess I like those two.” She gestures with her perfectly manicured hand to two side-by-side works: The Half of the Painting #23 and The Half of the Painting #24. They’re the same painting, cut in half diagonally. Where the divide was made is filled with a blank whiteness. They’re clearly still connected, but they’re not the same. If you study it closely enough, you can see where the works don’t quite match up. I don’t like them much.
“Why?” I ask.
Audrey looks at me and shrugs. “I guess they remind me of independence, like how they can both stand on their own now. They don’t need the other half to be worth something, you know.”
“But they do,” I say, as she pulls out a pack of gum from her bag. She offers me a stick. I take one and say thanks. “They can’t exist without each other. They’re a part of the same world. Remove one and the message is altered. It’s then about being unfinished rather than intentionality.”
Audrey blows a bubble. I could never figure out how to blow gum bubbles. I tried to get her to teach me once. She spent a good hour trying to get me to move my mouth and tongue in the right way. I could never do it. I try again now, placing my tongue in the place she taught me, making a little gum shield in my mouth to blow into. Instead, I just end up sticking my tongue through it and out of my mouth. Audrey laughs. I do too.
“Still can’t do it, huh?” she asks.
I shake my head, smiling in embarrassment.
“Let’s go to the other side,” I say. We walk out of Ilya and Emilia’s space, past the foyer we entered when we arrived. I give a small wave to the boy at the front desk. He’s dressed in all black like all gallery workers are. He looks college-aged, with green hair and a septum piercing. He looks very college-aged, like the male version of that blue-haired feminist meme.
“I like your piercing,” I say. He smiles. He’s got a nice smile; it makes a dimple on his right cheek. I smile back then keep walking with Audrey. We pass through the heavy black drapes into Shilpa Gupta’s exhibit: For, In Your Tongue, I Cannot Fit. The room’s dim. We’re the only ones there.
“This is the one,” I say. “This is the one I wanted you to see today.”
“You mean you dragged me around Dallas for one exhibit? Why’d we even have to go to the DMA then?”
“Shh,” I tell her. “Listen.”
“Not even in the night,” two voices sing, one male, one female. “Not even in the night,” the female continues. The man sings again then a chorus joins them. Four times in all it’s sung. I don’t breathe as they sing. A moment later, another voice begins to read a poem. It’s coming from a microphone near the center. I grab my sister’s hand and walk through the forest of spikes to where the voice is coming from. The poem is over by the time we reach it. Then another one starts, somewhere to the right of us. We reach that mic with enough time to read the last line with the disembodied voice. We spend the next few minutes following voices.
We hear a man’s voice read: “Life’s no life when honor’s left; man’s a man when honor’s kept. With thoughts of these I do remain; unvexed with cares of loss or gain.” The paper underneath the voice has the poet’s name and year of detainment: Khussal Kattak, 1658. I can see Audrey reading it too. A tear runs down her face. That’s the power of this exhibit. She wipes it away. I pull her out of the spike maze. I’m concerned for her, but I’m also worried about her tears making watermarks on the lightly crinkled papers.
I pull her toward a bench on the border of the room. She sits down first. I pop a squat near her, leaving a bit of space between us. She sniffles, wiping her eyes. I stare ahead, not sure what to do. This is new. I sneak glances at her out of the corner of my eye, saying nothing. It feels wrong to speak in here. This space is for the voices. All I do is close the gap between us and lean my head on her shoulder. She puts her head on mine. We stay there for a minute. My neck starts to hurt from the awkward position; she’s a bit too short for this to be comfortable for me. I don’t move though. This is the closest I’ve felt to her in a long time, sitting in silence just listening to the voices.
I don’t know when, but eventually she stops sniffling. “Ready?” I whisper. I can feel her head nod below mine. She sits upright and I do the same, rolling my neck to stretch it out. We stand and walk out. She leads; I follow. I use the contemplative silence the exhibit has imposed on me to wonder about my sister. I stare at her back. She’s wearing a white crop top with dark wash straight crop jeans and white Keds. She looks like every American girl out there, down to the claw clip in her hair. But she’s not. She never can be fully. She will always be my Nigerian sister. We’re not twins but for the longest time she was the Taiwo to my Kehinde, sent out to see how good the world would be for me. The world she lived in turned out to be different from the one I would inhabit though.
We don’t say anything as we exit the gallery, other than a muffled, “Thanks, you too” to the green-haired guy who tells us to “Have a nice day” with his patented hospitality smile. Audrey starts the car and turns the volume down real low. You’d have to focus hard to hear any sound. She drives in silence for a bit.
“Do you want to grab some coffee?” she asks.
“Sure.”
Silence resumes. We pass the other renovated warehouses in the Design District on our way to the closest Starbucks. I expect Audrey to go to the drive-thru when we arrive but she parks instead. I guess we’re going to have an actual conversation today.
“I’m going to the bathroom,” I say when we enter.
“Do you want me to get you anything?”
“I’m good. Thanks though.”
The bathroom’s a decent size, a little dirty, a tad smelly. After locking the door, I stare at my reflection in the mirror and breathe deep, regretting that soon after. Shallow breaths only, I think to myself, wrinkling my nose. I see my unruly ‘fro, my smudged glasses, and my fraying gray knit sheath dress. I’m embarrassed to be seen with me quite frankly. I run my hands under the sink then run them through my hair, smoothing it into shape. I take a paper towel from the dispenser and dry my hands then use the same towel to clean my glasses. There’s nothing I can do about my dress, so it’ll have to stay as is.
Once I’ve forced contentment with my appearance, I leave the bathroom and search for my sister. She’s seated on one of the armchairs near the large window. The window faces west, showing the setting sun which bathes Audrey in light. She’s already got her drink in hand, the same thing she’s ordered since high school, a grande peach tranquility tea.
“Good?” I ask when I’ve reached her, taking the armchair opposite her, crossing one leg over the other as ladies are supposed to do. Like Audrey has done.
“Mmhmm,” she says. “Do you remember New Mexico?”
“How could I not?” I half laugh at that. It wasn’t funny, but sometimes all you can do is laugh.
“Do you remember that kid with the scooter?” Audrey traces her finger around the rim of her cup’s lid, staring out the window.
“Again, how could I not?”
She looks back at me.
“How could you not,” she repeats with a hint of a smile.
“What made you think of them—New Mexico and that a**hole in the making?”
“Do you remember what I did after?”
“Answering a question with a question. How cryptic,” I say sarcastically. I start looking out the window too, watching a mom and her kids climb into a Subaru. I can tell that Audrey’s watching them too.
“Do you remember what Mommy told us after?”
“Yes, Audrey. I remember everything you do.” I fight the urge to roll my eyes.
“Do you like the name Audrey?”
“It doesn’t matter if I like it.”
“But do you like it?”
I shrug. “Not really, but I got used to it. I never disliked the name. I just disliked it for you.”
Audrey purses her lips at that.
“You know how I got that name?”
“You gave it to yourself. You didn’t get it.”
“But do you know why?”
“Because of the mini a**hole,” I say simply. I look at her for a reaction. And I get one. She, too, looks away from the window, startling a little out of her reverie. Her eyes on mine.
“You knew?”
“You left me. Of course, I’d make sure I knew why.” I stand up. “I need a coffee.”
The line’s not long. Only two people stand ahead of me. They each get grande coffees. It doesn’t take the barista long to write their names down on their cups. When I reach the barista, I read her name tag: Sun. “Nice name,” I say. “Happy.” She smiles.
“What can I get for ya?” she asks.
I order an iced chai latte, a grande just like the other two before me.
“What’s your name?” Sun asks.
“Ayobami,” I say. “You can just write ‘Ayo.’” I watch as she writes the letters ‘I-O’ and don’t correct her.
“That’s such a cool name,” Sun says. “Where’s it from?”
“It’s Nigerian.”
“Oh, that’s cool. You’re the second Nigerian I’ve seen here today.”
I give a polite smile at that. I’m not sure what to say to that. Either I lack social graces or it’s a weird thing to need to respond to. When I’ve paid for my order, I head back to the seat across from Audrey and wait for my name to be called.
“You knew?” Audry asks.
“Yeah, you didn’t hide it well. You changed a lot about yourself — you started hating on Tiwa Savage and replaced her with Taylor Swift, you got a hair relaxer, you took all your ankara fabrics out of your side of the closet.”
“What’s wrong with Taylor?”
“Nothing’s wrong with Taylor. You probably would have liked her anyway. What is wrong is you hating on Tiwa, the African queen that she is. You just…all together…it didn’t take a detective to figure out that you were choosing all-American always. And I felt hurt.”
“I-O!” I hear a barista shout.
“One sec,” I say. The drink’s hot, not iced. I don’t care enough to say anything, so I take it and say thanks.
“Did I really hurt you?” Audrey asks when I get back. She has no apparent desire to ease into things.
I sigh then take a sip of my drink. It burns my tongue a little.
“I didn’t say you hurt me. I said I felt hurt. There’s a difference.”
“Explain.”
I look out the window. The sun’s lower now by a good few degrees. A little while longer and I’ll only be able to see half of it above the trees and buildings.
“Sunsets were better in New Mexico, don’t you think?”
“Explain.”
“I don’t know. There was less out there. You could see them better. And the stars too.”
“Explain why you were hurt.”
“I felt like you left me.”
She asks me how, so I tell her about New Mexico from my perspective.
***
Clovis was a dry town. I remember it despite my efforts. Snake skins near alley dumpsters and tumbleweeds in car spokes weren’t uncommon. It was a place to grow up, not the best and not the worst. It was the middle you need to know to understand what’s truly terrible vs. what’s truly good. It fostered visions of other places. My favorite place to imagine living in back then was Nigeria, where I would be one in a sea of brown. In our New Mexican town, the only brown outside of our family was the dirt of the alley roads. That was where we came from.
For the longest time, Audrey was Bimpe there. We were the Nigerian sisters. Every time we could get extra credit for bringing in foreign food during global week, we brought our mother’s pounded yam and ogbono soup. We would bring meat pies for lunch and wear our hair in braids with beads at the end. Sometimes people would make fun of me when I was alone but they never did when I was with her. They knew that she didn’t let things like that slide. She never used to anyway.
Then one day, in our room, she gave herself a new name. This was a week after we were informed by a kid on our block that we couldn’t ride his scooter like the other kids could because he didn’t want our color rubbing off on his new toy.
Bimpe wrote out her new name on our chalkboard wall in big, loopy letters. We had just painted it a few weeks ago, so there was plenty of empty space. The name didn’t look anything like her usual handwriting—small and cramped. She drew a little heart with the tail of the ‘y.’
“Are you gay?” I asked her. “Who’s Audrey? Your crush? Your girlfriend?” She had written a few names on the wall before, toward the bottom in one corner or the other. They were all male names and even though she never said it, I knew they were the names of boys she liked. There were a lot of names on that wall already. She went through crushes fast. It was 8th grade; she was like every middle school girl.
“Sorry, I meant bi- or pan- or…” I attempted to correct myself. There was no way in my mind that she could be 100% off of boys after what I’d seen.
“What?” Bimpe asked.
“Aren’t you coming out?”
“What do you mean?”
“Out of the closet? I can’t believe I’m explaining coming out to my gay sister right now.” I laughed a little at that. I thought of what it would feel like to need a white person to explain the long-lasting socioeconomic effects of American slavery to me. I started laughing a little more at that.
“I’m not gay.”
“Really?” I asked. My shoulders slumped a little at that.
“Do you want me to be gay?”
“Yes?” I drew out that word for miles, giving it a little lilt at the end. “No? Maybe? This sounds like something you should give me the answer to.”
Bimpe shook her hand at that. “I don’t need the answer. I’m not gay.”
“Then who’s Audrey?”
“I am.”
I stared at her for a few seconds, narrowing my eyes a little as I looked up at her from where I was lying on my bed.
“You’re Audrey?” I asked. She nodded. “No you’re not,” I said.
“Yes, I am,” she said.
I paused. “Oh, I get it now.” I smacked my hand against my forehead like I’d seen Stephanie Tanner do in reruns of Full House on Nick @ Nite. “You’re Audrey in the school play! That’s so cool! I didn’t know that there was an Audrey in The Sound of Music.”
“I’m not in the play,” Audrey said. “I am Audrey.” She said it slowly that time, emphasizing each word.
“No, you’re not,” I repeated. “You are Bimpe.” I said it just as slowly as she did. “Audrey isn’t even your Christian name. Faith is.” Bimpe—Audrey—walked the few steps between the wall and my bed and sat down on the edge of it.
“You don’t have to call me Audrey, not yet at least. But that is my name now.”
I looked into her eyes and looked from her right eye to her left and back again. I had read about people searching someone’s eyes in books before but I never understood what it meant until then. When I searched, all I found was resolve.
“Why?” It was the only thing I could think to say. Audrey scooted toward me and tried to give me a hug. I stopped her.
I stood up. “I’m telling Mommy and Daddy.” I thought that that would bring her to her senses. She wasn’t scared though when I said it, so I sat back down.
Soon, Bimpe was Audrey everywhere. My parents even called her that in public. She stopped bringing Nigerian food to school or eating it at home. She didn’t wear her hair in braids anymore. I could never find her on the playground when a mean kid would pull on my hair and claim that it grew out weird. Even if I did get lucky, she’d just say, “Change your hair then.” I cried the first few times she told me that. Then I stopped crying, thinking that she would change back eventually.
I thought it was just a phase. When I cried to my parents, they said to try not to take it too personally if Bimpe was mean to me sometimes. She was a teen now, they said. Sometimes teens are angry and mean without really knowing why. They’re hormonal. It wasn’t the hormones though. She really did change. Even though our faces still looked the same, I was suddenly the only Nigerian kid in school. And I didn’t like it.
***
“I never meant to hurt you,” Audrey says.
“You didn’t hurt me. I felt hurt. There’s a difference.” I look out the window again. The sun’s not there anymore, just the pinkish-purple hues of dusk.
“Why won’t you look at me?”
I look at her. “I am looking at you.”
“What’s so special about the window?”
“Nothing. Sunsets are just better here.”
“You said they were better in New Mexico.”
“I was wrong. They’re better here.” I take the final swig of my chai and stand up to trash it. “You ready to go?”
She nods and follows me out. Once we’re in the car, seatbelts fastened, she turns the radio up a bit, by an increment of five, just how I like it to be turned up. Her cup goes in the cup holder.
“Thanks for spending the day with me,” she says smiling.
“Thanks for inviting me,” I say. This is where we’re at now as sisters. I’d thank her for even thinking of me at this point.
“I love you,” she says.
“I love you too, always and forever,” I say.
She repeats “always and forever” after me, an old sibling ritual. Before driving off, she plugs her phone into the aux port and “Ma Lo” by Tiwa Savage plays. I start a little at the first notes and smile.
“Always and forever,” she says again, smiling back. Then she drives us away.
************
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