by Kate Story
She always tells her mother she can’t remember her father. It’s easier than admitting to the painfully few memories she does have.
He loved Johnny Cash, listened to Johnny Cash all the time. He told Ophelia that JC (that’s what he called Cash: JC, like Jesus) lived on Cinnamon Hill, near where he himself had grown up, and to this day a Johnny Cash song puts the scent of cinnamon in Ophelia’s nostrils. He was from a place with such a name, a name that fell off your tongue like a song: Montego Bay. He had a way of saying it, too. I was bawn a bays, he’d say, and Ophelia remembers her mother laughing. I was born in a bay, too.
Me too! she’d shout. Me too!
Before coming to Canada, he’d worked in a magical place: Rose Hall. Rose Hall had a woman who could work magic, a witch, a white witch.
That was scary.
Ophelia wonders what it would be like if he’d stayed with them, her mother and her.
Darryl is yelling so loudly it’s like a smell, a colour, a physical blow.
“Okay, okay. ‘Walk the Line,’ you like that one.”
Darryl shrieks.
It’s Ophelia who loves that song, with its goofy guitar-picked bass line. She starts with that, the two notes, low as she can sing and with a goofy face to make Darryl laugh.
He stops crying—that’s something. She starts singing.
She sings about hearts and eyes, wide open all the time. What’s the line Johnny Cash was walking, she wonders. The line between love and addiction, or between life and death? He’d even turn the tide, that’s how much he loves.
Why had her father loved this song?
It takes three verses, but at last Darryl stops yelling, and waves his fists in time to the music.
In the grocery story Ophelia feels a black woman looking at her and her mother and Darryl, judging, gauging. Her hand flies to her head; is her hair okay? She forces herself to put her hand back at her side. As a kid these trips in public were fraught with difficulty: black women coming up to her white mother on a regular basis and asking, Now, do you know how to take care of your girl’s hair? They wanted to help. And make sure her mother knew her place.
Worse were the white women: What do you do with that hair? Looking at her mom like they are allies, barely concealing their antipathy for the stuff on Ophelia’s head. Or that memorable madam who’d surged forward, eyes devouring Ophelia and the then-infant twins. Oh my god, where did you get them?
Get them? Ophelia’s mother had asked, harried, confused.
Yes, what agency . . . A dawning look of comprehension on the woman’s face. Or . . . um . . . they’re yours?
Later Ophelia had almost laughed when her mother said, I wanted to say to her, from a man’s penis. Where do you think babies come from, lady? A stork? Almost wanted to laugh. Not quite.
On the drive home Darryl falls asleep and the car fills with woolly, sleepy silence. Ophelia stares out the car window. She catches herself scanning the face of a tall, dark man, wondering if it’s her father. She hasn’t done that in a while and when she realizes what she’s doing she looks away, pretends to be reading signs. She’s too old for that now.
He’s gone. It’s been years since Ophelia stopped asking when he would be coming back.
But still, she catches herself doing this. Scanning men’s faces and wondering if she’ll find her dad on the city streets. She longs to see him . . . but what then? Would she actually go up to him, try to talk to him? Or would she run away before he saw her?
One thing’s for sure. Ophelia wants to be the one to see him, not the other way around. That way, she can decide.
“Mom, how did you and Daddy meet?”
Her mother’s head turns fast, eyes wide. “Wha’? How did we meet?” It’s like she’s coming back from a long way off.
“Yeah. Like . . . did you meet in Toronto?” Ophelia has never asked her mother this; it all just seemed too fraught. For all she knows, her mother met her father in Newfoundland, where her mother is from, or maybe her mother vacationed in Jamaica, although she can’t picture this. Whenever she thinks of Jamaica she sees something like a postcard. White sand, blue water. Women in bright clothes, cloth wrapped around their heads. She knows this is a silly fantasy. Jamaica probably doesn’t look like that anymore than Canada is a Mountie on a glossy brown horse next to the CN Tower.
Ophelia’s mother stares out the windshield, and for a moment Ophelia thinks she won’t answer. But at a red light, “Uh-huh, we met here. On a subway. He came right up to me and started talking to me. He reminded me of a fella from home.”
“He did not.” Ophelia’s been to Newfoundland—when she was eleven they’d spent Christmas at her grandmother’s old house in Harbour Grace. Not a black man in sight.
“Yis, b’y, he did. Men in Ontario, they’ll barely look at you. You knows they’re looking but then they looks away with this angry expression on their faces. I didn’t know what was going on, the whole first year I was here. And I was some homesick. You know, I wasn’t much older than you are now. Imagine, being in some big place where you don’t know a soul.” The light changes. “But then this man, he just starts talking to me. I had some salt fish in my shopping bag, wrapped up in paper—homesick, I guess, I just wanted some fish and brewis and I was on my way home to make it—and he says, Hey, beautiful, what are you up to tonight? Just like that. Almost like a fella from home would.”
“Mom, go. The light’s green.”
“Whoops.”
Ophelia tries to picture her mother, not much older than she is now, sitting on a subway with a wood-hard slab of salt cod in her shopping bag. And this guy coming on to her. The man who would become her father.
“He was some handsome.” The look on her mother’s face is so sad Ophelia doesn’t ask all the questions crowding forward in her mind.
Did they mean to get pregnant? Were they in love? Why did her mother kick him out?
There’s no point in asking that last question, anyway. Ophelia’s tried. Her mother can’t, or won’t, answer.
—
It’s still light out when Ophelia’s mother leaves on her “date.” Ophelia helps her pick out her outfit. She’s wearing too much makeup; she’s nervous. She’s meeting this guy for drinks and dinner, that’s all Ophelia can get out of her. She asks when her mother will be home, hoping against hope that it’ll be early enough that she could still make the Romulus concert. Could she be that lucky?
“Midnight.”
No chance.
Her mother machine-guns a volley of last-minute instructions and finally, all in a flutter, gets out of the house.
Ophelia wants to die.
Darryl starts fussing right away. “Okay, we’re going to the park.” He likes the swings, the twins like the monkey bars, she can distract herself from her aching heart and incipient insanity. Incipient, her word for the day. From the Latin incipere, to begin. Beginning to come into being or become apparent. How appropriate.
Ophelia puts together the snacks, water bottles, diaper bag, and off they go. The park is just at the end of the street, thankfully—Darryl’s getting heavy but refuses to walk the whole way.
There’s hardly anyone there, just some white woman with a baby carriage. The twins peel off at once to the climbing gym, and Ophelia settles Darryl into a swing. He loves the swing and giggles happily. A gurgle comes from the baby carriage; the woman lifts a kid out. He’s smaller than Darryl but goggles at him in that way babies do; they love looking at each other. The woman’s well-dressed: gold rings and perfect hair, and the baby carriage is one of those fancy ones with the cup holders.
“Nice evening,” says the woman.
“Yeah.”
“I’m looking for a nanny. Do you just look after those ones, or would you be interested?”
Ophelia misses a swing and Darryl smacks back into her body. He startles and gives a little cry, but she gets him going again.
“We’re siblings.”
At least she’s made the woman blush.
She’s as red as a pomegranate now.
—
On the walk home Ophelia catches sight of one of those double-headed fire hose connectors on the side of a building in the housing development. A sign overhead, “Siamese Connector.” She tells Shakira and Siobhan that they were born as Siamese twins and had to be surgically separated. “You’ve never been told, but you’re old enough now.” They stare, mouths open. “Don’t tell Mom, though,” Ophelia continues. “She doesn’t think you should know.” Telling them this fabrication makes Ophelia pleased in at tight, mean little way.
“Where?” Siobhan asks.
“Where what?”
Shakira clarifies. “Where were we connected?”
Ophelia thinks fast. “On your stomachs. That’s why you have weird belly buttons.” The twins have outies and Ophelia’s always teased them about this.
“Are you lying?”
Ophelia shrugs. “Don’t believe me, then.”
When they get home the twins rush upstairs to the bathroom to look at their bellies in the mirror.
The lie hangs heavy. Ophelia tries to dismiss the feeling. If she has to be at home while her mother’s out on a date, if she has to be mistaken for a nanny, if there is no chance of ever finding happiness, and she is also losing her ever-loving mind, at least she can tell mean little lies and confuse the twins, who will never ever feel as lonely as she does.
Chapter Thirteen
Can’t Stop The Words
Her mother comes through the door.
“Hi!” Ophelia is startled.
“Hi.” Voice flat. Something bad has happened.
“What’s up?”
Her mother doesn’t look at her. She kicks off her heels and lowers herself into her armchair, flicking on the TV with the remote.
“Nothing. That’s what happened.”
Ophelia looks at the clock. It’s only eight. She could make it to the show, it’s totally early enough. “Can I go to that show?”
Her mother doesn’t answer.
“Mom. Can I go to that show?”
“What show?” Her mother turns the TV up higher.
“The one I told you about. At the all-ages café.”
Nothing.
“Mom?” She practically has to yell over the TV.
“What?”
“Can I go out?”
“Who you going with?”
“Um . . . Candace is probably going to be there.”
Mistake. Her mother doesn’t like Candace.
“I don’t think so.”
A pause. Her mother changes channels.
“Please?”
“Ophelia! Don’t nag me. I said no.”
“You didn’t say no!” This is so unfair. There’s no reason to keep her here. Her mother is just being mean because she had a bad date. “Look, I’m sorry if you feel bad, but is that any reason to keep me locked up like goddamn Rapunzel?”
Her mother glares. “Don’t you swear at me!”
“Sorry.”
But her eyes have sharpened. “Are you planning on meeting a boy?”
“No.” Lies seem to be coming easily today.
“Don’t you lie to me. Who are you meeting?”
Her mother has a preternatural ability to detect bullshit. Best to come clean. “Rowan.”
Saying his name is a mistake. It hurts.
“Who’s Rowan?”
It’s even worse hearing it come out of her mother’s mouth, angry, like a swear word.
“No one. Some guy. Look, it’s nothing.”
“Some guy? Since when do you have a boyfriend?”
“I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Sounds to me like you do. Rowan.”
Ophelia looks again at the clock in the kitchen. There’s a dishtowel hung on the oven door, embroidered with a cheerful duck. For some reason the sight of this duck makes the feelings in Ophelia swell like a tsunami. It’s so childish and pretty and meaningless; how can the world produce two things so far apart as that duck and these feelings? She hears herself yelling, “I don’t have to tell you everything!”
Her mother’s face is red. “New boyfriends you do. You do have to tell me about that.”
“Why, why, why?” Her voice rises, the twins are staring, Darryl is going to start crying. She glares at him. “Shut up!” Her voice is ragged, hysterical. The TV rattles on, some nature show about lions.
“Since when do we keep secrets from each other in this house?”
“Look, it’s nothing, okay? There is nothing, there’s no boyfriend, I just want to go out tonight to this show, please.”
“You’re going to keep secrets from me, you don’t get to go out, girl.”
Ophelia goes for the stairs. She has to get away, be alone. But her mother rises and blocks her way.
“Don’t you walk away with that sullen face!”
“Sorry!” Ophelia gasps. Please just leave me alone leave me alone leave me alone.
“Are you in trouble? Is some guy using you, is that what’s going on here?”
Her mother thinks she’s pregnant. Ophelia feels the weight, her mother’s paranoia, how she’s drilled the consequences into Ophelia all her life. She will never even kiss Rowan now. She will never see him again.
“Yeah. That’s right. I’m having sex with a guy and I’m pregnant. Actually, lots of guys. I don’t even know who the father is, I’m that much of a slut.”
“Don’t make jokes like that!” Her mother looks so horrified that at any other time it would be funny.
“I wouldn’t want to end up like you, now would I?” The words come flooding. “Saddled with four kids, one of them a horrible slut like me?”
“That’s not what I . . .”
She doesn’t want to hear what her mother has to say. “Afraid I’ll end up like you? Alone?” That shuts her mother up. She opens and closes her mouth. The wound opens, spreads across her face. Ophelia feels sick, but she can’t stop the words. “Well, don’t worry. I am alone, thanks to you.”
She tries to push past her mother to get up the stairs, stop this stupid fight, get alone where she can let the tears and the rage out of her body without hurting anyone. But her mother grabs her arm.
“What’s gotten into you?”
The shock of her mother’s grip, the way it swings her around, head whipping back on her neck—her mother is strong—this shock dislodges some last vestige of restraint in Ophelia. She wants so badly to be alone that she says the meanest thing she can think of.
“Maybe if you weren’t such a fat slob, Dad would still be here.”
What happens next is so weird. Her mother throws her against the wall.
Ophelia hits the wall and everything goes still, except the TV where a lion is now stalking an animal on a grassy plain. Ophelia sees the lion, unconscionably beautiful: golden fur, fierce, empty eyes. The lion works its mouth slightly as it glides through the grass. Her mother stares, not at the lion but at her, frozen.
Then her mother speaks and everything speeds up again. “My love, I’m so sorry. . . .” She looks down at her own hands like they horrify her.
Ophelia runs out the front door, into the night.
—
At the café she pays the five Amero cover, finds a seat, roots through her pockets and finds another buck for a pop; that’s all she’s got, she left without her wallet. The place is packed, but she sees nobody she knows.
He isn’t here.
Maybe she imagined it all, all the looks and everything.
He’s tall, he should be easy to find even in this crowd—that pale hair, he’ll stand out.
But she doesn’t deserve to see him. Tonight, after what she said to her mother, she doesn’t deserve love.
And yet, there he is. Unfolding from a chair in a corner, standing.
Ophelia’s heart hammers so fast she thinks she’ll pass out.
He’s kind of gawky, she realizes, there’s something endearing about a faint awkwardness in his elbows and k
nees, like they sort of get in his way when he moves.
He sees her. He walks toward her. He’s smiling. Smiling like his whole day just got good because she’s here.
Chapter Fourteen
He Almost Loses Her
Rowan watches Ophelia out of the corner of his eye.
She can’t keep still, beats out the music on her thighs, the tabletop. There’s something brilliant and nervy about her this evening, like she’s burning up inside.
The music is mostly too loud to talk over. Romulus takes medieval music and rearranges it for electric guitar, bass, and drums, screaming liturgical melodies into the mics.
“You like these guys?” Rowan yells over a song.
“They’re great!”
“I know the guitarist.” The song ends; his voice is loud in the sudden gap. He feels embarrassed—is he trying to impress her?
“Which one?”
“The guy with the black hair.” The band launches into a new song and whip their heads around in unison, long tails flying.
“They’re sick!” Ophelia yells.
—
After the first set she enthuses over a coffee. “They take that medieval stuff and make it work.”
“The chord progressions and song structures are practically the same as metal.” Yup. He’s trying to impress her.
Ophelia smiles. “Wonder what the monks would have made of it.”
Rowan crosses himself and is rewarded by a laugh from her. Is this going well? He thinks it’s going well. He wants it to go well. “I like it,” he says. “I guess I’ve never really felt at home in the twenty-first century.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” He wishes he hadn’t said that. She’s looking up at him from underneath her eyelashes. They curl in this really pretty way. And her eyes—at first he’d wondered if she was wearing those coloured contacts, but up close he sees that her eyes really are a sort of translucent greenish colour, like jade. He’s glad; he hates those contacts, they’re creepy.
“No, really, what do you mean? Like, you eschew cell phones?”
“I what cell phones?”