by Angie Abdou
at the dry skin of her lips, three sharp hairs unplucked at her chin.
She’s awake?
A mother whose hair sticks flat to her head on one side and springs
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wildly from the other wears an infant strapped to her chest, its chubby
red legs kicking. Across the baby’s chest a sticker reads “My planet,
my future!” A man sits in a wheelchair mounted with an oxygen tank,
two tubes snaking into his nostrils. He holds a sign: “What’s your
footprint?” it asks, in angry red. Little blue words swim around the
question. Vero tries to make them out: sweat, laundry, towels, heat. A
woman in a pink sweat-suit rests a hand on his shoulder. Her other
arm angrily jabs a sign at the sky : “Bikram yoga: destroying the envi-
ronment one tree pose at a time!” In front of the wheelchair, a teenage
boy with curly hair escaping a hand-knit toque stretches a long piece
of paper across his chest: “I’m so angry I made a sign.”
“Your sweat: killing our planet!” his girlfriend’s sign screams.
Vero looks the other way. The crowd squishes around her.
“SWEAT!” A young man holds up Vero’s arm as he yells, makes
her one of them.
“KILLS!”
Who are these people?
“SWEAT!”
“KILLS!”
Vero is pulled with the crowd, one way then the next, forward and
then back. She’s lost all control over her own body. A “bottled water
is bullshit” placard bangs her in the head. She takes a deep breath and
with all her strength wiggles her way through the warm bodies. She
must force the other warm bodies—the ones from Jamaica—from
her mind. She curses her own body for responding to these around
her now. Screaming and unaware of her, people bang and bump and
rub up against her. Sex is a metaphor, she told Shane. Her body doesn’t
agree.
When she’s nearly at the front of the crowd, she spots Roger
tucked inside the glass door. She almost doesn’t recognize him with
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his clothes on. In her mind, he’s inseparable from his hot pink Lycra
shorts. In street clothes, his posture is different. His neck hangs. He
leans into the glass window as if he needs it to hold him up. The
Bikram Yoga sign stencilled across the door cuts him in half.
The sight of him so unlike himself creates a surge of energy where
she thought she had none. “Don’t you have something better to pro-
test?” she says to the picketer next to her, a university student waving a
picture of a planet in flames. “Hot Enough For Ya Now, Bikram?” His
white T-shirt is so thin she sees his nipples underneath. “Protest the
oil sands, the war in Iraq, the cuts to public transit, for God’s sakes.”
She hears her for God’s sakes, the Mr and Mrs Schoeman in it.
“They’re all the same thing,” the young man replies with unexpected
softness, meeting and holding her eyes. “Them and this. Same thing.”
She searches his face for anger, expects the muscles taut, strained at
his temples and neck, but his features sit at rest, his eyes gentle. She’d
like to invite him to her house for tea, ask him to elaborate, but how
would she hide Ligaya? A domestic servant from the third world.
It’d be “the same thing” too. This man would put his disapproval on a
placard and run circles around Vero’s house.
“Thank you,” Vero says to him, putting a hand to his wrist, the one
holding the placard. He doesn’t flinch. She wonders what she means
by it, thank you. “Thank you,” she says again, letting go of his wrist and
turning for home.
She’s surprised when the crowd parts to let her exit. Escape is this
easy only in a dream. Maybe she is sleeping, then.
◊◊◊
At home, Vero cleans. She will sweat like LiLi sweats, scrubbing away
her lethargy. She slathers vinegar water on the bedroom windows, and
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scrubs until it seems there is no glass, just gaping holes cut into her
bedroom walls. It is the smell of her childhood, this vinegar water.
Cheryl poured buckets of it in the wake of every man who left. She’d
tell them to leave, and then she’d scrub. With shirt soaked and arms
aching, Vero carries her sloshing bucket of water into the en suite
bathroom. She scrubs until the kids could eat off the floor. Here, she
will say to Jamal and Eliot, eat off it.
The boys chatter downstairs, Jamal in his own nonsense language,
but Vero cannot imagine what either child has to do with her. She
dropped a thread in Jamaica, studies the bathroom floor as if she
might find it there. She wonders if Danielle has re-adjusted to her
home life, mended her situation with Henri. And then she wonders
what these words could even mean: adjusted, mended, situation. In
Jamaica, they admitted they were lying, playing at characters. Now,
Vero wonders if there’s any other way, anywhere. She pulls off her
shirt, wet with sweat, and drops it with a splat into the bathtub, then
sends her shorts after it. In her underwear, she scrubs again.
She’s up on a stool in her wet bra and panties, reaching for the top
shelf of the closet, when Shane comes upstairs.
“What are you doing?”
She follows his gaze into her own hands, sees the small pieces of
cloth there. Red, black, pink. “I’m rolling my underwear in a ball and
shoving it into the farthest corner I can reach in the top of the highest
shelf in our bedroom.” Her voice is loud and hollow, like she’s reciting
the words from a stage.
“Why?” Shane’s eyes have not moved from her hands.
“Because I’m not comfortable with LiLi handling my dirty under-
wear, and if I don’t hide them, she washes them.”
“You don’t think this—” He points at the stool, at the balled under-
wear clasped in her hands. “—is a little bit weird?”
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“A lot is weird about our life right now, Shane.”
He still stands in the doorway, and Vero waits on her stool for
him to step forward to carry her down. She knows he will, but she
also knows they won’t talk about Jamaica. What happened there and
what happens here will never touch each other. Shane can do that.
Compartmentalize. Cheryl did it as well. The scrubbing helped. Vero
will need to learn to do it too. She sees now that it’s necessary. This
disinfecting.
By the time that thought finishes passing through her mind, Vero
realizes she’s sitting on their bed, but doesn’t remember Shane car-
rying her here, yet she is sure she didn’t walk herself. “Thank you,”
she says, but she does not look at him. She stares out the windows
so clean they seem to be without glass, perfectly shaped holes in her
home. They could be exhibitionists here too. “Thank you, I mean, for
helping me.” Shane doesn’t say anyth
ing, so she speaks again. “Aren’t
they clean? The windows. I scrubbed them.”
“You need something.”
I do, she thinks, I need something to hold me down. I’m floating away.
She’s surprised Shane can see it. She imagines her body lifting to the
ceiling, her stomach and intestines left behind in a sloppy pile on the
mattress, staining the comforter. LiLi will have to scrub.
“Some new work maybe. Something more challenging. More stim-
ulating. To keep you busier. Engage your mind. Distract you.”
Isn’t that two different things, she thinks, engagement and distrac-
tion? And then she thinks, distract me from what? A bird flies into
the window with a loud clunk. Vero thinks it must be dead, but then
watches as it picks itself off the awning, shakes its feathers and flies
off, quickly losing its stunned wobble.
“Or, I mean, maybe you need some medication. For a while. Just
to right you.”
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“Is right a verb?” Vero hears her voice soft and high now. She’s
lost the performer’s confidence she had up on the stool. If she heard
a recording of this new soft voice, she wouldn’t recognize it as her
own.
“How about writing? You always wanted to be a writer.” Shane
has moved close to her on the mattress, but he hasn’t yet touched
her. “But not—” he puts a hand on her arm, its gentleness surprising.
“—not The Mommy’s Alphabet. ” She looks at his face and is relieved
to see his smile. “Or how about yoga teacher training? You like yoga.
The boys are getting bigger. We have LiLi. Do something for your-
self.” Shane moves his hand up and down Vero’s arm, the way she
rubs Eliot’s back when he can’t sleep.
“We don’t…” Vero finally says, the weakness in her own voice an
embarrassment to her. She takes a deep breath and tries again. Shane
moves a hand onto her knee, but softly, as if he’s scared to hurt her.
Or scared that she’ll start and run. “We don’t know anything about
her.” Vero speaks without removing her eyes from the invisible pane
of glass. She worries for the birds. She should stand and bang on the
window, warn the poor birds away. “About LiLi. Nothing.”
“Vero, that’s not true.”
“It is.”
“LiLi lives with us. We’re the only family she has here. She takes
care of our children. Of course we know her.” His voice sounds
wrong too. It’s too slow, the words too evenly spaced.
“We don’t.” Vero decides to stick to simple, truthful claims. They’re
safe. They’re short. “She knows us more than we do her. And look
how much she doesn’t know.” Vero lies back on the bed and rolls her
face into the pillow.
“Look, we need to talk about something else…” Shane waits, as
if Vero might fill in his blanks. She will never be one of those old
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married women who finishes her husband’s sentences. She has no
idea. He gives her a hint: “About Jamal…”
Still, she’s quiet. She thinks about what Adele said to her before
the adults sat down to dinner at Shane’s birthday party: “You should
get him checked. Something’s wrong.” Nothing is wrong with my son.
Vero will not answer.
“He’s still not speaking properly. We need to see someone. I’ve
made him an appointment.”
Make one for me too, Vero thinks, digging her head under the pillow.
She will say nothing. She keeps her head there until she hears Shane
leave, closing the bedroom door, not softly, behind him. Maybe Shane
doesn’t love her as much as Joss claimed. Maybe no woman should
envy Vero anything.
Vero can’t blame Shane. Even she has lost patience with herself.
◊◊◊
The silence in the waiting room is uncomfortable. Vero can hear her
own breathing, an unhealthy click of phlegm deep in her throat. Dr
Wagner, Speech Therapist reads the sign on the desk. Behind it, a red-
headed secretary click-click-clicks on a keyboard. She meets their
eyes when they come in, points her nose where they should sit, but
she doesn’t stop clicking.
Nobody’s hair is really that colour of red, thinks Vero. And then: Why
are all my thoughts so hateful? What has happened to me?
The room is full. Jamal must sit on her lap. Shane stands, leaning
into a bookcase filled with stories and toys that nobody touches. Vero
hadn’t seen his fatigue until now; she’s been too absorbed in her own.
She wonders why none of the children speak, why they all look so
scared. What have we done to them? The thought passes through her
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mind, and then she worries it has passed through her lips as well. She
lifts a hand to her face, holds her mouth shut.
“I don’t want to do this,” she whispers to Shane through the hand.
The phony-haired secretary raises her head, clicks on the keyboard,
and pushes her lips upward. Shane puts his hand on Vero’s shoulder
but says nothing. This is not a place for speaking. That’s what his hand
says. She wants to point out the irony—a speech therapist’s office
being the place for no speech—but she’s been silenced. Jamal curls
into her shoulder like a baby, nibbles on the string in her hoodie.
Let’s go, she wants to say, he’s fine.
He’ll learn in his own time, she wants to say.
I don’t want my son measured and found lacking—this she pushes
from her mind.
Jamal is so close she can feel the rise and fall of his breath, tries to
synch her own, but hers is too fast, too shallow, too phlegmy.
Yesterday, Vero tried to engage LiLi in a discussion about Jamal’s
speech. “You spend more time with him than anyone,” she said, the
words scraping a raw bloody line up her throat. “What do you think?
Should we be concerned? About his speech?”
“Oh, Vero,” LiLi did not look up, busied herself scrubbing a spot of
red tomato sauce stuck to the black granite countertops.
Stop bloody cleaning! Vero wanted to scream. Please! Talk to me!
“I cannot answer that,” LiLi finally said, directing her words to
the spot of tomato sauce. “My English not so good. I not from here.
Of course.” Vero would not let that be enough. She stared at LiLi’s
ear, holding her silence. If LiLi could not meet her eyes, Vero would
win a staring contest with that ear. “I not a doctor,” LiLi finally said.
“Ma’am.”
That single ma’am defeated Vero. Still? Vero cannot take what
will not be given. Nobody can. Warm liquid tickled her eyelids. She
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blinked but made no effort to wipe the tears. Even when her cheeks
were wet, she left them.
When LiLi finally had no choice but to look at Vero, she misun-
derstood, as Vero knew she would. Of course, LiLi thought the tears
; were for Jamal. Vero let her think so. LiLi would be embarrassed to
know the tears were for her.
“Jamal, he a good boy,” LiLi said, consoling. “A smart boy. He is
okay, Vero.”
Vero thought LiLi might reach out to hug her or rest one of her
small hands against Vero’s bare forearm. The momentum moved in
that direction, a step, but then LiLi turned her back to Vero, all busi-
ness. “I make you some tea. Maybe that help.” She spoke loudly so
Vero could hear her over the running water.
◊◊◊
Dr Wagner puts Shane and Vero at ease as he’s been trained to do.
“Nice to meet you, Dr Wagner,” Shane says in his medical profes-
sional voice. He pronounces the name the German way, Vahg-ner. “We
appreciate you putting us on the cancellation list, getting us in on short
notice.” Shane sounds genuinely grateful, as if this is not the way it
always works between medical professionals.
“I’m just Wagner with a wah,” the doctor says, his eyes on Jamal.
“Wag like a dog’s tail.” He smiles and sets a hand on Jamal’s head. Vero
wants to push it off. “And then Nurr,” the doctor says, “like a Nerf ball.”
There are posters of cats and monkeys taped to the ceiling, word
bubbles above their heads. Vero expects the doctor to lay Jamal on
the table so he can look at these ridiculous posters, as if he’s sick and
simple. She doesn’t know how she will bear it. But then Dr Wagner
sets Jamal in a regular chair and motions for Shane and Vero to stand
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by the wall. Vero does not like this either. He’s made her unnecessary,
redundant.
Dr Wagner pulls a picture of a tabby cat from a deck of cards and
holds it before Jamal, who looks very small in the adult-sized chair. Dr
Wagner says nothing, simply waits for him to speak.
“Pusa,” Jamal says, “pusa.”
“I think he means pussy, like cat,” Vero says, her voice just as small
as Jamal. Shane’s hand curls around the back of her neck. Shh, that
hand says, shh.
“Do you know any other words for this picture?” Dr Wagner
prompts. He smiles while he waits.
“Pusa!” Jamal snarls, clearly annoyed now.
Dr Wagner puts the cat card face-down and holds up a picture of a
car. “What’s a good word for this picture, Jamal?”
Vero studies her shoes, winds the string from her hoodie around