* * *
—
That week drifted by with me staying mostly at home listening to music, watching movies from Jillian’s enormous collection, and surfing the net. I toyed with the idea of starting a new Instagram account, but then changed my mind. I wasn’t ready yet to do anything so public. The idea of anybody crawling through my pictures and making comments filled me with terror. Instead I contented myself with obsessively watching BuzzFeed videos on YouTube. Josh and I messaged each other briefly every night. Nothing serious, just about movies we’d watched and music we’d listened to that day. Slowly we were getting to know each other. Emphasis on “slowly.” But I held on to the memory of the way we had almost kissed, and the tingly feeling of my skin on his when we held hands.
I was at peace, starting to feel like the world wasn’t such a bad place. I saw Dr. Khan and I was starting to get the hang of writing in my therapy journal.
Then my mom called again. From the airport in Toronto. She was coming to Edmonton. She was almost here.
journal session 5
Dr. Khan keeps pestering me to talk more about my mother.
What else is there to say? I don’t know. Dr. Khan said to just start writing about her in my journal and see where it takes me, so here I go.
Cynthia gave birth to me fourteen years ago. She was sixteen; she finished her O-Levels with a baby bump. I have a picture of her when she was fifteen, and one of her with me at my christening, but there’s nothing from when she was pregnant. I don’t know my father. There aren’t any pictures of him either. I don’t know how they met, or even who he was. My birth certificate is blank under “Father’s Name.”
That doesn’t bother me as much as Ki-ki thinks it should. Everybody has a dad, she says. Yeah, of course. Men and women have sex and that’s how you make babies. Duh. Yet women get pregnant and men don’t know about it unless the women tell them. Cynthia never told me what happened. Sometimes I imagine that they were childhood sweethearts and he died young. Who knows? Cynthia sure wasn’t talking. She never got married. As far as I knew, she didn’t have boyfriends, either. Sometimes she went on dates with other singles from church, but nothing ever came of it. Cynthia wasn’t exactly warm and welcoming.
Still, my earliest memory of her is nice. I think I’m looking up at her from my crib. It’s night and she’s smiling at me. Maybe it was a dream.
I grew up with her. We lived in my grandparents’ house. It wasn’t a terrible place. My grandfather was a bookkeeper who lived long enough to know his unwed teenage daughter had disappointed him by getting pregnant. My grandmother, a housewife, followed him to the grave when I was six. My memory of Granny Rose is blurry. She was sick for a long time, since I was a baby. I hardly remember her, except that she was bedridden and her room was always dark and smelly. Going to kiss her goodnight was like entering a haunted house. She would stare at me. It was terrifying. But in old pictures, she was proud and stern and pretty. Her hair was a long, shiny plait flowing from below her church hat right down to her breast. She looked nothing like my mother. We got our looks from my grandfather’s side of the family.
I remember Granny Rose’s funeral better than I do her. There were a lot of flowers. Like, a lot. Plenty of old people smelling of camphor and rum, singing hymns I didn’t know. Plenty of strangers on the church steps kissing me and telling me how much I looked like my late grandpa. I remember piling into a big car to go to the cemetery with my mother, some cousins I didn’t know, and Aunty Jillian. To be honest, I mostly remember Aunty Jillian. She was so different from my mother, so happy and smiley, even though it was a funeral and everybody was kind of sad. But I could tell they were sisters. They talked the same way. And when Aunty Jillian wanted to, she could make my knees shake with one harsh word just like my mom could. With Granny Rose dead, they were all the family I had left. Cynthia didn’t make any effort to keep in touch with her other relatives. She depended on no one but herself.
Cynthia always worked. I spent a lot of time at the library, where she left me as long as she could from the time I was old enough to read. She grumbled that her job was boring and that the school that employed her took her for granted, but she had to do it anyway. “Everybody has to work to live,” she always said. “Nobody owes you anything.” Over and over, she said that I had to be responsible for myself. “You can’t rely on anybody else. People will disappoint you.” That was how she was, and that’s what she expected of me. We didn’t talk much at all, not like mothers and daughters in the movies. We didn’t have warm, loving conversations over tea and biscuits.
I’ve never seen my mother cry. She’s just not the crying type; she’d quicker hit you than let you see her weak or wounded. I think part of what she never accepted about my illness was that it seemed like weakness to her. Mom expected everyone to be able to just deal. Lonely? Deal with it. Man left you pregnant at sixteen? Deal with it. Hate your job? Deal with it. Don’t break down, don’t trip. Just quietly and efficiently deal with whatever it is that’s bothering you. Deal with it alone and shut up. When I got my period for the first time, she handed me a pack of tampons and sent me to the bathroom. I read the instructions and figured it out, eventually. While Akilah was celebrating getting into the convent school, I resigned myself to my fate. The school I’d passed for was infamous: understaffed and with a reputation for student violence. But I had sat the exam. I had to live with the consequences of my actions.
I don’t blame my mother for my illness. I don’t blame her for sending me away, either. I’m glad she sent me to Canada. I’d tried my mom’s method and I’d still wanted to die. Everybody isn’t wired the same way. Jillian and Julie are the best thing to happen to me. They let me be myself here.
Though I wanted to go into hiding and never come out, Jillian and Julie made me go with them to meet my mom.
The airport was a cavernous, frightening place, like a cross between a market and a supermall. It had a huge, high ceiling, with ranks of uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs. Nothing was familiar, even though I had only recently come through there myself. Everywhere I looked, I saw miserable passengers who seemed like they were lost dragging enormous suitcases around. They congregated below the arrivals and departures screens, watching the lines of information continuously updating. In between, there were uniformed flight crews pulling smart black carry-on cases on wheels, striding purposefully from one end of the airport to the next. Though it was daytime, neon lights lit the book, candy, and souvenir stores. A stuffed horse made of fluffy, plush fabric called my name, but I didn’t stop to say hello, just threw it a longing look before trailing after Jillian and Julie to the crowded arrivals hall where we would greet Mom.
After checking a screen to confirm her flight had arrived, we squeezed into a spot between a family of four redheads and a Jamaican couple. I kept looking around for something I could recall from my own arrival.
“Blurry memory” does not cover it. Try “Good night, Port of Spain; good morning, Toronto! Good afternoon, Toronto; good evening, Edmonton!” Probably for the best. I cried myself to sleep the first few nights at my aunts’. Who knows what that flight would have been like without the medication to knock me out.
My Edmonton airport memories were vague, but wasn’t there a baggage carousel that snaked out of a hole in the wall, carrying suitcases and bags? Wasn’t there a sound it made? Clang-bump-hummmmmm. Maybe. “Remembering your trip here, muffin?” Julie asked.
Impulsively I said, “Nah. I was thinking about the baggage carousel. Can I ride on it?”
“No!” Julie chuckled. “Please don’t try it. It’s dangerous and I’d have to tackle you. I’m too old to be scrambling around on the airport floor. So undignified.”
We laughed together. It was easy to be myself around her. I was comfortable. So comfortable that I had blurted out loud one of the many random things that crossed my mind from time to time. Fortunately, I didn’t
have to worry that I’d disappoint her by saying something ridiculous. It still felt hard to be completely honest. However, I tried. It was mortifying to admit it, even to Julie, but there was a hole in my brain and I couldn’t remember arriving in Edmonton. “I don’t remember this airport, Julie. I took a lot of tranquilizers so I wouldn’t freak out on the flight. I was not exactly in good shape when I traveled, right?”
She stopped laughing. “True,” she agreed. “How are you doing? All set to see your mom?”
I didn’t get a second to answer. My mom must have parachuted off the plane before it landed. There she was, the first Toronto arrival, dragging a case behind her.
“Cynthia!” yelled Jillian, pleased as punch to see her sister. Jillian’s last trip home had been ages ago and they hadn’t seen each other since. My trip into exile had been planned over Facebook and phone calls. We traveled to Port of Spain to the Canadian High Commission for an interview that was so quick it passed like a dream. I was out of the hospital one day and in the air soon afterward, heavily medicated and flying as an unaccompanied minor to my recovery in Edmonton. I’d had a passport as a form of identification since I was small, but this was the first time I’d gone anywhere with it. The single immigration stamp on my passport was smudged. The maple leaves on its edges as blurry as my memory of arrival.
Mom was looking really pert and pretty in jeans and a crisp white shirt. I guess having no child to look after suited her to the bone. It was all right by me, since being away from her suited me just fine too.
Her hug was stiff. Our initial conversation was just how I had pictured it would be:
“How are you?”
“Fine. You?”
“Fine.”
“How is everything at home?”
“Fine.”
It took all of thirty seconds, probably, to run out of things to say to her. Yes, I was taking my medication. No, I wasn’t feeling ill. Yes, the doctor said I was improving. I loved it here. No, I didn’t miss home. At all, I lied.
I guess she was a bit perturbed that I would come right out and admit that I was happier in Canada than at home, but she didn’t say anything. I supposed I was in for it later on, though. To my surprise I felt some anxiety when I saw her, but nothing like the rushing-to-my-doom overwhelming despair that would normally have accompanied such a meeting just a couple of months ago. In fact, I could honestly say that I really felt…fine. I hoped it would last.
She had just the one suitcase, which Julie quickly grabbed and hauled off to the car. We took Mom to lunch at a steakhouse and she and Jillian made conversation about everything at home. Mom kept staring at Julie, and I wanted to kick her for making Julie seem like some kind of freak, but Julie handled it like a pro, neither ignoring Mom nor pointedly staring back. I felt a bit bad at first, but as the evening progressed I got more and more infuriated.
It had been about two months since I had seen my mother. Time had changed us both.
She and Jillian were laughing over some old schoolteacher they had had when I interrupted without preamble.
“I don’t want to go back.”
Julie immediately tried to play it off. “Hey, muffin, we can talk about that later….”
Mom wasn’t having that, though. She engaged immediately.
“It’s time for you to get back to your real life. You have to go back to school. Your place is at home.”
“My real life is in a place where nobody wants me around, nobody understands me, and nobody really cares if I live or die?” I asked, the light of challenge sparking in my dark eyes.
My mother was outraged. “What nonsense! What self-indulgent nonsense! You go on as though you had no friends.”
“I have no friends!” I shouted.
“Don’t be ridiculous. What about that girl Anika? Akua? The one you went to primary school with.”
My jaw dropped. She couldn’t remember my only friend’s name! “You don’t care about me at all.”
“Of course I care about you! I might not always understand you, granted, but I always do my best by you, child. How dare you come with this attitude, these accusations!”
Jillian tried to calm the turbulent waters. “Cynthia, you know she’s just exaggerating. Of course we all know you care about her and whether she lives or dies. She’s not being literal. I think she means that she doesn’t feel accepted for who she is.”
My mother’s mouth was a thin, unsmiling line. “Who she is, is my daughter. Her place is at home, with me. Whether I understand or accept her or not.”
The waiter came with the bill and Jillian tersely handed him a credit card before turning back to her little sister. “I really think it’s bigger than that, Cynthia. You have to understand that she’s ill. Without love and acceptance she’ll be worse off—”
Mom snorted. “Ill?” Clearly, despite all the doctor had told her after my pill-popping incident, she wasn’t convinced I was actually sick. As far as she was concerned, depression was some kind of self-induced and entirely frivolous condition. In other words, I was probably making all this up. Or rather, I was making all this up to spite her.
Nothing was further from the truth. But I knew I couldn’t convince Mom over steak and salad. I shut my mouth.
* * *
—
The ride back to the house was tense. Over the stiff silence, Jillian and Julie pointed out landmarks to Mom’s stony face, and I steupsed under my breath a couple of times before Jillian told me to cut it out. Sucking your teeth to an adult was a no-no here, too, it seemed. Finally we were home. We pulled into our street just as a bus roared off in a cloud of hot air. It’s the Eighteen, I thought automatically. That’s my bus!
Mom got out of the car with a flounce, and walked around and stood by the trunk, tapping her foot impatiently. She was in a hurry to finish the discussion. So was I. Jillian wasn’t, though. She eased the suitcase out of the trunk and up the steps to the front door, inviting Mom to come in. Julie and Jillian gave her a quick tour, ending at my bedroom. Although Jillian left Cynthia’s suitcase in my room, my mom would sleep on the foldout living room couch during her visit—her choice. She could have slept with me in the guest room. Mom glanced around at the small room, painted a pale pink, with its white eyelet cotton curtains and comforter and white furniture. It was a girl’s room; it occurred to me for the first time that Jillian and Julie had probably decorated it for me just before I got to Edmonton. I could see, from the tightness around her mouth, that the thought had occurred to my mother at the same time it did me.
I saw her eyes flicking over the neat room and knew she was mentally comparing it to my room at home, which was even smaller and was never this organized. I kept this room tidy because, even though Jillian was family, I wasn’t really home home and didn’t want her to feel put-upon by my presence any more than was necessary. Somehow I wanted to make the best possible impression, in spite of everything. I had to rely on myself. My mother, who knew me from before I was born, would have understood all that without me saying anything, and I saw something flicker in her eyes as she took in the room, the neatly stacked books on the night table, the absence of clothes strewn on the crisply made bed. Even the floor was clean, with no shoes thrown haphazardly around as they would have been back home. She looked at me, that same expression in her eyes, looked back at the room, and walked out without a word. She could have chosen to be proud of me for finally learning to pick up after myself. Instead, it seemed, she chose to be offended that my behaviors had changed here.
It was hours before bedtime and we had yet to talk about the purpose of her visit: to take me back.
She led the way to the deck while Julie went into the kitchen to get everyone some cold drinks. It was afternoon, warm and muggy by Canadian standards, which after two months had suddenly, it seemed, become my standards. I didn’t know how I would cope if I went back home to
the furnace-like heat and ponderously humid air. My hair, cut so short when I had come, had grown out a bit into a wiry Afro, sort of like Jillian’s, but thicker. I took a hank of the tight strands and started twirling it between my fingers and thumb, making little curls that stuck out from my head at right angles. I could tell from Mom’s disdainful look that she didn’t appreciate the aesthetic, but it wasn’t meant to be a fashion statement, just something to do with my hands.
“Have you been keeping up with your schoolwork?” she asked, checking out the pristine lawn and pretty flowers as she talked.
“Not really,” I admitted. “I go to the library a lot, but mostly I read whatever I feel like. I am teaching myself French, though,” I added.
“French?” Frowning, she turned back to me.
“You didn’t tell me that,” said Jillian with a surprised grin. “I could have helped. J’adore le français,” she said, with the requisite guttural pronunciations.
I saw my mom tighten her mouth, so I changed the subject. “I bought a dress,” I said. “Want to see it?”
She looked wounded. Too late, I reflected that for years she had tried to get me to buy a dress of my own accord—with no success whatever. And now, here, I’d finally done it. Without her.
The afternoon wasn’t going well.
Julie came out, as fresh as a breeze of summer flowers, carrying glasses of lemonade on a tray. She was such a caretaker, it was almost funny, a real Wilma Flintstone. Not that Jillian was flat-footed Fred to her Wilma, just that Julie was so concerned with keeping things running clean and smooth. I envied her easy way with both housekeeping and people. Remembering how she effortlessly handled Nathan in his caveman wake-up mode, I admired once again her ability to smooth people’s feathers as she graciously handed my mom her glass of lemonade, doing a little dip at the knees to keep the tray steady.
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