Not for Everyday Use

by Elizabeth Nunez

  “The immigrant survives by forgetting,” says the narrator of Anna In-Between as Anna tries to persuade herself not think of her grassy green tropical island, redolent with the fragrance of brightly colored flowering trees. “The immigrant erases from her consciousness the past that is too painful for her to bear.”

  It takes another novel for Anna to come to the realization that there are two sides to restraint. By the end of Boundaries, the novel that follows Anna In-Between, she has an epiphany: “It occurs to Anna now that restraint can protect even though it excludes. She has the answer to her question: her mother is restrained but perhaps because she wants to protect her.”

  The epiphany is mine. I place it in Anna’s mouth. It comes to me in that miraculous year, when by some strange collision of events I am in Trinidad three times, the last time a month before my mother dies.

  So are both novels, Anna In-Between and Boundaries, about me and my family? I think to some extent all novels are camouflaged autobiography. The facts may be inaccurate, even false, but the emotions and ideas resonate from the writer’s experience, something he or she feels passionate about, ideas the writer is anxious to explore.

  Richard, who has read both of these novels, interrogates me. I don’t believe such and such happened, he tells me. I explain that both books are works of fiction, not autobiography or memoir. I may have been inspired by the facts, but I took the liberty to make use of them as they suited the stories thematically and artistically. Yes, the books’ base about a mother who has breast cancer, who discovers—no, admits—she has a tumor as large as an orange in her left breast, and another one as large as a lemon under her arm, is very much our mother’s story, but it was just the blueprint for the novels I wrote. I know no Dr. Lee Pak, nor Dr. Ramdoolal, nor Paula, nor Paul Bishop; they are all invented characters.

  “Though . . .” I pause for the effect I want; he is curious about my personal life after D—.

  “Though what?” he asks, wide-eyed, caught on my hook.

  “Though it would be nice to have a Paul Bishop in my life.”

  “And why don’t you? Why didn’t you?”

  “It’s all about timing,” I say. “My Paul Bishop always arrived at the wrong time, either I was not free or he was not free. Then when we were both free, we were too set in our ways to make compromises. Anyhow, I’m not Anna. I would still be seething with resentment if what had happened to her at work had happened to me. Anna concedes too quickly; Paul encourages her to concede too quickly. I would need a more supportive Paul Bishop.”

  It takes my brother a moment to respond, and when he does, he looks away from me. “You are as ambitious as Anna,” he mutters.

  I don’t think Richard says this spitefully, but I know he doesn’t mean it as a compliment either. Men of my generation are generally wary of ambitious women.

  “Anna, you will note, is the only child of John and Beatrice Sinclair,” I say, refusing to go down the path I sense he wants to lead me with gripes about his own relationships. “We are eleven. More importantly, the plot in the first novel turns on Beatrice’s refusal to have surgery in the US, which would never have been true for our mother. She was a patriot, but she believed in the superiority of medicine in America.” I go on, but he stops me midsentence.

  “And what about John Sinclair’s infidelity?”

  Ahh, he has me there! How do I reconcile my father’s undying love for my mother with the extramarital affairs I believe he had through many of their years together?

  One of my mother’s favorite novels was Gabriel García Márquez’s Love in the Time of Cholera. She loved it so much, she read it twice. In that novel, Florentino Ariza professes his “eternal fidelity and everlasting love” for Fermina Daza, which he claims was never broken in the fifty-one years, nine months, and four days since they parted. Yet the reader knows that during those fifty-one years, nine months, and four days, Florentino Ariza had many sexual trysts and some enduring love affairs. Still, in Florentino Ariza’s mind he has remained a virgin for Fermina Daza, his one true love.

  My father, too, denied he had ever been unfaithful to my mother, though there were nights I lived through loud arguments and tears as my mother accused him of having lovers. Of course, we knew she was right, but my father would become incensed if any of us made the slightest suggestion that he had been unfaithful to her. Always he swore he loved her. He did not lie—he never lied—not by commission at least, though I would have to say he lied by omission, sidestepping our questions, never acknowledging our accusations, always claiming that our mother was the only woman who mattered in his life.

  In his last years with my mother, he was more direct. “Affairs? I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He would say this with such conviction that we would find ourselves questioning the accuracy of our long-held beliefs. Did we have proof? Had any of us seen our father in a compromising position with another woman? Could we name names?

  Gabriel García Márquez claims that “what matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.” My father remembers that he adored my mother. His mind does not allow him to remember that he was unfaithful to her. My mother seemed to share the same recollections. On the last two days I spent with her and my father, we talked about their lives. “I was lucky,” my mother said. “I don’t know why God was so good to me. I have a loving husband and all my eleven children are alive and well and successful.”

  Indeed it was amazing. Both my parents had lived to their nineties and not one of their eleven children has suffered a serious illness. We are all alive. They did not have to bear the single most painful tragedy a parent can experience: the death of a child.

  “I had a good life,” I heard my father say to my mother one day. “I was lucky. The woman I loved married me.”

  And my mother answered: “You were always a good husband to me.”

  POSTSCRIPT

  My father died seven months after my mother. As he wished, he was buried in the same grave with her. Without his wife, my father seemed to find little reason for living. She had given him the security and stability he’d yearned for all his life as the darkest of his parents’ children, a brilliant man whose rise up the ranks of the British colonial system, and, later, the British- and Dutch-owned Shell Oil Company, was always threatened in a society that placed inordinate value on skin color.

  During those seven months after my mother’s death, my sister Mary went often to Trinidad to be with our father. She tells me that the entwined mango trees, under which shade he often sat, continued to bear fruit, though the only fruit she remembers it bearing were the small, sweet starch mangoes my mother loved. Since my father died, Mary has returned to Trinidad three more times, once during the mango season. Never has she seen a single mango on those entwined trees. As far as I know, never have they borne fruit again.

  Discussion Guide

  1. Elizabeth says that as a novelist she relies on her imagination to arrive at essential truths about life. What does she mean?

  2. What opportunities for truth-telling does fiction provide? In what ways can memoir hamper truth-telling?

  3. Elizabeth speaks of her mother's fear of disobeying the Catholic Church's prohibition of birth control. What were the consequences of her mother's decision? Did her mother have other options?

  4. Why, in spite of the problems in her marriage, did Elizabeth find it so difficult to divorce her husband?

  5. Elizabeth has achieved a measure of success in America, and yet she speaks of the losses she suffers as a consequence of leaving her homeland. What are those losses?

  6. In describing the qualities of "outliers," Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers: The Story of Sucess, claims that "individual merit" is not sufficient. Outliers, he says, succeed because they are given "a special opportunity." What does Elizabeth say about the chances for young blacks to get the special opportunity that, say, a Steve Jobs had?

  7. How did attitudes toward race and c
lass in Trinidad affect this family? Do these attitudes still exist in the Caribbean today?

  8. Elizabeth claims that whites in America, even new arrivals, continue to profit from the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. Is this true?

  9. F— ends his relationship with Elizabeth, because, according to Elizabeth, as a black woman she was a liability for a white lawyer with ambitions to climb to the top of the legal profession. Do young people in interracial relationships face similar challenges today?

  10. What is the significance of the title of this memoir, Not for Everyday Use?

  11. The front cover photograph of Elizabeth's parents was taken during the early years of their marriage, and the back cover photograph at the celebration of their sixty-fifth wedding anniversary. Why do you think this marriage lasted so long?

  12. How did Elizabeth's mother deal with her husband's decreasing cognitive skills?

  13. Infidelity is often cited as the main reason for divorce. Should Elizabeth's parents have gotten a divorce? What was lost and what was gained by remaining in their marriage?

  14. Elizabeth writes that years of colonialism and slavery left her and the people on her island "unsure of our identity, doubting the value of our culture, the relevance of our history." How did Elizabeth overcome these obstacles?

  15. What was the result of the "sterner stuff" Elizabeth's parents applied to their children? Did it work?

  Elizabeth Nunez is the award-winning author of eight novels. Both Boundaries and Anna In-Between were New York Times Editors’ Choices. Anna In-Between won the 2010 PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award and was long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Nunez Also received the 2011 Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers and Barnes & Noble, and a NALIS Lifetime Literary Award from the Trinidad & Tobago National Library. She is a Distinguished Professor at Hunter College, CUNY, where she teaches fiction writing. She divides her time between Amityville and Brooklyn, New York.

  Also Available from Akashic Books by Elizabeth Nunez

  Anna In-Between

  “A psychologically and emotionally astute family portrait, with dark themes like racism, cancer and the bittersweet longing of the immigrant.” —New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice)

  “Nunez has created a moving and insightful character study while delving into the complexities of identity politics. Highly recommended.” —Library Journal (starred review)

  “Nunez deftly explores family strife and immigrant identity in her vivid latest . . . with expressive prose and convincing characters that immediately hook the reader.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

  “Nunez offers an intimate portrait of the unknowable secrets and indelible ties that bind husbands and wives, mothers and daughters.” —Booklist

  “The award-winning author of Prospero’s Daughter has written a novel more intimate than her usual big-picture work; this moving exploration of immigrant identity has a protagonist caught between race, class and a mothers love.” —Ms. Magazine

  “A new book by Elizabeth Nunez is always excellent news. Probing and lyrical, this fantastic novel is one of her best yet. Fall into her prose. Immerse yourself in her world. You will not be disappointed.” —Edwidge Danticat, author of Brother, I’m Dying

  “Anna In-Between is Elizabeth Nunez’s best novel. Nunez proves that a great writer, armed with intellect, talent, and very little equipment, can challenge a multibillion-dollar media operation. As long as she writes her magnificent books, characters like the Sinclairs, characters with depth and integrity, will not be hidden from us.” —Ishmael Reed, author of Mumbo Jumbo

  “In crisp, clear, and beautifully turned prose, Elizabeth Nunez has written a fascinating novel that will profoundly affect the way in which many readers now view the Caribbean. We welcome the voice of the infinitely wise narrator, Anna, who is an expert witness to the seismic changes that take place within and without. A wonderful read.” —Lorna Goodison, author of From Harvey River

  “Elizabeth Nunez has written a contemplative, lush, and measured examination of how a family history can reflect the social history of an island, and how twined together, like fragrant vines, the two can remain.” —Susan Straight, author of A Million Nightingales

  Anna In-Between is Elizabeth Nunez’s finest achievement to date. In spare prose, with laserlike attention to every word and the juxtaposition of words to each other, Nunez returns to her themes of emotional alienation, within the context of class and color discrimination, so richly developed in her earlier novels. Anna, the novel’s main character, who has a successful publishing career in the US, is the daughter of an upper-class Caribbean family. While on vacation in the island home of her birth she discovers that her mother, Beatrice, has breast cancer. Beatrice categorically rejects all efforts to persuade her to go to the US for treatment, even though it is, perhaps, her only chance of survival. Anna and her father, who tries to remain respectful of his wife’s wishes, must convince her to change her mind.

  In a convergence of craftsmanship, unflinching honesty, and the ability to universalize the lives of her characters, Nunez tells a story that explores our longing for belonging to a community, the age-old love-repulsion relationship between mother and daughter, the Freudian overtones in the love between daughter and father, and the mutual respect that is essential for a successful marriage. One of the crowning achievements of this novel is that it shines a harsh light on the ambiguous situation of this ruling-class family who rose from the constraints of colonialism to employ their own servants. It is a strength of the novel that it understands that the political truth is not distinct from the truth of the family or the truth of love relationships; they are integrated into a unity in this novel constituting one unbroken reality as they are in real life.

  Anna In-Between is available in hardcover and paperback from our website and in bookstores everywhere. The e-book edition is available wherever e-books are sold.

  Boundaries

  FINALIST for the 2012 NAACP Image Award in Literature!

  Selected for the New York Times Editor’s Choice, October 2011

  “Boundaries is told in spare and transcendent prose. [. . .] As always, Nunez delivers a unique and riveting perspective on Caribbean life as well as immigrant life in general.” —New York Amsterdam News

  “Many moments of elegant, overarching insight bind the personal to the collective past.” —New York Times Book Review

  “In Nunez’s latest, the author further explores immigrant life, a life where a hard-working woman can progress up the corporate ladder, buy an apartment in a soon-to-be trendy neighborhood, and still be plagued by outsider’s angst . . . A thoughtful literary novel exploring the shadows of cultural identity and the mirage of assimilation.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “A quiet, sensitive portrait . . . This work covers a lot of ground, from mother-daughter and male-female relationships to the tensions between immigrants and the American born.” —Library Journal

  “This bittersweet, sentimental novel will appeal to readers who’ve left home to make their path in the world.” —Publishers Weekly

  “Nunez deftly dissects the immigrant experience in light of cultural traditions that impact family roles, professional obligations, and romantic opportunities.” —Booklist

  “Elizabeth Nunez continues to add to her impressive body of work with her new novel, Boundaries, the moving and spirited story of Caribbean-born Anna Sinclair’s efforts to find love and foster a successful career as a book editor, all the while caring for her aging parents. Ms. Nunez has always had the power to get to the essence of what makes human beings take right and wrong turns. With Boundaries, a reader will find that she, again, does not disappoint.” —Edward P. Jones, author of The Known World

  “Elizabeth Nunez is one of the finest and most necessary voices in contemporary American and Caribbean fiction.” —Colum McCann, author of Let the Great World Spin

  “Elizabeth Nunez has written a book so searing, so astute, s
o immediate to our times, it resurrects; it disrupts inevitability; it startles complacency; and over and over again, it invites healing to flourish.” —Patricia Powell, author of The Fullness of Everything

  In an age of reality TV, a husband and wife cling to Victorian notions of privacy, though doing so threatens the life of the wife. Their daughter, Anna, yearns for her mother’s unguarded affection, and eventually learns there is value in restraint. But Anna, a Caribbean American immigrant, finds that lesson harder to accept when, eager to assimilate in her new country, she discovers that a gap yawns between her and American-born citizens.

  The head of a specialized imprint at a major publishing house, Anna is soon challenged for her position by an ambitious upstart who accuses her of not really understanding American culture, particularly African American culture. Her job at stake, Anna turns for advice to her boyfriend Paul, a Caribbean American himself, who attempts to convince her that immigrants must accept limitations on their freedom in America.

  Told in spare and transcendent prose, Boundaries is a riveting immigrant story, a fascinating look into the world of contemporary book publishing, a beautiful extension of the exploration of family dynamics that began in Nunez’s previous novel Anna In-Between, and a heart-warming love story.

  Boundaries is available from our website and in bookstores everywhere. The e-book edition is available wherever e-books are sold.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means, including mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the publisher.

  Published by Akashic Books

  ©2014 by Elizabeth Nunez

  Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-61775-233-9