by Farah Heron
What?
Mum picked up her spoon and ran it through her rice. “I know you’re surprised, honey.”
Surprised? Shocked? Bewildered? Maybe. Upset? Most definitely.
“Oh, Mum.” Amira looked at her mother, whose eyes were wet with tears, and it broke Amira’s heart. She walked around the table, lowered her knees to the hardwood floor in front of her, and hugged her mother’s shoulders tightly. “How could you have listened to your own mother say those things? Today . . . and before, too. I’m so, so sorry, Mum,” Amira whispered.
Mother and daughter hugged silently for a long time. Mum’s heart had to be full of pain and hurt after that argument with Nanima, and Amira wished she could take it all away from her. Nanima had been spewing her bigotry about the possibility of the quartet being gay for two weeks, and Mum had to listen to it, all while she was in a relationship with a woman.
But why hadn’t she said anything to Amira? Amira wouldn’t have been like Nanima; she would’ve accepted anything that made Mum happy. Mum had to know that.
Finally, she gently pushed Amira away. “Go, eat, before the dal gets cold. We can talk and eat.”
Amira reluctantly returned to her seat and stared at her mother. How well did she know the woman in front of her? Mum had always been around, in the background, but Amira had never considered her mother to be a driving force in her life. She thought herself closer to her father. More similar. She had followed in his career footsteps, and she always admired his strength and integrity.
But Mum . . . Mum was the predictable one. She worked hard, went to Jamatkhana, avoided arguments, and pleased everyone. Had she been hiding a secret identity all this time? How could she have lived that way?
“Who knows this?” Amira asked.
“Not many people. A few at work. Laura, the woman I’m seeing, is a nurse at the hospital. Surgical.” She took a sip of water. “Your father knows.”
“You told him?”
“I had to. We were married for over twenty years, he had a right to know. Your father is a remarkable man. He was quite understanding.”
“Was this the real reason for your divorce?”
“No. Amira, please don’t think I didn’t love your father. I did. Very much.” She looked down at her plate. “In every way.”
Amira’s eyes widened.
“I’m attracted to both men and women,” Mum said quietly. “I always have been. Laura isn’t the first. I had a . . . dramatic love affair with a girl when I was sixteen. My parents found out about it. That’s what Nanima and I were talking about.”
“But you only moved to Canada when you were fifteen!”
“I know. I met her in school here.”
“What happened to her?”
Mum shrugged. “After my parents found out, they came very close to sending me back to India. They forbid me from seeing her. I wasn’t allowed to leave the house, I wasn’t allowed anything at all.”
Amira tried to imagine it. Her mother, a teenage Indian immigrant in the eighties, in an intense, secret love affair with a Canadian teenage girl. Add a beach scene and some lens flares, and Amira could imagine it as a great indie coming-of-age movie.
But this wasn’t a movie—this was her mother’s life, and Amira wished she had known about it, wished she had taken enough interest to know Mum was much more than she seemed. How could she have been so self-absorbed that she hadn’t noticed who her own mother was?
“They forced you apart?” Amira asked.
Mum nodded. “Her family, too. My parents told the school, who told her parents. They pulled her out and transferred her to the Catholic high school, and I never saw her again.” She smiled sadly. “I was miserable. I was practically under house arrest. Only allowed to go to Jamatkhana and school.”
“Ugh. That sounds horrible.” Amira had a sudden thought. “Wait . . . did others know about it? At Jamatkhana, I mean.” It would explain so much about how people like Reena’s mother treated Mum.
Mum nodded. “My parents tried to hide everything, but gossip spread. My parents found Mohammad for me to try to alleviate the gossip.”
“What!?! Jesus, Mum! Your and Dad’s marriage was arranged? They forced you to marry him? Why didn’t you ever tell me?” This was huge.
Mum shrugged again. “I don’t know if they would have forced me to marry him, but it didn’t matter. I wanted to marry him. I fell in love with him. He was so kind and accepting. He understood me. I was furious with my parents for trying to run my life, and I saw the marriage as a way out of the house.”
“So, he knew you were bisexual?”
“Yes. I told him everything. But truly, Amira, that wasn’t why we divorced.” She stilled. “He was just never around. One contract or business trip after another. I didn’t want to be sitting home the rest of my life, waiting for my husband to come back. You were almost grown, and I saw all the loneliness I felt when I raised you starting over again with Zahra. That wasn’t the future I wanted.”
“And Laura is your future?”
“I meant it when I said it was early, we’ve barely started dating.” She smiled. “I’m enjoying myself. I’m just living in the present now.”
Amira smiled. “And you’re not letting your family get in your way anymore.”
“No, I’m not. My future is mine only.”
Amira’s heart swelled. Sameer was happy—she remembered his face after the show, when he had Travis wrapped around him. He looked like a different person, released from the burdens that had entangled him for so long. He and Travis stood taller, walked prouder, both with an unmistakable rhythm and harmony that connected them. Forever. And Mum was happy. Amira now understood that spark, that lightness in Mum’s mannerisms that she’d noticed when she first came home. She loved Mum’s new attitude of not caring a bit what others would say. Everyone around her was taking control of their own future, haters be damned.
She couldn’t understand how anyone could look at Sameer’s and Travis’s faces and not be moved by their joy. She was so disappointed that people like Nanima and Shirin still would not embrace it.
“But, Mum, one question. After everything that happened back then, how could you have moved in with Nanima again? Why did you even speak to your parents at all after you got married? You guys even bought a house around the corner from them. Why wouldn’t you take the opportunity to go far, far away?”
Mum finished chewing her bite, and then took another sip of water, before speaking. “You needed grandparents, Amira. We didn’t have any other family in Canada, and you needed a connection to your culture and your religion. And then I moved back here only a few years after your grandfather died, when I was newly divorced. Zahra was still little, and you were starting university soon. I needed help, and Nanima needed company. She’s my mother, Amira. I forgave her. They were new to the country. Everything was so foreign to them. And a daughter who was prone to histrionics proclaiming undying love to a girl wasn’t what they expected out of Canada.”
Amira wrinkled her nose. Mum wasn’t prone to histrionics, was she? “But what about now? Nanima has lived in Canada for thirty-five years. Are you going to tell her about Laura now?”
“Yes, if the relationship continues. And we’ll see what happens then. I’ve been saving for a down payment on a place of my own for a while. I’d hoped to convince her to sell this house and get a condo in one of those seniors’ buildings in a year or two. But now I think I may want to move sooner rather than later. I’m not hiding this from her again, and I will live on my own terms. That’s why I’ve been trying to depend on Nanima less for help with Zahra.”
Amira grinned. “You’re amazing. And, of course, I’m here to help with Zahra whenever I can.”
“I hope she will have an open mind if I tell her, but we’ll see.” She smiled. “What about you, Amira. Are you planning to stay here? Have you thought at all about your future?”
Amira looked down at her nearly empty plate of food. Her future . . . a futur
e where she was going back to a job with a boss who didn’t respect her because she wasn’t a white male, and where her mentor didn’t believe her when she said her boss was sexist and may have trashed her report right before it was due so she wouldn’t get a job he wanted. A future where she lived with an intolerant grandmother and a mother who had to hide her relationship. A future where Amira was alone. What future did she have, really?
Words Travis had said to her yesterday crashed through her mind. The past doesn’t matter. We both lost the potential for a future.
A future with Duncan? Bullshit. Three nights and . . . she counted in her head . . . seven rolls in the hay did not equal a future.
Amira excused herself from the dining table, bringing her plate and the leftover rice to the kitchen while blinking repeatedly to prevent the tears from forming. What was supposed to happen now? Could she confront Raymond? Go back to her job after everything she knew? Could she continue to live in this house, with a grandmother she loved but who believed people like Mum and Sameer didn’t deserve to be happy? Amira would never respect Nanima’s views, but did that mean she had to leave Nanima’s house?
It all made her feel lost. And whenever Amira felt lost, she became angry. Looking out the window over the kitchen sink, she remembered the day last December when she had been escorted out of the airport. She had been furious, and she had not let go of that anger when the dust settled on the event and its aftermath. True, she stopped fighting once it all became too much. She’d stuck her head underground and stopped engaging with others on social media, stopped writing articles on the Muslim perspective, and learned to avoid the news when it became too painful. But she hadn’t stopped being angry.
Angry at everyone. Everything. The damn rent-a-cops who walked her out of the airport terminal. The mouth-breathing trolls targeting and harassing her. The people telling her to go back to her own country and sending her vile pictures of violence she couldn’t scrub from her mind. People like Ryan Galahad teaching their children to assign value according to a person’s race.
People like Duncan forgiving them.
And now, just to live her life as she knew it, she had to forgive, too. Forgive her grandmother for her intolerance. Forgive her mother for excusing it. Forgive Raymond for his dishonesty. Amira’s head spun in circles. She held on to the counter in her grandmother’s kitchen, the warm, setting sun blinding her through the west-facing windows. She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry.
“Sweetheart?” She turned to see Mum behind her. Amira couldn’t help it. Her tears flowed freely as she fell into her mother’s arms.
Her mother held her, gently stroking her head as Amira’s anger finally unfolded to expose the pain inside. She sobbed and couldn’t even be bothered to feel embarrassed for this breakdown—if you couldn’t lose it in your mother’s arms, who could you count on?
Her mother released her when she had calmed, but held on to her arms. “Amira, I know you care about your friends, but this is not about Sameer and his boyfriend, right?”
She shook her head.
“You’re upset about Duncan. It was more serious with him than you let on.”
Amira turned her focus to the window, peeking at the setting sun. “It’s so stupid, Mum. This is not like me, it was less than a week. I should be stronger.” She wiped her wet cheeks.
“You fell in love after a week?” Mum smiled. “I’m not surprised. This is exactly like you.”
“What?”
Her mother touched Amira’s cheek. “You have the biggest heart, Amira. You love so quickly, and fiercely. Loyal, protective, and unwavering. And when you finally met your match, you fell in love fast. You have the biggest heart in the world. It might be too big for you, sometimes.”
“No, Mum.” Amira sniffled. “I’m always angry.”
“You’re angry because of your big heart. You’re angry because you won’t sit back and let people get hurt.”
Amira looked down. Why was this so hard? She was so tired of outrage. Of anger. But how could she get past this with Duncan? How could she not be furious with him? “I just . . . I don’t know what to do.”
Her mother squeezed Amira’s arms. “I don’t know what you should do either. I understand why you’re angry at him. What happened to Zahra is unforgivable. He should have told you his brother’s beliefs. He should have told you what you were getting into.” Mum walked to the other side of the kitchen and silently took out a pot and filled it with water for chai.
She put the pot on the stove to heat as Amira pulled the tea tin out of the cupboard and added three teaspoons to the pot. She gently crushed some cardamom pods, cinnamon, peppercorns, and ginger in a mortar and pestle, letting the warm aromas calm her. It was a familiar ritual, one carried out countless times with her mother or grandmother, but in Amira’s emotional state, all she could think about was how much she missed this.
She missed these tiny rituals, these small moments with her family that were becoming rarer—and would soon end, it seemed. Her family was changing. Zahra wasn’t a baby anymore, and her mother was moving on with her life in new ways. Amira wished she could hold on to the past and keep everything the way it was, but she didn’t really want that either.
As the chai started to boil, her mother looked up. Amira couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw tears in Mum’s eyes, too. “I used to wonder what I would have been like . . . who I would have been if I had been allowed to be myself back then. Seeing you, my beautiful daughter all grown up, I realize, at least I hope, I would have been just like you. Give yourself permission to be that, sweetie. Just you is more than enough for anyone who matters.”
Chapter Thirty-Three
THE NEXT DAY was the project due date. And despite the truckload of drama in her life, Amira was ready. After breakfast with Travis and Sameer, and after waving them off as they left for Ottawa, she went back to her now empty basement and gave a final spit-shine to her report. She hovered over the submit button for several long seconds before taking the plunge. There was nothing she could do now but wait for Professor Kennedy’s response.
After submitting, she saw an email from Raymond asking if she had time for a meeting this week.
Why? Why did Raymond choose now to meet? After her due date, after he knew she submitted the report that he had deemed worthless. She stared at her computer for a while, not sure what to do. Finally, she agreed, and arranged to meet him in the Hyde office the next day.
Her project was done. The barbershop quartet was gone. It was time to deal with her work problems now.
* * *
RAYMOND WAS ALONE in his cubicle the following morning when she approached. Alone, and looking rather pleased with himself.
“Amira, I’m glad you could make it.” He stood. “Let’s go to a meeting room.”
She followed her mentor to one of the small meeting rooms that lined the wide-open space with its grid of cubicles, nodding and smiling at some of her former co-workers as she passed. She had a bad feeling about this, but her racing heart and sweaty hands were masked by her professional smile that at least looked the part.
“Here, sit,” Raymond said, pulling out a chair for her before taking the one on the other side of the table. That was new. Pausing a second to take inventory of all her dealings with this man over the last six years, she didn’t remember him ever pulling out a chair for her. And watching his face carefully, she detected a slight furrow in his brow. He seemed jumpy. Maybe he felt bad about what he had done? Was he going to mention the sound-reduction division? She considered the merits of showing her hand and mentioning that she’d had lunch with Shelley.
Amira hung her bag on the back of the chair. “So, Raymond, how are Alice and the boys? Is Jacob still playing with that Lego robot I got him for his birthday?”
He smiled tightly. He was definitely feeling guilty. Good. “Yes,” he said. “He’s obsessed with it. And now Andrew wants one, too. Did you get your report in on time?”
“Just bar
ely. Thank you for your insight on it, by the way. It was very eye-opening.”
Raymond shifted. There was no missing his discomfort now. Even someone who didn’t know him as well as Amira did would see it.
Of course, Amira had realized she really didn’t know this man at all.
“I wanted to give you the heads-up about some changes here at Hyde,” he said. “So you’re not blindsided when you return.”
“Oh?”
“There is a new division opening, and a new consultant role will be available. I know you said you were interested in moving up, so I wanted to let you know before the posting closes on Thursday.”
“A senior consultant role?”
Raymond nodded. “I will warn you, though, there will be a lot of competition. I know many consultants who are interested. Not just at the Toronto office either.”
“Who’s the hiring manager?”
“Jim Prescott. The division will be under him.”
Amira blinked repeatedly. Was he going to tell her the name of the new division? Or mention the fact that he apparently would give his left arm to move into the role himself? Had he brought her here today just to ease his conscience?
Amira looked at Raymond. Why was he doing this? Getting caught in this sort of corporate back-stabbing seemed so unlike the Raymond who’d helped her find her feet at Hyde all those years ago. But Shelley confirmed that Hyde had changed since Amira left. Jim had a clear preference for old boys’ club–type managers, and a small but brilliant middle-aged Chinese man would not have attracted his interest. Maybe Raymond had to learn to play dirty to catch Jim’s notice. Amira felt a wash of pity for her old friend.
But even straining to understand Raymond’s motivations didn’t change the fact that he misled her. Worse, there was little she could do about it. Even if she never set foot in the Hyde office again, industrial engineering wasn’t exactly a huge community. She couldn’t burn any bridges at Hyde. She was vibrating with the urge to confront him when a knock on the glass door startled her.
Damn. Jim Prescott.
