Projection

by Priscila Uppal

  The Air Canada attendant flips through my passport.

  “Where’s your visa?”

  “I’ve already paid for the ticket.” Still smiling, I point to the paper, resume clenching and unclenching my toes.

  “No. Your traveller’s visa. Canadians need a visa to visit Brazil.”

  I might not yet be a world traveller, but I am responsible. This woman is confused. “I asked my travel agent. He said I didn’t need one. I don’t need one.”

  She shakes her head, sliding my documents back to me. “You can’t trust travel agents. Always check the customs website. You can’t travel to Brazil without a visa.”

  My smile drops, along with my courage. I am now a scared, ignorant girl. “But I’m Canadian.”

  “We don’t need visas for most countries, but Brazil got upset when Canada put a restriction on Brazilians travelling to Canada. Tit for tat thing. Every country has the right to set its own customs laws.” She shrugs.

  I make no motion to leave the counter. It finally dawns on me. “Does that mean I can’t go?”

  The attendant nods sympathetically. “You need to go to the Brazilian consulate and apply for a visa. Air Canada will transfer your ticket, no problem.”

  “I can’t go?” Even as I ask the question, I’m hopeless. Unexpectedly and quite uncontrollably, I start to cry, passport in hand in the bustling terminal. Not the first or the last person to do so, I realize, even as it’s happening, but I never thought that lost soul bawling her eyes out amid steel carts and luggage belts and gate signs would be me. What I want to say is, That stupid travel agent should be fired, but what I actually say rises from a long-buried pain in my chest: “I’m going to see my mother. She’s sick . . . I haven’t seen her in . . . years . . .”

  “It’s going to be okay,” the attendant assures, lightly caressing my shoulder as we walk over to the Air Canada ticket booth. “Normally it takes two weeks to get a visa, but if you’re visiting family and mention your mother is ill, you should have a visa by our next flight, exactly forty-eight hours from now.”

  “Forty-eight hours? But . . .” But I’m ready to go now. I want to confess: I might not be ready again in forty-eight hours. I’m a twenty-eight-year-old woman with a stuffed toy in her carry-on who reads and writes poetry for a living—not exactly the blueprint for a fearless explorer. I only have so much bravery, and I might have used it all up today. You have no idea what you’re preventing me from doing. You’re interfering with my story. I didn’t write a visa complication into the script.

  “Be patient at the consulate. They’ll give you your visa, but they’ll probably give you a hard time and make you wait until the very last possible minute. It’s not a friendly consulate. I hate going there. I’m Brazilian too.” She hands me an address: 55 Bloor Street West. At least it’s downtown, not far from where I live.

  I am still crying openly among those who are flying out today, sniffling all over the receiver when I talk to Chris from an airport pay phone, fiddling with my scarf as I explain, between sobs, that I’m coming home in another expensive cab ride, my two disappointed suitcases, one full and one empty, flung like deflated wishes back in the trunk.

  Take Two

  Pacing outside the Brazilian consulate the next morning before it opens, application in hand.

  The Air Canada attendant was right. The Brazilian consulate is a cold, unfriendly place with a stocky and dour woman in a matronly blue blazer working the window.

  “If you’re Brazilian, you should have a Brazilian passport,” she grunts.

  “I’m not Brazilian. I’m Canadian. My mother is Brazilian.”

  “If your mother is Brazilian, then you’re Brazilian.”

  The logic eludes me. I am told to come back tomorrow.

  The next day proceeds much like the first, me pacing outside the consulate in the morning before it opens, the same stocky and dour woman, this time in a matronly purple blazer, working the window. Sit and wait. Even through lunch hour when they close the wicket, I am told not to leave or I will lose my spot. What spot? I’m beginning to wonder if it’s worth it. If I can’t even manage to get myself a visa and onto a flight without a massive hassle, how will I navigate a foreign culture and language in one of the most dangerous countries in the world on top of whatever my mysterious runaway mother will throw at me? Maybe my missing visa is an omen, a sign? As a writer and literary scholar, my eyes and ears should be attuned to such blatant foreshadowing.

  “Excuse me, I won’t make my flight if I can’t get the visa by four o’clock.”

  “I know,” she snarls as she points for me to resume my post on the uncomfortable bench, periodically shooting me dirty looks until it’s five to four before calling my number out to a waiting room of one. I’ve already lost control of this story, I admit to myself as I tear out of the building and rush home to phone another taxi.

  The taxi, the suitcases, the hugs and kisses, the airport, all déjà vu, except that my Air Canada attendant is on the lookout for me in the crowd and waves me to the front of the line.

  “You must be anxious to see your mother,” she whispers.

  “I am.” Though this time, I don’t feel giddy or brave, only scared.

  “I hope she’ll be well soon.”

  “Me too,” I offer, though I don’t know what I wish as I step back from the counter admiring my travel visa like it’s a certificate of achievement.

  On the flight, I am seated beside a woman named Dalva with gorgeous olive skin and friendly eyes. She introduces herself, telling me her name means morning star. She points to my phrasebook.

  “First time to Brazil?”

  “Yes.”

  “You look Brazilian. Are you visiting family?”

  “Sort of.”

  I note that this beautiful Dalva is acting motherly toward me. Do I look like a need a mother? I’m not sure that’s a look I should be going for.

  “You’ll be fine. Just relax. You’re from Ottawa, aren’t you?”

  “How did you know? My accent?”

  “I work at the Brazilian consulate. Not at the booth, but in the office. I saw you today. I saw your application. I knew your mother and father. It’s a coincidence that we’re on this flight together, but I know your story. It’s a sad story. You haven’t seen your mother for some time.”

  I’m not as shocked by her words as I imagine I should be. Although I’m not altogether convinced the designation of “coincidence” is accurate, I don’t feel threatened by this woman with wavy black shoulder-length hair in a flowery pantsuit eating slices of green apple beside me. In fact, she is oddly comforting. Plus, the fact that she has some knowledge of my parents matches my original vision of my trip as epic voyage. Every epic hero or heroine is watched over by sympathetic gods who send wise advisors down to earth for aid. Dalva strikes me as one of these special characters. Of course she is disguised in government garb: my father was a successful civil servant, my mother the daughter of a high-ranked diplomat. The tragic tale of my father’s accident and my mother’s subsequent flight to Brazil circulated among government office water coolers in Ottawa, why not Toronto?

  The plane conspicuously empty, I lower the back of my chair. “Twenty years.”

  “Now I feel old,” she laughs, pressing her lever to follow suit.

  The pilot warns us of turbulence, which lasts for eight hours of the nine-hour flight (not ideal for a nervous traveller who suffers from motion sickness—another sign from the gods?) and delays the serving of dinner until well after midnight. Dalva closes her eyes and sleeps, never moving a muscle. I cannot join her. Nor can I watch the movies—it’s funny, now that I am much more travelled, I still can’t enjoy movies on an airplane; the size of the screen offends me—not that I want to, as they are showing Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and The Hurricane. Why a children’s movie after midnight? I wonder. When I scan the seats, there are no children on this flight. Just some businessmen, Dalva, and me.

  Befor
e we land, Dalva asks over a tray of tasteless scrambled eggs, “What are you hoping for with your mother? Forgiveness, reunion, a new start?”

  She doesn’t apologize for her bluntness or curiosity. I like this Dalva that I will never see again, who fits nicely into the role I have assigned her in my narrative. She exudes good will. I know I’m projecting, but I suddenly wish I could leave the plane and go off with her rather than the woman from the website who when I phoned from the airport swore retribution to those who wouldn’t let me on that original Toronto–São Paulo flight. Without a visa I would be detained in São Paulo, I told her, to calm her down. Either that or jailed. I was lucky the attendant refused to issue me a boarding pass. But she was inconsolable. Although I was somewhat alarmed by the force of her anger, at least it proved she’s as invested in this reunion as I am.

  “No. Not forgiveness. I was raised Catholic, but I’m an atheist. I don’t understand their obsession with forgiveness. I don’t care about forgiveness. I don’t believe in it.”

  “Once a Catholic, always a Catholic,” Dalva laughs, poking her orange juice open with the plastic fork. I’ve heard it before. I’ve even said it before. But I don’t mean it. And now I’m visiting one of the most Catholic countries on the planet, a people who built one of the world’s largest statues of Christ to watch over the country day and night. “What do you care about then?”

  “I want to fill in the blanks of the story, you know?”

  “Your mother’s not going to like being a character. I can tell you that straight off.”

  I’m about to interrupt, but she gives me a friendly wave to stay my protest and piles my breakfast containers inside her own.

  “I understand you. You have a book with half the pages ripped out and you think you’re going to find those pages and place them back in the spine, shut the cover, and start another book. You’re a writer, I know. But when you find those pages, you’re going to discover you didn’t have the pages in the right order to begin with and you’re going to spend a lot of time rearranging things and in the meantime the book is going to get written in ways you can’t even imagine.”

  As we fold our trays and prepare our seats for landing, the blinding light of sunrise forces me to turn away. Although I can no longer see her, I feel her kind eyes upon me, like a silent blessing. “Who are you?”

  “Dalva. Morning star. I’m the woman who sat beside you on the plane, wishing you good luck.”

  Flashback

  “Angel, my angel, your voice is music to my ears, most amazing earthly choir, oh my beautiful lady, beautiful girl, my angel, intelligent, amazing, wondrous angel, just to hear your voice sent me, your mother, into ecstasies, such happiness to hear you, I cannot tell you, such happiness, I am overjoyed, oh my angel of course you are welcome to join me in Brazil, we will go to museums, and art exhibits, and music nights, and you must come with no luggage, no clothes, oh my angel, what a voice you have, I have saved your voice on the machine and I listen to it over and over, my angel you will bring no clothes, none, we will buy you a new wardrobe, a new Brazilian wardrobe, in bright beautiful colours, my wondrous angel, we have the best shopping malls in the world in Brazil, the best designer clothes, the best shoes and purses and jewellery, I will buy you all new things, me, your mother, we will be together again and eat ice cream and shop and go to the theatre and the movies . . .”

  “Okay.”

  That’s all I managed to say our first telephone conversation. I’d left her a message, October 3, 2002, two weeks after discovering her website. This is your daughter, Priscila. Did I need to say that? My name? My relation? I don’t know. This is the rest of the message, word for word, as I wrote myself a little script to avoid the phone equivalent of stage fright: I found you on the internet by accident. I’ve seen your resumé and the pictures of me and Amerjit. (I used my brother’s old name here—he legally changed his name to Jit—because I didn’t want to confuse her above and beyond the shock of hearing from me. My brother, as first-born male, received an Indian name, and I received a Portuguese one. Priscila in Portuguese has one L.) I’ve also seen on your resumé that you retired because you were sick and I want to know if you are still unwell. I’m living in Toronto and my number is ____. Goodbye. Not Oscar-worthy writing, I know, but practical, concise, straightforward English. Confronted with the reality that no matter how many times I might have imagined conversations between us, invented monologues or dialogues between our two selves, I really didn’t know a single thing about her or her life in Brazil, I didn’t know what other information to offer. I fretted over whether or not to admit my discovery was an accident, and decided I wanted to start on a truthful foot.

  A week later, she called back. She’d been working in São Paulo. That’s what she said. Who was I to disbelieve her? This woman calling me angel over and over again in such a loud, passionate, saccharine voice? This woman who would later write to me in faulty grammar in an email, in anticipation of my arrival, Your voice is like music of angels. And it reminds me the scent of roses and lilies of the valley.

  Cut Back to Airport

  I’ve landed in Brazil, the land of my mother’s birth, a place I have only seen on world maps and in movies—a place I only vaguely associate as relevant to my life, like a kindergarten teacher whose name I can’t recall or a vacation trinket given to me by a co-worker—and am immediately accosted by security guards in hospital masks handing out forms due to new precautions in light of the global SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) epidemic, a virus with flu-like symptoms that the World Health Organization put on Code Orange Alert and which has already resulted in several deaths in China (where it is believed to have originated), France, and in Canada in Toronto where hospitals are under quarantine in an attempt to contain the outbreak. Flights from Toronto require extra forms. My mother warned me: You’ll be tired from your flight, but try to look healthy. Don’t sneeze, or you might be questioned. I shuffle forward in a haze, a healthy haze, but a haze nonetheless, as I extract my luggage from the turnstile.

  Sliding doors. Slap of immediate heat. Signs. Buses. Palm trees. Pockets of people. I am breathing shallowly, scanning the crowd for a face I am not accustomed to look for—only in the sludge of dreams where my mother surfaces now and then like a porpoise in dark waters. It doesn’t take long to identify her though, as she is wearing a bright orange blouse and a 70s orange-and-yellow square-pattern skirt, a long strand of costume jewellery and matching thin hairband (she still wears hairbands, I note), and is waving wildly at me, like a teenage girl at a pop concert, jumping a little on her toes. I step forward. Oh God, there is no turning back.

  My mother recognizes me. At least I think she does. We each had the benefit of photographs—me of her website, and her of a few photographs I sent in anticipation of my arrival—but photographs are not live people and the fact that she spots me right off the bat comforts me somewhat, evidence that even if she abandoned us as children, she didn’t erase our features from her psyche, that some connection remains. When I have pulled my bags past the barriers and present myself in front of her—I am much taller than she is, a good six inches in my heels; I didn’t know that—she says warmly, “Priscila,” then kisses me European style on both cheeks, and in booming accented English: Did they treat you all right? You are so beautiful. . . . Did they treat you well at the consulate? You are so beautiful. She kisses me again—I smell the wax of her lipstick, a scent that triggers a flash of time spent at her vanity—then a large hug. I am aware that this woman is touching me, touching me rather intimately for a perfect stranger, and that she likely expects reciprocal motions, but I’m ironically frozen by the heat of the foreign climate and the novelty of the exchange. It’s as if I am watching my mother through a camera lens—framing her at a safe distance, mesmerized by her large red lips and creased white forehead and bloated cheeks. I simply nod in response to her questions, having also lost, it seems, the ability to speak.

  I follow her the way I would a s
ecurity guard directing me to the exit, obediently and a couple of paces behind. This doesn’t seem to bother my mother, who eagerly leads us out in her orange attire (did she wear such bright clothes so I wouldn’t lose her in a crowd?), assuming control of one of the luggage bags, making a beeline for the street exit. As we weave through the people, I think of all the times over the years I’ve felt my heart race—speed up and then drop to a dull throb—when I’ve caught a glimpse of a woman purchasing a handbag in a clothing store, or sitting on a city-park bench, or pacing outside my campus office door, who, somewhere deep down in the recesses of my childhood, reminds me mournfully of my mother—my pulse literally crying out for powerful, ineffable motherly love. But here, my elusive runaway mother actually in front of me, her hips cutting side to side as she ploughs us through passengers and greeters, my heart is virtually still. Funny how it doesn’t recognize her—the similarity between my memories of my mother, thousands of conscious and unconscious invocations over time, and the real living person, is lost on the heart’s unscientific logic. And yet, there are hundreds of women with dark hair, the scent of waxy lipstick, the hint of a hairband, going about their day-to-day business, eating sandwiches and salads, shopping for books or toothpaste or a silk scarf, with a piece of my heart clinging to their sleeves.