“Oh, look at you with your bunny dip,” Jillian teased her.
I was confused. Bunny? Seeing my confusion, Jillian explained. “Julie used to be a waitress in Toronto for a while at this gentleman’s club—”
“Read: strip club,” interjected Julie.
“—and they taught her how to do something called the ‘bunny dip’ so she could serve drinks without bending over and showing her cleavage,” Jillian said.
“Yeah, showing cleavage was strictly reserved for the girls on the poles,” Julie joked.
“The move was invented by the Playboy Bunnies, for their club,” Jillian explained.
My mother was less and less amused as the moments ticked by. “You worked in a strip club?” She made it sound like Julie had made a living selling crack outside a kindergarten or something.
“It was only for a couple of months, when I was an undergrad,” Julie said. I liked how she said it without tension, as if there was nothing to be ashamed about. As if it was just a job.
Mom’s top lip was curling farther and farther into a sneer. “Doesn’t sound like a great place for a woman to work,” she said.
“Actually,” Julie replied, “it wasn’t bad at all. Management was very strict about customers not being able to touch the employees. And the tips were great,” she threw in with a wink.
As fascinated as I was by the idea of strip clubs and bunny dips, I was anxious to get to the meat of the discussion. So was my mother, apparently, as she cut to the chase first.
“Jillian, it’s time for this child to come home with me.”
There were tears in my eyes.
I couldn’t help it. I was sad, angry, frustrated, but mostly horrified at the thought of going home. I just wasn’t ready yet to face the same old places where nobody cared about me, the school where I didn’t feel like I belonged. In any case, hardly anybody tried to actually teach us anything there; they had given up on us before we had even started. As a school clerk herself, my mother ought to have known that but she didn’t seem to care much whether I did well or didn’t; whether the school I went to was good, bad, or indifferent; whether the kids I sat next to in class were going to grow up to be pharmacists or drug dealers. If she cared, she did an awful lot not to show it. If she cared, she was awfully good at pretending otherwise.
It wasn’t just the school. I didn’t hate it all the time; it was okay some days. It wasn’t anything specific that made me unhappy there. The teasing didn’t happen all the time, and mostly the other kids left me alone. And it wasn’t really my mother. It was the whole country—the smallness of it—that seemed to close in on me sometimes. I could understand why some people like Jillian couldn’t really be comfortable living in a small place like that, where to be gay or lesbian or whatever they wanted was a shameful secret you could hint at but never discuss, not openly. So to people at home, Jillian was a spinster. In fact, she was as good as married to Julie, a woman who was her life partner, with whom she kept a nice house, and who loved Jillian as much as Jillian loved her. Home home was full of people like my mother who couldn’t separate a person from their sexual and domestic arrangements—which weren’t really their business anyway—and whose judgment was flawed regarding anything they couldn’t understand. “Different,” to my mom, meant “unacceptable.”
My eyes started leaking and I could feel my face getting hot and swollen as I tried to hold in my screaming, boiling rage and helplessness.
I wanted to tell my mother all these things, but I couldn’t. It was one of the things I had to work on in therapy, I guess, expressing the feelings I had bottled up inside of me. But that was for another day. Today, I just wanted to scream.
Jillian’s hand was cool around mine. She didn’t say anything but seemed to communicate through touch: It’s okay.
I took deep, gulping breaths as the tears rolled slowly down my hot face. “I don’t want to go home,” I said. “I just don’t.”
My mother was getting angrier by the second, especially after Jillian took my hand.
“Child, whether you like it or not, you are coming home with me when I leave. You have a week to resign yourself to the fact.”
I felt like I did the time I tried to hurt her with a knife. I wanted to injure her. I didn’t have a knife but I had my tongue.
“I hate you! I wish I had died when I took those pills, just so I wouldn’t have to live with you ever again!” I sobbed. And, jerking my hand from Jillian’s cool grasp, I ran to my room and locked the door.
A few minutes later I heard tapping on my door. From the light touch I knew it could only be Julie. My mother would have banged on the door with a clenched fist; Jillian would have tapped louder. But these taps sounded just like Julie: kind of delicate but not weak. “Muffin, open the door,” she called.
I was in the midst of my enraged tantrum and couldn’t move if I tried. Over the sobbing and screaming, I could hear her persistent knocking. After a while I had wound down enough to get up and open the door to her.
She didn’t look happy. “Hey. You going to be okay?”
I nodded, still gulping and weeping.
“Then get out there and apologize to your mother. You’ve really hurt her feelings. I know you’re sick but that doesn’t give you the excuse to be so rude. I know you’re better behaved than what I just saw.”
I pushed my lips together into a pout my mother called a swell-face, turned my back to Julie, and sat down hard on my bed. “She is so evil,” I sobbed. “She doesn’t understand me and she doesn’t want to even try. She’ll never let me be happy.”
“Be that as it may,” Julie responded, implacable, “you still can’t talk to your mother any old way. She’s your mother and deserves a measure of respect.”
Stubbornly, and still crying, I sat and looked at the white eyelet cotton of the comforter on my bed.
“This is not negotiable,” Julie said, as softly and as firmly as she had knocked on my door.
I stood, not looking at her, and walked out to the deck. Even before I hit the back door I could hear the raised voices of my mother and Jillian, tossing angry words back and forth like the birdie in badminton.
“…my daughter!” screamed my mother.
“…bad mother!” rejoined Jillian.
“…had no choice!” That was Mom.
“…always have a choice!” That was Jillian.
Without hearing all their words, I knew somehow they were arguing about who was going to keep me. I felt weird, like a toy being fought over by children on a playground. Their voices dropped for a second and I took the opportunity to walk into the conversation.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” I said without preamble.
“You should be. How dare you talk to me like that?” No easy apology where Cynthia was concerned, no sirree. I had to suffer for my arrogance.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” I said, but the sarcasm flew over her head.
“No, I don’t think you were thinking at all. You don’t talk to me like that, ever. You understand?”
I nodded. I was starting to cry again. I turned around and went back into the house, leaving them to their argument. Whoever my next therapist was, they would have a field day with this episode, I thought.
“Look, you see how you have her so rude!” my mother accused Jillian as soon as the door was shut behind me.
“Me!” Jillian sputtered. “She never talk to me so a day in she life! I never see her get vexed once yet in the two months she here….”
* * *
—
Back in my room, Julie was waiting for me.
“I feel like…like I’m on an auction block and the two of them are bidding for me with love instead of money,” I said to her. “Who loves me more.”
Julie carefully weighed her words before replying. “I don’t think it’s lik
e that, sweetie. Your mother…well, she has a lot of things to offer you. This isn’t about love, really. It’s not in question who could love you more.”
The cryptic words didn’t answer any of the unspoken questions I had buzzing around inside of me. What did she mean? Was she saying my mother really didn’t love me? That Jillian actually did love me more? Or was she saying that my mother loved me more but that love wasn’t all that was required to take care of me?
“I don’t understand, Julie. What do you mean?”
She sighed and looked troubled. “I think…I think your mom does love you.”
It was a relief to hear it. I did have my doubts.
“But she is not good at showing her love. It comes out as criticism. I guess you could blame her family for it, if you had to blame anybody at all.” She shrugged, shook her head. “I don’t know. I think it was something about how they were raised. When I met Jillian she was so cold and locked away…it was very hard to get her to admit her feelings about anything. I think your mom is bad at showing her emotions. Believe me, Jillian knew nothing about hugging and saying ‘I love you’ when we first met. Thank God, she learned. Give Cynthia time.”
“Time? She’s had me for fourteen years and she still doesn’t love me!”
Julie was firm as she corrected me. “Cynthia does love you. That much I do know. But you’re sick right now, and you need a lot more attention than Cynthia gives you. I don’t know if she even knows how to give anybody the kind of loving care you need. She understands duty and responsibility. Love is…hazy for her. She’s just…she’s just not wired that way.” She had used exactly the words I did when I considered my mom and my illness. I was wired differently than my mom, and that was one of the big obstacles between us. She would never understand me or accept me.
I told Julie my fears.
She nodded slowly. Her eyes were getting a bit shiny now too. “Yes, I see what you mean. It is hard for us, too, to deal with your illness. But we are willing to try. I don’t think Cynthia is. I really don’t. She had you when she wasn’t expecting to, and she was so young! From what Jillian tells me, your mom was never very maternal. Strangely enough, she took great care of her mother before she died. Babies are not the same as older folks, I suppose.”
“So why did she have me, then?” I scowled.
“You think it’s that easy to abort a baby?” Julie asked softly. “Back then it wasn’t easy to get an abortion in Trinidad. It still isn’t. And you know your mom is Catholic. Jillian said Cynthia never even considered terminating the pregnancy. Your grandmother would have had a cow.”
She wasn’t even an adult when she got pregnant. What choice would I have had, in her shoes?
I considered this. Thought about the rumors about a girl in my school who had disappeared for months and then returned the mother of a baby boy. The nasty things people said about her, even though many of them were also having sex and could have well been in her position. My mother had had me right after leaving secondary school. She had only been two years older than I was now. The thought of myself trying to take care of an infant on my own at such a young age was terrifying. I shuddered, the heaviness of the burden occurring to me for the very first time.
“I ruined her life,” I despaired.
“Oh, no, honey!” Julie hugged me quickly. “Not at all. You did make it more challenging. And maybe she didn’t deal with it so gracefully. She did the best she could.”
The enormity of what having me must have meant to my mother’s life, her opportunities, her choices weighed on me. It was something I’d definitely have to take to therapy.
“But I want you to promise me,” Julie said, “no matter what happens, that you’ll keep an open mind and an open heart. And if you have to go back home, you’ll try to give your mom a break.”
It was ironic to hear the words, but I understood what they meant. My mom couldn’t really handle my illness; I’d have to do it by myself—with the help of doctors. She wouldn’t be supportive. It wouldn’t be the end of the world, not like if she locked me in a cage or something, but it would make my therapy much harder. One of the things I’d come to love about my temporary home in Edmonton was the unspoken support Jillian and Julie gave to me. It was there in the hugs and the occasional questions: Are you okay? Is there anything going on we need to talk about? The glances they gave me were just rich with love and affection. I didn’t feel appraised when I walked into a room where they were, just appreciated.
I was dying to ask how come she and Jillian were fighting to keep me, but I didn’t want to let Julie know I had overheard her private conversation. Finally my curiosity won out.
“Did you and Aunty Jillian talk about keeping me? I guess it wasn’t a surprise when my mom came to take me home, since you were so prepared with your arguments.”
“It was kind of a surprise,” she admitted. “We knew she’d come but didn’t expect her until August. I guess she felt we were letting things get out of hand when you had that last breakdown.”
Her frank use of the word was jarring. I still felt sensitive about the recent excursion into my mental wasteland. My Classic Nervous Breakdown. No shame in it, just a need to prevent it from happening again, or, if it did, to make sure it was dealt with in the right way.
“Jillian really wants to have children, but I don’t think we need to try to do that now,” Julie said. “We’re trying to start a new business, we’re breaking even but not really making much money yet….It’s not a good time for that.”
I tilted my head and looked at her. “How is it okay for me to stay but not okay for you to have a baby?”
Julie grinned. “I don’t have to change your diapers, do I?”
I had to laugh in return.
“Can you imagine Jillian doing it? Since I’m the one who’ll really be doing the fun stuff like that, I guess I have some say in when we have a baby.”
I could see her point.
She was fingering the end of her long ponytail when a loud knock came at the door.
It was my mother. Her eyes were red. She looked at Julie and said, “Do you mind if you and I have a word outside?”
Julie nodded and left with Mom.
I waited nervously but didn’t have long to wait.
When Julie came in, her wide smile told me all I needed to know.
I was staying.
I pulled up my phone and messaged Akilah and Josh: IM STAYIN YIPEEEEEEEEEEE.
Dr. Khan gave me an exercise to do the day after my mom arrived, his last appointment before I met my new therapist. He said I should make a list of all the things I loved about Trinidad and all the things I hated about it, and all the things I loved about Edmonton and all the things I hated about it. It would help me to process this new stage in my life, he said, because even though I thought I only hated home, nothing is ever that simple.
I started with Trinidad. The things I loved: my mom, Akilah, the sunshine, the beach, the hills. It was a short list. The things I hated: my mom; school; how closed-minded people were, how judgmental, how racist, how mean. Things I loved about Edmonton: Jillian and Julie, my bedroom, the library, summer flowers, Josh. What I hated about Edmonton: everything was so strange, so big and so intimidating, and sometimes I was the only person in the room who looked like me.
When I showed Dr. Khan my list, he looked thoughtful. “You’re going to work on this, okay? This is just the tip of the iceberg. Spend some time thinking about what you really miss about home, and what you really like about here. Trust me, it will help you over the next few months. Living here, going to school, it’s going to be an adjustment.”
Having to give up her only child—even one she had mixed feelings about—wasn’t something my mom agreed to lightly. There were terms and conditions. I had to go to school. I had to go home for Christmas. And most of all, I had to swear I was returning t
o Trinidad at the end of a year. I would have agreed to anything short of the amputation of my limbs to hear that I could stay. I anxiously agreed to all her rules.
The arrangement did nothing for her temperament. Cynthia was sour and distant for the next five days, which was as long as her visit lasted. Even on the four-hour drive to Banff, a national park with the biggest rivers, lakes, and mountains I’d ever seen, she sat unimpressed and silent. After a joyless hour of hiking from the pretty little town up the side of a mountain, Julie and Jillian gave up on trying to delight Cynthia. The drive back was as silent as the drive there.
On the night before she left, Jillian threw her a dinner party to send her back home. Josh and his dad came.
“Mom,” I said, nervously, “this is Josh. He’s Jillian’s godson.”
She shook his hand and gave him a long up-and-down look, trying to peer past his skinny jeans and fitted T-shirt to see his soul. I could have told her it wouldn’t work, and that she shouldn’t judge this book by its cover.
“She’s letting you stay?” he said under his breath when we went to the kitchen.
“Yeah,” I replied. “Only for a year, though.” I snuck a look at him out of the corner of my eye. “What about you?”
“I’m staying!” He was glowing like a lightbulb. “My mom isn’t exactly thrilled, but she’s willing to give me up for a year too. So you’ll have company.” He laughed shortly but not unkindly. As we walked back out to the deck he whispered, “Dysfunctions R Us…”
Julie had gone all out for this dinner. I was glad. In a way, it was not only my mom’s farewell party; it was my welcome home party, too. In the dining room, I looked at the faces reflected in the yellow candlelight. Nathan—drinking a glass of water, I was happy to note—looked interested in something my mother was saying. Jillian seemed glad, too, smiling broadly and proudly. Julie, as usual, was placid and kind. And Josh looked excited and thrilled. My mother wasn’t happy, I could see. She was frowning, her lips tight and turned down. But as the night wore on I could see her relax somewhat, perhaps getting used to the idea that for the next year she’d be free of the responsibility of having a teenage daughter to mind.
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