Under the Visible Life

by Kim Echlin

  KATHERINE

  Ma wanted more. On the phone she said, Katie, I’ve got news.

  I cancelled my gigs and took Dexter and Jimmie and Bea to visit right away, to see her still well. No one can know how it will go. How long from diagnosis to end.

  She met us at the bus terminal and said, Put your stuff in a locker. We’re going walking. We walked downtown past our old apartment and looked up at the window and Dexter said, It woulda been a different life here. And then she took us to the Connaught and they had prepared a meal for us and Ma stood with the kitchen staff joking and laughing while we ate and when we were leaving she said to them, I’m not coming back and I don’t want you to visit me.

  Out on the sidewalk I said, Ma, you’ve been working with them for years.

  She said, And that’s long enough. Then she opened her purse right there on the sidewalk and pulled out three American one-hundred-dollar bills and gave one to each of the kids. She said, I don’t need money where I’m going. Now you won’t forget me.

  I said, Ma, stop it.

  But Jimmie said, It’s okay, I’ll take it.

  That evening we were sitting in her apartment and Ma and Bea were painting their nails red, and Ma was telling stories about the hotel and the musicians and the time they played a trick on Tommy Dorsey. Dexter was pretending to read but he was listening to her and Jimmie was barricaded in my old bedroom with his Walkman and headphones. Ma pulled out her Chinese teapot and gave it to Bea and she gave Dexter her Bartlett’s. She said, I’ve got a soft spot for lawyers. They’ve done some good work for me. You keep going with that. Call your brother in.

  She gave Jimmie her Les Paul album and she said to all of them together, I don’t want you making a fuss over me, I’ve had a good life, and we’re not going to waste money running back and forth. We’re going to do this my way. You’re not coming back. I don’t want you to see me sick. Don’t let time flap on the mast. Go and live your lives. Take care of your ma and each other. Tomorrow let’s walk up the escarpment.

  It was Jimmie who opened his arms and held her but she wouldn’t let him hold her for long. She said, I’m not going to heaven because I wouldn’t know anyone there.

  The kids still shake their heads at that, and laugh.

  *

  It was a good week. We looked around the used record stores and walked back to the escarpment and one night I found the three of them playing around in my old schoolyard. Somehow they’d made themselves a team. I was always curious about brothers and sisters, having had none myself, and it seemed a great advantage to have someone who knows you in your blood when you were thinking about death. After that visit I went to Ma’s alone. At first I wanted to be busy, to clear out her apartment, sort her papers, but she wasn’t ready and there wasn’t much to do and she did not want it all done too fast. No one wants to say, Well, that’s that. My life cleaned up in a couple of hours.

  So we sat around together and it annoyed both of us. She said, Go out and give me some peace. I went to a few of the old clubs, stood inside the Alexandra where I first laid eyes on T, went to the Downstairs Club. The steel business was faltering, bought up by new business interests that did not care about the workers on Ma’s street and the city was depressed. The clubs were tired and the jazz scene was done. There was a bit of other music. There was a classical musician, Boris Brott, who brought the symphony to the steelworkers. The Connaught was half-empty. My god, I thought, what if I hadn’t had the guts to leave?

  Slowly Ma’s bones began to poke upward in rounded mounds under her skin. Her eyes withdrew. She did not smoke as much. One low day she said, I had opportunities that I did not take. I couldn’t.

  I listened to her stories of digging out the unearthed papers from Belmont reformatory. She was proud of her years of work with lawyers and researchers, and getting brave enough to publicly admit who she had married. She said, Katie, you can’t imagine how anyone would look down on you for marrying a Chinese. When I first wanted to clear my name I was frightened because I had papers in my name and in your father’s name and I didn’t know if they could arrest me all over again. The first lawyer I went to I pretended it was for a friend. I kept thinking that I did not deserve what happened to me. You know, Nan was the only person I told. You know what she said? Love is love.

  Ma’s hands got bonier and she had a little rubber thimble that she wore on her index finger to turn the pages and drugstore reading glasses and the way she set things up at the table I could see that she had spent many hours carefully deciphering the legal documents, slowly reading the transcripts of her court appearances, looking at photocopies of records from Belmont.

  Here’s the file for when I got you back, she said. I wasn’t easy to work with. I couldn’t remember dates the lawyers needed and when it was too much I would drop out of sight for a while. It’s a flaw in my character. I always survived by hiding. The lawyers said, That’s how you resisted.

  She held out a thick file marked “Medical.”

  What’s this one?

  They thought all of us had VD, made it seem as if we carried some kind of blight. Where’d they think we got it? I didn’t have it but they were treating me anyway. The prison doctor was experimenting on me, and the other girls too, burning and cauterizing us. She was a horror. For a long time I thought it was me, that I was bad or diseased or something, but I wasn’t. It’s in the files. She was a vice-president of a eugenics group. One of the girl lawyers helped me find her a few years ago but she was already dead. All I wanted was to tell her I knew what she was up to and that I’d turned out all right and I had raised my daughter and held down a good job and I wasn’t a slut. The lawyers tried to be kind and they said, There’s only so far we can go. But we are going to clear your name.

  Ma was proud of her mealy government apology: Sorry we ruined your life. The letter said: This Act had unfortunate and unjustified consequences for you and other women who were unjustifiably incarcerated under its provisions. It wasn’t well written, only carefully written. Ma said, It should have said all women incarcerated but I got tired of fighting. The day I received the letter, the lawyers took me out for a drink. Guess where we went?

  The Connaught?

  First time I ever walked in there feeling worthy. I called the Colonel to come and join us and he did. He bought us a bottle of champagne and I was on the served side and everyone made a fuss over me.

  You phoned me that day, Ma.

  I did this for you too, Katie.

  She closed the file and put it back into the heavy cardboard box. She said, After a person’s gone, there’s still paper. What do you want to do with this box? I care about these papers.

  At first when the pain was bad I did not recognize it. She said, Wouldn’t it be nice to have a smoke and a glass of wine again?

  She was standing in the bathroom looking at herself in the mirror. She turned around and held out her bony arms and said, Why didn’t anyone tell me I’m wasting away? What’s the big secret? You’re all keeping secrets from me. I can feel it.

  Her anger took me right back to my teenage feelings, when I was trapped in her frustration. I turned around and went into the kitchen.

  She yelled, Why bother coming all this way to ignore me? Go back to your life. Lucky you’ve got one.

  She was trying not to need me. I wanted to keep things light. I said, Hey, Ma, why didn’t the skeleton cross the road?

  Why?

  Because it had no guts.

  Like old times. The two of us alone, grating against each other, keeping each other company. We were always afraid not to love each other so we kept making space. Tried to get on with life. Except this time she was dying.

  She was frail and brittle and small and as if she could hear me thinking, she said, Don’t feel sorry for me. If you’re going to be around here so much, I guess there’s someone you better meet.

  MAHSA

  I got taken away from my mother, Katherine told me over the phone.

  You�
��re making that up.

  I’m not.

  Katherine liked to phone me from Hamilton late at night after her mother got sick.

  She said, My mother wasn’t married when she got pregnant and they put her in a reformatory for being incorrigible. When I was a baby they took me away.

  How did she get you back?

  She had to fight for me. Kids get taken away and survive. There’s a jazz fan in New York everyone calls Baroness. Her real name’s Nica Rothschild and she takes care of Monk, drives him around Harlem in her big limousine. She had to give up her five children to be a jazz fan. At least you got Lai back.

  Lailuma was withdrawn, especially around Ali. Our lively daughter stayed in her room, used her little-girl-Abbu voice to please him. Her surfaces became reserved and she covered herself with large sweaters that I knew she took off at school. She no longer lingered in the kitchen to talk when she came home in the afternoons. She answered Ali’s questions without looking at him and he moved struttingly. Living without forgiveness made me feel empty. Ali said to me, She is respectful now. You would never have taught her that.

  I loved the smell of her hair and the feel of her firm arms and back and my cheek briefly on her soft face when she let me hug her. But mostly she avoided me, stepped away before I could touch her. Her eyes accused, You let him.

  Katherine said, Thirteen was when I started to shake my fist at the universe. It is normal.

  I remembered thirteen.

  Then Katherine said, Mahsa, give her a way to escape if she needs it.

  I was ashamed to talk about it. I asked, Want to hear what I’m playing?

  She answered, Yes, I always do.

  But the next day I went to my bank and I came home and gave Lailuma a thin envelope with a lot of money in it from my old student account, and Katherine’s telephone number. I said, Hide this well. Keep it with you. In case. Memorize Katherine’s number. You may never need it, but the children belong to the father.

  Lailuma’s eyes cracked like a china teacup. She asked, What would I do, Ma?

  I pressed the envelope into her hand and said, It would depend on what happens. You will know what to do. I hope you do not have to.

  Some women leave their husbands and children. In the dark, doubting hours I tried to imagine how it would be, the next morning, the next week, a decade later. I imagined pain waning in time. I imagined Lailuma and Asif’s story: Our mother left us.

  This could not be me. I could not live cut off from my children.

  I put my troubles into a small box and forced myself to practise. My concentration became more and more pure. Month after month became a year, and then the next, my only precious life. I taught Lailuma verses of the Quran to please Ali and I said to her, Work hard, try for a scholarship, get your own money.

  I watched the little frown-wrinkle like Ammi-jaan’s deepen between her eyes.

  Things were unalterably changed between us. I stayed home. I played. It was the only thing left to me. One day Lailuma came out of her room when I was practising and said, Mor, I can’t concentrate with all that noise. I thought you wanted me to study.

  Noise.

  Finally I called Jean St. John, said, Jean, I’m dying.

  Mahsa, you are coming to your senses. De quoi tu meurs?

  Doing nothing.

  You’re lucky to have nothing to do but play. I hate administration. All I do is take care of broken contracts and students with broken fingers and pianos with broken strings.

  I laughed.

  He said, Ne ris pas! I have a Japanese student whose father has donated a great deal of money to us. He wants her to play jazz and not one of my instructors can do anything with her.

  Let me give her a master class at my house in the mornings. I will pick up my pay in your office. Don’t mail it.

  Jean said, Merde! The mountain must come to Mahsa. Then he laughed and said, Tu me manques. I’ll bring her tomorrow. Get yourself out, Mahsa, come play at Biddle’s with me.

  He never stopped believing in me.

  To live, you must risk calamity. Abandon old ways to create something new. Love the life under the visible life. When Lailuma forgot that she was angry I saw in her grey eyes Mor’s lively, laughing nature. I sometimes thought she smelled like Mor. I loved her firm, small breasts and her dark hair. I started to write music telling the story of Lailuma and Mor. I saw my mother’s crumpled shot body on the floor. I saw the rigid body of a grieving child. Why is honour worth more than a child’s love? All this I put in my piece and I called it “I Miss You, Mor.”

  With each day, the phrases and chords and ideas came from the thing in me that most needed to speak. After weeks and weeks, I sent it to Katherine and she called me back and played it to me over the telephone.

  She said, Mahsa, this is beautiful. Do you want my real opinion? Try a major chord in the third line. Contrast the darkness.

  Then she said, I love this piece.

  I am a strange Karachiite to love winter as I do. Match came through the door, shaking snow from her boots and pulling off thick mitts and hat and unwinding her scarf. She wore her straight hair pulled back in a spiky ponytail. She had no ear for jazz. She loved Bach and she could not bring herself to improvise. She said, Who can improve on Bach? She wore short schoolgirl skirts and carried pink and black accessories and purses decorated with cartoons.

  She said, My father is disappointed. He wants me to play like Toshiko Akiyoshi.

  I said, I know all about people having dreams they inflict on others.

  She said, You are the first genius I ever met.

  Improvising is all about adding your own note, I told her, you can do it.

  The next class she played a Bach fugue and when she came to the end she paused dramatically, added a single note, then lifted her hands from the keys and turned to look at me. She had her own wit. Jean called and said, I need tutors like you. Take some more students, but you need to come here.

  So I found an easy solution. I went, every Wednesday. I told Ali I was volunteering at Lai’s school. I wore a niqab on the street so I would not be recognized and stuffed it in my bag on campus.

  I even played with Jean. He brought his double bass into my practice room and kicked my student out. He said, My turn.

  He left the door open and students gathered in the hall to hear us and they gossiped about whether we were lovers. Sometimes I got up off the piano bench and went to the doorway and riffed on the poetry of Kabir, Do not cut a goat’s throat … cut the throat of control while Jean played ostinato. They told one another that we had played together when I was a student and Professor St. John was still a young professor. They heard, in our music, the technique of decades mixed with youth’s eros. One day, Jean looked at his watch and said, I have to go. I’ve got a meeting. Mahsa, let’s run away, ditch it all. He shouted to the students in the hall, Go make your own music.

  What a sad waste, my family pretending to be happy. I did not know where Asif went with his friends, or where Lailuma wore the red-heeled shoes she hid in her backpack.

  Ali became unwell and they found a prostate cancer. During the time of his sickness when I was driving him to treatments and appointments I had to give up teaching again. He directed the office by telephone. I took him in to work for a few hours, waiting, reading magazines, and saw how his staff loved him and were loyal to him. He was charming, talking about hockey and asking after their families. I was reminded of the young man I met in Pakistan. On our drives home he used to tell me with satisfaction how successful he was.

  Soon Asif will take over, he said. I’ve built a good business. One day when he was tired and ill he said, Mahsa, we made a good life.

  Jean said, I can pick up all your students, except Match. You’ve got to see her through. You owe me that.

  I taught her a few standards with simple chord patterns she could perform for her father. I pulled out my old Minimoog and we played around. She learned to add few more notes. One spring day near the end of t
erm, I asked her if she had a boyfriend.

  He is in Japan, she said. I’m going to marry him in the summer and move to Vancouver. The Richmond Symphony has hired me part-time. My father is coming and I will introduce you and tell him you are my best friend in Montreal.

  Does he like your boyfriend?

  Oh yes. I am lucky.

  Why lucky?

  It is difficult for a Japanese girl when the parents do not approve.

  I said, That is true everywhere.

  Oh no, she said. Here is free.

  I said, If you love him, be with him soon. Now, you improvise and I’ll recite a poem:

  Ask the lightning,

  when it cracks through the nightcalm, if it saw my love.

  It makes me think of him.

  Then Match said, You play and I will say a poem:

  In dreams, on dream paths

  with no rest for my legs

  I go often, to you

  all this is less than a glimpse

  in the waking world.

  Jean came for her official exam. He stood looking out the window, listening to Match play. I showed him her transcriptions.

  Jean asked, What is that?

  Match said, It is the Abhogi raga scale.

  Jean asked, Jazz?

  I said, Jazz is whatever you are. Who said that, Match? Earl Hines.

  What did Ellington say about Mary Lou Williams?

  She was like soul on soul.

  What did Mary Lou Williams say about men?

  Working with men you get to think like a man. You become strong, but this does not mean you are not feminine.

  Jean raised an eyebrow, asked me, Are you teaching music or politics?

  I said, Match and I prepared an Arabic poem by Umm Ja far bint Ali. She improvised the accompaniment. Ready? My mother taught it to me.

  Match put her hands on the keys and played a few notes and I began to recite:

  Leave me alone, you are not my equal.