What We All Long For

by Dionne Brand

“Well, whatever.”

  “Sure you’re not jealous?”

  She used to ask Carla to come with her to Pope Joan, to cover for her in case there was someone she couldn’t shake. But she’d stopped doing that. Oku wouldn’t come with her because despite their friendship he would not go that far, and Jackie vainly told Tuyen that Tuyen wouldn’t get any action if she came along. Tuyen actually invited Carla in the hopes that some lever in Carla’s mind would switch on, some desire discovered. That Carla might recognize herself in the lean girls against the bar, the girls in slender-cut suits with silver rings on each finger and thumb who looked so compact and secretive, so much as if all their essences were perfectly locked and kept, and only if you managed to please them could you unlock their fingers and pry them out. They smelled of a different perfume, they never quite met your eyes except in a swift and thorough appraisal whose conclusion you became aware of immediately when their eyes averted without the longed-for approving smile. You longed to go with them to secret apartments in the suburbs or condos on the lakeshore and there have their fingers brush down your back and have their maroon mouths kiss your thighs.

  Tuyen entered Pope Joan’s looking for a woman like that. She didn’t want to go home tonight, back to the image of Quy’s face. The Quy she had imagined. The music was techno, the deejay was the regular Thursday night deejay, Angela. She played house and techno music. She stood on the raised dais, earphones to her left ear, held there by her shoulder, her hand moving from one album to another. Tuyen felt relief at the pounding, fast, whirling music and thanked the song for replacing the frenetic buzz that had taken over her head for the last two days. She moved to the bar and ordered a beer above the music, sizing up the women at the rail, looking for that one with the coolest, most-remote look. She saw a woman with a dark, angular face sizing her up. She returned the glacial look, and the woman smiled a half smile both challenging and easy. Tuyen smiled back, and they headed for the delirious dance floor.

  Two hours of mindless dancing later, she had gathered that the woman’s name was Iman, that she worked for an insurance broker, doing accident claims, that her family was from Eritrea, that she had fled their happy life in the suburb of Brampton. And that Iman had a small condo on King Street that she rented with a friend.

  “What kind of friend?” Tuyen asked above the music.

  “Not that kind of friend. Someone I used to be involved with, but it’s nothing now.”

  “Ah.”

  “No hassle,” the woman assured her, sensing Tuyen’s dejection at possibly having to deal with a jealous ex. “Or we could go to your place?”

  That prospect didn’t appeal to Tuyen. “No, if you say it’s all right.”

  The music had simmered to R & B ballads, and they danced closely in the steam of each other, the woman putting her lips in the cup of Tuyen’s shoulder. Tuyen bought her another tequila, and she laughed, downing it and biting into a quarter moon of lemon, saying, “I don’t drink, you know. I’m a good Muslim girl.” When the set was over and the music picked up pace again, the woman led Tuyen off the dance floor toward the door. They left the cocoon of Pope Joan, hailed a cab, and went to Iman’s place.

  The sex was casual, performative and muscular, rather than passionate; the kind of sex two strangers have, physical and unartistic except for the natural artistry of bodies. They would meet again and glide by each other at Pope Joan, perhaps nodding as if what had happened between them was the simplest of exchanges. But the sex they had needed no promises, except the work of thighs and hips and tongues and hands. They didn’t talk, they only held and squeezed, and wet and exhausted and too drunk to do more, they fell asleep. The next morning they parted as casually—Iman going to her job at the insurance broker and Tuyen making her way to her place on College Street above the store, across from Carla.

  It was eight in the morning, and though it was unusual for her to be awake at that time, she had wanted to leave when Iman left.

  As she walked the distance home, she felt as if she were still drunk—she hadn’t been able to sleep off the tequilas. But something had resolved itself in her mind. She simply had to confront Binh. She would do that and then she would go to Richmond Hill to size things up herself. After all, maybe she was imagining things. She had warned Binh not to make trouble, and he hadn’t called her with any news. After their last encounter she thought they had developed a kind of understanding, so she must be wrong about the photograph.

  TWENTY-TWO

  WHEN CARLA LEFT THE HOUSE after throwing the glass at Derek, Nadine turned on him. “You have a lot to pay for, Derek. She’s right. Why did I spend my life with you? How … how could you be so selfish?”

  “I don’t want to hear about it, Nadine. Ever since the day those children came here, you turned on me.”

  “Turned on you? They were children, for God’s sake! You’re a grown man. Take some responsibility.”

  “Responsibility! Didn’t I take them in? Didn’t I?”

  “You were duty bound. You were supposed to love them too.”

  “You sided with that bitch against me. You and your family took her side. How the hell you could take her side after she ruined my life.”

  “My God, Derek. She killed herself! You made her kill herself.”

  “I didn’t make her kill herself. Don’t blame me for that.”

  “Who else?”

  “Just like I said. You take her side and turn against me. She was crazy. Shit, she had a mental condition!”

  “Well, she wasn’t crazy enough to stop you from putting your dick where it didn’t belong.”

  Derek wheeled on Nadine, raising his hand to hit her.

  “Go on, hit me, Derek. It will be the last thing you do. Go on.”

  “Fuck you, woman,” he said, pushing her aside to leave the room. “I don’t have time for this! You can go to hell.”

  “You’re the one going to hell!” she yelled after his back going up the staircase. From the kitchen, a few minutes later, she heard him slam out the front door.

  Derek hadn’t pushed Angie over the balcony, but he might as well have.

  His friends, his family, had formed a protective circle around him after the inquest. Nadine felt like a bystander. Derek’s arms had gripped her shoulders in a nervous vice. She was his prop, his evidence that Angie was just a crazy bitch trying to come between him and his family. His grasp of her shoulder confirmed for Nadine that Derek was to blame. Angie’s mother had spat at him in the courtroom, shouted at him, “Figlio di puttana!” Outside, after the inquest, she walked over to him, reaching for him in what seemed at first a gesture of forgiveness. Nadine knew it wasn’t peace, it wasn’t forgiveness, it was vengeance. Derek saw Angie’s mother and made a strangling sound before she grasped his neck. “Fucking get her off me!” he screamed. He closed his eyes, she had something in her hand that was cutting into the right side of his neck. “Bastardo! Figlio di puttana!” Nadine watched in sweet horror, wishing the worst. It was a St. Christopher medallion. Derek thought it was a knife and tried to wrench himself away, yelling, “She’s got a knife!”

  After the suicide they had taken in his children by Angie. Angie’s sister had dropped them at his door, the little girl, Nadine knew about her, and a squalling baby she didn’t quite know about. Derek had denied it, his face in that soft way, as if he had been wounded. He had promised her that it was over, that the woman, Angie, was a madwoman. That yes, the first child was his. It had happened at the time that he and Nadine weren’t doing well. But the baby, he swore, was not his, not at all. He had had nothing to do with that woman again. She was crazy, following him, coming to his home. He was paying her child support and that was all.

  Nadine wanted to refuse, she would not raise another woman’s children, she wanted to leave him but she hadn’t. He had chosen her, hadn’t he? He could just as easily have taken off with the white girl, but he had chosen her, chosen to stay with her, and so some vanity in her, a vanity, of course, tinged with
racial vindictiveness, made her take his choice as an honour.

  The truth, she knew, was that Derek was a vain man, not a forward-thinking man. He could not start over again with another woman. He had been quite comfortable living in that way with Angie on the side. Nadine calculated, counted on that streak of conservativism in Derek. When she finally agreed to take his children in, it was with another calculation. That he would never be able to thank her. That would be their pact. Something else involuntarily crept into the bargain. Nadine gradually and sometimes violently ceased to love Derek. What she felt for him was certainly strong but it was not love. Another fascination took hold of her—why Angie? What did Derek see in Angie? Nadine was tortured by this. The thought also occurred to her that taking the children would reveal this. That Derek could betray her for someone less worthy was to her impossible. So how was Angie more worthy?

  She searched the children’s faces for what element there might reveal Angie’s attraction. But what it took for her to take care of another woman’s children without cruelty was every ounce of her sense of herself as a good human being. It wasn’t hard with the baby. He was like an unformed bit of matter, he knew nothing. But Carla was a brooding, watchful little girl who was grieving for her mother. She would sometimes ask Derek when Angie was coming for her and the baby. Derek would bark at her eventually, saying that Angie wasn’t coming back and that she should be quiet. The child was unhappy, and in those early days Nadine could not bring herself to comfort her. Carla would sink into quietness and strangeness. All Nadine could summon up was a prissy reprimand of Derek: “The little girl has lost her mother, you’re her father. You should explain it to her.” Nadine really meant “You’ll spend a lifetime explaining it to me.”

  You can’t resent children for long. Or at least Nadine couldn’t. She didn’t have it in her. Some did—there were stories of child abuse in the papers every day. One poor boy beaten to death by his stepmother and father after he’d come to the city from Jamaica. Nadine knew where her anger was. Derek was the one who should suffer. She ignored her sisters hissing at her on the telephone about why she should not be taking care of Derek’s bastards. She made Derek blunder through the first month of feeding and dressing and taking care; begging his mother to help out. She wanted him to know just what he would owe if she took on the task of caring for Carla and Jamal. And despite herself she came to give them a kind of love, especially the baby, who didn’t have the reserve of the little girl.

  The sisters found her behaviour unusual. In the years that passed they shook their heads at her, saying she was either stupid or a saint for taking on the burden of Derek’s children. And they did not know and Nadine did not confide in them what a struggle she had in damping down her hurt and resentment, her feelings of utter betrayal. She had turned a corner morally in being able to bring anything like love to her relationship with these children. She took it as a triumph over Derek, over herself, over conventional wisdom, to come to the point of considering Angie’s children her own. The complexities of this triumph—some distorted, some like an epiphany—she never revealed or for that matter understood herself. She felt guilty about Angie. Why? Because Angie had killed herself in some respects because of her, Nadine. Her existence, which stood in the way. Was that vanity too? she wondered. Angie had killed herself because of Derek’s callousness. Or perhaps Angie was mad, as Derek said, and had killed herself because of that. Whatever it was, Nadine felt guilty. She should have put a clean stop to it long ago.

  There was a terrible flattery also in Angie’s death. For Derek. Nadine had overheard a man at a social function pointing to Derek as they passed by and saying in an appreciative tone, “Woman kill herself for him, you know?” She shared in this flattery, as women in her social circle told her better Angie than she, and complimented her on sticking it out or encouraged her to leave his ass now. So for all this terrible praise she took extra care of Angie’s poor children. It was the sign that she had no malice toward Angie, no malice for a dead woman; that she was better than Angie. And anyway, why should these children suffer because Derek couldn’t keep his fly zipped? And she was not about to let them suffer so that people would say that her jealousy made her mistreat them. She would take instead the beatific garment offered to her, taking Carla and Jamal in and loving them.

  And she had. She had loved them. Beyond what she had thought possible. That’s the thing with children. They opened a person up. They came with their own presences and opened you up. Now Nadine could not recall with the same intensity ever not loving Carla and Jamal. Perhaps there had been in her a small resentment toward Carla. She bore a resemblance; unlike Jamal, Angie was there in her. Perhaps she had been unable to completely love her for this. Perhaps it was why she had been unable to form the words to tell Carla that it had not been her fault. She had not meant to leave her without an answer. She recognized a whinging smallness in her hesitation. She told herself that she did not say anything because Carla was too young, not because of these resentments. She told herself no, she would never transfer these to her. And she didn’t, at least she thought so. Self-doubt made her think everything twice, made her mistrust her best feelings. She loved Carla. As much as she could.

  Nadine’s love for Jamal, however, was unreserved, so uncontrollable at times that she never made the right decisions about him. He got whatever he wanted from her. Whatever whim of his needed satisfying she gave in to. With Nadine, Jamal had no compass for right and wrong, and when Derek stepped in, he bludgeoned his way in, his meter of hatred for Angie as clearly present as his wounded passion. Between them Jamal was a temperamental bundle seeking continuous attention yet blowing up because of it. Sometimes Nadine was speechless with this love, confused at the depth of it, as deep as if Jamal were her son in flesh. In fact, this love had alienated her from her son by blood. He found her weak because of it. But she would do anything for Jamal. There had been many confrontations with Derek, some coming close to violence in defence of Jamal. She’d stolen money from Derek for Jamal, she’d hidden the fact that he had dropped out of school, she’d covered up his lying, and on the numerous occasions that Derek had put him out of the house, she had gone looking for him with Carla and brought him home.

  Carla had left home at nineteen, by which time she had grown lank and long as if from too much rain and small portions of strong sunlight. When she first told Nadine and Derek her plans, they both involuntarily screamed “no” at the same time. What about college, university, how was she going to make a living? Nadine took it back, quickly saying, “If you really think so, Carla. If you’re ready.” Yes, go, Nadine thought. She had lived with this brooding, watching child for eleven years. Relief is what she felt. She would not have to answer any questions. If Carla stayed at home, she would be a child who had to be answered, but if she left home, then she was an adult with a separate life and Nadine wouldn’t have to feel any more guilt for Derek, or for the death of Angie.

  So as quickly as she had said no to Carla moving out, Nadine took it back. “Yes, yes, darling. You’re big enough now. As long as you think you could manage.” She would do her best to help Carla, help her fix the place up. She would visit her. They would be different. They would be adults together, they would go to the movies together, meet on their lunch hours and have a laugh. She wouldn’t have to love her any more. Carla would find people that she could love. She had not exercised this muscle at all with them.

  “I can manage. I have a job. I found a place already.” And that was that. Carla wasn’t asking them, she was saying that she was going. She was saying, if they heard her right, I’m leaving you both. Don’t need what I never got.

  Nadine searched herself for some word that would ease them over into friendship. She wanted Carla to know that she was happy for her, but Carla was gone, retreating, or rather advancing into her life. Who were her friends, and how did she know the city enough to have found a place, to be ready to live on her own? What Nadine had not said had cut her off too. She
would have to wait for Carla to come to her. One day she was sure it would happen. Carla would see how she had protected her and shielded her from the bad things in life. But Carla circumvented every effort she made to come by and visit her. When she baked something and said she’d come and bring it, Carla said no, not to bother, she’d pick it up from her at work, or she’d merely say, “Don’t cook me anything,” in her exasperating whisper. Nadine wasn’t the kind of demanding mother that others were. She knew where to stop and she knew why. She didn’t want anything boiling over. She didn’t want that whisper to turn into a growl.

  Today Nadine dressed for work feeling an unusual absence. She would tell her that she, Carla, was not to blame for anything. She would tell her that she was too small to understand at the time, too small to be burdened. It was too late, but she wanted to tell her, she wanted it to make a difference. An urgency moved her. She would tell her the whole story. But she was going to find Derek first.

  She left the house and could hear far off a train lumbering and squeaking along the tracks at Cherry Street. She looked at her watch, she should get to work. A sweet smell of fresh bread was coming from the bakery, a recorder was playing music at the school next door. She walked toward the Chester subway, feeling a sharp light on her, her head tingling as if she had inhaled water. The city around her seemed new, soft-skinned and tender.

  She handled the facts of the day briskly—the white counters, the green screen of the computers, the ruby coagulates, the sharp needles, the shiny sinks. By lunchtime she had decided to skip the rest of the day and go talk to Derek. She’d been to Derek’s workplace infrequently. She was going to leave him, now finally, if he didn’t do what he had to do.

  Derek managed a car wash in the west end of the city. Good weather or bad, six or seven men would by turns be shivering from the cold or wet, rubbing cars down with wet rags, lit cigarettes in their hands to keep them warm. Over the years Derek hired an assortment of the city’s down and out, men who had the good fortune of being the latest wave of immigrants: Sikhs, Caribbeans, Vietnamese, Sri Lankans, Russians, and Somalis. Somalis and Ethiopians now made up the majority of the crew. Two old Caribbean men and one Ukrainian had been with the shop even before Derek. Most days Derek sat in the small warm kiosk taking money from the customers while the crew ran the cars through the wash and then wiped them to a shine. That is, unless a pretty woman came to get her car done. Then Derek would come out, ordering the crew to make sure that her car was waxed well and all the running boards wiped. He would turn on the charm, holding her by the shoulder and giving her a free coupon and his assurances that she could call him any time, come by any time; managing to get her phone number and, if she was married, implying all the while that she may not be happy and that he was available to talk or have a coffee. Derek’s game was a quick and slippery charm. In the middle of the oil-stained, deluged, smelly car wash, among the ruggedly dressed, rough-handed, broken-faced men, Derek was immaculate, well dressed, and sweet smelling. He always exuded the lover, the charmer.