Etymology (Published in Pleiades)

Eniola got the Big Promotion. Two-hour board meeting, binders and binders of new information, papers to sign. His whole floor drank champagne in the office, afterwards. Nancy from HR got a little drunk and lurched towards Eniola, said something incoherent; the only words Eniola could make out were ‘affirmative action’, and he thought even that might have just been wishful thinking, a projection of problems that were not there.

The next day, his older brother Luke called him at work.

“Hey, listen,” he said, as soon as Eniola picked up the phone. “I might need some help,”

“I thought you were calling to say congratulations,” Eniola said, standing up to close his office door.

“I’ve been working really hard. And I don’t think I have enough. To cover everything.”

“Don’t call the things you and your friends are doing work if you’re not getting paid,” Eniola said.

For a second, he thought that Luke had hung up. Then—“Are you going to give me money, or not?”

“How much?”

“Listen,” Luke said. The word was a vocalization of the hurried and desperate grasping Luke had been doing for decades.  “We’re doing important work. Just because I’m short on—we’re holding a big protest next Saturday. You should come.”

Luke always had the makings of protests smeared on his palms; Eniola avoided seeing Luke in person so he would not be dirty from Luke’s hands when he returned home. He had just gotten a new two-story apartment. He could see the water from his bedroom window.

“How much?” he repeated into the phone.

“One grand?”

“Jesus,” Eniola said. “And you didn’t even say congrats.”

“For what?”

“I got promoted. I’m a—” Eniola had to pause, swivel around in his chair to look at the new name placard on his desk, “—a senior management consultant now.” He chose to interpret the sigh he heard from over the phone as jealousy. Eniola thought he deserved the promotion. His name literally meant ‘wealthy boy’ in Yoruba. His American mother had given it to him for good luck; it seemed the good luck was paying off.

“I’ll bring you a check,” Eniola said.

“Thanks,” Luke said.

“Black Power, am I right?”

Luke hung up.

 

Eniola’s glass paneled office captured the shaking reflection of the Space Needle in the morning, when the sun was placed just right. During lunch, he liked to walk towards the most crowded parts of the city, get a hot dog from the stand that had never not been there, sit down at a little table close to a busy intersection, watch people as they passed him. If he leaned in close, he could hear parts of their conversations. He only did this when he was wearing a suit, for work. Otherwise, people would get scared; jump away in a polite, almost imperceptible one-two. The suit made people less scared.

Eniola loved to listen to the things they would say. Like: Mom told me that she likes the new home, but I went over the other day, I think the neighbors smoke too many cigarettes, I’m worried about her lungs. Or: What’s the name of that place, on fifth? The one with the crazy—no. No, it’s—it starts with an L. No? Damn. That’s going to annoy me.

Most of Eniola’s coworkers ate inside the office—the food was more expensive, which made it better, and your clothes wouldn’t smell of the street afterwards. But Eniola hated quinoa. He invested in strong cologne.

Today, Eniola looked across the street and saw Luke. He jumped, felt around in his pockets for a checkbook, looked again—it wasn’t Luke. It was a homeless man, at least, he seemed homeless, he had stained sweatpants and a fraying sweatshirt and he was sitting next to a worn out sleeping bag. He looked like Luke, though. Broad shoulders, red-brown skin, hunched over stance. As Eniola stared, the homeless man swiveled his head. Began staring back.

Eniola flinched, looked down at his hot dog, looked back up. The man was still staring. And slowly, the man stood up. Crossed the street after the light turned. Kept walking. He even walked like Luke—too forcefully, coming down hard on the soles of his feet. He walked, loping, grating, certain, until he was in front of Eniola, there.

Before either of them could say anything, Eniola brought out his wallet and handed the man a twenty. The motion felt familiar, familial; Eniola acting out the same tired scene he had been playing for the last 15 years, his script fraying at the edges.

As he handed over the money, he felt good about it. Eniola wanted this man to have something to eat. Some place to live.

“Do your best,” Eniola said. He considered adding something more, decided against it, added a weak “Man,” at the end.

The man took the money, considered it briefly, and in a swift and savage motion tore it in half.

Eniola’s throat made a short, garbled sound. His first instinct was to reach out and grab the bill, try to piece it together, bring it back to life.

“Yeah,” said the homeless man. He let the word sit in air for a little, then repeated it. “Yeah. You think you’re fine. You work up there, right?” He pointed at Eniola’s office building, three blocks away, towering above all the other buildings. The glass glistened—clean, unbloodied—in the soft spring sunlight.

Eniola said nothing.

“Yeah. Yeah, you think you’re something.” The man’s voice was grating, slurred. He jabbed his index finger solidly in the air in front of Eniola’s face, indicating where the punctuation in his words should be. “Yeah. Yeah. Ya’ll think if you dress up like Barbie and Ken, you different.”

Eniola thought about leaving. He wanted to leave.

“But hey—” People around them had started to glance over, shuffle sideways. One mother guided her stroller in a wide parabola around them. “—you no different. You no different.

Eniola opened his mouth to say something, something large, with enough weight to make this man go away; something like: fuck you, or I’m just doing my best, or my mother who has only known this country named me Eniola, which is Yoruba, which is a language she had never heard of, and she did it because someone told her that it meant ‘wealthy boy, and who knows, that could be a lie, but she told me that it would be a good luck charm and it is and you can not blame me for that.

Before he could say any of this, the man in front of him summoned all that was lurking in the dark cavities of his being, screwed up his face, opened his mouth, and spat.

The white-brown-yellow dripped down the lapel of Eniola’s suit. It was Armani. Two grand. He had gotten it custom tailored.

Eniola left. In the bathroom in the lobby of his office building, he managed to get most of the homeless man off his suit; both the man’s spit and his general feeling. But for the rest of the day Eniola’s lapel bore a faint stain. It did not come out in dry-cleaning.

            That same day, he left the office early, to drive to Luke’s apartment. He thought about taking the bus, but decided against it—he wanted to be home before dark.

“You should have taken the bus,” Luke said, looking at Eniola’s black BMW through the window. “Someone is going to jack that.”

In Greek, Luke meant light. Luke was also a man in the Bible who, after his death, became the patron saint of artists, and doctors. Eniola thought that their mother had given Luke his name because she hoped he would become a doctor. Luke had not become a doctor, although he had made himself into a kind of artist. He painted invisible chains on his body, made a show of breaking them apart.

“It’s locked,” Eniola said. “There’s nothing in it, anyway.”

Eniola stood just past Luke’s doorway, did not sit down. Everything in Luke’s apartment was old and cracked; Eniola had helped drag the couch shoved against the far wall into the apartment from off the street. He was always careful about not sitting down, or touching anything in. It was a little about not being dirtied by the apartment, a little about not wanting to have traces of himself still there after he left.

“Do you have the money? Or not?”

Eniola handed Luke a check. Luke took it without saying thank you. This always pissed Eniola off.

“Listen,” Luke said. “Are you coming to the protest next Saturday?”

“What is this one about?” Eniola had stopped watching the news.

Luke squinted his eyes, shook his head, said, “Man. It’s about Mark. Mark Freed.”

“Who’s that?”

“He was a homeless black man. Gunned down. Seven blocks from here.” Luke shook his head. “Just—brap brap brap.” He used his fingers to mime a gun. His thumb jerked down with every syllable.

“Who killed him?”

Luke clapped his hands together and put them up to his face. “Eni—who do you think?”

Eniola knew. He had just asked the question to be polite to people who were not in the room, not even anywhere near Luke’s neighborhood.

The Luke in the Bible had died of old age, believing that he would go to heaven forever and ever. This was another wish their mother had given Luke. Eniola thought that maybe her wishes had slipped off her first-born son and pooled in her womb to inhabit the second.

“Today I gave a homeless guy a twenty,” Eniola said. “He tore it up. Right in front of me.”

“Looks like your money can’t solve everything,” Luke looked out at the BMW again.

“Should I take it back?” Eniola said.

Luke smiled humorlessly. It was easier to pretend what had been said was a joke. Eniola smiled back. The invisible strands of DNA that laced them together grew tighter. If pulled even a fraction more, they would break.

“Why did they kill him?” Eniola asked.

“Who?”

“The—Mark. Mark Freed.”

“Oh. They thought he was a drug dealer. Or—no. That was the other one,” Luke looked around his apartment for a second, confused. “Mark Freed—they thought he was high. They thought he was dangerous, because he was high.”

“Was he?”

“High? Or dangerous?”

Eniola shrugged. “Either? Both?”

Luke clapped his hands again, ran them over his face. “Does it matter?”

Eniola thought, maybe. He said, “You should get a job, Luke.”

“I have one,” Luke said. “Come to the protest. Watch the news. Things are happening. They’re happening out here.”

There was the light that his namesake promised—it was glowing all over Luke’s eyes, his fists, his throat, his bobbing Adam’s apple. He was a doctor, at least a little. Diagnosing the creaky pains of streets they had both grown up in.

“I meant—get a real job,” said Eniola. He, too, lived up to his namesake.

 

During their sixth encounter, Eniola learned the homeless man’s name was Martin. Eniola looked up the meaning of his name—it came from the Roman god, Mars. God of war. Eniola spent hours looking at paintings of Mars—he was always portrayed in red-yellow arcs of tense movement, swinging a sword and shield, face set in defiance. From the computer screen, it always looked like Mars was charging outwards, at Eniola.

The lunches Eniola shared with Martin always began the same way. Eniola would buy a hot dog, sit where he always sat, look out across the street at where Martin was sitting, next to his sleeping bag. Sometimes he would be burrowed inside the sleeping bag. Then Martin would stand up, saunter across the street, staring at Eniola, until he was within 10 feet. Then he would begin to talk.

You are no different, he would sometimes say. He would sometimes tell Eniola how useless, worthless he was, how useless, worthless, they all were. He would sometimes ask questions. Do you think that you’re something? Have you ever slept on the ground? Have you ever even thought about folks? You ever thought about me?

The monologues were varied, but the conclusion was consistent—a hurtling wad of spit, landing somewhere on Eniola’s suit.

Eniola never said anything in return. But he did think of Martin. Almost all the time.  And when he thought about Martin, he thought about Luke. Then he would think about the protest. He thought about Mark. Mark Freed. Mark, freed.

Eniola would shove money at Martin, sometimes. And Martin would barely look at the green and golden bills before tearing them to shreds.

 

On the Saturday of the protest, Eniola woke up and felt his breath hacksawing its way up his throat. He thought he might be sick. He spent the day in bed, drifting in and out of sleep. Every so often, he would wake up, coughing, run to the bathroom, vomit into his bathtub, which was closer than the toilet. He thought he should call someone, just in case. No one came to mind. He fell back asleep.

His phone rang him awake. It was Luke.

“Are you coming?” Luke said.

“To what?” Eniola said.

“The protest.”

“I—I think I’m sick.” Eniola had vomited four times.

“Yeah,” said Luke.

Eniola could hear Luke’s eyes, rolling. “I vomited four times,” he said.

“Okay, man.”

Eniola fell back asleep, was awoken by the sound of gunshots. He rolled off his bed, slammed his body to the floor, laid there, waited. After nothing, he got up, went to his bedroom window, threw open the curtains, searched for the hole the bullet would have created in the glass. The window was smooth, unbroken. Eniola had a clear view of the water. Luke’s words rattled around his brain—gunned down. Brap brap brap.

Had he imagined the gunshots? He decided to walk, outside. Before he had time to realize it, he walked all seven miles to his office, walked even further to his usual meeting place with Martin, sat down, looked across the street. There was no one there. He waited. By now, the air was thick and cool—it was the kind of late spring afternoon where it felt as if darkness should have come, but it hadn’t yet.

The guy who sold hot dogs closed his stand on the weekends. Eniola had never seen the hot dog stand not open before. The streets thinned as the sun slipped down, the emptiness made Eniola paranoid. He had never realized an apocalypse happened every night, right under his nose. The street felt different, he felt less in control, and why were the streets so empty, anyway, and where was everyone? And where was Martin? With his shield and spear, swinging around declarations of war?

Eniola got up, stumbled across the street, thought he needed to vomit, opened his mouth, nothing came out. Thought he was sick, definitely. He reached Martin’s spot. There was no sleeping bag, no Martin. He sat down to wait.

A couple of teenagers rounded the corner. As they neared Eniola they walked a little faster; jaywalked across the street so they wouldn’t have to pass right by him.

Eniola thought he heard one of them saying something about him. About how: was he high? No, just tired, probably. Yeah, sure. I wish I was tired right now. They both laughed.

From far away, Eniola heard a police siren. He wondered if it was coming towards him, or maybe going away from him and towards Luke’s protest. On the grass, Luke’s words dropped alongside him.

Gunned down. How do you think? Brap brap brap.

There were a lot of police officers around here. The thought made Eniola’s head hurt. As he sat on the grass, he wondered what the name Mark meant.

Mark, Eniola thought, as in, a stain left on something. Mark, as in, x marks the spot. As in, a place to aim at. Mark, as in son of bones and gunpowder, as in, born to have your face painted on a sign after-the-fact. Mark, as in, how do you think? Mark, as in brap brap brap. Mark, as in—gunned down.

Gunned down made it sound like a war. Sometimes, Eniola thought of it like a war, with the uniforms, the guns, the dust that never seemed to scatter. Eniola was not wearing his uniform today, there was no Armani suit with the button done up, he was wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt and it was too dark.

Where was Martin? Eniola began to see the vague outlines of the answer. There were always a lot of officers around here. Were there? He had made a point not to notice, not to watch the news, just to go to work, go to his apartment, look at his water view.

In his mind, he saw Luke’s face, then Mark’s face, then Martin’s face. And then his own.

Luke, Martin, Eniola, Mark. They all meant the same thing, all had the same root, maybe.

Eniola lay down on the grass, wrapped his arms around himself, making his own little sleeping bag. He imagined the cold silver room they’d put Martin’s body in, how many rows deep he’d be, how many rows wide the room was. Two weeks from now, maybe, they would have a protest about Martin. Luke would ask—how do you think? And everyone would know the answer. But Eniola would not go to the protest. And now, he laid in the syrupy darkness, let his skin flex in and out of focus with the inky sky.

 

Eniola woke up with his face pressed into the grass; it was still dark. He did not know if it was the same Saturday night, or if it was Sunday night, or maybe a week had passed, or perhaps he was dead.

He pulled himself up, decided to go home, found himself on a bus headed to Luke’s apartment. Eniola sat close to the bus driver, leaned in, said—what time is it?

The driver flinched. His hands curled tight around the wheel. “It’s eleven-thirty.”

“What—what day?”

“Huh?”

“What day of the week is it?”

“Saturday.”

The only other people on the bus were two college-age kids. They picked up their things and moved to the back. Eniola understood. He would have done the same thing.

At Luke’s apartment, Eniola let himself in with the spare key he always kept in his wallet. Luke was sprawled on the couch, asleep. The sound of the door opening woke him up.

“What the—” he began.

“It’s me,” said Eniola.

Luke had to turn on the lights, rub his eyes twice to be sure.

“Christ,” Luke said. “What are you doing?”

Eniola sat on Luke’s floor. The Saturday seemed impossibly long. He was tired, and smelled like grass and dirt and vomit.

“What are you doing?” Luke repeated, almost panicked. “I don’t—I don’t have your money yet.”

Eniola’s head throbbed. “I heard gunshots.” He said, remembering his bedroom window. “I thought—I wanted to check. I thought you might be dead.”

Which one was the dead one? Martin, Luke, Mark; they drifted around in Eniola’s head, their heaviness collapsing in on him until he saw their faces compressed on top of one another. He lay down on Luke’s floor, thought, again, that he might vomit.

“Are you high?” From the ground, Eniola could see Luke’s face, hovering above his. Brows drawn tight, lips pursed—he looked like Martin. Except, Eniola thought, alive. So, so alive.

“No,” said Eniola. “I just—I heard gunshots. And, the protest, and the sirens—”

“There were no shots,” Luke said, exasperated. “No one got shot. No arrests, no nothing. It was a peaceful thing.”

Eniola closed his eyes. “Well,” he said.

“What is going on, Eni?”

Eniola wanted to explain—the gunshots, the sirens, then Martin, being gone, forever, and then, they all looked so much alike, and all their faces could be pressed—one two three four—right on top of one another. And death being transitive, Eniola had to make sure that it hadn’t transferred over to Luke, with his light and his art and his chains. But Eniola said none of this. Instead, he said: “You don’t have to pay me back.”

Then he began to cry.

And Luke watched; two eyes bearing witness to some sort of inwards demolition, some warped, lonely protest. But for Luke, for Eniola, for the small apartment and dirty couch from the street, it was protest enough.

 

By Monday, Eniola felt almost entirely better. When he stepped into his office, the name placard on his desk was more settled, familiar. That morning, he went to the break room for coffee, watched his co-workers stir sugar into their cups as slowly as possible.

Someone brought up Saturday’s protest.

“Is there no room,” said Nancy, sagely, “For discussion anymore?”

The handful of people in the break room hummed affirmation. As they moved, you could hear the rustling of their suits.

“It’s so sad,” said Frank, “That they think that rioting is the only solution.”

“Imagine all the economic output if they just worked,” said Nancy. Everyone nodded vigorously. Ah! This was industry. Problems solved in the safe confines of a skyscraper. You could feel the memoirs being written.

In a rush of ingenuity, Nancy turned to Eniola. “Right, Eniola?”

The world expanded dramatically, collapsed all at once. Eniola wanted to say, my brother organized that protest. He wanted to say: a homeless man named has been spitting on me for almost a week. Literally spitting. I think he is dead. I think he was murdered. By people like you, I think. Eniola wanted to say: I only know you people. I bought my apartment a year ago and I haven’t had a single guest.

Eniola smiled, with closed lips, so Nancy would not see his teeth. “You’re absolutely right,” he said.

He spent his time in the hot dog line that day writing Martin’s eulogy. He sat down in his usual spot. He noticed, across the street, a sleeping bag. An angry man, shuffling across the street, as if there was a strong headwind blowing against him.

“Oh my god,” Eniola said out loud. It was less in shock, more in prayer.

Martin reached Eniola. Opened his mouth to begin to speak.

“Listen,” Eniola said quickly. Martin paused.  “Do you want my suit?”

“What?” Martin said.

“You want to—you want to wear it? I’ll give it to you.”

It was the first time Eniola had seen Martin pause. “We can swap,” Eniola said. “I’ll wear your clothes, you wear mine.”

Eniola walked Martin back to his office, watched him push the revolving door open and shrink in the open space of the lobby. Before anyone could notice, he took Martin into the lobby’s bathroom. They swapped clothing in the marbled bathroom stalls.

Eniola’s suit was simultaneously too big and too small for Martin, long and droopy in the arms, tight around the waist. But Martin’s clothes fit Eniola well. Stained sweatpants, a sweatshirt that smelled like piss and cigarette smoke.

“What are you going to do?” Martin said. It was the softest Eniola had ever heard him speak.

Eniola wanted to walk back outside and lie down on the grass next to Martin’s sleeping bag, watch the people on the street as they ebbed and flowed. He wanted to lean in to them, close. Listen to their conversations and have them listen to him back.

“I’m going to go to work, I guess.” Eniola said. “I just got promoted.”