I sigh. “Mom, I need you to get comfortable with the idea of me not getting married.”
“Okay, well if you don’t want to marry anyone, then I have plenty of young men who need someone to marry for papers. At least you can help someone even as you break your mother’s heart.”
“Mom, I am not going to marry someone just for papers. First, it’s illegal, and second, it’s illegal.”
“Hmm, you never know…you could meet your forever man.”
I recoil in disgust. “Do you hear yourself?”
“Do you?” she retorts.
“I don’tneeda husband. Why would I sacrifice my autonomy just so I can satisfy an outdated norm that was only ever there to benefit men?”
She looks at my father in exasperation. “Our American daughter says marriage is outdated.”
He throws his hands up toward the sky. “Where did I go wrong?”
I sigh in long suffering weariness. “If you wanted a Ghanaian daughter, you should have raised me there.”
My parents have lived in this country for almost forty years, but their hearts, minds, and social circles remained on the other side of the world.
At home we watched CNN International, listened to high life, ate rice and stew every day, and every summer we had a house packed with visiting relatives who stayed for months at a time. And we almost always had a cousin living with us while they went to school. My parents both went to boarding school, prized education above everything, and didn’t allow us to do anything they deemed “too American.” So dating, straightening our hair, calling any adult by their first name, and spending the night anywhere but under their roof were all forbidden.
They ran our house the way their boarding schools had been run. But outside of the doors of their house, we lived what felt like an aggressively American life. Except for the weekends. We spent weekends attending functions and had more aunties and uncles than my American friends could comprehend. We shopped at African and Asian food markets, cooked and ate like they do at home—outside and with our hands.
When I was ten years old, they moved us from the diverse Silver Spring area to one of the whitest neighborhoods in northern Virginia where my father’s new job teaching history at Georgetown Prep camewith scholarships for his children.
It was a great privilege but isolating in its lack of diversity. It was good in that it prepared me for a life of code switching that has become second nature to me now.
I have three different accents depending on which one of the cultures I straddle is claiming the moment. It wasn’t until I got to New York that I realized how wrong I’d been to think of my identity as something fractured. I’m Ghanaian-American and Black and first gen and the child of immigrants. Instead of treating them as competing narratives, I’m learning to hold space for all of those at once.
Their doorbell’s ridiculously loud chime snaps us all out of our thoughts. “Oh no. He’s here. Thanks to you, I’m not ready. Let me go and get the door.” She stands up and sucks her teeth as she walks past me.
“As if I’m the one who demanded we have a meeting right now,” I mutter as soon as she’s out of earshot.
My father tuts in disapproval. “You make problems bigger for yourself when you try to hide them,” my father says in that nonjudgemental tone that makes me wish I was the daughter they wanted.
“Wasn’t trying to hide anything. You were already not happy that I was joiningThe Spectator.”
“Sin, at the very best it’s a lateral move at a time when you should be leveling up.”
I bristle at that. “I’mpivoting, Dad. And I’m still making good money.”
“Is that the only thing that matters?”
“Dad, it’s a job. Getting paid is the only reason any of us have one. I don’t want to be defined by it anymore. I’m sorry if it’s disappointing to you. I want so badly to make you proud. But I couldn’t keep living a lie just so you and Mom have something to brag about at the next wedding or outdooring you attend.”
“Oh. Is that what you think we care about?”
“I mean…what else could I think when you both call my step in the right direction a step down? Maybe you’re right and I’ll regret it, but I want to know what it feels like to taste regret that comes from the back of myownthroat.” My voice cracks and I touch my neck.
“Sin, we sacrificed so you wouldn’t have to. We’ve lived the American dream. We want you to do even better.”
“Dad, what if that’s not my dream?”
“Who doesn’t want stability?”
“I don’t think what I want is incompatible with stability.”
