True to Dr. Gorfinkel’s word, in less than two weeks I am feeling like myself again, whoever that is. I continue teaching creative writing and writing poetry. I defend my dissertation and earn a Doctor of Philosophy. I try not to think about my mother. In order to accomplish this, Chris and I rent movies. Lots of movies.
Eventually, I stop thinking about my mother. The moral of our story is clear to me. Some relationships are not worth pursuing. But I can’t help thinking about my grandmother, Uncle Fernando, and the cousins in Rio de Janeiro I haven’t met, the estranged ones like me.
I’ve always preferred the 1992 Director’s Cut ending of Blade Runner, the little origami unicorn left as both a threat and a message of hope in Deckard’s apartment as he and his lover flee the city underneath these last elegiac words: It’s too bad she won’t live, but then again, who does? Not every movie should have a happy ending. Not every relationship either. And who says you can’t go back and edit and cut, alter and transform the past. Or the future. We are mortal, yes, but we are also survivors.
What does it mean to have a mother? Is this the necessary condition of humanity? I have no idea. Overeducated as I am, this area of life was never properly covered to my satisfaction. Not then, and not now. Perhaps someday someone will enlighten me.
Before I know it, I am planning another trip, another visit halfway across the world to find out if there’s life, real life out there, and perhaps another possible ending, one discarded on the director’s cutting-room floor, one censored from public viewing, or one that hasn’t yet been imagined.
I never thought I would return to Brazil, and I don’t know if the decision to return for another adventure is evidence I am human or the opposite. What I do discover is that I am not a replicant. I’m a blade runner . . .
Fade to black.
Voice-Over
I can’t wait to return to my peaceful life, Priscila. You will have no effect on me. I will wipe you from my memory. . . . You will never see or hear from me again.
In April 2005, Chris and I landed in São Paulo, Brazil, but quickly boarded a connecting flight to Brasilia, where we were greeted by my blue-eyed and white-haired seventy-something grandmother and my large-armed Uncle Fernando. When my grandmother squeezes my hand and asks why I’ve come back, I reply, For you, Grandmother. Just for you! Not only did my mother refuse to see us, she refused to be in the same city as us. Under these circumstances, we were surprised the rest of the family welcomed us so warmly, although we do hear about how she fought with all of them before we landed, deeming each and every one a traitor. We also travel to Rio de Janeiro where we are introduced to my cousin Diana, the eldest of Fernando’s estranged daughters and the member of the family who most resembles me. Unfortunately, although my other cousin Juliana keeps promising to meet us for dinner or a walk on the beach, she never materializes.
When I ask Diana if it’s true there’s a crazy gene on the women’s side of the family, she sighs heavily and nods.
I propose a toast: To not going crazy.
Firmly, she shakes her head. No. It is easy to be the crazy one. It is not easy to have to take care of the crazy ones. So, we should drink to going crazy.
Which we do.
Sometimes life is like the movies. Second chances. I’m glad that I decided to visit my family for the second time, and grateful that Chris was able to join me. If we hadn’t gone then, we wouldn’t have all our memories. We wouldn’t have the privilege of knowing before it was too late.
Here is my list of what’s important to know:
On June 18, 2007, my Uncle Fernando José Salvador Campos died of the cancer he always knew would take him down. He was sixty years old.
On June 14, 2008, my grandmother Therezinha, or Theresa Amélia de Góes Campos, died of cancer. She was eighty-two years old.
Aunt Victoria sent me a Catholic memory card prepared for my grandmother’s funeral featuring the same portrait my mother displayed in her living room and photographs of her husband and her three children, but none of her grandchildren.
Elizabeth and Walter married in 2007.
I’m sure Guilherme and his fiancée married. I just don’t know when.
I’m also sure Uncle Wilhelm and Aunt Victoria are enjoying retirement.
In 2006, Chris and I threw a “Ten Years and Tenure Party” to celebrate our tenth anniversary and my recent tenure and promotion. I designed matching T-shirts that read: TEN MORE YEARS! Happily Unmarried since 1996.
We are currently planning our eighteenth anniversary.
My brother, Jit, married Jennifer Hacking, a hockey doctor, on June 30, 2007. I was a bridesmaid. My father was lifted in his wheelchair to the reception by four men, including Chris, like the sultan he is.
. Emmitt Uppal was born May 1, 2008, and Hunter Uppal on March 21, 2011. They love their crazy auntie who writes books.
True to my mother’s word, I’ve never seen or heard from her again. Except in my dreams. And sometimes in films. But even these appearances are few and far between, and elicit little emotion. I’m simply encountering in two dimensions someone I used to think was real. So I say let them come, the deep-sea diving and the apple bombs. I’ve already seen this movie one hundred times.
Time to turn off the projector. Turn on the lights. And go home.
My Brother’s Wedding Day: (left to right) Chris, Priscila, Avtar, Jit, Jennifer
acknowledgements
the red carpet
This book has been years in the making, probably since I was eight years old. I might have a number of people to blame, but I have even more people to thank.
Thank you, first of all, to all of my role models growing up: teachers and coaches and friends of parents who supported me in my dream to become a writer. This book would never exist without you.
Thank you to my partner in crime, Christopher Doda, for believing I could handle the trip to Brazil on my own, and for believing in the importance of this book from the beginning. Thank you for all those nights with pizza and movies. And thank you, most of all, for understanding that spending all day thinking about your mother is unhealthy and requires lots of running (not running away, but literal running across the city).
Thank you to the many organizations that helped fund the research and writing of this book: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, and York University Faculty of Arts.
Thank you to my amazing agents, Hilary McMahon and Natasha Daneman.
Thank you to my insightful editor, Janice Zawerbny, and to everyone at Thomas Allen Publishers.
Thank you to the friends who provided an eager ear, a good meal, and good advice before and after my travels, especially Richard Teleky, Barry Callaghan and Claire Weissman Wilks, Tracy Carbert, Ann Peel, Toni Healey, and the Women Writers Salon.
Thank you to all the writers, journalists, editors, and publishers who have supported all the work that has resulted from this project in many forms: poetry, fiction, non-fiction, drama—including Rishma Dunlop and Michael Helm and the editors at Brick magazine; Helen Walsh and Disapora Dialogues; Iris Turcott and the Factory Wired Festival.
Thank you to the graduate assistants who have helped with this book, especially the thorough and calm David Sprague and the skeptical and enthusiastic Anthony Hicks. Thank you also to Christina Sacchetti, Tim Hanna, Tanya MacIntosh, and Jessica Abraham.
Also, thank you tons to Ricardo Sternberg and Vivian Ralickas for your contacts in Brazil and your generosity with all things Brazilian.
Thank you to my father, Avtar, and my brother, Jit, for supporting me despite their reservations and their own heartache.
Thanks to Grace Westcott for advice. Thanks to Dr. Iris Gorfinkel for excellent care.
Thanks to all those who sent movie recommendations. And to Queen Video and 2Q Video in Toronto.
movie credits
Blade Runner (1982), Director: Ridley Scott, Screenwriters: Hampton Fancher and David Webb Peoples (based on
Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?); Maid in Manhattan (2002), Director: Wayne Wang, Screenwriters: John Hughes and Kevin Wade; The Big Blue (Le Grand Bleu) (1988), Director: Luc Besson, Screenwriters: Luc Besson, Robert Garland, Marilyn Goldin, Jacques Mayol, and Marc Perrier; God Is Brazilian (Deus É Brasileiro) (2003), Director: Carlos Diegues, Screenwriters: João Emanuel Carneiro, Carlos Diegues, Renata Almeida Magalhães, and João Ubaldo Ribeiro (based on Ribeiro’s short story “O Santo Que Não Acreditava em Deus” [“The Saint Who Did not Believe in God”]); Ladyhawke (1985), Director: Richard Donner, Screenwriters: Edward Khmara, Michael Thomas, Tom Mankiewicz, and David Webb Peoples; Mommie Dearest (1981), Director: Frank Perry, Screenwriters: Robert Getchell, Tracy Hotchner, Frank Perry, and Frank Yablans (based on Christina Crawford’s memoir by the same name); Stella Dallas (1937), Director: King Vidor, Screenwriters: Harry Wagstaff Gribble, Gertrude Purcell, Sarah Y. Mason, and Victor Heerman (based on a novel by Olive Higgins Prouty by the same name); Alien Resurrection (1997), Director: Jean-Pierre Jeunet, Screenwriters: Dan O’Bannon, Ronald Shusett, and Joss Whedon; Freaky Friday (2003), Director: Mark Waters, Screenwriters: Leslie Dixon and Heather Hach (based on Mary Rodgers’s novel by the same name); Throw Momma from the Train (1987), Director: Danny DeVito, Screenwriter: Stu Silver; The Myth of Fingerprints (1997), Director: Bart Freundlich, Screenwriter: Bart Freundlich; The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985), Director: Woody Allen, Screenwriter: Woody Allen; Bye Bye Brasil (1980), Director: Carlos Diegues, Screenwriters: Carlos Diegues and Leopoldo Serran.
Copyright © 2013 by Priscila Uppal
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
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Permission to photocopy should be requested from Access Copyright.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Uppal, Priscila, author
Projection : encounters with my runaway mother / Priscila Uppal.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-77102-274-3 (pbk.).—ISBN 978-1-77102-320-7 (epub).—ISBN 978-1-77102-321-4 (mobi)
1. Uppal, Priscila. 2. Uppal, Priscila—Family. 3. Mothers and daughters—Biography.
4. Poets, Canadian (English)—20th century—Biography. I. Title.
PS8591.P62Z53 2013 C811'.54 C2013-902857-9
C2013-902858-7
Editor: Janice Zawerbny
Cover design: Michel Vrana
Cover image: ostill/shutterstock.com
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program. We also acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and Livres Canada Books, and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit and the Ontario Media Development Corporation.
Care has been taken to trace the ownership of copyright material used in this book. The author and the publisher welcome any information enabling them to rectify any references or credits in subsequent editions.
J. Kirk Howard, President
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Projection Page 25
