Projection

by Priscila Uppal

  I institute deep breathing. I can’t afford to succumb to sickness here, where I can’t speak the language, with someone I can’t trust. I must not be at the mercy of my mother. Never again. If she was once maternal, all those bones have ossified from lack of use. She doesn’t look at me like I’m her daughter—more like I’m her client or some unsympathetic defence attorney forced upon her by the state. And not for the last time I berate myself for not learning more Portuguese, not finding the extra time to play the tapes I bought with good intentions but poor follow-through.

  Back at the flat, my mother asks if I liked dinner. I tell her it was delicious but that I suffer from stomach pains and need to take my medication now and be still and quiet in my room.

  You must be a very sick person, she says, opening the bedroom door as I slip underneath the sheets. Either that or you don’t like Brazil much. It’s propaganda that made you get all these vaccines before coming here. They are making you sick now.

  Although I miss Chris and know he’s anxious for a full update on what has transpired thus far, when he phones I have no energy left to speak. My mother eavesdrops and peeks in at me whispering goodbye, her eyes wide, mouth silent but twitching. I am a disappointing image, like a black-and-white sketch of a missing person. Not the daughter she imagined. Like Christina Crawford, I too will end up typing out the transcripts of our mutual suffering, our battles over our memories, our lives. Who will sympathize with us? Are we both monsters? Feminists? Are we in competition? Is this a showdown between Canada and Brazil? Did I come to prove that I didn’t need her? That though she didn’t play fairly, I won? Who will get the enviable last word? My mother is terrified, I now understand, that I am going to leave. That at any given moment, if I don’t like what I’ve learned, I might simply and willfully disappear. The room continues to spin. I hold my stomach like a big, achy secret. I did not realize how scared she is. Even of me.

  Mother at the Breakfast Table in São Paulo

  4

  ladyhawke

  Mouse: How can I learn any moral lesson if you keep confusing me like this?

  Everyone in the breakfast room is now worried about my stomach. Have coconut water. Have apple juice. Have guava soda. Brazil produces the best coconuts, the best apples, the best guavas.

  The best water in the world, Soares insists, as I crawl into the back seat and buckle up for another smog-filled ride across the city. Canada is nothing. Nothing. Like most people’s heads.

  I do not mind too much when Soares insults my nationality. He has the warmest smile and laugh, a sonorous comforting voice, and a laid-back but professional attitude. He makes me feel safe and is a good buffer between my mother and me as he involves himself in planning our itinerary. Plus, I’ve noticed these national comparisons where Brazil comes out on top of any dichotomy are as commonplace as traffic lights or snapping one’s fingers. “Brazil is the Best” chants in my head, an endless soccer match.

  To top it all off, Soares is on time, to the minute, whereas apparently everyone else in Brazil is chronically late. My mother despises this, her only complaint about Brazilian character aside from the love of Carnival. They do not plan. They like life to be chaotic. They do not care about ten minutes from now. Only now. Right now. This distresses my mother, who, like me, is an obsessive planner and leaves herself dozens of “things to remember” notes: what to pick up, what to purchase, map routes, phone numbers, titles of books. Chris jokes that I’m never happier than when I’m making a list. I wonder if my mother has a special “things to remember” list about her children. My mother is never on time, she mutters. She would even be late to pick up my father. Once they missed a train because she said, ‘No train ever leaves on time.’ When it did, she pointed out the two busloads of people the train station had to accommodate because they all showed up late thinking the same thing. This mentality makes my mother and me both nervous. Think of the continual rewriting of the day’s schedules. Think of all the missed connections.

  We will do whatever you want on this trip, she says loudly so Soares can bear witness, since it is once in a lifetime.

  Once in a lifetime. Yes, I agree, but it is interesting to hear her admit this whether or not she secretly hopes we will find a way to forge a relationship after these twelve days are over. My mother is a hopeless romantic (was a truer term ever coined?). She wears the Thai silk scarf I sent her from my friend Milton’s vintage clothing store every single day. I’ve also been learning this by her responses to art. Ladyhawke is another movie in her 100 Club. It is the story of an ill-fated couple in love: the beautiful Isabeau (played by Michelle Pfeiffer), who, because of a corrupt bishop’s jealousy, is cursed to be a hawk by day and a woman by night, and her lover, the stoic and regal Captain Navarre (played by Rutger Hauer—my mother must have a thing for Rutger Hauer—I mean she saw this film over a hundred times in 1985!), a wolf by night and a man by day. With the help of a lowly but good-natured pickpocket, Mouse (played by a wide-eyed Matthew Broderick), they must find a way to break the curse so they can finally embrace in the flesh once again.

  My mother, it seems, has allowed herself to invent in her dreams at night, directing actors, composing dialogue, orchestrating music. Whereas I have tried my best to erase her from my dreams, censoring and editing her out, but have often found myself pondering her character during the day. Now we have been given the opportunity to meet and speak as real flesh-and-blood people. Will we decide on mercy and forgive, or will we arm ourselves with those lost years shell by shell for an epic family battle? The jury is still out. Perhaps we are both a little like Mouse, who laments having to face the awful truth of the curse: I should have known better. Every happy moment in my life has come from lying.

  The Clock Museum, or Museu do Relógio Professor Dimas de Melo Pimenta: I tell my mother this is the next attraction I’d like to visit since we both value timekeeping. And I love clocks: grandfather clocks, glockenspiels, novelty clocks in the shape of TransAms or Betty Boop or KISS façades. But when we phone for hours of operation, no one answers. We chuckle at the irony and charge off to the Museum of Precious Stones instead.

  Brazil is famous for its precious stones and Pedras Brasileiras is located on the fifth floor of a bank building, with no signage to indicate the museum is housed inside. I am told this is to discourage robbery. My mother and I are waved inside because of her journalist ID. She enjoys flashing it, like a secret service badge. Journalists in Brazil are offered free admission to all sorts of cultural activities, and are treated with deference and respect. Since the dictatorship ended, my mother adds, we are not to be silenced.

  We walk into a colourful showroom of thousands of jewels (rubies, emeralds, diamonds) and geologic stones (agate geodes, amethyst chapels, tambled stones) encased in rings, necklaces, bracelets, brooches, hairpins, and objects with stones incorporated into their designs (clocks, jewellery boxes, wine openers, key rings, pyramids, dolphins, cats, hundreds of bonsai trees). Our young guide, a clean-cut, dark-haired Brazilian named Tom, speaks English and practically sings an aria as he shows off the glittering gems in a private tour, the pièce de résistance the largest natural quartz stone in the world, smoky quartz or quartzo enfumaçado from the north of Brazil weighing sixty-seven kilograms. More than me, I joke, as I examine the shiny tar-like sheen on its rectangular body shaft. He explains that the showroom is a business as well as a gallery, and most of their customers are airline employees, who know you can buy cheap stones in Brazil and hide them easily in suitcases or wear them through customs. Complying with this tradition, I buy several gifts from their lower-end selection: a desk clock, circular jewellery boxes, and corkscrews. My mother says we will tell Chris when he calls that we are so precious the manager tried to keep us for display. Her joke is charming and I am genuinely touched. My mother continues to surprise me. I make a note to add this to my own list of “things to remember.”

  Museums bring out our mutual good qualities—curiosity, appreciation for skill and beau
ty, an eagerness to learn—so we head out to another, the Museum of Inventions, also known as Inventolândia. This museum is located in the union building for inventors (makes sense), and here too we are given free admission and a private tour of more than four hundred Brazilian inventions. Many have to do with cooking and housework (and poking holes in coconuts), as well as machinery and toilet improvements.

  As my mother takes notes in her small spiral notebook—we are also alike in our ability to turn any excursion into work—she lectures me about Brazilian infrastructure. People can see and get excited about a new school, a new road, but what goes on underneath the roads, they don’t care about. In Brazil, if there is a hole in the road, instead of fixing the hole in the road, they build another road. But she loves that Brazilians “invented the airplane,” and explains the genesis of this assertion here. According to Brazilians, if not the history books, the airplane was invented by an eccentric dandy named Alberto Santos-Dumont living on a trust fund in Paris, the first to have his own personal flying machine, a motorized dirigible, which he used daily to fly himself to dinner, shopping, and social occasions on the Seine. On November 12, 1906, he flew a kite-like contraption with boxy wings called the 14-Bis 722 feet and was hailed all over Europe as the inventor of air travel. Only after this announcement did the Wright brothers contest the honour, claiming they had invented the airplane three years earlier at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Many historians still contend that according to the criteria established at the time, the Wright brothers’ flight would not have qualified. Brazilians are especially sore around Wright brothers flight anniversaries. Brasilia is shaped like an airplane. When we fly there, you will be able to see the outline of the city is an airplane. Airplanes are part of our family. My father was a pilot, and your Uncle Wilhelm and his children are all pilots. Very good jobs. Uncle Wilhelm is head of the Air Force and has met the pope. The most stressful job in the world is not an airplane pilot, as people believe. Studies show it is a university teacher or a public bus driver. We spend two hours among the cramped shelves, inquiring incessantly about the light bulb changers and pet massagers, punch-proof tires, portable bidets, foldable pianos, wall paintings that convert into tables, combs for the bald, exercise equipment that washes lingerie, hats with cameras that take 360-degree photographs, and more.

  Almost everything I order at lunch, my mother can no longer eat: cheese and sausage and pop. She orders soup and bread rolls and admits she is embarrassed by her weight—she could stand to lose thirty or forty pounds. I’m glad you’re skinny. Everyone in the family is skinny except for me. They like to tease me. In Brazil, if you’re fat, you get liposuction. Not like in North America where fat is the norm. Brazilians sometimes eat as much as North Americans but we don’t tolerate fat, we don’t tell each other to feel good about our bodies. If you want to feel good about your body your body needs to look good. But I let them make fun of me. I’ve had too many surgeries for real problems, why would I put myself under the knife for cosmetic reasons?

  Although I don’t yet know what to believe about the rest of the de Góes Campos clan, my mother has not painted a pretty picture. It is apparent my mother does not think highly of her immediate family, and this distaste is rubbing off on me rather easily since we’ve both lived lives where we’ve developed stronger bonds with friends and colleagues than with relatives.

  They are jealous, she insists. Jealous because I don’t care about them. I care about my friends. My mother does not like me as much as she likes my brother and sister. Because I don’t have a man. It’s easier to fight with one person than with two people and my mother likes to fight. (I notice she never says “your grandmother” or “your uncle and aunt.”) I embarrass her. She thinks a woman should have a man.

  I interject: But she was with you when you left. Which is true. It’s the only memory I have of my grandmother. A tiny grey-haired woman who pitter-pattered around the house almost invisibly until bags were packed in a car headed for the airport under the illusion of picking up Christmas presents chosen out of the Sears Christmas Wishbook (a guitar for me, and a hockey foosball game for Jit). This bony woman was helping my mother force Jit into the car when I started screaming my heart out. Yes, my mother says, I never said it would make sense. Nothing in Brazil or about Brazilians makes sense. I am just telling you that my mother does not like me very much. She makes plans to be away on my birthday when she knows I will come to Brasilia no matter what. She went away when I was in the ICU for my cancer. I am visibly shocked by this. Não, Não, I don’t say a word. I try not to provoke her into a fight. I just smile and remind myself that when Pontius Pilate decided Christ had not done anything wrong and left it up to the people to decide who to set free, Christ or Barabbas the murderer, they picked Barabbas. I should not think myself better than Christ.

  Like the hawk and the wolf at sunset and sunrise, my mother and I almost connect at short intervals, excruciatingly close to understanding, sympathy, perhaps even clear-eyed sight. I try to hold on to these moments, these potential transformations, but they pass too quickly. Here she is again, my overweight mother in her loud formless clothes and bright red lipstick, following me incessantly with nonstop chatter from room to room, eyes glued on me as if I’m going to disappear into the ether. While I am learning a lot of interesting information about my estranged family, the relentlessness of the delivery takes a serious toll.

  My brother has lived with the same woman for nineteen years. Common-law. His two daughters were taken away from him by his first wife. This makes me very, very angry. He has nothing to do with these girls, and they are not well. One has tried to kill herself, several times. My brother is a coward. He won’t talk to his ex-wife, so his children have had no father. He’s afraid of changing light bulbs. He also loses his teeth when he’s anxious and so he has no natural teeth left . . .

  It is difficult to identify the details my mother finds most significant about her family. Is my uncle’s lack of teeth as important an insight into his character as the fact that he does not respond to his daughter’s suicide attempts? How can she be angry at him for being a coward when she says she’ll flee at the whiff of any fight? Like trying to collect water in a butterfly net, I can feel the coldness, the wetness, the rush of the motion, but can’t trap my subject for further examination. And my True and False jars keep shifting, contents rolling imperceptibly from one to the next and back again like in a carnival shell game.

  The only place my mother usually does not follow me is into the bathroom, and so I find myself retreating there, trying to catch my breath and indulge in a little peace and quiet by washing my underwear in the sink. Who are all these people she’s telling me about, starting fights and losing teeth and flying airplanes? My family? I don’t recognize the word beyond its six letters.

  No, not that mall, Soares argues when my mother suggests the plaza she normally frequents to write her articles. This is mini-shopping. You must take Priscila to the shopping palace. So we end up strolling through a designer labyrinth, where you can spend R$3,000 for a handbag or a pair of shoes (approximately $1,200 Canadian). Strangely, considering the wealth the customers must possess, prices are signed in a curious manner: 199R x 15, or 49R x 20. I suppose the idea is that you instinctively surrender yourself to the object in question due to your attraction to the low numbers, even though you can (hopefully) do basic math and figure out the actual astronomical price.

  I’m also amused by the opportunity to experience a culture where preparations for Easter are as extravagant as those for Christmas. In the middle of the mall is a display the size of a small town: fifty to sixty stuffed rabbits, human-sized, alongside other stuffed critters eating giant chocolate eggs and cookies. One glamorously attired rabbit is posed holding court with rabbit paparazzi while others in overalls and peasant dresses collect goodies from the fields. At Lojas Americanas, a popular department store my uncle with the missing teeth will later refer to as “paradise for housewives,” thousands of chocolat
e egg baskets wrapped in bright pink and yellow and blue aluminum foil hang just in reach above our heads like palm tree coconuts. The sweet smell is overpowering. Customers are pulling these baskets down by the cartload as if wresting wishes out of stars.

  I tell my mother that I remember, yes, I do remember (finally, one of the good things you remember about your mother) she used to hide chocolate eggs and rabbits in our dresser drawers and all over the house for Easter morning. I am so pleased you remember, she replies. I am pleased too. A happy memory of childhood. The kind other children must have. We both feel, momentarily, normal. Like we were once something called a family. Before the accident: our version of the family curse that separated us and made loving difficult, perhaps even impossible. I am reminded of a scene in Ladyhawke—a movie I must confess I find charming as well; I saw it for the first time when I was eleven years old and learned through Captain Navarre that hawks and wolves are wondrous because they both mate for life—when the shimmering Isabeau reappears to Mouse in the dead of night and he poses his most pressing question:

  Mouse: Are you flesh or are you spirit?

  Ladyhawke (Isabeau): I am sorrow.

  My mother has suffered. Profoundly. I must remember this. She carries her sorrow around with her, in the silk scarf I sent her and in her crippled fingers, in her tacky clothing and bulky frame, and in the exhale of her eternal monologues. For her, there is no end in sight to her curse. Every night and day is torture. She knows she has children, but she knows she has no permission to love them. She gave up her mate. Instead of fixing the hole in the road, she built another road.