All My Mothers

by Joanna Glen

  ‘Congratulations,’ I said.

  Bridget was crying.

  ‘So it’s over, no discussion?’ I said.

  She nodded.

  In the last refrigerated bag, there were two tiny glass jars of white chocolate mousse.

  Jhazmin had remembered!

  Which is what real mothers do.

  Even mothers who you might think are disappointing at first.

  I thought then that one day I’d be able to call her Mum, and when it happened, I would want to – I nearly did already.

  I held up my white chocolate mousse, and Bridget clinked hers against mine, and I said, ‘To your beautiful baby! You’re going to be the best mother in the world!’

  ‘Do you want to join in?’ said Bridget. ‘As I don’t have a husband any more.’

  ‘Join in?’

  ‘We always planned to share everything our whole lives,’ said Bridget. ‘Do you remember?’

  I took her hand.

  ‘I’m the one who remembers everything,’ I said.

  We were little girls wrapped in bath-towels.

  ‘I feel scared doing it alone,’ said Bridget. ‘And also I’m so tired all the time these days. Will you do it with me?’

  ‘Course I will,’ I said.

  ‘I feel so bad that you might not have a baby,’ said Bridget.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ I said.

  ‘You can choose the baby’s name,’ said Bridget. ‘But only if I like it!’

  We both laughed.

  ‘How about Bethesda if it’s a girl?’ I said.

  ‘The healing pool!’ she said. ‘I love it!’

  So there we are, Beth!

  It’s a strange name, but I hope you like it.

  ‘What colour do you want to be?’ said Bridget.

  ‘I think I’ll be green,’ I said.

  ‘That’s the baby moving. Put your hand here.’

  I held my hand over Bridget’s belly.

  And I felt a fist maybe and then some toes.

  Your fist and your toes, Beth.

  ‘Baby, this is Green Mother,’ said Bridget to her belly. ‘She was barefoot in the grass, wasn’t she?’

  I nodded: ‘And there was a little waterfall running over the rocks.’

  Bridget took my hand.

  ‘What colour mother are you going to be?’ I said.

  ‘Can we have Blue again?’ said Bridget.

  ‘Blue is totally the best,’ I said. ‘Yes, mark 2, and just as gorgeous!’

  Blue Mother number 2 – I can’t really bear to say it.

  Chapter 117

  Bridget gave birth at our flat at La Convivencia because she wouldn’t go to the hospital, no, not for one appointment, and certainly not for the birth – her phobia was such a big and traumatic thing, the mark of her terrible grief.

  But enough of grief.

  Here was joy.

  I saw you come out, Beth, on 5 September 2004.

  You had one hand on your cheek.

  Making an entrance into the world.

  You had dark hair, plenty of it.

  A little snub nose.

  Blue eyes like your mother.

  Your mother held you first.

  I held you next.

  Then Grandpa Blue.

  He was crying.

  We were all crying.

  Because you were little and perfect and beautiful.

  There we were, making a circle – you can have any number in a circle, and you can add people as you go along, odd numbers or even numbers, anyone can fit in, at any point.

  Bethesda – you were here and real.

  Bethesda, the pool where the angel, Rafael, stirred the waters and made people well.

  You made your mother the wellest she’d ever been.

  She should never have agreed not to have babies.

  She was a born mother.

  Just like your grandmother, Blue Mother.

  Your beautiful grandmother with the heaven-breasts and the scalp tingles and the kindest heart. How it pains me that you never knew her.

  ‘I’d like to have seven!’ your mother said the day after.

  The day after giving birth!

  Your mother and I gazed at you.

  As if you were a masterpiece.

  ‘Mothers are artists!’ said your mother. ‘Do you remember M’s note with the tampons?’

  My scalp tingled.

  ‘We should write our life story for Beth,’ I said to your mother. ‘So she can understand the difficult bits.’

  ‘Like you didn’t?’ said Bridget.

  I nodded.

  ‘I think you’ll be better at this than me,’ said your mother. ‘I’m maths and you’re English. And you’re the one with the photographic memory and the diaries.’

  ‘You can be the editor,’ I said.

  And we began.

  Chapter 118

  Jhazmin moved to an upstairs room to vacate the flat for the three of us, our new little family – yes, I finally had a family: you – Beth – and your mother and me. On free evenings, when you were in bed, I wrote, and she tried to edit, but mainly fell asleep, telling me motherhood made her tired and achy. I felt worried.

  ‘I can try to pay for a doctor to come and see you here in your room,’ I said.

  ‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘I’ve just had a baby. It’s normal to feel like this.’

  But I really didn’t think it was normal.

  Carrie had never seemed this exhausted after having a baby.

  Our world shrank and time merged into a blur of feeding and washing small cotton vests and not having proper conversations, though eventually we started going for walks and drinks and tapas, and I returned to lecturing.

  ‘I thought you should know things aren’t too good with Barnaby and Naomi,’ said your mother. ‘She’s been having an affair in Brazil.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, although I don’t think I was.

  ‘Are they getting divorced?’ I said.

  ‘She’s looking for a more open marriage or something,’ she said. ‘It all sounds weird. Be careful, won’t you?’

  I remember feeling a bit neutral, as if the spell had broken.

  Perhaps you broke it, Beth, by being even lovelier than he was.

  Or perhaps you’d grown me up.

  Or perhaps I was exhausted, which is a great cure for lust.

  Or perhaps my head was too full.

  Barnaby came for Christmas.

  So did Grandpa Blue, and Cherie and Jean and Nigel.

  Your mother had bad backache, that’s what I remember, and spent a lot of time in bed, but wouldn’t talk about it, not to me, not to Grandpa Blue, not to anyone.

  I want you to know that I tried, Beth.

  Maybe I didn’t try hard enough.

  Barnaby was flirtatious.

  Barnaby with his newly open marriage.

  Isn’t that an oxymoron?

  If you want the open, don’t bother about the marriage.

  Barnaby and I sat up late.

  ‘I think the time has come,’ he said, and he reached to take my hand, but I didn’t let him.

  ‘The time for what?’

  ‘Our time,’ he said, looking into my eyes, with those dark eyes, with those long eyelashes, with that gold star around his neck.

  ‘Meaning?’ I said, not coldly, but not smiling.

  ‘The affair we’ve been waiting for our whole lives,’ he said.

  But his smile was not enough any more – the waters had finally dried up.

  ‘I’m not looking for an affair, Barnaby,’ I said. ‘And I’m reclaiming my heart from you. I need to give it to someone else.’

  ‘Don’t you think it’s meant to be?’ he said, sounding a bit desperate.

  ‘People say that a lot,’ I said. ‘But I think it might be a load of crap.’

  He looked startled, and then sad.

  ‘Naomi’s been having an affair,’ he said. ‘It turns out you can be in love with more than
one person at once. You remember me saying?’

  ‘So you thought you’d use me for revenge?’ I said, and I was pleased that I sounded calm. ‘And stay with her?’

  ‘I didn’t say that, Eva,’ he said. ‘I was saying I was in love with you.’

  ‘At best, you were saying you were in love with more than one person,’ I said. ‘Which slightly takes away the magic.’

  ‘You sound bitter,’ he said.

  ‘I think I am, Barnaby. Or if not bitter, embarrassed. I waited far too long for you.’

  ‘But I never promised you anything. I was always truthful.’

  ‘You indulged me with kisses,’ I said.

  ‘A kiss is nothing.’

  ‘I totally disagree.’

  ‘I think about you all the time,’ said Barnaby. ‘I always have. Come on, Eva, we know we both want to. We always have.’

  ‘I know I don’t,’ I said. ‘Thank you for the offer. But it’s too late. It was always too late once you’d met Naomi. I’m sorry I didn’t have more courage.’

  ‘Who is it you’re giving your heart to?’ he said nervously. ‘Am I allowed to know his name?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid not.’

  (It was you, Beth. It was you!)

  ‘What terrible timing,’ said Barnaby.

  Chapter 119

  When Jhazmin held you, Beth, I could tell she was remembering Liam.

  It hurt me that she’d never known me as a baby, but Sister Ana had traced the outline of my birthmark, and I would forever be her pequeña España, and that helped.

  Jhazmin longed for Liam to write, but when he wrote, he blamed her that their pub in Gibraltar had failed.

  ‘They needed a woman’s touch,’ she said to me, as if it was a compliment.

  ‘A woman’s touch?’ I spluttered. ‘You don’t believe that crap?’

  ‘I feel like I let them down,’ she said.

  Then the next day: ‘They treated me like a servant my whole life.’

  I wanted to point out her inconsistencies.

  ‘Just listen to her,’ said Bridget. ‘That’s all she wants.’

  Naomi arrived with Azahara and Esther to see the procession of the wise kings, but Bridget didn’t feel like coming out, which ruined it for me. I was properly worried about her now. I knew something was wrong.

  Naomi was actually very nice.

  Perhaps she always had been.

  Perhaps it’s all a question of perception.

  Giants and windmills.

  Nigel loved jumping for sweets, and so did I.

  We bumped into Gerónimo’s sister, who was visiting friends.

  We hugged each other and didn’t mention that her brother had left Bridget when she was five months pregnant.

  She looked into the pram.

  I said, ‘This is Bethesda.’

  Tears welled up in her eyes when she looked at you, Beth.

  ‘My niece,’ she said, taking your tiny hand.

  As the wise kings left, she said, ‘We had twin brothers, Gerónimo and I.’

  She gestured towards Nigel.

  ‘Born not right,’ she said. ‘You know. In the head. Like Nigel. My parents sent them away as babies. It destroyed the whole family.’

  Nigel was perfectly right in the head, I wanted to say, but she’d hurried away.

  So, Beth, your father had his reasons.

  His reasons were those twin brothers.

  It wasn’t you he didn’t want – it was a hypothesis.

  He made himself jolly to cover up his pain.

  We all find different ways to cover up our pain.

  Most of them don’t work.

  I’m so sorry you haven’t met your father yet.

  But nor have I met mine.

  We’re in it together, and we won’t sweep it under the rug.

  Because pain is better not covered up, but channelled into something else.

  Perhaps that’s what motivates me to write.

  Perhaps that’s what motivates Jhazmin to cook, endlessly refilling our industrial fridges and freezers, forever walking around the courtyard with her trays of love and regret.

  ‘I love it here,’ said Cherie. ‘I always dreaded Christmas.’

  ‘We love having you,’ said Jhazmin.

  I’m not making this up.

  ‘I always wanted to be part of something bigger and noisier,’ said Jhazmin. ‘Our house in Tooting was so quiet and tense.’

  ‘I did too,’ said Cherie. ‘All only children do.’

  That’s true – that’s why I loved the Blumes.

  All our Christmas guests left in mid-January.

  And you were four months old, and growing into yourself, Beth.

  We closed the hotel for a month: Carrie and Jhazmin experimented with new recipes; Gabriel painted the walls; Ignacio staggered around the courtyard; I sanded down Rafael and painted him; and your mother watched.

  ‘I don’t think I’m well,’ she said finally. ‘I tried so hard to convince myself it was the pregnancy. But I’ve been feeling weird for a long time.’

  I paid for a doctor.

  I couldn’t believe how terrified she was.

  Laughing happy Bridget.

  I held her hand, but it didn’t help.

  Nothing helped because she’d left it too long and the breast cancer had already spread.

  I don’t want to major on this, Beth.

  Life stories, as I said, are allowed to be selective.

  Chapter 120

  I ran the hotel with Jhazmin, with Carrie and Gabriel, and Adriana, and extra staff in the busy months. And I mothered you with your mother. I had to give her drugs to get her to hospital, and we came away with more drugs as we left. It was a cocktail of drugs by mouth at the beginning, and possibly surgery, but then not.

  ‘But it’s not hopeless,’ said Carmen García, the strong warrior oncologist. ‘Many people live long productive lives with metastatic breast cancer. You can still live life to the full.’

  Well, kind of.

  The hotel grew, and you grew.

  I’d found a desire bigger than my own happiness.

  You.

  You weren’t a good sleeper in the beginning.

  And I wasn’t that good with the endless crying and the endless waking.

  But I did my best.

  You had colic.

  You teethed loudly, thrashing about in your cot.

  In the in-between times, the up weeks, your mother had this amazing ability to not sleep and still be reasonable. I never had that. And whether this was biology – you were her egg – or nature, my nature, I don’t know.

  What I do know is that I loved you from the start.

  I wasn’t so good at the practical stuff.

  I’ll be honest.

  Your mother, regardless of how she was feeling, still mashed food, packed your sunhat, washed your hair, remembered the soft bit behind your ears, which she dabbed with cotton wool and olive oil.

  I, on the other hand, preferred to show you butterflies and flowers and birds and the shades of colours.

  I took you to the peace festival in March 2005 – you pointed at the white doves as they were released over the river.

  You always wanted to fly.

  Perhaps you’ll be a pilot.

  I’d love that, Beth.

  But I’m taking that right back.

  Because it might turn into an expectation.

  And expectations are too heavy for us.

  As Billy showed.

  By being crushed by them.

  Be anything.

  Find your thing.

  I started to read you books.

  Anything I could get my hands on.

  In Spanish and English.

  I read you Peter Pan endlessly, doing my not-father’s funny voices.

  I walked you around Córdoba in your buggy and stopped to let you feel the texture of the old bricks and the bark of the olive tree.

  I told you stories ab
out Sister Ana.

  I read you The Rainbow Rained Us.

  ‘Sister Ana was just like Grey Mother,’ I told you. ‘She even had a globe she liked to spin when she prayed for the world.’

  I knelt down every day and I asked Sister Ana to send help from heaven if she could, to make your mother better. I wished so much she was here to still and steady me. Like Blue Mother had. They were probably the realest of my mothers in the end.

  We sang ‘He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands’ and ‘Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory’ as we walked along the river.

  You started crawling just before Cruces.

  You were walking by your first birthday and eating geraniums and pulling over pots.

  By the next March, the peace festival had grown, and we held an exhibition of Lorenzo’s old photographs at La Convivencia – how Sister Ana would have loved to see the people crowding in to admire his work. A thin man with a beard held hands with a fat man with a moustache. And that was fine with everyone because time does sometimes make people kinder.

  Your mother made it to concerts and plays and food festivals and Arabic poetry recitals and peace processions along the river, and some days we nearly forgot about the horrible bird of prey that had been after us ever since we were in Class 1 with Miss Dixon.

  You were one and a half, walking, holding my hand, dancing (kind of).

  I talked to you, and I longed for you to talk back.

  Eventually, you did.

  Mamá to your mother.

  Ebba to me.

  Cat naughty.

  Butter-fy.

  Wanium.

  (Geranium)

  Patio.

  Ángel.

  We skipped through the pillars in the Mezquita.

  We watched butterflies swooping through the fountains of the Alcázar.

  You turned two, and we held a birthday party in the courtyard on 5 September 2006 with a butterfly theme. We all wore wings. It was a good day.

  Jhazmin waited and waited for letters from lawyers and letters from Liam, which didn’t come.

  On sad days, she took to wild experimenting in the kitchen, and didn’t speak to us.

  But hope would rise again, and she would skip and spin hoops with you, Beth.

  ‘I never did this with Liam,’ she said. ‘He was a bit of a loner.’

  You wanted your mother to skip and spin hoops with you, Beth, but it was hard for her, and hard for you.