Bear Bear Harvest

The house is on a twelve-acre lot that Mom Mom thought cozy. She has a map of the land and surrounding properties to prove that it isn't a corner lot, as if anyone could tell. Corner lots draw too much energy and are considered bad feng shui. The aquarium, on the other hand, is on the southeast wall for wealth, and the wall of ficus and bamboo in the east for health or maybe luck. No cacti: They bring aggression. I believe the cousins are also bad feng shui, but no one will ever actually say so. Like everything, that, too, must be in the stars.

We have to entertain the cousins all weekend in honor of Sybil's first Harvest, like she's going to an unexplored galaxy when it's only the mall. Bear Bear understands my take on the event completely but stays quiet. We are in harmony. Bear Bear is my actual dad and generally silent on most matters about the house or the neighborhood—or the city or the globe, really. He reads a lot. He's earned that luxury. Oh, fatherhood is a motherfucker, Mom Mom says—same old joke, same irony, same spit flying through her gapped teeth. I like to bring Bear Bear snacks, just like she does, even though he won't eat like he used to: Nothing's good enough. Cousin Sybil, on the other hand, has not missed a meal or an in-between meal her whole life, and can't wait for Harvest, just grinning her delighted jiggly ass off.

Mom Mom is in every way free of sharp angles, has the neck and enunciation of Nigerian royalty. DNA results back this up—47 percent lineage—and so we actually went, all the way to the Continent. That was three years ago, I was only twelve. We brought back plenty of souvenirs to place around the giant portrait of my great-granddaddy. He was born in Detroit and spent all of his time building a business, so he never got to travel. We're reaping the rewards, of course. The image of him over the mantel is so big it's almost obscene. He looks like a king or shaman, his expression one of mischief and self-importance. He started the Harvest idea back when business regulators were pretty much nodding off, and he saw a need to heal those suffering in his communities. It was ultimately just a weight-loss program. Junk food was a killer, so great-granddaddy found a way to pull all that toxic excess from the bodies of those suffering the most: the poor. That's according to Mom Mom. I call her Mom Mom because she almost seems like two people but also because I think she got jealous of Bear Bear's double name. She says the word "water" like no one else. I hear "woo to her," and it sounds like a seduction, like she's conjuring the very thing in the glass, and I can tell why no one dares fuck with Mom Mom.

The cousins are plentiful in all the ways, their numbers and size and feelings just roaming through the house like geese. I have to tell the youngest, six-year-old Tricksie, to respect my personal space; don't press into my hips like a needy puppy all the time, but she's cute and round and probably in love with me, so it's hard to be cruel.

I used to be able to tell how many meals Bear Bear has eaten based on the smell in the hallway. If there is too much rot from untouched strawberries and pastrami he is on one of his trips, meaning he went so deep into one of those silly books he forgot the basics of life. One time I saw him leave the office for the bathroom, and the smell had gotten so rough I hurried to clear out the trays while he was gone. There were little creatures and ecosystems of mold just happy as hell on all...