In Between Dreams

by Iman Verjee

  I drag the bags to the farthest corner, where the light never reaches, and then I stand back and say goodbye to my grandmother’s remains. It is the first time I have allowed myself to think how sorry I am that this has happened and the strength of my feelings make me immediately guilty for what I have done; allowing her to rot and die away in a damp cave where no one will ever find her. I kneel down in front of the bags. The hard floor digs into my knees and the pain feels good. I put my fingers to my lips in a long kiss and then touch one of the bags. I whisper that I’ll miss her. I say how much I wish I could have heard her talk one more time before she left, because I have questions. Did it hurt, all those swallowed pills releasing their slow poison into her blood? When all she could feel and taste and see was water, did she suddenly change her mind only to be met with the terrifying conclusion, as her lungs popped neatly one by one, that she no longer had a choice?

  When I get back home, I change into a new nightgown and the material is loose and cool against my exhausted skin. With the curtains drawn, I sit with my head resting on raised knees until the clock strikes five and the sounds of distant conversations and bells of bicycles rise and greet the falling evening. He will be home soon and I take another of my grandmother’s incense sticks and light it. I move around the house, the trail of a hundred flowers following me, taking up residence in our curtains and carpet and pillows. I walk up and down the stairs and around his room until I am dizzy. I throw the key onto his bed, not minding when it misses his pillow and hits a picture of him and my mother instead. Then I go into my room, pack my bags, and wait.

  ‌7

  ‌St Albert. July–August 1992

  He can’t look at me—he hasn’t for days. I sat cross-legged on my bed, waiting as he walked into Bubbie’s empty room. After a small silence, the bathroom tap began to run and I heard his deep grunts as he splashed water on his face. I came out of my room and walked to the edge of the bathroom door. His hands were clenched around the ceramic sink, watching the water circle downward, and he paused for a moment when he heard me. Lifting his eyes, he met mine briefly in the mirror before he swung his foot back and kicked the door shut. When he was done, he went past my room and into his own. She’s a monster. How could she do this to me?

  My mother came into my room and we both pretended we hadn’t heard him say it.

  ‘Honey, we know you’re upset, but really, this is too much.’ She didn’t know where to sit. Nowhere was far enough. Her eyes showed how bewildered she was by me, the shake of her hand as she ran it over her mouth. ‘Just tell me where you put all of Bubbie’s things and we can figure this out. You know how much they mean to your father.’

  I turn away. Leave me alone, just go away, refusing to say anything—to tell her that we were only minutes away from most of it, sleeping and decaying in the old cave.

  Now I try everything to win him back. I wear makeup around the house, even while I am sleeping. My clothes are a size too small for me, hugging at my breasts and clinging to my curves that have formed to his fingers. Yet he continues to ignore my attempts to apologize and love him again. My suitcase sits by my bed and most of the time I simply lie down beside it, trapped in a strait-jacket of memories. Seconds pass like hours; minutes drag on for years, sluggish through the summer heat. I can only count down the days until I am gone and he will begin to miss me.

  My mother doesn’t comment on the state of me; on the dirty residue that is growing slowly and thickly under my fingernails, or the husky scent that slips from my mouth whenever I speak, or that assaults her each time I lift my arms.

  ‘We should go shopping,’ she says a few days later, coming into the living room and standing before me. I ignore her, pretend to be asleep under the arm that is thrown over my eyes. I feel her staring down at me, biting into the apple that is balanced carefully between her long fingernails, no doubt leaving lipstick marks on the wet flesh inside. ‘We have to buy you some new clothes before school starts.’ She reaches over in an attempt to push the slick hair from my face and I swipe at her hand more forcefully than I intend to. Her apple goes skittering across the coffee table. She bends to pick it up, and I can see she is trying not to cry. ‘Would you like that honey?’

  I take my arm from my face and look at her, wondering at her insistence. It’s so easy for her to love me, so effortless when she is glorious, supreme in her victory of having won the Main Man, the Big Cheese, the Silverback of our small family herd. I stare at her and then say, ‘I told you I’m not going and you can’t make me.’ Then I turn on my side, closing my eyes and letting my hair fall in my face. Her fingers flutter at this barrier between us but then she pulls away and walks out without a word.

  He closes the door behind him; so softly that I don’t hear him until he is kneeling next to me, his arm thrown over the back of my chair, the rough bristles of his stubble rising to rub against my cheek.

  ‘Frances.’ I stop my fingers moving underneath my desk but I don’t turn around. His breath smells of fresh mint and I open my mouth a fraction to breathe in the cool particles. I don’t look at him because then he will see how much I have missed this; the light grazing of his arm hair across my exposed skin, the sight of his shoulders stretching on endlessly and strong. ‘Are you going to look at me?’

  His fingers reach into my hair until they find and hold onto the bone of my neck. I turn against his grasp so that my back is fully facing him. ‘Frances, come on. Look at me.’

  ‘Why should I?’ I rub my eyelids. I attack my lips with a fury, becoming aware of what I look like and I wish he could leave so I could comb my hair or put on some of my mother’s stolen perfume. ‘Why should I when you haven’t said a word to me in over a week?’

  He presses his face into my shoulder blades and his breath is heated and slow through my clothes. ‘You know how upset I was. You really hurt me, Frances.’ His teeth bite into the creases of my shirt. ‘Come on, please.’ His mouth moves with my body as it gives in to him, coming up and around and fixing wetly on my collarbone. Darling. A long, sweet murmur. I stand up and he rises with me, his arms sliding naturally around my waist and pulling me near. We move toward the bed and I find his mouth and he lets me stay there for a while before pushing me away.

  ‘You don’t love me anymore,’ I say and I can’t look at him. I play with a fray in his pants. ‘You hate me.’ His hands push at my temples, tilting my head back until his face is over mine.

  ‘Of course not. I could never hate you.’ He lets me go and the loneliness that has filled the past few days comes falling at me. He holds my hand and puts it in his lap, playing with my fingers. He runs his fingernails across their lines, forgetting me.

  ‘I’ll give it back,’ I tell him. ‘All of Bubbie’s stuff, I can give it back to you. I’m sorry I took it.’

  He puts his forehead to mine. ‘Thank you, baby.’ He strokes my hair the way I like it best; starting from right at the temples and pushing roughly downward. ‘You understand why you have to go?’

  ‘No.’ I push my face into his neck but he draws back. ‘Please, I said I’m sorry. I told you—you can have all of it back.’

  He sighs into me. ‘All of this, Frances—everything that has happened recently,’ his thumbs streaking along the bones of my rib cage, lulling me into a daze, ‘it’s not good for you.’

  ‘I can’t leave you. Please don’t make me leave you.’

  He laughs but it sticks in his throat and I feel him stiffen. He stops touching me. ‘It’s only for a year.’

  ‘Two years.’ My hands are on his chest, gripping and pulling at his unwilling waist. ‘She’s sending me away forever.’

  ‘I’ll talk to her,’ he whispers, giving in to me. ‘Just a year, honey.’ I push back to look at him, but his eyelashes cover his eyes, dark and wet.

  ‘You promise?’

  ‘Yes. Only a year—how can I do without you for longer than that?’ He falls against me and my legs stretch out and bend around his waist. ‘You’ll do this for
me, won’t you?’ His face sinks into my shoulder and I don’t want him to stop, so I nod.

  ‘Yes, but only a year and then it’ll go back to being normal, right?’ Breezy kisses against my nose and gentle bites to my cheeks and earlobes. I tilt my head back and close my eyes.

  ‘Yes, darling. You do this and when you come back, everything is going to be alright.’

  Goodbye St Albert, hello open, empty space; if I could, I would take a winding train through your green, daffodilled grass all the way to the world’s edge with my body hanging out of the window and the soft air in my face. I curl up in my seat, trying to get as far away as possible from the old lady sitting beside me. I try not to stare at the gray fuzz above her upper lip or the lipstick smears on her teeth and chin. I lean my head against the window and the soft vibrations lull me into a sort of half-sleep. My mother dropped me to the station that morning and tried to kiss me goodbye. We’ll visit as often as we can, the joy in her words as she drove away, her small sedan struggling against the wind, her arm waving, discarding me like the old vegetables she sniffs and throws away, uneaten.

  ‘You going to eat that?’ Wrinkled fingers point at the sandwich next to me, still wrapped in its silver foil. I press harder against the window and shake my head.

  ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘Well, I’m just going to then,’ she reaches for it, ‘if you don’t mind.’ Eager eyes, a quivering throat as I push it toward her. I watch with growing distaste as the jam squeezes through the bread, slimy in the spaces of her teeth, covering what the lipstick has missed.

  He left early this morning without a goodbye and through the mist I caught a glimpse of the slightest slant of his skin against the upturned collar of his brown coat. I chased after him, my bare feet soundless on the tarmac. I shouted his name, screamed it until its sharpness tore my throat apart, but he never heard me.

  ‘Got anything else?’ the voice, having been fed, swelling with hope. Blue eyes just like his.

  ‘Please leave me alone.’ I turn away and she moves down the carriage, grumbling and pulling empty wrappers from under peoples’ feet, picking up a discarded juice box from a still warm seat, sucking at her winnings with large smacks of her lips.

  We travel through the night and I toss and turn in the small bed provided, my mind full of empty dreams that gather me up in their darkness and wake me with a start. Toward the evening of the following day, a white sign flashes by, ‘Welcome to Whitehorse’ and the distance I have traveled suddenly seems too far to ever go back. The train grinds to a stop. This is the end of the line, folks, the train conductor making his way through the carriages, ushering people off, shaking their hands and slapping their shoulders. He comes toward me once the train is empty, having checked on me several times during the journey upon the request of my mother.

  ‘Alright there?’

  My throat is full and hard with tears. Can you take me home again? He helps me with my suitcase, hoisting it down and dropping it into the dust. He smiles; a quick, friendly streak of light. ‘You have someone picking you up, have you?’

  ‘Sister Ann.’ He is gone, disappearing back into the cool darkness of the train before I finish saying it. I pull out a small slip of white paper from my pocket. Ask for Sister Ann when you reach Whitehorse. She’s coming to get you.

  I push my way through the crowd; talking and laughter and the whistling of trains all coming together too loudly, reminding me that I will never feel safe again. Finding an empty seat, I sit down and can’t keep my eyes open any longer.

  ‘Frances?’ A gentle voice. I nod and start to cry. Cool fingers at my forehead, patting my shoulder. ‘Take her bags will you, Joseph?’ A tall shadow leaning over and picking up my suitcase. I’ll go and get the car. Sister Ann sits down beside me, holds my hand and I can feel her watching as the tears curve down my cheeks and fall into my collar. I bend over my knees, the stiff, cold air of Whitehorse only suffocating me more. ‘Just breathe, honey.’

  The tears become silent and in their silence, more painful. I open my eyes and see her. Pointed chin, pointed cheeks; slim, half-moon lips. She is smiling down at me and I am taken aback by how young she is. ‘You are Frances—Frances McDermott?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m Sister Ann, from the Academy.’

  ‘Yes.’ My breath isn’t capable of sustaining more than that one word.

  ‘You’re a long way away from home, aren’t you?’ Inhale, exhale, gathering myself together, straightening my clothes and hair, reminding myself of why I already dislike her.

  ‘The train ride was alright.’ I pull my hand away and she lets me. ‘I’m not going to be staying for very long.’

  She stands up and I copy her without meaning to.

  ‘Well, while you’re here, how about we go back to the Academy and get you something to eat?’ I don’t protest because there is a low humming in my stomach and I let her arm go around my shoulders and lead me out into the foggy heat of the car where a tall, dark man sits ready to steal me away.

  ‌8

  ‌Edmonton, Canada. July 1965

  He had never smelled anything like it; sleepy heat, sour and warm. When she sighed close to his neck, her breath spreading milkily against his throat, James felt himself grow, filling all the spaces within him reserved for adulthood. He put his face to her fine hair and noted, with fearful surprise, how delicate her skull was. Soft and unformed still, he could crush it in his grip. So he kept his hands at her waist and held on tightly.

  ‘I’m tired.’ Her tiny, musical voice.

  He watched in the window as her eyes drooped heavily forward, her mouth slightly open as she rocked against him. He bent forward, as if to look over her shoulder, and in the process, pressed her closer to him.

  ‘Just a little longer,’ he said. ‘Don’t you want to finish the book?’

  ‘Okay.’ A stretching yawn; the inside of her so shiny and pink. The newness of it took his breath away.

  ‘Go on, then,’ his voice low and encouraging. ‘Just a few more pages.’ And as her sweet voice crawled over them, he closed his eyes and swayed softly, allowing the girl to melt and fold against him. He had imagined this for so long; a blurry, expanding need that had grown inside of him and he hadn’t been able to identify until now. This perfect body curving exactly into his own, the softness and smallness of it that made his heart race. It was a while before he realized she had stopped reading. That her head had fallen against his neck and she was fast asleep. His hand traveled down the side of her cheek and she gave a small murmur.

  At six years old, her hair was a shiny blonde that he knew would sadly fade out by the time she became a teenager. Her skin was rosy white, unblemished and astonishing. He was at once disgusted and elated at the sensations she caused within him and he leaned down to whisper in her ear, ‘Ssh. It’s okay, I’m here,’ thrilling in the dead weight of her.

  Stretching his calves, lifting his torso, his hand falling to still the swinging chair because all he wanted was to feel the motion of the child. He held his jaw shut, grinding his teeth together so that the sound of him wouldn’t wake her, but he couldn’t help the small gasp bursting from his mouth. The air tasted of his exertion. When he could finally move again, he kissed her gently on top of her head, marveling at the fact that she was still sound asleep, and carried her carefully to her bed. As he tucked the blanket around her, he felt the first inkling of bewilderment crawl in.

  ‘Well, isn’t this a sight for sore eyes?’

  The noise startled him and he turned toward the door where Nina was standing, leaning against the doorframe and smiling at them. Her voice had made the world real again and James didn’t like what he saw. He stood on trembling legs, feeling the shame burn in his throat.

  ‘I was just putting her to sleep,’ he said.

  ‘I can see that.’ Nina came up behind them, twisting Donna’s hair around her finger. ‘She’s beautiful when she’s sleeping, isn’t she?’ She’s so beautiful, James wanted
to say. I’m so sorry for what I’ve done.

  ‘I should be going,’ he said, moving toward the door.

  ‘I haven’t paid you yet.’ Nina reached into her purse but he held out his hand, appalled at the idea of taking her money. At the same time, his eyes darted wildly around the room to see if he had left any clues, certain that she would notice something, that she would call his mother as soon as he had left. But her face remained jovial.

  ‘Please, don’t worry about it,’ he said.

  ‘I insist. After you coming here on such short notice—you just can’t rely on some of these girls in the neighborhood.’ She pushed the notes into his hand. ‘Thank you so much, James.’

  He took the stairs two at a time, out of the door before she could see the disgust take a hold of his face.

  A week later, Nina called to ask if he would babysit again.

  ‘Donna absolutely adored you,’ she said, and in the background he could hear the young girl crying. The sound filtered through the receiver, ribbons of temptation rubbing against him like the softest Chinese silk, tugging teasingly between his legs. It would be so easy. He hung up with a quick, ‘I’m sorry, no.’

  ‘I thought you enjoyed babysitting Donna,’ his mother said. ‘You were happy, I remember, when you came home last week.’

  It was true. He had returned that night after babysitting with excitement brewing inside him; he hadn’t been able to sit still. For the first time in his seventeen years, he understood what being alive meant. Everything had seemed to grow around him, charged by his own exhilaration. When his parents had gone to bed, he had sat alone for a long time, with that feeling inside him, searching in its chaos to find its starting point. When the memory had been used up, it left a residual discomfort, like a rotting tooth somewhere in him. He was afraid and almost went to wake up his mother but stopped himself at the last minute.