Projection

by Priscila Uppal

  As I try this new love on for size, she explains some family history:

  My father, your great-grandfather, Dr. Custodio Fernandes Góes, was a composer and a professor at the National Conservatory in Rio. Piano and violin and full orchestras. A street is named after him in Ipanema in Rio, where we are from originally—I wish you were going there, but I would worry so much, it is a very dangerous city, but then you could see the streets named after your family members, you could stand outside our old home. My mother was one of his piano students. She was seventeen and he thirty-nine when they married.

  I guess she had a few things to teach him, I interject, risking a joke.

  My grandmother laughs, her blue eyes twinkling even under the harsh neon lights of the shopping plaza. She did. My father was a Romantic composer and adored my mother, who was very beautiful. His songs were frequently sung at graduations. When I graduated, I sang my father’s songs. Sometimes the lyrics were written by your Great-Uncle Carlos, Custodio Carlos Góes, who wrote poetry and a very famous grammar book. A street is also named after him in Ipanema in Rio. And their cousin Arturo Nones da Silva was also a poet, and yes, he too has a street named after him in Rio. All were Romantics.

  Incredible news! I had no idea there were so many artists, and poets no less, in the family. It makes me hopeful that maybe the bulk of my DNA might be traced outside my lunatic mother. For some inexplicable reason—inexplicable because these dead artists are known only by name—I feel proud. This is a family tradition I don’t mind embracing. I set a new impossible goal for myself: I must have a street named after me. I dream that Erinbrook Crescent will one day be renamed Priscila Uppal Crescent.

  Can I get any copies of the scores or poetry?

  My grandmother puts down her spoon. Are you interested?

  Of course. I know I can’t read the Portuguese, but I would still like to see them. I can read some music. I taught myself as a teenager because I desperately wanted piano lessons, but we couldn’t . . .

  My grandmother shakes her head in wonder. No one else is interested in these things. Music doesn’t run in the family anymore.

  Poetry should count, I venture.

  Yes, of course, you are a poet. You have the music gene! My grandmother looks delighted as she calculates where she’s kept the box of all those old papers. I do note, however, that she doesn’t consider my mother part of this genetic inheritance. Has my mother expressed no interest in the works of her ancestors? Is this another sore spot between them? Is my mother so fearful of competitions of any kind, even with dead family members, that she has ignored this treasure house of artistic archives? It must not have been easy for her to have aspirations of artistic greatness and to find herself standing in the wings. Is she jealous of my success too? Your grandfather died three years ago: February 2, 2000, she adds. I am interested in that too.

  One of my mother’s friends, sour-looking and frumpy with dark arching eyebrows and jet-black hair in a fuzzy purple sweater and purple lipstick, tells a joke: A divorced woman finds a bottle one day, rubs it, and a genie pops out. The genie is old and tired, so he offers her only a single wish, not three. That’s all he has left.

  Okay, then I want Israel and Palestine to be at peace.

  Impossible! the genie cries. I don’t have that kind of power. You must pick something else. Something smaller.

  Okay, then a man to love me forever.

  Let me see that map, the genie replies.

  I laugh hard, perhaps inappropriately. What a sense of humour this purple woman must possess to spit out a joke so clearly on target in terms of the evening’s crowd. Good for you, lady, I think, as she devours a slice of chocolate cake.

  One of the unique things about the Alien series is that each movie is filmed by a different director. In the hands of French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, the metaphor of the alien assumes psychoanalytic proportions whereby women, in their capacity for motherhood, are monsters. Ellen Ripley, played in every Alien movie by the tough-as-nails Sigourney Weaver, has been cloned to produce a baby alien (she was impregnated as a host human at the end of Alien 3, two hundred years previous, and committed suicide so as not to propagate a viscous predator—now there’s a truly unselfish mother). The military, using a computer called “Father,” plans to use the aliens as weapons of war. This baby alien is a female, a mother, and queen, and Ripley warns them that her alien daughter will end up killing them all. Through the cloning process, Ripley has acquired some of the alien DNA. The other crew members consider her “not human.” However, it is the only other main woman character in the film, Call, played by Winona Ryder, who is not human, an android. These two women are outcasts, freaks, monsters. The most powerful scene in the film occurs when Ripley discovers the lab housing the failed cloning experiments, all the different mutated versions of herself—grotesque bodily dimensions, extra limbs, eyes and teeth peppered about—locked in glass cases. Stunned, she stares at the fleshy remains of her exploited DNA, a ghastly hall of mirrors, and torches the place to the ground. Johner, played by the brusque Ron Perlman, describes the act: Fuckin’ waste of ammo . . . must be a chick thing.

  At the end of my notes on Alien Resurrection, I’ve written: MORAL: No creature wants two mothers. I’m not sure I want one. There’s a reason stepmothers embody evil in the fairy-tale genre and overbearing mothers are a recurring trope in horror films. The ability to create life harbours the opposite: the ability to kill it. Some women can’t resist this urge, as strong as the urge to procreate, to control the product of one’s flesh to its end. Without her children, my mother lost control of a very important area of her life. No longer could she count on affection, attention, admiration, obedience, at a moment’s notice. My mother did not plan this life. I must remember that. She didn’t know what to do when she was plucked from her romance and dropped into a horror. The heroines of horror films must fight, fight until their very last breath to survive. My mother was not built for fighting, or running, or bloodshed. Every night she moans loudly, like an injured dog, before falling asleep. Is she crying, or praying? I cannot tell. But she seems, like these other lonely women, to miss expressing a maternal largesse. One of the most distressing horror movie images ever has to be Ripley drowning in the bosom of the Queen Mother alien, mother and daughter hugging and caressing each other. Hungrily. These women too look at me hungrily, even once they have wiped their faces with napkins. Will their appetite for love ever be satiated?

  And I wish someone could explain to me why it is that in science-fiction movies—think Alien Resurrection, think Gattaca, think Brazil, think X-Men, think Avatar, where distant planets are colonized, where robots are so advanced they can pass as humans—these revolutionary civilizations can’t seem to eradicate simple paralysis, or at least give these military guys an electric wheelchair! I know I’m sensitive to the portrayal of disability in art because of my father, but doesn’t it point to a truly deficient imagination if plot twists depend on the inability of humans to design effective prosthetics or mobility aids when they’ve managed to build elaborate spaceships and project themselves into new bodily forms?

  Nobody asks me about my father. Nobody asks me if I have children. Has my mother prepped them? I bet she has; either that, or they’re afraid I’ll ask them similar questions. No one wants to be put on the spot. There is blood underneath their eyes and purses and plates of noodles and fried fish and cans of Coca-Cola. Streams of blood and anger and lost years no one wants to recall.

  Furthermore, maybe my mother fears I’ll explain why I don’t have any children. If she asked—I’ll bet an entire year’s salary she won’t—I’m not sure I would tell her the truth. Better to let her think that I’m too focused on my career, that I’m waiting for Chris and me to purchase a house and build a nest egg, that there’s no need to rush in today’s world, where a woman of twenty-eight can accumulate a lifetime of experiences before settling into domesticity, that I’ll change my mind once the biological clock starts ticking a litt
le faster. How to explain to my mother what is nearly impossible to explain to most friends and other family members: when I imagine holding a baby of mine, I am overwhelmed by nausea. Always have been. So much so that I took the pill for over a year before I even thought about losing my virginity. I’m just grateful I’ve managed to find a partner who has as little interest in reproducing as I do. Even if it makes me seem like a monster, let me confess that when I see newborn babies, especially newborns with scrunchy red faces or drooling lips or with spittle on their shirts, I feel disgust. I am a caring and generous person—I frequently put myself out for friends and strangers alike—but I don’t have any sentimentality toward motherhood. Ultimately, never mind all the propaganda to the contrary, I think procreation in our society is a selfish act. Millions of unwanted children exist in the world. Why not put your intense motherly pangs to work to give these kids a fighting chance? But I know I’m in the minority here. I’ve watched dear friends undergo painful and expensive fertility treatments for the opportunity to carry a child. And I’ve witnessed the sincere satisfactions and intense joys many experience feeding, cuddling, and playing Lego and tea party and Transformers with their children, even unplanned and unexpected children. I frequently offer to throw the baby showers. That way I don’t have to talk to anyone about breast milk or poopy bums or stretched labias. My friends think I’m funny, but they also know I throw a damn good party. Just don’t involve me in baby discussions. Once I nearly passed out when a pregnant friend mentioned she was thinking of saving her placenta and eating it at a later date. I feel woozy now just writing it. Besides, I like to tell people, I have way too many children already at the university. Their parents screw them up and then I help them sort out the mess. My talents lie with this age group—eighteen to twenty-five or -six—when they want to become adults but don’t know how. When they want to leave their childhoods behind. And I do think of them as my “kids.” Just kids whose bums I’ve never wiped.

  As we disperse, my mother gushes that the day has been “so emotional, so delightful,” then has trouble remembering where she parked her car. It is painfully clear my mother has rarely been the focus of the family, able to set the agenda and command the centre of attention. When I explained our intense Brasilia schedule to Chris, he christened it my “media tour.” He also said, You’re your mother’s accessory.

  And I am on display. Look how beautiful. Look how intelligent. Always mentioning my books, my professorship. To think she has never once asked me how long it took to write my novel or what courses I teach. She desires a picture-perfect mother-daughter weekend without any of the work. Well, I suppose we’re celebrating Jesus coming back from the dead. Like Ripley, who when characters exclaim I thought you were dead, counters Yeah, I get that a lot; she doesn’t have much choice, being who she is, whatever combination of human and alien, so she keeps living. My mother and I don’t have much choice either. At least I’ve made the decision not to reproduce. Not to risk birthing monsters. As the British poet Philip Larkin advises in “This Be the Verse,” to avoid the cycle of parent-to-child neurosis: “Don’t have any kids yourself.”

  Come to me, my little one, my mother coos, closing her eyes and turning herself about the parking garage like a child playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. Opening her eyes, she steps forward. Astonishingly, her little green Gol car appears. As my head thumps against the roof all the way back to her condominium, I consider how I believe art and magic are meant to facilitate revelations, while my mother believes they are meant to perform miracles. And today, for the most part, her wish has been granted.

  My Grandmother Therezinha at the Church of Dom Bosco

  10

  the myth of fingerprints

  Warren: It’s been long enough that I can’t quite remember that I shouldn’t go.

  The hotel blue tree, as already mentioned, is not actually blue, but red to symbolize the workers’ union. Oscar Niemeyer, born in 1907 in Rio de Janeiro and inexplicably still alive and kicking (Oscar will die only years later in December 2012, days away from his 105th birthday), is an unapologetic atheist and Marxist. I’m glad that there is such a prominent, beloved Brazilian who has shunned Catholicism (and built the famous cathedral!). The hotel neighbours Palácio da Alvorada (Palace of Dawn), the official residence of the president, and also designed by Niemeyer. In fact, the city of Brasilia is essentially Niemeyer’s artistic DNA. Under the directive of visionary president Juscelino Kubitschek (a Brazilian equivalent to American president John F. Kennedy, Kubitschek campaigned in 1956 on the slogan “50 years of progress in 5” and was hailed “a poet of public buildings”; there is even a twenty-eight-metre-high statue of him and a memorial museum with a sepulchre for his sacred ashes), he also designed the Brasilia Palace Hotel, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Defence, the Presidential Chapel, the National Congress, the Supreme Federal Tribunal, the National Theatre, the Praça dos Três Poderes (Square of the Three Powers), and more. Inaugurated on the city’s birthday, April 21, 2000, all the visual art of the hotel is by Oscar Niemeyer, Japanese-Brazilian abstract painter and sculptor Tomie Ohtake, and her son Ruy Ohtake. I can’t get enough of it: large bulbous red chairs, green fluid geometric counters, glowing white globe lights, amoeba-shaped swimming pools. Our hotel room overlooks the gigantic blue pool (no blue trees, but an abundance of blue water), which could hold at least a couple of hundred people in its swirling body, and Lake Paranoá. A towering bouquet of yellow lilies has been delivered to our room and I can smell their sweet fragrance from the balcony. I am feeling a little guilty because my mother, who is the oldest of the siblings, seems to be the worst off financially, and this is the most expensive hotel in Brasilia. So much for Marxism.

  Today is the forty-third anniversary of Brasilia and the third of the Hotel Blue Tree. Riders on horseback follow the exact parade route as on the inaugural day of Brasilia in 1960. Brazilians are worried about the current president because he is not as vigilant about his personal security as previous presidents—part of his socialist politics and his self-stylization as Lulu, a man of the people. This lax security is at odds with the heightened security I’ve experienced in other Brazil venues, where many buildings are guarded by young male soldiers in their late teens or early twenties in green combat uniforms, machine guns strapped across their chests. I am informed that Brazil is considered by South Americans to be a peaceful nation: they fight with themselves, not with others. Like a dysfunctional family.

  My mother is wearing her orange outfit again. She looks hideous, like a gigantic papaya, and she knows it. I dress unfashionably on purpose, she brags, adjusting her hat. I will not follow the fashion of others. If I buy something and someone says, that is very stylish, I will not wear it again until it is out of style. And have I told you why I carry such a big purse?

  Because you’re neurotic and require endless supplies for your multiple delusions? I shake my head even though she has told me, because her answers change like the weather and I like to gauge my mother’s temperature several times per day.

  Because no thief wants such a big purse. Thieves want light purses, heavy wallets. They don’t want glasses and shoehorns and umbrellas and rubber boots and . . .

  Lunch today is with immediate family only at Bargaço, a seafood restaurant specializing in Bahai cuisine with outdoor tables underneath straw umbrellas and thick white braided ropes for an entrance walkway. My family looks like a mix of Brazilian colonizers and European immigrants: Portuguese, Dutch, German, Italian. Blond and brown and black hair; blue and green and grey and brown eyes. Here I meet the infamous Uncle Fernando, who was away for the weekend with his partner’s family and their daughter in the Amazon. I dreamt about him the night before—I was christening the TV Tower in honour of my grandmother and the entire family was present, including my unknown Uncle Fernando—and he looks nothing like what I imagined. I pictured him short and wiry, whereas he is large, stocky, and muscular. I have been told he is shy, but this, I soon learn, is far
, far from the case. He is not shy; he simply despises chit-chat or socializing. He will only speak when he considers it important; he only listens for the same reason.

  The family drama The Myth of Fingerprints begins with the main character, Warren, the eldest sibling in a ruptured family, telling his therapist, I had a dream about my family. . . . Warren hasn’t been home in three years, but has agreed to visit, with his three other siblings and their various lovers, for Thanksgiving. He’s not sure why he’s going, only that he can’t remember why he should stay away. As I sit eating shrimp and sipping coconut juice, I sympathize. I’m no longer sure what I’m doing here, a family tourist. And I appreciate the title of the film, the word “myth” rather than “lie” or “illusion” or “fable.” A myth is a story but not a lie, a foundational story believed to be true by a group of people, a community or nation, to give them an understanding of who they are and what their purpose is on earth. It’s up to the group to adapt the story over time to suit the new needs and goals of its people; here a family story, the story of fingerprints, what it means to share DNA, to share spaces where fingerprints linger.

  Before I finish my appetizer, Uncle Fernando, who has not yet spoken to me directly, has convinced the rest of the family that as a professor I would want to see the university where he teaches. We’ll be quick and I promise to bring her back safe and sound. I laugh, but soon discover why everyone seemed a little worried. Even by Brazilian standards, my Uncle Fernando drives like a lunatic.