He had a scar on his hip from a dog bite in his childhood. Our first night together I kissed it and he breathed the most profound sigh and asked how did I know exactly where he wanted to be touched, that no one had ever touched him there. Our romance was like that, healing every old wound with magic disappearing powers until they were all tended. We lived out of time, nursed all injuries, shared all the stories and then were fortified and ready to go on with our life together.
At dinner, I ask the boys if they remembered that scar, and they do, and the scar on his hand from when he offered the dog a cookie. No wonder he was wary around dogs! We tell a funny story about how Daddy poked the stick in the donkey’s ass and the donkey kicked his two hind legs in Daddy’s stomach. African stories, stories with animals in them, stories in the backyard, stories with lessons, ghost stories, war stories.
We don’t talk about the old scar on his head, which the treadmill scraped clean off when he died. It is one of our shared nightmare images we wish we could un-see. The old scar was a three-inch, purple-ish ribbon across his scalp. “He fell off his bike,” Solo remembers. “He told us, he fell off his bike and all of the streets of Asmara ran red with his blood.” Simon has already dreamed his father’s head clean and healed without the scar, and that, he says, is how you know Daddy is dead in the dream.
We three loved his head, and caressed it. We were the keepers and protectors of his dear brown head. We loved him with our hands on his head.