All My Mothers

by Joanna Glen

  You were heading for two and a half, and the peace festival had started attracting people from all around the world.

  We had a huge inter-faith service in the orange-tree courtyard, and I stared into the faces of the rows of priests to see if one of them was hiding a sunflower in the folds of his robe.

  Not yet.

  Chapter 121

  It was the first day of Cruces – 1st May 2007 – when they said that the treatment had stopped working, and your mother had to start intravenous chemotherapy.

  The three of us held hands and walked out of the hospital, and everything looked completely different from when we walked in.

  We didn’t say much to each other in the van.

  As I parked, I said, ‘Do you still want to go tonight?’

  Your mother said she did.

  And on that first night of Cruces, 1 May 2007, the colours of the flowered crosses were somehow a deeper red and much more beautiful, the rose petals softer, the fino sherry on our tongues richer and the stars brighter than we remembered them.

  ‘I was thinking,’ I said, looking at the sky, ‘that if stars only came out once every thirty years, we’d be totally mesmerised by them, and we’d stay up all night lying on our backs looking at them. Don’t you think?’

  ‘But because they’re here forever we take them for granted?’ she said.

  She had a tear running slowly down her cheek – just one big tear.

  She held my hand and she said, ‘Forever Eva.’

  You looked up at us, Beth.

  And the tinny music struck up.

  And you started to dance.

  Wiggling your hips.

  Strutting your sandalled feet.

  Hands in the air.

  Glittery wings on.

  Like a butterfly.

  Chapter 122

  We got a letter from the Oncology Department with details of chemotherapy appointments.

  We sat in the courtyard reading it, and I could feel your mother’s fear.

  We never nailed that iatrophobia, and that made it so much worse.

  We looked up at the sky.

  I remember that flocks of starlings were twisting across the sky like great wrung sheets.

  Dpto Onc, it said at the bottom, in red.

  Carrie was playing Ignacio’s favourite songs from The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

  ‘The Wonderful Wizard of Onc!’ said your mother.

  ‘Exclamation mark!’ I said.

  ‘Now is the moment of the exclamation mark!’ said your mother. ‘Now is the moment to be as jolly as we can! And full of hope!’

  I went for a walk – the crosses from the festival had been dismantled, and the city bins were full of browning flowers.

  I’d have to get her to the hospital every three weeks from now on.

  There was no way round it, and it felt so cruel.

  ‘We’re off to see the Wizard! The Wonderful Wizard of Onc!’ we sang in the car, hollering out the song in case the Wizard was deaf.

  And you joined in, Beth, shouting out the song, with no clue what we were on about.

  What were we on about?

  We were calling out to God in the manger, between the pillars, in the current of the river, in the mosque-cathedral, in the tiny synagogue, in the olive tree, in the orange-tree courtyard, in the stars, in the hands of San Rafael, in the healing waters of the pool of Bethesda.

  We were reading the science and the data too, begging it to bend to our hopes.

  The five-year survival rate for Stage 4 breast cancer is 22 per cent, I read.

  I counted 1, 2, 3, 4 all the way to 22, and I said to myself, 22 is a lot of people.

  I definitely did not say to myself, 78 is a lot more people than 22 because what would be the point of that?

  We have faith, we said to each other, as our hopes refracted and danced through sunbeams, as the hospital air conditioning units strained against the summer heat, which hit us as we crossed the car park, holding hands, the three of us, with you in the middle. You liked us to swing you up so that your feet left the ground.

  Oh, if only we could all leave the ground and fly away.

  Chapter 123

  All our lovely easy rhythms seemed to stop.

  Time was punctuated by appointments, and getting your poor mother in the car.

  And waiting for results.

  Week after week.

  Month after month.

  ‘It’s not all bad!’ your mother said. ‘I don’t have to wax my bikini line!’

  I laughed because I thought that was what she wanted from me.

  But inside I wasn’t laughing.

  I said, ‘Let’s go to Alvera!’

  Because Alvera always made us happy.

  But when we got to Alvera, she was still bald and scared.

  We jumped in the waves, though.

  We ate a picnic.

  We talked about Lyme Regis and chocolate brownies and gold ammonites.

  We got home and there were envelopes.

  I remembered coming home to envelopes from Lyme Regis, back when I didn’t tremble as I opened them, when envelopes weren’t the enemy.

  I remembered the way Blue Mother lay down and held her chest.

  I went and sat on the low couch in the courtyard under the sky.

  I sat fighting off my hypotheses, like demons in the desert, and you crawled onto my lap, Beth, and you felt the skin of my arms, and you clinked my bangles back and forward.

  And you were me.

  And I was you.

  A girl just back from the beach.

  And I remembered the things Blue Mother did that felt so good to me as a child, and I put my hand into your hair and did those little tingly-scalp-rubs she used to do.

  I hoped you felt like silk blowing in the breeze.

  Even if I didn’t any more.

  I remembered Blue Mother saying, ‘We’re going to stay big and hopeful.’

  And I thought, We’re going to stay big and hopeful, Beth.

  ‘We’re going to be big people,’ I said to you, bending my arm at the elbow to make muscles.

  ‘Big people,’ you mimicked back at me.

  I piled up your mother’s hospital paperwork on my desk, highlighted and stapled.

  I would dominate the cancer bird with staples and paper clips and post-it notes.

  I would clip its wings.

  We would get on with running the hotel.

  Thank God for the hotel.

  The lovely guests.

  News from outside.

  Purpose.

  We went back and forth from the hospital, singing, singing, crying sometimes, mainly laughing.

  More letters arrived from Dpto Onc.

  Letters full of words we never used to need.

  Words like metastasise, which means to spread.

  Before it was a word we used for butter.

  But now it wasn’t.

  I spread Nocilla onto warm bread for you, Beth – you liked the white chocolate more than the dark.

  Gabriel spun hoops with you in the courtyard.

  ‘You remember you taught me how to play?’ I said to your mother.

  ‘Hoops first, then elastics,’ she said.

  ‘On your bald lawn,’ I said. ‘You changed my whole life, Bridget Blue.’

  She paused.

  ‘I hated M’s bald head, and now I’ve got one.’

  ‘You will always be beautiful to me,’ I said.

  ‘I love the way you’ve always said that,’ she said. ‘Even when I look awful.’

  I said, ‘Awful can be beautiful.’

  You danced flamenco, Beth.

  You fed the runt kittens with a bottle.

  You matched your Superman suit with the butterfly wings; a bullfighter cloak with a pilot cap; fairy wings and wellington boots.

  ‘The sacrament of the present moment,’ said your mother. ‘You remember that weird nun who came to school. With buck teeth.
’

  I laughed.

  She’d started remembering.

  ‘The one I loved. Until you didn’t,’ I said. ‘I was under your spell from the beginning!’

  I noticed how much we were talking about the past.

  I said to myself, of course we are, we’re writing our life story.

  ‘You remember the way Mr Altman tiptoed about in his velvet shoes at St Hilda’s?’ said your mother.

  ‘Nobody else knows all this,’ I said.

  ‘Except Sophia and Laura Stephenson and awful Annabel!’ she laughed. ‘Who will all have married millionaires and be living in Fulham!’

  Such lovely power in a shared history, and partly we don’t want people to die because we want to keep our own stories alive. But your mother would beat the odds, I knew she would, she was a winner, we were survivors, like the geraniums, as long as we knew how to love, I knew we’d stay alive!

  We will survive oh-oh!

  Hairbrushes for microphones and badminton racquets for guitars.

  We sang Gloria Gaynor loudly together, and it felt like it might help.

  I said, ‘I wonder what would have happened to me if I hadn’t met you.’

  ‘And me,’ she said. ‘What would I have done if I hadn’t met you?’

  I propped her up with cushions.

  I tied her turban.

  I painted her nails turquoise.

  Grandpa Blue didn’t tell Bridget she was invincible.

  Like he’d told his wife.

  Grandpa Blue has given up too early, I thought.

  This time it will be different.

  Chapter 124

  You started collecting dead insects, Beth.

  You kept a dead cockroach in a matchbox.

  You lined dead flies up along the windowsill.

  It unnerved me.

  I remembered how adults never spoke about death when I was a child.

  I wondered if it would be helpful to do so.

  To try to make it normal, easy-breezy.

  ‘Poor flies,’ I said, anxiously.

  ‘Poor flies!’ you said, laughing and sweeping them off the windowsill with your hand.

  So where would one go from there?

  I couldn’t work it out.

  And what if I started crying in the middle?

  Or what if it scared you?

  Beth doesn’t want to talk about it, I told myself, I will take my lead from her.

  Did your mother want to talk about it, I wondered, or did she want to go on following the yellow-brick road?

  Every time I thought of bringing it up with her, I couldn’t.

  So I gave myself a deadline.

  An actual deadline, that is, a date before which to talk about being dead.

  ‘If you ever want to talk …’ I said.

  ‘What about?’ said your mother.

  ‘It begins with d,’ I said, feeling my teeth starting to tremble inside my mouth.

  ‘Dessert?’ she said, laughing.

  And I laughed too.

  Laughed hysterically with relief.

  That she didn’t want to talk about death.

  ‘The Golden Opulence Sundae costs around a thousand dollars,’ your mother said. ‘And when I get better, we will go to Serendipity 3 in New York and order one each.’

  ‘Yes we will!’ I said, laughing too hard.

  I pictured us flying on a private jet drinking champagne and then stuffing our faces with Golden Opulence Sundaes, with cream all over our face.

  Hurray, let’s talk about whipped cream instead of death!

  This is how adults deal with death.

  I had a vivid memory of the toffee sundaes they served at Smugglers Restaurant in Lyme Regis, with squeezy cream and sprinkly bits on top.

  And I remembered Bridget saying I wish it was then.

  And I wished wished wished that it was any time but now.

  Time, please will you bend, I prayed.

  Chapter 125

  Autumn came, and you turned three, and we went to Priego de Córdoba for the quince festival, and we made quince jam and quince paste and stored it in jars for the whole year, but I noticed we didn’t talk about the whole year any more.

  Your mother was finding it harder to walk to the Mezquita, or to the river to see the holm oak.

  ‘You go!’ she said. ‘Take Beth!’

  You liked to run everywhere, like a puppy, Beth.

  You liked to count the orange trees in the courtyard, putting stickers on the bark as you went. I watched you stickering the orange trees, skipping over the cobbles and I knew that you were my bigger desire.

  I’d give my life for you, I thought, as you walked between the pillars.

  And having that thought felt like the deepest happiness.

  I wondered if that was a morbid route to happiness, or the only one there was.

  I knew for certain then that, although I’d always wanted a bloodline, you could love a child just as well without one.

  A bloodline could be a bloodcircle too.

  You and your mother had curved your line around to fit me in.

  December came with stables and shepherds, and you cut out paper shapes and put them on the Christmas tree, and you took to wearing angel wings and a gold star sticker in the centre of your forehead.

  We watched two brown nuns put the clay Jesus into position with his clay mother and his clay not-father under the arch.

  I might have been a not-mother but I didn’t feel like it.

  You helped the nuns scatter the straw about on the stable floor.

  A priest walked by.

  I smiled at him.

  I always smile at priests these days.

  Just in case.

  One day he’ll come to La Convivencia with sunflowers, and I will fall into his arms and love him forever.

  I do believe that, Beth.

  Perhaps your father will come too.

  Jeronimo!

  Just like that!

  In the last appointment before Christmas, the Wizard of Onc wasn’t wizardy – her voice was softer and she held your mother’s hand. She said the disease was progressing significantly, and I thought that until that moment, progressing had been a good word. She said it was time to take a break.

  I think we all knew what taking a break meant.

  When we got back, you ran in circles around the courtyard, trying to fly, Beth. Then you sat down and burst into tears because you couldn’t. Something was stopping you, holding you back, keeping you down. Your mother gathered you up and held you against her bosoms. And I thought of Blue Mother. And I couldn’t hold back the tears. And nor could your mother. And soon all three of us were crying. Because taking a break didn’t mean what it used to mean. It used to mean a little holiday, or a drink, or an ice cream, or a walk by the river. No, nothing meant what it used to mean. It doesn’t when life starts turning into death. I don’t want to say any more. At the time we didn’t say much at all. We cried and we hugged.

  ‘This will do us good,’ I said.

  ‘It will,’ said your mother. ‘I’ve had enough of being brave.’

  You started running in circles again with your gold angel wings splayed out.

  You ran and you ran, and you shouted, ‘I can fly!’

  You were in Neverland, Beth, where we so wanted to go. We could hear the sound of the surf but we could no longer land.

  We clapped.

  ‘Hurray!’ we said.

  ‘Reality is so constricting,’ I said to your mother.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m slightly over it now!’

  ‘Sister Ana was always slightly over it,’ I said. ‘Was that why we loved being with her?’

  ‘It probably was,’ she said.

  ‘It was a bit like being in Neverland where the normal rules don’t apply,’ I said.

  ‘Can we live there now?’ she said. ‘Where impossible things are possible. Where facts don’t matter.’

  ‘Definitely,’ I said.

&nbs
p; ‘Can we not go to the hospital?’ said your mother. ‘I hate it.’

  And because facts didn’t matter, I was able to say, ‘Course we don’t need to go to the hospital. We’ll stay here together.’

  ‘Excellent,’ said your mother. ‘Let’s open some champagne! Because we have absolutely nothing to celebrate!’

  ‘Perfect,’ I said.

  ‘And can we light the tealights like Sister Ana used to?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Beth,’ I said. ‘You must be careful with the candle flames.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ said your mother. ‘Flames don’t burn here. Not any more.’

  ‘Oh, what a relief,’ I said. ‘But Beth, don’t touch them anyway.’

  We sat and drank champagne and the tealights flickered.

  We clinked our glasses and said, ‘Happy Christmas!’

  The wise kings came into town throwing sweets, and the new year came.

  We couldn’t stop it.

  Your favourite cat, Clavel, gave birth to kittens.

  You chose the white one with a black pirate patch over her eye, Beth.

  You called her Smee like the pirate in Peter Pan, except you couldn’t say it.

  We had a kitten called Mee.

  Happy New Year!

  Of course it would be, now we were living in a world where the Wizard would make a miracle-spell which would fall from the sky and sprinkle the courtyard with eternity.

  Chapter 126

  I hope the peace festival will happen forever.

  It seems to honour everything that is good about Córdoba’s history.

  All of our history.

  Being human.

  The peace festival makes a circle big enough for anyone – anyone – to join in.

  Where once they burnt heretics in Plaza de la Corredera, now we light candles and dance.

  For the festival in March 2008, I’d arranged to hold a concert at La Convivencia where Grandpa Blue’s Quartet for the End of Time would be played in the courtyard. Back in reality, where we sometimes had to go, I offered to cancel it or relocate it to keep things quiet for your mother, but she absolutely wouldn’t hear of this, and wanted it to go ahead.

  The four musicians would stay at La Convivencia.