Walking on Cowrie Shells: Stories

It Takes a Village Some Say

Volume I: Our Girl

I

Don’t believe everything you read in the tabloids. We’re nothing like the others. We’re not the Slick Salikis splashed page to page in the papers; a couple so utterly obsessed with living the good life, so concerned with keeping up appearances that we pimped out our own daughter. Fabrications. Rag sheet revisionist history. All of it. We did our best by Our Girl.

She was eleven years old when we got her, Our Girl. She came to us with a shocking expedited-shipping efficiency, after years of adoption delays: endless home studies, background checks, credit checks, health checks—then ding-dong, ding-dong, a child, handily home-delivered. Imported from the motherland. She was bundled up in this sad little polyester coat, the color of off-brand cola—fudgy-brown, tasteless, fizzy—utterly useless in warding off the cold and bluster of that winter night. We pulled her shivering frame into the warmth of our home and she scuttled off to an entryway corner—so straight-backed and vigilant between our coatrack and umbrella stand.

Her guardian, Mrs. Ndukong, a booming storm cloud of a woman, thundered in behind her. Teeth chattering. Chatter chattering: Hello, hello! It’s so cold, so cold. They had just been to Houston she told us (so warm!) and then on to (so windy!) Chicago. She pronounced the latter Qi-cargo, sounding vaguely reminiscent of some new age travelware boutique, a nag champa—scented place specializing in vegan carry-ons for the ashram hermitage set. It was the kind of shop we might have frequented in our East Village heydays; before our vacation fund became the baby fund, before we moved out of the city to a home with a backyard and a swing set and a better school system for our someday children.

The girl? Call her anything, anything you like, she said. "Call me Aunty Gladys. ‘Mrs. Ndukong.’ Hmph. So formal, so formal. We are good friends now, no so?" Her bobble-headed yes preemptively settled the matter to her liking.

We were seated in the formal living room. We could see that Aunty Gladys was impressed. She was meant to be. It was our showcase parlor: chandeliered, marbled, credenzaed; a place where we received guests with a dazzling solicitousness typically the dominion of ambassadors feting visiting state dignitaries. Our Girl sat mutely by the flames of our hearth while we beamed at her from the comfy remove of a Chesterfield sofa.

Mrs. Du … we began, our eyes locked on each other, before we turned, opening up to our newfound good friend. "Aunty Gladys, you have no idea how long we’ve been waiting for this. We’re just so grateful—"

Nonsense, nonsense. It is the girl’s family that should be grateful, she answered. "Grateful that one of you is from Cameroon so she will know her culture. Not grow up like these young girls twerking their makande on television. Godless Americ— she stopped to gape silently at the salt and pepper set we made sitting there —sorry, sorry. The cold has scattered my brains."

We were suitably understanding. How could we be otherwise? What followed was all courtesy and business: Yes, Our Girl had all the appropriate papers. The girl’s parents? Her father, may he rest, would be so honored by this opportunity for his youngest daughter to live in white man country. Her mother? Back home, with six younger sisters, happy to know that at least one daughter would go to bed each night with more than cold gari in her belly.

This saddened us, this sibling separation, but we couldn’t take them all on, could we? We—a chemist, a botanist turned floral stylist—were hardly millionaires. We lived an average middle-class New Jersey ’burb life: a two-story colonial with a three-car drive and ballooning mortgage payments, two car notes paid off, the other, not so much. Our new aunty understood, took the balance of the thirty thousand dollars in fees we agreed upon, told us it would help them, told us this was the way it was done back home. One child lifted up and up till they returned and lifted their whole family out of shantytown quartiers, out of thatch huts, out of hollowed and hungry lives.

We nodded in understanding.

Our Girl’s family would be our family, we told her.

How could it be otherwise?

II

We were finally a family. Finally! Well, not quite. An adjustment period was to be expected, after all. For weeks, Our Girl roamed our home merely touching things, eyes saucered, while we followed her hopefully with our own. She was fascinated by bling (usage courtesy of a How to Talk to Your Pre-Teen pamphlet, just a coin-toss pick from the multitude of parenting ebooks, magazine articles, and podcasts we devoured). Bling: our Waterford crystal vases, the gold-leaf lion-head knobs of an armoire, even the gleaming touchscreen interface of our chrome Whirlpool washer. We took to wearing our shimmery baubles and finery indoors, pantomiming our movements—exaggerated yawns and back stretches that dangled Tiffany bracelets and satin-finish wristwatches, anything to draw her near. We craved her approbation. Anxiously laid shiny objects at her feet like penitents. Did she like her new room? (kitted out in cotton-candied furls of pink). Were her patent leather Mary Janes too tight? (the sizes her aunty Gladys emailed had been as off the mark as that miserable winter coat she had bought the girl).

In retrospect, it strikes us as hideous, our bottomless need for her validation, when we should have striven for her love. Back then we needed a win, we habitual gold star scholars, six-figure earners, C-suite careerists. Yet for years, among the Forjindams, the Atanganas, the Ngangmutas of our Cameroonian clique, we had been failures, reproductive underachievers. In another time, another wife might discreetly have been proffered by some well-meaning village aunty, oh so solicitous about maintaining the family line. Ours was a tribe where marriage and procreation went hand in hand, peopled by descendants of rural gran-grans accustomed to measuring their worth by the number of progeny, like so many sacks of cacao. Although Western diplomas brought Western mind-sets—and for couples such as we, a Western wife—remnants of old ways persist.

"Habi white women no sabi born pickin? Habi nah the man who no get bedroom power?" our so-called friends conjectured in whispers as they dandled chubby infants or noshed on palm-oily tsetse plantain at every born-house but our own. Among our New York social set, it was somehow worse: we were the definition of mediocre, an average Joe and Jane. There were our co-op neighbors, the Talbots—childless by choice, a couple who booked open-jaw journeys around the globe, toting that mock-croc vegan luggage from Bali to Madagascar, while we watered their fire escape philodendrons. Then the chef-owners at our favorite bistro, Tomas and Didier, devastated yet resilient after a childhood friend reneged on her promise to be their birth mother, to easy-bake-oven their offspring.

But the poor, poor barren Salikis were finally a family. Gone from duo to trio. And after nine bumpy, oops-riddled months; we were getting the hang of things with the evidence to prove it: snapshots on IG; thousands of page views for Bringing Up Baby/Bébé/Mtoto/Bimbo, our interracial, multicultural child-rearing blog. No longer would we press our faces longingly against the windows of our friends’ high-gloss social media lives, their rosy cheeks smushed together for family pics on powdery slopes in Gstaad. No more namaste envy as coworkers regaled us with Mommy and Me Goat Yoga tales too precious for words. We too would be chronic chroniclers. If alien life forms explored our planet eons from now, there would be irrefutable proof, found footage of our happy family: at the pumpkin patch, schmoozing with mall Santas, attending any number of calendared events at the Children’s Museum of Manhattan enrichment series. We were building our own exhibit of sorts, a collection of report cards and other artifacts, often lacquered and laminated, shining, as if under glass.

• • •

The corridors of Highland Terrace Middle School were circuitous and maple-wooded, we held hands as we Hansel and Greteled our way through this educational IKEA in search of the principal’s office. We had been summoned for a parent-teacher conference to discuss our precocious child’s special needs. In truth, we were practically preening, prepared for our late-life parenting to be lauded as ultramodern, if not downright revolutionary.

There you are, Mr. and Mrs. Saliki. A secretary sidled up on slipper-heeled feet, ushering us into the cool hush of another woodland-paneled chamber where Principal Artemis sat in state behind a coffin of a desk. Her brow was pinched behind dark cat’s-eye glasses. We sat where we were instructed to.

It’s customary to begin these meetings with some pleasantries, with chitchat, she said, yet the circumstances that led me to call you here are of such a serious nature. Well, I can see no other way but to get right to the heart of the matter.

Here, she paused. But we were trained observers, habituated to gathering facts, empirical evidence, before formulating shaky conclusions. Inwardly, steeling ourselves to fight for our child. Outwardly, we leaned forward slightly, to indicate a tepid interest and nothing more. She seemed taken aback, hesitated a moment, then said:

Well, your daughter has excelled academically here at Highland Terrace, in spite of some initial concerns about her ability to adjust to our expectations, the high level of rigor required of our young scholars. We’ve done everything in our power to welcome her, given her less-fortunate upbringing. We do make every effort to create a culture of inclusivity.

Inclusivity? we echoed. Yes, no doubt they thought they did. There were two Indian students from Uttar Pradesh, a half-Czech Latina, as well as ongoing relations with a sister school in Qingdao, China. And yes, there was Our Girl, in no way less-fortunate, we had guaranteed at least that.

Yes, inclusivity, said Artemis, forging on. "Progressive, in fact. But even we have our limits. I’m not sure what type of behavior was tolerated at your daughter’s previous institutions but here at Highland there are some practices that we simply cannot tolerate. Your daughter has been, how to phrase this, procuring the belongings of others."

Procuring! one of us repeated angrily, jaw clenched tight to cage epithets in three languages and a dialect or two.

You mean stealing? said the other, attempting to comprehend what was all too apparent from the tight mask of disdain on the principal’s face.

Well, no. We’ve conducted our own internal investigations and have no evidence of that. Yet there have been complaints from a number of parents. Regarding items found missing from their homes. Items later noted in your daughter’s possession.

This is ridiculous, we cried out. And why exactly are we here? If she’s not ‘stealing,’ how did she—

She claims they were gifts. From male students who were interested in her.

So a few moon-eyed teenage boys gave her ‘gifts.’ And you called us in here for that?!

We rose in ire.

Her voice rose as well. Mr. and Mrs. Saliki! Please understand. These items were family heirlooms: Dr. Donovan’s ruby tie clip; a diamond clasp passed down in the Connelly’s family for generations. Worth thousands of dollars. Priceless.

Where are these items? Certainly not in our home.

I don’t imagine she would just leave these things hanging around in plain sight, would she? Your daughter is a very clever girl.

Not by this account, we replied, our backs up, already striding toward the exit.

But there’s more, she says haltingly, yet her steepled hands are a cathedral of holier-than-thou condemnation. Some of the young men. Well, they say she does things, sexual things, for these items.

They say, they say, we parroted, cawing with bitter mirth, well versed in the cutting power of whispers made truth.

We were done then. Her imploring explanations rang on but we were out of earshot and out the door. Only after we had tossed off the requisite threats to call our attorneys, cried foul regarding Our Girl’s token race status, when really all we wanted was to take her home and make sure she was safe. You see, she was damaged when we got her, Our Girl. Something Aunty Gladys had neglected to mention lest we contract some buyer’s remorse. Imagine! It had come out in family therapy. There was an uncle, we learned. She was only four years