Between

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