Niko’s Eye

Chapter 44.

"Relativity."

Isis.

"I’m sorry, what! Are you saying that, somehow, Zainab is my sister? Not that she isn’t right now but you know?" She asked, half excited, and half irritated that it had to be Sergio out of all of the men out there.

The one who had an affair with Aisha? That one? For f**k sakes.

She wasn’t sure what the world was turning into and how many more surprises she could take.

But let me not judge. They say the future is female; I say it’s united and flexible. We are human before we are anything else - a gender, race or s****l orientation. All personality traits are found in all genders; men are fully capable of being empathic. Personally, I find emotionally open men to be fully manly and indeed, the most attractive. What we need to avoid is cold or indifferent leaders, those seeking power and craving personal status instead of seeking to serve with love. We need those who desire to stop the pendulum of discrimination rather than letting it swing to the other side, making new victims and villains. Our sons are as important as our daughters and we need to raise all of our children to be fluent in compassion, empathy and kindness.

She grabbed a chair at the dining table and sank into it, weak from the news.

But, from the top of her head, all she could set her eyesight on was the fact that Zainab could be her relative.

Isis looked at Sergio, and then she looked at Zainab. She kept exchanging glances this way, until Zainab spoke up.

"I’m not sure if he’s really my father, I.."

"Nigga, have you seen your nose? It’s just like his."

Sergio’s nose was straight with a European bridge, speaking of his Nordic kin and their need to preserve body heat. His hair was tightly curled on the top, with his soulful laugh and the sort of brown eyes that bring hearth-sipped hot cocoa to the memory.

She kinda did looked like Sergio.

And then her heart twisted into a knot, as she had already told Zainab about Sergio and her mother and how evil they both were once upon a time. In a silent prayer, she hoped that it wouldn’t thwart their relationship or his efforts to bond with her.

In one of their intimate conversations, Zainab had disclosed that she had met a man who claimed to be her father, but right now, all it actually was, was a claim. There was so much that needed to be done before anything else.

"Okay okay," she sliced into the light discussion that had already risen around the table.

"Why don’t we do a paternity test, today. Right now. Alejandro, please call the doctor. I need to know if Zainab is my relative, in one way or another."

Alejandro nodded and excused himself from the table.

She looked over at Zainab and Sergio who were caught up in each other’s vibe, but yet distant.

Awkward.

Alejandro came strolling back into the dining room, "He’ll be here in a jiffy."

They proceeded with dinner and started to conversate about other things, moving away from the depressing topics.

Mushroom soup, collard greens with tomatoes the size of peas, rare roast beef slices as thick as the size of bricks, noodles in a white sauce, Parmesan cheese that melts on your tongue served with sweet blue grapes.

Laughter filled the house, as Isis and Alejandro playfully kicked each other’s feet underneath the table while the rest told jokes and amusing stories.

As they were getting lost in the happiness and jolly mood, Alejandro got up to go and usher in the doctor as he had already pressed the remote so the gate could open.

Isis drew in a sharp breath.

Crunch time.

Zainab.

Once Zainab had finished telling the high and low lights of her and Isis’ high school camping trip, Sergio locked her in a serious gaze. "You know," he said, callused finger pointing right at her nose, "you kids have it easy. When I was a lad the real work was in setting the snares for the wild parsnips." Zainab mock fainted on the table and Isis snickered.

Maybe he is my father. When he speaks, I see myself in him.

Her rate was faster since Alejandro had gone to show the doctor in.

Zainab had always been good at waiting.

My mind is so much like the ocean I watch for the incoming ship, calm on the surface with so many deep under currents, all of them with their own purpose. Being a "watcher" is the perfect job for a daydreamer like me and if I must suffer cold feet and numb fingers through the winter months it’s a price worth paying.

They think I’m a fool to wait like I do every chance I get: eyes set to the horizon, arms resting on the cold metal rail. But the way I see it they’re missing the greatest mysteries of life as they chase the mundane and trip over the details of existence. Waiting here gives me time to let my mind escape the boundaries of the ordinary, to think beyond the offerings of modern media. I ponder the threads that bind one person to another and the wounds that separate. I think about the origins of goodness and what "humanity" really is. Waiting here while others do important things is such a gift, a blessing of time. I would give up an eternity of tedium to simply solve a great mystery, to think as the masters of antiquity once did.

Waiting is easier for me than it is for Isis, I can see that as I look across the table from her. She’s tapping her long nails onto the dining room table, while I sit with my arms folded across my chest. I’ve had all the practice in my younger years. To her, a few minutes is a long time, a week even more. My concept of time is so different, I sit, let my mind empty and enjoy the peace. She comes up with a million different "we’re screwed" scenarios and needs feedback on every single one. Waiting on my own is simple, with her in tow it’s exhausting just sitting in my chair.

As she heard the men’s voices nearing the dining room, her heart did front flips as they all sat in silence.

Alejandro walked in with th doctor trotting behind him at arm’s length.

"Everybody, this is Dr. Osler." Formalities were over and done with, and they had taken their seats in the living room because nobody wanted to mix blood with their food.

Straight to the point huh?

Her mind drifted as she watched the doctor draw blood from Sergio’s arm.

The universe beyond the interface, the barrier that limited humanity to one time and place, was like DNA. It was a spiral that stretched onward until it coiled about on itself, like some fractal pattern on steroids. Were human-kind still constrained by time it would be a simple spinning disc, just like the milky way we’d always seen.

Should this spiral spin fast it would appear as a simple disc, a ball perhaps, one ever expanding. Yet as the circle shape expanded, some would float into space as a loose string, like the string of a balloon, ready to be cast off. The strings were released to prevent devolution within the ring, not simply of matter but of spirit also. As we watched it grow, watched it cast off what was no longer required, we knew we were looking at a living universe, one that self regulated to only keep in what was good for the whole. Perhaps the double strands were parallel universes, never intended to mix, yet they belonged together, needed one another. All we had seen for millennia was like a cross section of a candycane.

Zainab sighed and looked at the bracelet on her arm, the one that Isis had given her a few moments ago, the silver beads alternately separated by tiny blue kyanite "drops." She wondered if there was indeed a level of the universe beyond this one. If this DNA-like circle was truly spinning, how would she know without a reference point? In which case the next level up could resemble the bracelet on her arm, each larger part of the universe separated by something different that kept them isolated and safe. She touched her fingers to the beads and turned back to the real world, to face her reality.

Zainab was a mind-ranting individual, just like her father, but she didn’t know it yet.

The doctor stood up to come around and seat himself on Zainab’s side so that he could draw blood from her arm too.

After carefully placing her blood in a tiny tube, and labelling it, he looked up at the Sergio and Zainab.

I’m going to be using expedited methods to ensure a faster result, one within the next few hours, so if you would like, please carry on with your dinner, I will remain here in the living room.

"Dr. Olsen, please do join us for dinner."

So he’s a greedy one?

The tiny man with a wide-brimmed pair of glasses and wizened, sparse hair, gladly accepted the invitation.

As they continued with their dinner, some having lost their appetite, the beep on the pocket-sized DNA test went off, giving everybody a fright.

"The results are ready," said Dr. Olsen.

"Digging."

Sergio.

Two years ago, if somebody had told me that I would meet my child in the next year, then I would’ve sent that person to hell. And yet, here I am.

Dr. Olsen had confirmed that the probability of paternity was 99.9%.

Sergio had known it. Deep in his heart, he had been convinced from the very first day that Zainab was his. His only daughter. So, he wasn’t shocked. He was just over the moon. Ecstatic at how favourable things had turned out for him. He didn’t know what he did to deserve such a beautiful gift. Especially because he had been such a

That made him wonder how many more kids he had out there because he was a little bit of a Casanova in his ’hey-days’.

Even though he wasn’t sure about that, what he did know was that, he never spilt his seed in any other woman’s womb except Aisha and his wife.

He didn’t have any kids with his wife because she didn’t want any more, seeing that she already had kids from her previous relationship. He felt like that had always been an unfair point of view, considering the fact that he didn’t have any, at the time.

I don’t know where she expected me to pull one out of, especially if Zainab didn’t exist. God always knows what he’s doing. Maybe Alejandro was right. God truly exists, and he is good. But, as a man, it is interesting that the female reproductive part of a flower that receives the male pollen is called the "stigma" and in society for so many generations a woman who has s*x with a man outside of marriage has carried a social "stigma." This is linked to old fashioned notions that a woman must be a virgin or pious and is linked to greater certainty of paternity for males. Again, we are back the kind of basic biology that is at the root of much misogyny and patriarchy. We will always need chivalry because women who are pregnant or mothers have specific needs and because males have greater physical strength from babyhood onwards. Women have s****l needs as much as men do. Perhaps it is time society at least admitted that so we can move on to a more grown up attitude towards female sexuality.

Sergio was rambling in his mind again.

I need to get control of this. It’s beginning to annoy me. Maybe I’m losing my mind because of the trauma Aisha has put me through.

He laughed at his own thoughts, and decided to focus on his new-found happiness.

They were back around the table, playing Uno and Monopoly, Zainab seated next to Sergio, the atmosphere having changed from serious to jolly.

Everybody was happy.

Sergio held his daughter’s hand and kissed her forehead.

"We have a lot of catching up to do."

She responded by placing her head onto his shoulder.

Isis.

The gravity of their inexplicable bond had been justified. Isis and Zainab were too close not to be sisters.

They had both been extremely ecstatic at the news, to the point of tears.

I’ll cry over a sad movie, or in empathy for another, but for myself, there’s not just drops, there are puddles. I always express my own pain and joy that way, I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s functional. But, I’ve been through a lot and crying was never going to do me any good.

But Isis was really happy that Zainab turned out to be her sister. Even though they did not share the same blood, she knew that having the same blood did not mean anything, without love and loyalty.

She watched her as she bonded with her father.

As if Alejandro knew that she felt a pinch of envy, he knowingly placed his hand on her leg and gave it a gentle squeeze.

Rãmirez had left the gang a few hours after their discussion about Aisha had ended. They didn’t even get around to discussing the issue at hand because there was just so much drama that unfolded that night.

Atleast he had dinner.

"Baby, tell me," Sergio started, "How did you become friends with Isis?"

Zainab immediately plopped herself up in her chair and swallowed the last jellybaby that she had in her mouth before speaking.

"Actually, Isis’ mo...I mean, Aisha, had introduced us when we were in primary school , because she was friends with my adoptive mother. So now that the story has unfolded, it’s all making sense. But we really got a chance to know each other in high school. We were in the same biology class and we needed a leader. I’ve never seen a person more devoted. At first glance her actions appeared scattered, her choices non-congruent with the rest of society, yet the key to her making sense to others was to see that her moral compass was perfect. She knew what love was, what it was not, and she charted her course though this messed up world making the best choices she could. Thus she had a different focus to everyone else, and, in time, it built her into the leader we all needed. That’s what drew me to her, and from there, we just, hit it off. Got even closer after I moved away from her."

Isis forced a smile and held back the tears.

She didn’t feel like crying because of Zainab’s sweet words. But she felt like crying because it was dawning on her that she was an orphan.

Why me?

Alejandro.

Wow. So Sergio has a daughter, who happens to be Isis’ best friend? Interesting times.

Alejandro’s heart ached for Isis though.

She has no parents. Which doesn’t make sense as to why I take mine for granted. It’s been 15 years since he left Cuba. It was weird that Isis didn’t know anything about him but yet he claimed to love her.

Alejandro’s father was a Cuban man who got married to a Greek woman. He never spoke about his roots or even thought about his family, whom he left behind. Alejandro had always been a stubborn boy. He grew up beer appreciating what his family would do for him because he wanted more. His parents were aristocrats. They were well-off. But Alejandro didn’t just want to be "well-off." He wanted the world in his hands. That ambition had led him nowhere, but to a hedonistic life with a huge emotional void. He tried to fill the void with numerous women, which lead him into deeper holes. He had cut contact with his family 15 years ago, and he had no idea why.

Alejandro had a brother, whom he was never close to, but appreciated so much.

Every blessing is a curse and they come in equal strength. This is the balance of the universe. My brother was the greatest blessing God could ever have brought and thus my responsibility for him was of the same measure, and yet I ran away from that. But, if you won’t accept the curse, you can never be blessed.

Every day while the other boys played as if every drop of daylight were sacred, as if the next day the sun might stay in its heavenly bed, Alejandro always meditated on his money-making blueprint. He thought that with more money, he’d have more power. His influences came from reading specific books. And with that, he was curious about how the human brain works, which explained his degree in psychology. But the real deal, had always been to make more money, in order to gain more power.

He would watch his male cousins wake up unbothered by their poverty. Of course the brilliant white rays came to rouse them from their slumber more early than they wished the next day and after a hasty breakfast they were tearing around the neighbourhood with laughter louder than the birdsong. Alejandro’s family was the only family who could send their children to prestigious schools, but Alejandro’s mind was made to be home-schooled. There were just so many dysfunctional things in his mind, that drove him to where he had gotten himself.

Oh, I’m a broken man alright. I can’t make someone else happy if I’m not happy. I need to fix my s**t. It wasn’t just with God, but my whole life in general.

He wasn’t sure if this was the perfect time to bring up his own family as he knew Isis was feeling a type of way seeing Zainab cuddling with her father.

Hectic.

Alejandro zoned deeper into his thoughts as he thought of his mother.

She had once said, "Know that being my son means something. It means I will protect you to the very last vestige of my power. I will stand before you should danger come your way, beside you as you find your footing, and only behind when you are ready to be a man. I won’t ever leave you. Not ever. Though these bones will age my love is eternal, so am I, so are you. I hope you never felt you had to earn my love, to prove yourself worthy, you never did. I was there when you came into the world, I saw the divine spark that is your soul k****e in your newborn eyes. Whatever challenges come your way, I know the real you, the one inside, the one that is my son."

I need to call my family.

"Skeletons In The Closet."

Belvia.

She laid in bed satisfied, as she listened to the ruckus that was going on downstairs.

Everybody is safe. My baby girl is happy. And I am happy.

Her mind wandered off to Aisha. She wondered where she went wrong. She had always tried her best to be the mother that every child deserves.

When Aisha was born, she contained more love than many worlds that share our spiral galaxy. In her chest, beat a heart as noble as any fiction book hero, she was one who would take untold hardships to honour the keeper of her soul. As a baby and child, she needed mother to be her keeper and father to be her steadfast guide and role model, but life just didn’t unfold that way. Her mother was too beaten down, too emotionally crippled to reflect even a fraction of the love she poured into her and needed to be mirrored back. Her father kept strict discipline, never yielding, always in charge. The rules were the rules. Though her outside remained as beautiful as the day she first cried, her spirit struggled to survive in a world so cold, so bereft of love. And so, she blended in with the world. Belvia thought that maybe that had set the foundation for the way Isis turned out.

She got up from her bed and walked to the dresser, where she had placed a box with earrings that she had wanted to give to Isis. They belonged to her mother.

She smiled as she opened the box.

I looked at the earrings, their pressed metal form, and my heart sank. They could have been made by a trafficked child in a sweat factory before being sold to some aristocrats from the 60’s. I’d worn them. I’d felt good in them. They meant so much to me and even though Isis was not Aisha’s biological daughter, I will never rule her out as my granddaughter. She deserves this.

Belvia thought about her life as a young girl.

If I could have been a grown up woman sooner instead of being stuck as a girl, I would have not felt the need for escape, for that is a sense of being in a cage. There was no cage. Perhaps, in this imaginary more mature version of myself, I’d have kept us together. Not from greater care. You had far more of that than a grown man should be entitled to. No. I should have taken better care of myself. I should have had better boundaries on what I could give and what I could not give. Most likely though, we’d simply have ended sooner. I guess, in hindsight, that would have been better. We both would have found our freedom to grow, to become the versions of ourselves our inner passions were pulling for.

She lifted the box and there was a piece of paper that she had once ripped out of Aisha’s diary when Aisha was 10 years old. She had only discovered the diary in Aisha’s adulthood, which had helped her to understand Aisha’s psychology. The diary entry read:

August 24, 1973.

It was the same old story. Dad had become stressed, his stress response was dis-regulated, he was spiralling. Mom’s buffering ability was overrun, and now she was triggered too. Dave wanted to protect Mom, he always did. So then he was in the middle of it - all of them with their higher brains shut down and their primitive selves in full lack-of-self-control maximum-damage-infliction mode. The fall out of all this was gonna take years to heal, if ever. I didn’t get it then, how could I? Ten years old and hiding behind the couch - peeking out - getting my own dose of toxic stress and PTSD into the bargain. Family fights, eh? No-one wins and long term it makes us all sick, makes us all die younger than we should have with lives so much less loving than we all deserved, needed, wanted. These are the ACEs you never want to hold, let along get a stack of them. I found my way out though, in making money and power the focus of my life, in being self aware, in noticing when I am my inner "Bruce Banner" or in "Hulk-smash-mode." I want to get any and everything I want, and I will take down everyone who happens to get in my way.

Belvia had skeletons in the closet, and she was terrified of revisiting them.

Just as chills had gone up to her spine, there was a knock on her door.

Isis.

Isis was in the kitchen, packing up the leftover dinner into the freezer, when Zainab walked in on her, giving her an unsolicited fright.

She plucked a kiss on Zainab’s forehead and attempted to walk past her, when Zainab grabbed her arm and swung her back around to face her.

"Are you okay?" She asked, with a pour.

"Yeah, sure. I’m great. I just need to lay down. I think it’s been a long day."

"Yeah, you’re right. So much to process. I’ll let you sleep. Goodnight Ice. I love you."

Isis jokingly punched Zainab’s arm, "Where’d you hear "Ice" from?"

"From your one and only, " Zainab laughed.

Isis rolled her eyes and backed out of the kitchen, semi-blushing.

Isis was in the dark about many things. She felt lost. She needed to talk to somebody who understood.

Her grandmother.

In the age of enlightenment that followed the era of greed and vanity, people put aside their holy books. They kept them safe as revered documents of the struggles of humanity and looked toward a harmonious future together as many cultures, each with their own merits. They became more humble, knowing that they could only really operate with one principle rather than books inches deep. They had to make independent choices as free-thinkers, but always guided by the principle of Love. What was the most loving course for their own family? For their friends? For their community? For mother earth and the other life that also called her home?

They were called on as billions of adults to embrace learning, to think about the best and kindest ways to raise children, for children are the future and their psychological health depends on that rearing. They had to learn that fear and love are opposites that cannot dwell together, that when you use fear as a weapon love cannot remain and God is Love. Change was hard, we made so many mistakes and prayed forgiveness even though we knew no punishment would come. It took a long time to get into our "modern mess" and it took a while to get out of it.

Knowing we were still in the dark ages was hard, but we thanked the Creator for the message and began to think. No longer was it permissible to just be "part of the herd," that kind of thinking was destroying the earth. Science blossomed, creativity was understood better and how it brought us closer to the Divine, artists were respected and the culture of chasing money at all costs was over. We didn’t need rituals, we didn’t need to worship. He made it clear that all forms of discrimination are not His ways, they are not Love. A "dog eat dog" culture is no culture at all.

We embraced new ideas and discarded old ones, even cherished ones, if new solid evidence contradicted them. Enlightenment was scary at times, but it was the greatest blessing from God, from Love.

Isis knocked onto her grandmother’s door and walked in.

She immediately went up to her grandmother and hugged her.

"Nana, I’m so lost, she cried. "I don’t know who I am anymore. I’ve been waiting for, praying for, some kind of top-down change, but now I know it won’t happen that way. We’re fooling ourselves if we think it will. We’ll be watching some stupid reality show or playing computer games the moment the Earth goes past the tipping point and into an unstoppable greenhouse effect. We’ll still be frightened by the news and placating ourselves with chemical laden junk food in pretty boxes, wrapped in plastic of course. We’ll still be chasing that lifestyle we’ve been groomed for from childhood to crave, that life equals consumption, success equals consumption. We’ll admire a system with no more morals than "rich is good" and you can do "whatever you can get away with" to accumulate more money than you can ever spend - while others starve. With no change we’ll continue to sacrifice our own children to the "daycare" system and then feel stressed when our damaged kids "act out." We won’t even stop to dwell on the fact that the number one cause of death of our minors is suicide - yes, children killing themselves. And for the record, that means our culture - the one we accept so passively - killed them. I can’t live with that, not anymore, and if you’re being honest with yourself instead of swallowing the "I don’t care," " I’m too busy to care" party line, then you’ll know you can’t either. I can’t keep living my life for others, but I don’t know what life is outside of what I was taught. So I’m caught between the two."

Isis needed to put down all the baggage she was carrying from the day she left the house after catching her mother with another man.

"Isis, read this piece of paper."