Things Are Good Now

by Djamila Ibrahim

  He took a big gulp of his drink. “Anyway, things might look a little overwhelming right now, but the world is out there waiting for you. You just need someone to help you find a path through the fog.”

  I wanted to disappear into the depth of his reassuring baritone. I nodded again.

  My grandmother could read lifelines in wet coffee grains. She told tales of switchbacks and backroads ahead, of beguiling serpents hunting by day or by night, but also of guardian angels sprinkled here and there like light posts on dark country roads.

  Funny how deeply etched, how immediate, is the need to find a trail home.

  My mother was fond of telling people that I’d been a precocious and responsible child. “Even as a toddler, she never complained or cried in front of strangers,” she’d say as she discreetly pressed her hand flat on my back to remind me to bend like a lady when I served her guests refreshments. She told stories of how she could always reason with me or confide her heartaches and pains in me the way she would with a sister. Or how, when visiting family friends gave me money to buy treats or toys, I used to ask to spend it on school supplies instead.

  I remembered things differently. By the time I was four or five years old, before I could articulate shame, I knew it was shameful to touch my private parts; I knew to sit with my legs closed tight together, and to pull at the hem of my skirt. By the time I was seven, before I could grasp the mechanism of sex and reproduction, I knew the world could hurt me in a way that my brother could never be hurt, that I was prey and that, if something happened to me, it would be my fault. So when my gym teacher in grade three made it a habit to touch me in ways I knew were inappropriate, I couldn’t tell anyone, especially not my mother. I couldn’t let her down. And later on, when other men hurt me, I’d tell myself it was only my body they broke, that they couldn’t touch me where it mattered. I couldn’t let myself down.

  He signalled the waiter for two more pints. I thought of refusing his offer but I didn’t want to look disagreeable.

  A couple sitting across from us pulled their chairs closer together around a small table.

  The first few months after we started dating, my boyfriend and I sat with our knees touching under the table too or, if we were assigned a booth, we sat on the same side, our thighs and legs stitched together. We ate from each other’s fingers, each other’s mouths. We memorized each other’s words and mannerisms. When he moved inside me, I made noises to please him. It will do for now, I told myself to conceal the possibility that I might never feel what other women felt.

  “So tell me. Is it about a boy?” he asked, following my eyes.

  “No,” I said a little too quickly.

  “You live with your parents?”

  “No, I have my own place.”

  “An independent woman. I respect that,” he said. “But it’s tough out there when you’re alone, isn’t it? Though maybe not for one as fine as you. You must have many suitors,” he said with eyes that spoke of experience.

  “No, not really,” I said.

  “A woman is never complete without a husband and children,” he said and paused. “But it has to be the right kind of man. Don’t get me wrong, a man needs a good woman by his side too. But young men these days … ” He pursed his lips and shook his head emphatically. He downed the rest of his beer and continued: “Young

  men these days, they’re not mature enough, not man enough, to know what well-grounded and intelligent young women like you need.”

  There was an intrusive quality to his almost shy smile. I felt a knot tighten somewhere deep in my stomach. I took a long swig of my drink and turned my thoughts to memories of my boyfriend’s generous smile, the kind that made you think you’re in on whatever made him grin or laugh. It took me over a year to see the blind optimism behind that bright smile. To him, life was as simple and straightforward as the video games he loved to play: a succession of problems to be solved, quests and goals to be achieved. He was the knight out saving the damsel in distress, the elite commander defending Earth against alien races, the sharpshooter fighting evil lurking in dark, urban dwellings. He couldn’t fathom that life could beat you down to a pulp, break you into multitudes of irreconcilable fragments that no amount of effort or will could mend.

  “He wasn’t always like this,” my mother would say when I asked why Father was always angry. When social workers or the police urged her to press charges against him, she would just nod until they left. “What would people say? The shame,” she’d say to me once we were alone. Or she’d shake her head and groan: “What do these people know about us? How could they understand? We can’t put him in jail after all he’s been through, okay?”

  I would nod, not to appease her, but because I knew from the news on TV that sometimes men who were sent to prison for hurting their wives or girlfriends would return to kill them when they got out.

  When I turned eleven, my mother told me I’d become someone’s wife someday and if I was lucky, a mother to good children. “In the meantime,” she said, “men will try to take advantage of you.” So I needed to learn to protect myself until the right man came along.

  I already knew what men wanted from me, of course. I’d felt the bone-chilling gaze of my gym teacher’s lust on me, the laboured breaths that coat the skin like grime. But my mother couldn’t tell me how to discern the right man from the others, so I gravitated toward those who showed the most persistence, the ones who seemed to know they had a right to my body. Some of these men didn’t ask for my consent. And I didn’t stop them. There was an order to things, a silent acquiescence that romance and propriety demanded of me. But sometimes, there was also a thrill in knowing that these men full of want and anger desired me.

  “Do you practise meditation?” the man asked. His voice rose when he said this, as though he’d just had an epiphany.

  I shook my head.

  “You should try it,” he said. “Meditation is self-­knowledge. It’ll bring you inner strength, peace, and joy.”

  He talked about galactic formations and cosmic vibrations, of the power of love to enlighten us and bring us closer together, of one day returning to our rightful place among the stars.

  I ached to believe I could attain all the things this man was promising meditation would bring me.

  Outside, the moon was a disc of soft cream against the black sky, a porthole into another world. I imagined myself freed of the doubts and sense of failure gnawing at my bones.

  “I’m certified to teach it. If you wish, I could teach you,” he said, watching me intently.

  “Maybe,” I said and smiled.

  Funny how readily the crust of dead skin splits open under the spell of an old man’s tale of the circle of life.

  My boyfriend’s love felt good and it felt portentous, like floating in deep waters. Some days, he’d grab and pull me to him and I’d feel my skin hum with the need and love for him. Other times, his gaze would feel suspect, as if it wasn’t me he was looking at but a fantasy he’d conjured up, and his softest touch would hurt like a lick of fire. Let it go, he’s good to you, move on, I’d tell myself at the first intimations of a storm brewing inside, but it would be in vain. I’d find a million little ways to attack him for having failed to see me as I was. I’d flirt with strangers or make fun of his sheltered, middle-class upbringing in front of his friends. I’d accuse him of pitying me, anything to provoke him, to find a line to cross, to unfurl the violence I assumed lived coiled inside him.

  “Let’s see the real you,” I’d encourage him. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”

  Sometimes he’d ask: “You’re testing me, aren’t you? Trying to push me away. See how much I can take?” And he’d hold me tight in his arms until I softened into a silent cry.

  Other times, his face would turn white for a second before he’d kick the nearest object out of his way, lurch at me, and with a firm grip on my arms forc
e me to stand still in place, his beautiful face flush with outrage.

  “There it is. Let it out,” I’d tell him and my heart would thump with the frenzy of imminent victory. He’d quickly let go and stare at me with horrified eyes for a while, then pack up a few of his things and disappear for days until I begged him to come back.

  “Don’t be so fatalistic, baby,” he would say when we made up after a week or two spent apart. “You can’t let what happened between your dad and mom define you. Or us.”

  I’d want to tell him there was more he didn’t know about me, but there would be so much conviction in his voice that I’d choose instead to believe it was possible to let go of the past. I’d daydream about reinventing myself, about new beginnings and second chances.

  But even after two years together, I’d still sometimes wake in the middle of the night feeling adrift, dislocated in body and mind. Some nights, he would gently pull me to his side of the bed, fold his arm around me, and kiss me in the nape of my neck before falling back into deep sleep. I’d lay there, eyes wide open, willing the memory of that kiss to burn through my skin, my flesh and bones, and settle in my heart. Other times, I’d watch him sleep and wish I could penetrate his dreams so that I could find a new language for us in them. But he’d look so peaceful, so far away, I’d know he could never really see me as I was. And it would dawn on me again that what he offered me — a love free of fear and pain, and a life built on consent, trust, and compromise — would always be beyond my grasp too.

  We sat in silence for a while. The pub was busier and noisier than when we’d first arrived. Outside, the rain had started again. It looked as though millions of rubies and emeralds were crashing against the slick asphalt and the cars whooshing by. I quietly tapped my feet to a pop song playing in the background.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “Why don’t we go to my place? It’s only a few blocks away. I have scented candles. Red ones and cream-coloured ones.” He looked past me for a moment, trying to remember if he had the colours right. “What do you say?” he continued before I had time to respond, leaning closer to me across the table.

  He covered my hand with his.

  There was suddenly something unhinged in the way he looked at me. I recognized the slippery sharpness of avowed lust in his eyes.

  My breath caught in my throat. I stared at his hand as he gently wrapped it around my wrist. A wild cat’s jaws clasping a child’s bones.

  “Or, if you prefer, we can pick up the candles and go to your place,” he said, patting my hand before he let go.

  He stretched one arm across his torso.

  I caught a glimpse of the contours of a burly arm under his windbreaker. The power in his shoulders, in his big hands.

  Funny how thin the line between safety and fear, how abrupt the shift in vision.

  “The heart never forgets,” my mother used to say, “but you have to be as patient and light as water. That’s the only way for a woman.” And some days, she’d look at me with a smile that hinted at hope and say: “There is a secret power to water, you know, the kind of strength that carves fissures in mountains and turns stone to mud.”

  I’d search for signs of weariness in my father’s hard stare to corroborate my mother’s teachings. But in the end, my mother was the one who’d lost the battle. I learned then that the erosion of the soul, like that of the land, is slow coming. By the time I left home, my mother had evaporated into a whisper.

  I ordered another pint and examined the skin on my wrist and hand where he’d touched me, expecting it to change colour or texture.

  I thought about other men. Men I’d known before I’d met my boyfriend. Rich, white men leaning close to me at formal parties or work-related events and whispering the things they’d buy me if I was willing to spend some time alone with them. Or middle-aged men with thick accents and heavy gold necklaces who kept their wives and daughters on a tight leash but openly ogled dark-skinned girls like me. There were Black men too. And yet it shocked me that I didn’t see it coming this time, that I was so wrapped up in my own misery that I’d chosen to ignore the signs. A gush of self-­loathing and defeat filled my throat. That’s when I finally saw it. The anger, the want just below the surface of his wet smile. I knew why this man approached me. And why I’d followed him to the pub. This man and I knew each other the way my boyfriend and I couldn’t. He was a piece of my past reclaiming me.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I heard my voice, I recognized myself sitting across from him but felt disconnected from my thoughts and feelings.

  A subtle look of surprise flashed across his face. “Let me go settle the bill then,” he said and quickly went to the bar.

  I watched the rain trickle down the window. I felt the emptiness inside pushing into my ribcage.

  I remembered how even my ever-cheerful boyfriend had eventually grown weary. “I can’t do this anymore,” he’d said. “You need professional help.” As he spoke, I picked at dried drops of food on the kitchen counter. He rubbed the back of his neck and with a forced enthusiasm that made me wish I could disappear into a circle of darkness in the ground, he added: “Maybe it’s just hard to overcome things on your own, sometimes.”

  I looked at the man as he walked back from the bar. His steps were light, his face lit with anticipation.

  “Ready?” he said, a youthful urgency to his voice.

  I imagined following him past a busy street corner or two, past boisterous businessmen waiting for cabs, their ties loose around their necks, their bellies round and faces flushed with the aftermath of one-too-many Happy Hour specials; past dark, residential streets where wet, leafless vines crawled up the blood-red brick walls of expensive houses like thousands of leeches feeding. I pictured myself following him into a shabby, short apartment building, then up a dark staircase, shadows zigzagging on the dimly lit wall like the snakes in my grandmother’s coffee grains. I imagined thinking about my boyfriend for a moment, then about my mother, about shame that settles in the blood and memories that confine like a straightjacket before I let myself disintegrate into nothingness. I found solace in these thoughts, a certain kind of homecoming. I felt the release of tension in my bones.

  Funny how dangerously easy it is to sink back into the darkness within.

  you made me do this

  Mariam tightened her hijab and tucked its end under her chin for the hundredth time that day. Every time a woman pressed herself against Mariam’s shoulders to express her condolences, the flimsy polyester fabric came undone, sliding off her thin, grey-streaked hair. But Mariam was too tired to go upstairs to her bedroom to get a better scarf or to ask someone for a pin to secure the one she was wearing.

  Her friend Asma, whose loud weeping had just started to subside into snuffles, dried her eyes with her own shawl and asked: “Do the police have any leads ?”

  That’s another thing Mariam was tired of already: people asking if the police were any closer to finding the man who’d killed her son, Ismail, two days earlier. She shook her head, shifted around on the couch she shared with Asma, then discreetly slid her body to the end of the seat.

  Asma adjusted the pillows behind Mariam’s back to ease the sciatica she knew her friend suffered from.

  “I’m fine,” Mariam murmured, trying to keep her tone from betraying her annoyance — she didn’t want to be waited upon. She was not a bride or a new mother to be pampered. If anything, she wished to be left alone. She looked at her watch: three hours before her daughter’s flight from Vancouver would land at the Ottawa International Airport. Without Mona, she felt under siege in her own home.

  After their initial loud keening, those of her friends who knew Ismail well huddled around her, bowed down with grief. The ones who had teenage sons around Ismail’s age struggled with their growing fear of a city that seemed to be more and more determined every day to devour their children like an angry, voracious s
ea. Others sat still, lost in their own past, slowly peeling scabs off old pains, reviving with silent tears and occasional sighs the memories of those they’d long laid to rest.

  Mariam had been in these women’s shoes many times before. She had sat with them in their time of mourning. She had shared their tears, consoled them with the appropriate words, recited the right surahs to remind them of the impenetrability of God’s plans and of the special place in Heaven reserved for the faithful. That’s what friends do for each other and what a community does for its members. But she never believed such a calamity would strike her home. Not really. And losing one’s child, she realized now, was not only about loss and separation but also about defeat, a crushing sense of failure that no words or tears could ever absolve.

  She heard the clatter of dishes as three or four of her friends cleared the dining table where the foods that visitors had brought — injera, rice, and bowls of various sauces — had been set up for lunch. A few kids criss-crossed her field of vision as they ran up and down the stairs. When someone opened the door to the basement, the voices of the men gathered there around her husband, Ahmed, rose to the main floor and commingled with those of the women and children. Mariam saw and heard these things peripherally, like being aware of the muddled noise while making her way through a busy market. In a way, that was what she’d been doing since she’d learned about her son’s death: wading through the jumbled memories of her life, sifting for clues, for a reason why Allah had rescued her from certain death eighteen years earlier, brought her to this cold country, and gave her a son just to take him away so quickly.

  When the police officers came to her door two days earlier, Mariam had expected them to say they were looking for her son for questioning — it seemed as though the police were always trailing young men like Ismail in this neighbourhood — or even to arrest him the way they had a few months earlier, when he was detained for a week in relation to a murder that took place a few blocks away. This time, she was ready to stand up for her son, to tell the officers to stop harassing the poor boy. But when they told her of Ismail’s death, she was stunned into silence. She’d looked directly into the clear eyes of the officer who’d said the word dead, expecting to find a rebuttal. But there was nothing in them except maybe a slight fatigue. She’d felt unsteady on her feet. She’d struggled to breathe, to say something, then simply collapsed. When she came to, she was in her bed. A police officer was looking down at her. She heard women’s cries somewhere close by. She closed her eyes and opened them again.