All My Mothers

by Joanna Glen

  And you are my North Star.

  Possibly.

  But of course my life moved on.

  It had to.

  I have a husband and a son.

  We live with my father.

  Perhaps we should start by writing letters to each other.

  What do you think?

  Yours

  Jhazmin

  Writing letters?

  Not Mum or Mother or Mummy.

  Just Jhazmin.

  Yours?

  That’s how she signed off.

  Not exactly warm.

  Or excited.

  Or urgent.

  Yours?

  Mine?

  Was she mine?

  Not really.

  She was theirs: her father’s, her husband’s, her son’s.

  But we would write letters.

  That was it.

  Carrie burst in.

  ‘So?’

  ‘You can read it. She’s got a husband and a son. And she signed off Jhazmin.’

  I handed the letter to her and I lay on the bed staring at the ceiling, remembering that when Peter Pan flew back to his mother, the window was barred and there was another little boy sleeping in his bed.

  We lay on our beds saying nothing.

  ‘Are you OK?’ said Carrie, lying very flat on her bed because I’d stolen all her pillows.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  My Jhazmin-mother had failed me.

  Like my not-mother had failed me.

  Like my not-father had failed me.

  Like the whole project of family had failed me.

  Carrie got up, and she climbed next to me on my bed.

  ‘This is really hard, Evs,’ she said.

  Maybe Carrie could be family.

  ‘I don’t know what I can say that will help,’ she said.

  ‘Just stay lying here next to me please,’ I said.

  ‘When I’m really down, I find dyeing my hair helps,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t think that will work for me,’ I said.

  ‘We’re all different,’ said Carrie.

  ‘I love you, Evs,’ said Carrie.

  ‘That does help a bit,’ I said.

  ‘Did you write to Bridget?’ she said.

  ‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘But I will.’

  Maybe Bridget could be family again, if only she’d reply to my letters.

  Chapter 95

  I wrote to Bridget again.

  She apologised for her lack of reply.

  She said please could I always write to her when I was drunk.

  She said Bessie was having a really crap time – but she’d write properly when she was feeling better.

  I tried not to dwell on the brevity of her letter.

  ‘Poor Bessie,’ I said aloud, when I was actually thinking poor me, Bridget doesn’t love me any more.

  I wrote back, fast as anything, saying that she and Bessie and Bella would be very welcome here in Córdoba, and that I was longing to see her. I didn’t show the faintest glimmer of how sad I was feeling. Same old story.

  My Jhazmin-mother used her letters to rehearse the detail of her days, focusing on the weather and her job at a Hispanic restaurant in Tooting, and favouring commas.

  ‘I got up, awful rainy day, I went to work …’

  ‘So cold today, Deborah was ill, I had to work a double shift …’

  ‘Finally a bit of sun, I sat on a bench in my break …’

  ‘I finally find a mother,’ I said to Carrie. ‘And she’s so boring!’

  Carrie laughed, but I felt a horrible mix of orphaned and mean.

  Bridget didn’t write again.

  I tried not to think about her.

  My Jhazmin-mother took to sending me recipes, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her I hated cooking. I passed them onto Carrie, who tried them out.

  ‘I’m starting to love cooking,’ said Carrie. ‘Tell Jhazmin.’

  I told her.

  She made no comment.

  She never asked questions about my life.

  But I asked about hers.

  Nothing too threatening.

  Questions about her family’s flight from persecution in Lebanon (before her time, she wasn’t sure), life in Lima (busy, full of friends, she left when she was twelve), Machu Picchu (she’d never been).

  I bought an old yellow van, and Carrie and I filled it with rubbish, day after day, as we cleared the old house.

  Carrie stuck stickers of butterflies and ladybirds onto the van doors.

  We went on clearing.

  We came to several towers of boxes, all marked Lorenzo.

  The first five boxes were full of clocks.

  ‘Choose one for your room,’ we said to Sister Ana.

  She picked the gold one with winged eagles on top.

  ‘Put the clocks everywhere!’ said Sister Ana. ‘All over the walls!’

  ‘Shall we wind them up?’ I said.

  She shook her head.

  The clocks hung with their hands pointing to different times, as if we’d all been released from time like she had.

  We came across boxes of photos, all of Sister Ana, sitting in different parts of the city, sometimes holding a red rose – each with a date on the back, and an L for Lorenzo.

  There were only two photos of skinny Lorenzo.

  I kept hoping to find a photo of myself in the boxes.

  But I didn’t.

  I kept hoping to find a photo of Sister María Soledad with me as a baby.

  But I didn’t.

  I asked my Jhazmin-mother if she had a baby photo of me.

  She didn’t.

  Or a photo of herself.

  She never sent one.

  Or ideally a photo of me and her together with her arms around me, kissing the top of my head. Like someone loved. The sort of photo I’d wanted to take to school for Miss Feast to put on the display board.

  No photo arrived.

  I cleaned and scrubbed my way through my horrible disappointment.

  My lack of mystery.

  My lack of magic.

  When Carrie and I went out to buy a ladder, we bumped into Barnaby Blue at the hardware store.

  ‘Why didn’t you come and see me?’ I said, wondering how awful I was looking. ‘I wrote my address on your arm.’

  ‘It rubbed off,’ he said.

  ‘You didn’t think to write it down before it rubbed off? I said.

  ‘Why don’t you come and see the house?’ said Carrie.

  Barnaby walked a foot away from me.

  ‘This is where you’re living, right?’ he said as we opened the huge door.

  ‘Not just where we’re living,’ I said. ‘This is my home!’

  Lovely word.

  I’d never felt it fully before.

  We walked into the courtyard where Sister Ana was letting the yellow budgerigars out for their daily fly.

  ‘Sister Ana,’ I said. ‘This is Barnaby.’

  Barnaby took her hand, ducking to miss a bird.

  ‘Encantado,’ he said. Pleased to meet you.

  ‘Bastante guapo,’ she said. Quite handsome.

  I laughed.

  Barnaby laughed.

  Carrie disappeared.

  Sister Ana sat down, spun the globe, stopped it with her eyes closed, opened her eyes and said delightedly, ‘Burkina Faso,’ before kneeling on the stone floor.

  ‘She prays constantly,’ I said. ‘For the whole world.’

  ‘Should we be quiet?’ said Barnaby.

  ‘No, she’s very loud once she gets going,’ I said.

  ‘You actually own this house?’ said Barnaby, over Sister Ana’s prayers. ‘It’s beautiful. It must be, what, two hundred years old?’

  ‘So?’ I said, looking steadily into his eyes.

  ‘So what?’ he said, as if he honestly didn’t know.

  ‘You know exactly what,’ I said.

  He still tried to look as if he didn’t.

  ‘We kissed each
other,’ I said. ‘And then we never talked about it. What was it?’

  ‘What do you mean what was it?’ he said.

  ‘What was that kiss, Barnaby?’ I said, feeling vulnerable.

  Surely you know what a kiss is, Wendy said to Peter Pan.

  ‘I think it might have been the kiss we didn’t have on Charmouth Beach,’ he said, in what was quite a tender voice.

  I softened, and then I didn’t.

  I saw what he was doing.

  He was making it something inconsequential, childish.

  ‘It felt like the beginning of something.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘It was definitely the end of something,’ he said. ‘Closure.’

  ‘You don’t end things with tongues.’

  ‘Was it really tongues? I don’t think so,’ said Barnaby, and his face was contorted, and I suppose we all have the ability to deceive ourselves, see giants where there are windmills.

  ‘Now that is total bollocks,’ I said.

  ‘No tongues or bollocks involved,’ he said, and he attempted a laugh.

  ‘I wonder what Naomi would say about our kiss,’ I said triumphantly. ‘If I told her.’

  I hadn’t expected to say that.

  ‘You’re acting like a bastard,’ I said, and then in Spanish: ‘Un cabrón.’

  ‘Son todos cabrones,’ said Sister Ana, pausing her prayers for a moment.

  ‘I didn’t think you were a bastard,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t either,’ said Barnaby. ‘And I honestly didn’t mean to be. But I love Naomi. And I know that’s not supposed to be possible. Feeling things for two people.’

  ‘I hate hearing you say that.’

  Sister Ana was rising to a crescendo, and Barnaby stood very still, staring at me.

  ‘I hate feeling things for two people,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t try and make me feel sorry for you!’ I said coldly.

  ‘I’m trying to be truthful,’ said Barnaby, wringing his hands. ‘And you were with Michael.’

  ‘I hate you being truthful,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘I think you should go,’ I said.

  He started to walk towards the door.

  I stayed where I was.

  ‘Son todos cabrones,’ said Sister Ana again.

  This really isn’t true.

  Chapter 96

  Carrie went to the craft shop to buy feathers, and I walked along the river and sat under the holm oak picking up acorns and putting them in my pocket. I’ve no idea why, but that tree always comforted me.

  At the craft shop, Carrie met a man called Gabriel, who was also buying feathers.

  They walked out together, and he asked her to have dinner with him.

  This is the effect Carrie has on people.

  Carrie came home very drunk.

  ‘That was the best night of my life,’ she said, before falling sound asleep.

  She often had best nights of her life, and worst ones too – and she slept as deeply as Bridget.

  In the morning, I said, ‘Did you really meet this guy in the craft shop?’

  She nodded, holding her head.

  ‘Was he really buying feathers?’

  She nodded, holding her head.

  ‘Also,’ said Carrie. ‘He has biceps.’

  ‘He was buying feathers and he has biceps?’ I said. ‘You will never ever find that combination again.’

  I stand by this opinion.

  ‘Also,’ said Carrie. ‘He has dark wavy hair like Jesus.’

  ‘Also,’ said Carrie. ‘He may be Jesus.’

  Gabriel was a primary school teacher: his pupils made birds out of feathers and collages out of anything and he found an old sofa and turned it into a pirate ship – and this is the sort of man he is.

  ‘I think he’s hyperactive,’ said Carrie.

  ‘Hyperactive is the best fault anyone can have,’ I said. ‘It’s what you should say in interviews when you’re asked what your weakness is.’

  When Carrie had been dating Gabriel just over a month, he offered to paint the courtyard, so we took the flowerpots off the dirty walls and we left them in rows. When Sister Ana came outside, she fell forward, twisting her right leg and bashing the side of her face on the pots.

  Once the paint was dry, we put the pots back, but she was never the same after that. Her walking days were over. We bought her the best possible wheelchair, one with knobs and levers, self-propelling, even over cobbles and up slopes – Gabriel called it her Porsche.

  She zoomed about the house too fast, over thresholds, round corners, straight into the bathroom, where she overran and practically joined me in the shower.

  We both laughed.

  She reached out her hand.

  She ran it over the birthmark on my thigh.

  Her mouth looked for words, but didn’t find any.

  I turned off the shower.

  Tears were streaming down her face.

  But still no words came.

  She traced the land mass of Iberia on my thigh, naming cities as she went, in perfect order: Barcelona, Valencia, Alicante.

  ‘Mi pequeña España,’ she said. My little Spain.

  I felt the realest I’d ever felt – Eva from Iberia.

  She knew me, she remembered me, from the beginning.

  It felt so good.

  The best ever.

  She turned her wheelchair and left at speed, and the moment was gone for her, and un-remembered ever after.

  But I had it.

  I had it!

  I treasured it in my heart, still do.

  Sister Ana was as excited as a teenager who’d passed her driving test, and she started slipping away at night with supplies for the homeless hanging off the armrests of the wheelchair.

  We’d wake and find her bed empty, and we’d rush about trying to find her.

  She’d be donkey-laughing with the beggars in the orange-tree courtyard.

  Or whispering at the old olive tree, next to the city walls.

  She got a cold, which turned into a chest infection.

  While Gabriel, Carrie and I painted the whole house bright white again, like it was in the old photographs, she watched us from her wheelchair. Then she was better, and once again propelling herself out of the door in the dark and the damp with bags of bread rolls.

  Barnaby’s wedding invitation arrived on the same day as a letter from my Jhazmin-mother, and on the same day as Sister Ana came down with another horrible cold.

  ‘There’s no way I’m going,’ I said to Carrie.

  The phone rang.

  As the voice said the E of my name, I knew.

  I knew before the va, I swear I did.

  ‘Bridget!’ I yelled.

  Her actual voice!

  I was crying.

  ‘Where are you? I thought there were no phones in the kibbutz?’

  ‘I left!’ she said. ‘In the end, I hated it. Communal living is better as an idea than a thing.’

  ‘And how’s Bessie?’

  ‘Bessie was always fine,’ said Bridget. ‘It was me who was feeling shit and I couldn’t admit it to you. It’s been an on-off thing. And I’m feeling so much better right now.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. ‘I can’t imagine you ever feeling shit. I always think of you as happy. Happy all the time.’

  ‘That was before M died,’ said Bridget. ‘And when you’ve been a happy person, it’s so hard to be unhappy. But you didn’t see us afterwards. We all lost it in Israel.’

  ‘Oh, Bridge,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry. Will you come to Spain? My friend Carrie is dying to meet you.’

  ‘Perhaps after the wedding?’ said Bridget. ‘I can’t wait to see you at the wedding!’

  Oh, not the wedding.

  ‘Actually see you in the flesh!’

  ‘I’m not sure if I’m going,’ I said.

  ‘Of course you must!’ said Bridget. ‘You totally have to! If you’re not going, I�
��m not going. And I am going!’

  I laughed.

  ‘Don’t forget you’re an honorary Blue!’ she said.

  ‘The thing is …’ I began. ‘The thing is …’

  There was no way I could, or should, tell her.

  About me and Barnaby.

  ‘So is that a yes?’ said Bridget.

  Oh crap, I thought.

  ‘I suppose …’

  ‘Fantastic!’

  Carrie came shopping with me, and we found an emerald-green dress, with frilled cuffs, which flared out at the bottom, and Carrie made me peacock feather earrings, and bought me twelve silver bangles like Blue Mother’s.

  I suggested to my Jhazmin-mother that I could go to Tooting and meet her after the wedding, but she wrote back and said she wasn’t prepared to take the risk, what if anyone saw me? I threw the letter in the bin.

  Sister Ana was wheezing, but she refused to see the doctor. She said she was fine, and could I stop fussing and go with her to the olive tree?

  ‘Did you know the olive tree is two thousand years old?’ she said. ‘Think what it’s seen.’

  ‘It saw the Muslims and Jews and Christians all chatting together by the city walls in the Convivencia,’ I said, as she trundled beside me in her wheelchair.

  ‘I first heard God talk to me from the olive tree,’ she said once we got there. ‘I was a child. And God was very talkative.’

  I smiled.

  ‘God seems a bit speechless these days,’ she said.

  ‘Perhaps he regrets what he made,’ I said. ‘When he looks down. I assume he’s up. I never know where he is.’

  ‘Oh, you haven’t lost him, have you?’ she said. ‘I’m always losing things. I think I’ve lost Lorenzo.’

  I took her right hand.

  ‘Free will,’ she said. ‘Risky risky risky.’

  She groped at the air with her left hand.

  ‘Will someone pull up my socks?’ she said.

  ‘You’re only wearing one sock, Sister Ana,’ I said, pulling it up.

  ‘You can’t force love,’ she said.

  ‘That’s true,’ I said.

  ‘I truly love you,’ I said to her. ‘I hope you know that.’

  ‘I wish someone would pull up my other sock,’ she said.

  ‘That, Sister Ana,’ I said, ‘is one of your hardest ever requests.’

  Chapter 97

  I set off for London, reluctant to leave Sister Ana (even with Carrie and Gabriel), and even more (much more) reluctant to go to Barnaby’s wedding.