Nicole opened the door to her apartment and invited me in. She was obviously curious about why I’d come. “So what did you want to talk about?”
I wasn’t sure how to begin. “This is going to sound strange.”
“Okay,” she said.
I told her about viewing my partial lifelog using Remem and seeing the argument we’d had when she was sixteen that ended with me yelling at her and her leaving the house. “Do you remember that day?”
“Of course I do.” She looked uncomfortable, uncertain of where I was going with this.
“I remembered it, too, or at least I thought I did. But I remembered it differently. The way I remembered it, it was you who said it to me.”
“Me who said what?”
“I remembered you telling me that I could leave for all you cared, and that you’d be better off without me.”
Nicole stared at me for a long time. “All these years, that’s how you’ve remembered that day?”
“Yes, until today.”
“That’d almost be funny if it weren’t so sad.”
I felt sick to my stomach. “I’m so sorry. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
“Sorry you said it, or sorry that you imagined me saying it?”
“Both.”
“Well, you should be! You know how that made me feel?”
“I can’t imagine. I know I felt terrible when I thought you had said it to me.”
“Except that was just something you made up. It actually happened to me.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Fucking typical.”
That hurt to hear. “Is it? Really?”
“Sure,” she said. “You’re always acting like you’re the victim, like you’re the good guy who deserves to be treated better than you are.”
“You make me sound like I’m delusional.”
“Not delusional. Just blind and self-absorbed.”
I bristled a little. “I’m trying to apologize here.”
“Right, right. This is about you.”
“No, you’re right, I’m sorry.” I waited until Nicole gestured for me to go on. “I guess I am…blind and self-absorbed. The reason it’s hard for me to admit that is that I thought I had opened my eyes and gotten over that.”
She frowned. “What?”
I told her how I felt like I had turned around as a father and rebuilt our relationship, culminating in a moment of bonding at her college graduation. Nicole wasn’t openly derisive, but her expression caused me to stop talking; it was obvious I was embarrassing myself.
“Did you still hate me at graduation?” I asked. “Was I completely making it up that you and I got along then?”
“No, we did get along at graduation. But it wasn’t because you had magically become a good father.”
“What was it, then?”
She paused, took a deep breath, and then said, “I started seeing a therapist when I went to college.” She paused again. “She pretty much saved my life.”
My first thought was, Why would Nicole need a therapist? I pushed that down and said, “I didn’t know you were in therapy.”
“Of course you didn’t; you were the last person I would have told. Anyway, by the time I was a senior, she had convinced me that I was better off not staying angry at you. That’s why you and I got along so well at graduation.”
So I had indeed fabricated a narrative that bore little resemblance to reality. Nicole had done all the work, and I had done none.
“I guess I don’t really know you.”
She shrugged. “You know me as well as you need to.”
That hurt, too, but I could hardly complain. “You deserve better,” I said.
Nicole gave a brief, rueful laugh. “You know, when I was younger, I used to daydream about you saying that. But now…well, it’s not as if it fixes everything, is it?”
I realized that I’d been hoping she would forgive me then and there, and then everything would be good. But it would take more than my saying sorry to repair our relationship.
Something occurred to me. “I can’t change the things I did, but at least I can stop pretending I didn’t do them. I’m going to use Remem to get an honest picture of myself, take a kind of personal inventory.”
Nicole looked at me, gauging my sincerity. “Fine,” she said. “But let’s be clear: you don’t come running to me every time you feel guilty over treating me like crap. I worked hard to put that behind me, and I’m not going to relive it just so you can feel better about yourself.”
“Of course.” I saw that she was tearing up. “And I’ve upset you again by bringing all this up. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, Dad. I appreciate what you’re trying to do. Just…let’s not do it again for a while, okay?”
“Right.” I moved toward the door to leave, and then stopped. “I just wanted to ask…if it’s possible, if there’s anything I can do to make amends…”
“Make amends?” She looked incredulous. “I don’t know. Just be more considerate, will you?”
And that’s what I’m trying to do.
At the government station there was indeed paper from forty years ago, what the Europeans called assessment reports, and Moseby’s presence was sufficient to grant them access. They were written in the European language, which Jijingi couldn’t read, but they included diagrams of the ancestry of the various clans, and he could identify the Tiv names in those diagrams easily enough, and Moseby had confirmed that his interpretation was correct. The elders in the western farms were right, and Sabe was wrong: Shangev was not Kwande’s son; he was Jechira’s.
One of the men at the government station had agreed to type up a copy of the relevant page so Jijingi could take it with him. Moseby decided to stay in Katsina-Ala to visit with the missionaries there, but Jijingi came home right away. He felt like an impatient child on the return trip, wishing he could ride the truck all the way back instead of having to walk from the motor road. As soon as he had arrived at the village, Jijingi looked for Sabe.
He found him on the path leading to a neighboring farm; some neighbors had stopped Sabe to have him settle a dispute over how a nanny goat’s kids should be distributed. Finally, they were satisfied, and Sabe resumed his walk. Jijingi walked beside him.
“Welcome back,” said Sabe.
“Sabe, I’ve been to Katsina-Ala.”
“Ah. Why did you go there?”
Jijingi showed him the paper. “This was written long ago, when the Europeans first came here. They spoke to the elders of the Shangev clan then, and when the elders told them the history of the Shangev clan, they said that Shangev was the son of Jechira.”
Sabe’s reaction was mild. “Whom did the Europeans ask?”
Jijingi looked at the paper. “Batur and Iorkyaha.”
“I remember them,” he said, nodding. “They were wise men. They would not have said such a thing.”
Jijingi pointed at the words on the page. “But they did!”
“Perhaps you are reading it wrong.”
“I am not! I know how to read.”
Sabe shrugged. “Why did you bring this paper back here?”
“What it says is important. It means we should rightfully be joined with the Jechira clan.”
“You think the clan should trust your decision on this matter?”
“I’m not asking the clan to trust me. I’m asking them to trust the men who were elders when you were young.”
“And so they should. But those men aren’t here. All you have is paper.”
“The paper tells us what they would say if they were here.”
“Does it? A man doesn’t speak only one thing. If Batur and Iorkyaha were here, they would agree with me that we should join with the Kwande clan.”
“How could they, when Shangev was the son of Jechira?” He pointed at the sheet of paper. “The Jechira are our closer kin.”