by Y Kendall
He was only two when he disappeared. His pictures show a big, sweet-natured grin, glittering with baby teeth, the same smile that charmed the face of his twin sister and half-brother. All three bore the same misty brown curls typical of biracial babies, with the same peachy bisque skin color.
All three had the same father, Archie, a tall, still-fit, failed former pro athlete with rich skin tones of bittersweet chocolate. Archie indiscriminately scattered his progeny throughout southern Oklahoma, like some dystopian Johnny Appleseed. All three children had mothers of a similar Southern type: skin with the pale, pasty grubbiness of unhealthy eating, stringy hair floundering between blonde and brown, their leaden bodies made shapeless through incessant indolence and relentless fecundity—women whose only attraction for the Black men who bedded them was the formerly forbidden fruit of their white skin. Yes, these three babies were much the same and should have had much the same lifelines. But with one event, Atropos would sever their fates.
Kito’s mother, Suellen, waited eighteen months after the twins were born before contacting their father about their existence. She probably wouldn’t have bothered, but the State of Oklahoma requires unwed mothers looking for public assistance to approach the father first. No more popping out babies and jumping on the dole. Dads, in this case, my cousin Archie, now have got to step up. But first, the mother must establish paternity.
Archie said he wasn’t the father; Suellen said he was. The state did the DNA test. Then, as Maury might have said, “You are the father!” All of a sudden, Archie had twin toddlers. He came from a family that favored boys, with my Aunt April as matriarch. He was second of four boys; all their names started with “A.” It should have been A-okay.
But Kito was awkward, “non-verbal,” perhaps even autistic—he was too young to test. His name started with a “K.” The family was superstitious about stuff like that along with anybody who might be seen as “odd.” Kito was odd and inconvenient. Besides, Archie already had a live-in girlfriend and their eight-month-old son, plus her one-year-old daughter (by a different father), and his seven-year-old son (by a different mother).
One day, Kito’s mother dropped him off along with his twin sister at Archie’s duplex and left town for an indeterminate time. She frequently littered town with her children much as Archie did with his seed. The addition of the twins had the already cramped two-bedroom public housing unit overstretched like a balloon.
***
My younger sister, the Atlanta corporate executive who is a Real Housewives and Maury fan, called me during her lunch hour. We were three states apart, and I was sitting on my sofa in Houston, grading papers, having a San Francisco Symphony mug of Darjeeling nearby.
“Hey,” ReeRee barked in the speed-of-light CEO voice. She’s been the same since childhood; our parents called her “Chief” because of her bossiness. “Have you heard that one of Archie’s sons disappeared? I just heard it from Isaac.”
“Archie who?” I sputtered, unprepared for the onslaught. “Aunt April’s son? Our cousin?’
“What are you talking about?”
“Archie has a son with one of his baby mamas. He was taking a nap when he was supposed to be taking care of the child. When he woke up, the child was missing.”
“Oh my God! Where was the child’s mother? Was she in the house?”
“No, the woman he was living with wasn’t the child’s mother, though I think he has a baby with her, too, or was that… Anyway, the woman was giving the other twin a bath or giving her own child a bath or something, and Archie was taking a nap. I think there were other kids in the house, as well.”
“What the. . .? Well then, what happened?”
“It’s on the news; I’m sending you a link.”
***
The Disappearance
On Thursday, November 23, a 911 call came into police headquarters in Polydora, Oklahoma.
Neighbor: My neighbor’s son is missing. He’s two and a half years old.
Operator: Okay, and what is your name, ma’am?
Neighbor: Cindy Roberts.
Operator: Cindy?
Neighbor: Yes, ma’am.
Operator: R-O-B-E-R-T-S?
Neighbor: Yes, ma’am.
Operator: And how old’s this little boy? Two years old?
Neighbor: Two and a half.
Operator: Two and a half-year-old little boy?
Neighbor: Yes. It’s been about 45 minutes.
Operator: What’s he wearing?
Neighbor: (aside) Do y’all know what he’s wearing? (pause) They think he was wearing blue shorts and a red-and-white striped shirt.
Operator: Okay. What’s the address?
Neighbor: The address is 111 Beech Street. It’s a block off 78.
Operator: Okay, ma’am. I’ll send an officer right over there to you.
***
The First Story: He Must Have Walked Out of the House
Archie Albertson
Archie had been a high school sports star. With his 6’11" height advantage and natural ability, he dribbled and dunked his way to prime college offers, starring for two seasons as a Division I player at West Central Oklahoma State. According to the book Best of Oklahoma Sports, “Like Samson, he strong-armed the program atop his shoulders and heave-hoed it to a win against the University of Oklahoma.” Despite his short tenure there, the Oilies inducted him into their Hall of Fame five years ago.
His academic talents were much less stellar, which is why the state’s premier team hadn’t rushed to recruit him in the first place. So, after five years in college, when he couldn’t complete a degree, he dropped out and went off to play professionally with the Enid Tornados of the short-lived U.S. Basketball Federation, and then he played with a Uruguayan team in the International Basketball Federation. But his fear-based close-mindedness wouldn’t allow him to eat food his mama hadn’t made, even when foods like cuzcuz and pollo campero are close cousins to grits and fried chicken.
I saw him play once in college. Both my parents were college players, as was my brother-in-law. We didn’t think he’d go far. Even with the colossal combo of physical gifts and natural ability, he couldn’t make it. He had no hustle, no team spirit, and frankly, no brains. He simply thought that standing there shooting three-pointers was enough. He couldn’t be taught. No running, no passing, and no strategy could be drummed into him. Just big feet superglued to the floor.
No profession can ever be conquered that way. Shaq and Serena Williams both have natural talent, a strong work ethic, and the ability to use deep strategic gifts. Though his parents had dreams of glory, Archie just couldn’t muster the necessary work ethic, so he came back home to Polydora and led an aimless life of conceiving kids and flirting on Facebook.
Archie inherited traditional beliefs from his father with certain convenient modifications. In his early forties, he remained allergic to marriage, but though he wasn’t supporting any of his kids or their mothers, he still believed that women should take care of all the “womanly” things like cooking, cleaning, and full-time childcare. After all, his mother had done the same. His mother, my college-educated aunt, did everything inside the house, but she also worked full-time as a chemistry teacher to support the family. But no, Archie’s wasn’t a single-parent home—technically.
Archie’s father accepted his wife’s labors, bringing little of himself to the family coffers, but fathering four big, strong boys. With virtually no education or skills, he did nothing more than occasional janitorial work.
Then there was that back injury. Pops said there was one; Worker’s Comp said there wasn’t. We’d never seen any indication of it as he played local basketball games out on the tarmac.
For twenty years after college, Archie lived the lay-about existence—hanging with his buds, smoking weed, and like his dad, working the occasional dead-end job. By age 43, he had eight kids by five different women. When this whole thing began, he was in public housing with a live-in girlfriend that his churchgoing mother called “trailer-trash” along with five kids of varying parentage: his, hers, mine, ours.
When Kito disappeared, volunteers fanned out week after week to search. News media publicized the search for months, avoiding the typical “here today, follow the bouncing ball tomorrow” pattern. Local sheriffs, state investigators, and FBI worked tirelessly to find the tiny boy. To no avail.
***
“The story’s been on Nancy Grace!” ReeRee shouted over the phone. Well, maybe she wasn’t shouting, but she has a naturally loud voice, and I was a bit dazed because I had been grading English Comp papers in complete silence for nearly two hours when the phone rang. Her information tazed me into full consciousness.
“What?!”
“She thinks there’s something wrong with Archie’s story.”
“What did he say?”
“He says Kito must have just gotten out through the screen door while he was watching the other kids in the house.”
“How many kids were there?”
“Who the hell knows. Both he and his girlfriend are in a yours-mine-and ours situation.”
I groaned “Oh lord” under my breath.
“Nancy Grace isn’t buying it,” my sister added breathlessly.
“Okay, what did she say?”
“She sent some of her staff to the house. She doesn’t see how a child that young and that short could have opened that screen door. She thinks something doesn’t smell right.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking,” I mused. “How was Archie sleeping when he had young children in the house? He might have fallen asleep and rolled over on the kid. As big as he is and as small as the child is, the child could have suffocated. It could happen.”
“But then, where is the child?”
“I don’t know. Good lord.”
***
The Second Story: Somebody Must Have Snatched Him
April Albertson
My aunt, Archie’s mother, is only eighteen months older than I. She’s the youngest of thirteen from a rural share-cropping family. My father is the eldest. I’m his eldest. She was six-months old when he married, four years old when I was born.
Down in Polydora, Dad’s family was known for their intelligence and their looks. They were the pride of the Black community, serving proudly in the military, teaching in schools, acting as deacons in the church.
April got the one trait but not the other. Her brains led to the college degree, the middle school science teacher job, and the high school chemistry job later. Looks-wise, she got the leftover features—her mother’s large nose, her father’s small eyes. But she’s tall and stately, with a Jheri curl knockoff. Her formerly sharp mind has rusted from underuse and over-dependence on churchy small-mindedness. Somehow the good-natured confidence of her siblings morphed into judgmental arrogance. As years went by, we felt more and more isolated from her.
When April was a teenager, her mother died. My parents, living near D.C., agreed to take her in. ReeRee and I had been so excited for her to live with us, but she wanted to stay with her elderly father. For the first time in her life, she would be the total focus of her father’s attention.
One summer, though, she spent time with siblings in Detroit and came back with Big Al, an illiterate guy she married. He barely spoke, rarely worked, but he thought he was cute and walked with a “playa’s swagger.” Big Al expected his wife to do all the traditional wifely things: cook, clean, conceive, while also bringing home the bacon from her teaching job. She bore him four boys, all of whom were named with the letter “A” after their parents.
April was the brains in her nuclear (in the quasi bombing sense) family. All the boys, including her husband, depended on her judgment. She spoke with them; she spoke for them. But she always affected a quasi-convincing semblance of deference to her husband as the titular head (in the quasi-biblical sense) of the household.
Corporal punishment was the only way Al knew. Like many rural environments, it was an accepted way of life, culled from the Bible’s orchard during scriptural cherry-picking season. “Spare the rod” made it to the processing plant, while “suffer the little children to come unto me” was left to rot on the tree.
Growing up, we knew April as being cheerful, but since marrying Al, she didn’t seem happy. We rarely saw her big face-splitting smile.
Her boys grew up strong and tall like her. Physically. But they were all too work-averse and education-averse like their father. Since Archie, the favorite, failed at basketball, Lil’ Al, the one who works for the postal service, is considered to be the success story.
None of them completed college, though two attended. But all lived up to “be fruitful and multiply” like their father. From four sons, April has twenty-four grandkids. Only one son has ever married (the steady-working one), and even he has children out of wedlock. All have multiple “baby mamas.” Churchgoing April blames the bad girls for seducing her good boys, but none of her sons has ever lived with all his kids at any one time. And that’s what pissed us off.
When Archie left the U.S. to play ball in Uruguay, he left all his children behind even though some were not living with their mothers. In our family history of hard work, military service, college degrees, good jobs, and good kids, April’s is the anti-success story, conspicuous in its unfortunate consistency. The longer she lived with Big Al, the more judgmental she became.
***
“The whole area has turned out to look for him,” ReeRee blared. “They’ve brought in helicopters and sniffer dogs and a bunch of people volunteered to look for Kito.”
“And they haven’t found anything? Where could a child that young go?”
“Maybe he was snatched. Archie mentioned a white van to the po-po, but he was a repairman vouched for by the neighbor who had hired him.”
“Oh my God. Oh my God. What does Nancy Grace say?”
“I think she’s on to something. She still says there something wrong with this picture, that the police should look at the family.”
“What does April say?”
“She says she asked Archie over and over again if he knew anything and he keeps saying, ‘no’. She says she believes him.”
“Hmmm. But why would she keep asking him if she believes him so much? She must think he’s lying. And if she thinks so, he probably is. What on earth has he done?”
“I think you’re right. You know he never could admit when he did something wrong. Remember when he stole those cookies April had made for Cousin Jo-Jo after she got out of the hospital?”
“He was only seven”
“But still, it just goes to show. I wonder where that baby is.” “Damn.”
***
The Third Story: Something Smells
Jerald “Big Al” Albertson, Sr.
He wears dapper clothes of synthetic colors, always topped with a Kangol cap rakishly tilted to the side. His dress is at odds with long missing teeth. Ask him a question about politics, or the weather, or his missing grandson, and he’ll just grunt and shrug, or say “I’ont know,” or “Ask April.” But mention dinner and he’s likely to trample his grandchildren on his way to the kitchen. There he’ll pile his plate high as Everest with food, not caring in the least whether enough is left for anyone else.
In fact, part of family lore is when he did just that at a funeral meal and one of his smallest grandchildren began to cry because, after the adult men swarmed the table, there was no fried chicken left. Not even a wing. His son, Archie, moved toward the child with his hand reared back, ready to strike, but other relatives intervened. Cheryl, a social worker calmed him down while Jake, my brother-in-law, whisked the child away.
Big Al looked all lost and confused when ReeRee asked why didn’t he leave some food for the children. “But…” he mumbled, “I like my chicken hot.”
***
“The search is still ongoing,” my sister reported three months later. “The Missing Children people are there. Did you see the video link I sent you where Archie’s hoping his son is returned? He’s done the same in church”
“Well, at least he’s going to church. But after all these months, where could that baby be?
I just hope he’s not being abused. Jesus wept.”
“No. Andy knows something. Remember when Momma and I went down there? She says Andy knows something. You know how she could always read boys after all her years of teaching.”
“Which one is Andy? Al junior is the oldest, right?” “Yeah. I think Andy is the one right after Archie. Who does that leave?”
“Uhhh, Allen?”
“That’s right,” she responded, “He’s the youngest, I think. Al, Archie, Andy, Allen.”
“All these A-names confuse the hell out of me.”
“They’ve all got baby mamas.”
“Are you kidding me?” I said, my voice filled with amazement. “Do they support them? I thought one of them was married.”
“April takes care of some of Archie’s. The one you’re thinking of is Al Junior, the oldest one. He’s the only one who has most of his kids living with him. But he’s divorced and engaged, engaged to someone with an A-name . . . Annie, Andie, Andes, I don’t know.”
“Well, I guess that’s something. Wait, Andes like the mountain range?”
“You know it can’t be spelled like that,” she chuckled. “That would be too much like something that makes sense.”
“My people, my people,” I moaned, wryly shaking my head. “All right then. Later.”
***
Nobody seemed to know what happened. First, Archie said “maybe the screen door was open.” Then, maybe he’d been kidnapped. Neighbors were questioned. Family members were questioned. Repair people with business vans were questioned. The full forces of state and federal law enforcement pulled out all the stops. Nobody seemed to know where Kito was.
Uncle Isaac, the family griot, reported more than once that Archie stood up in the church and begged people to pray for the safe return of his son. Kito’s mother, Suellen sobbed on camera, both local and national. Kito’s twin sister, Alissa, kept piping “Where Kiki? Where Ki-ki?” Archie’s mother, April fiercely blamed Kito’s mother, Suellen. She told everyone who’d listen that Suellen used the baby to ruin Archie’s life. Big Al speaks so little that the police couldn’t even interview him for the entire year that his grandchild was missing.
Months came and months went. I taught my classes, my sister did her good works. No sign of Kito. But his twin kept asking for her Ki-ki.
Then, shortly after the spring flowers began to bud, the body was found. Tossed away like trash, covered in brush. Under closer questioning, Archie’s stories fell apart. One of Kito’s half-siblings opened up about past abuses. Archie had hit the unwanted toddler—often. That wasn’t unusual in rural Oklahoma. “Spare the rod and spoil the child” and all that. But with such a big guy as Archie and such a small guy as Kito—an unwanted child at that—something was destined to go wrong.
***
“Oh my God! Archie’s been arrested!”
“Whaaat! What has he done?”
“Andy admitted loaning Archie his van, but thought he was just taking the kids out for a picnic. With that clue, the sniffer dogs got on the scent.”
“Even after all this time?”
“Yep. Apparently, Andy felt funny about using the van after the ‘picnic,’ so he just parked it. He’s working steady now, so he bought an old banger.”
“Forget the cars. What happened with Archie?”
“He fell apart and told the Feds he panicked.”
“Panicked for a year? Panicked so much he could plead on TV? Panicked so much he could stand up in church and tell a bold-faced lie?” I got almost as loud as ReeRee.
“I’ve got the tapes of the interviews. One of the children innocently told about past
‘whuppings’ against Kito. Imagine how that child feels. It’s horrible, just horrible.”
***
Consequences
Big Al sustained his customary silence, even during the period when his son was charged with capital murder. When she came to the jail to check on her son after his arrest and heard about the charge, April wailed and fell out on the floor like Miss Rebecca used to do in church sometimes. Big Al stood there silent, unmoving, as his third son, Andy, rushed to pick up his mother from the dingy jailhouse linoleum.
ReeRee and I went down there to visit Archie in jail, surrounded by families and kids playing as they waited to visit other inmates. We’d never been in a jail before. Although she’s a lawyer for a humanitarian non-profit, my sister is sharper than the jackleg lawyer they had gotten —and she was free.
The best capital murder lawyers in Oklahoma are white and expensive, but even had they had the money, Archie’s family wasn’t comfortable with White people, so they’d got a Black pastor with some sort of degree from some unaccredited law school somewhere. I’m not even sure he’d passed the bar. He never tried so much as a shoplifting case. Because our cousin was guilty, ReeRee suggested that special plea—you know the one—the Alford plea. I thought of Mad Magazine, where you take punishment without admitting guilt, kind of like corporations who cheat or poison thousands, then pay out millions without officially taking responsibility. I think it worked for her former corporation, but like many things in families, better to keep that thought to myself.
“That plea might work,” ReeRee told them. And it did. The court accepted the Alford plea, and Archie wouldn’t get the death penalty. He would spend years in prison where we were sure he’d become a favorite with guards and prisoners alike. Usually child-killers are targets, but everybody knew his history as a high school and college b-ball star. And he’d played pro-ball; that saved him from the abuse most child-killers normally suffer. They could pretend to believe him when he said it was an accident.
Oddly, Archie likes prison because being in there relieves him of all responsibility. No job required. No childcare required. No squabbling women. Just hanging with the guys, enjoying tales of the glory days. Same as he used to do. He’s living his best life.
But his mother, April, is having trouble sleeping at night and holding her head high in church.
And Kito’s tiny twin sister still wonders where her Ki-ki is.
Y. Kendall, the first runner-up of the 2024 African Diaspora Award, is a Stanford-educated musicologist specializing in dance history. After a distinguished tenure, she returned to the role of student, earning an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Columbia University, where she studied nonfiction writing under Ben Ratliff and Margo Jefferson. Kendall’s diverse body of work includes poetry translations published in Alchemy: Journal of Translation and The Hunger Mountain Review, original poetry in the Bayou Review, and nonfiction in the Columbia Journal. Her fiction has won awards in Short on Words and Writer's Digest. Born and raised in Tennessee, Kendall now resides near Nashville, freelancing as a flutist and writer while caregiving for elderly relatives.
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