Projection

by Priscila Uppal

  Then it occurs to me: maybe she knows I’m writing about her. Why didn’t I think of this before? My notebook is as ubiquitous as my little black purse (I’ve even started to take notes while she is talking because she doesn’t register my actions, and it’s perfectly acceptable for reviewers to be fiddling with pen and paper at exhibitions). Back in the safety of the São Paolo suite, bedroom door closed, I transfer the notes as quickly as possible to my laptop before falling asleep. But maybe she knows it’s not all journal writing and lists of Brazilian artists, but a full character sketch and psychological case study, detailed scenes and dialogue for an inevitable memoir, and she wants to ensure she is represented as an extraordinary woman who was victimized and is now victorious. The Wrongly Accused.

  But I see her more as a Stella Dallas—a complicated figure, both tragic and despicable, a woman worthy of sympathy and contempt. If you’ve never seen the film, rent it. You won’t be disappointed. You won’t believe when the movie was made. At the time of the film’s release in 1937, the role of Stella Dallas was certainly one of the most ambiguous female roles available for an actress at the time, and Barbara Stanwyck plays her with flair and unapologetic determination and desire. The young Stella Martin, born into a family of mill hands, fills her romantic head with love lyrics from India and high-society newspaper articles. The result is an infatuation with a rich man whose father killed himself, Stephen Dallas. One day they meet and he takes her to the movies, where Stella longingly admits she wants to be like the people in the movies. You know, doing everything well-bred and refined. When Stephen marries her, Stella thinks she’s been granted her grandest wish, but all is accoutrement—unfortunately, Stella’s still a lower-class mill hand’s daughter with garish tastes and little elegance, a woman more interested in fancy parties and endless martinis and fur coats than in her newborn daughter. Eventually, Stephen gives up on changing her shallow ways and moves out of the house and to another city, renewing a love affair with an old childhood sweetheart who is now a widow. The two want to adopt Stephen and Stella’s daughter, Laurel, but Stella vehemently refuses. By today’s North American standards of motherhood, and our inherent distaste for anything that reeks of class-consciousness, perhaps someone like my mother would side with Stella and claim Stella was a feminist, a woman refusing to accept the standard female roles offered to her. However, I think that Stella’s tragedy is related to an inability to love unselfishly. It’s only when she realizes that her daughter’s future might be seriously hampered and even harmed by her infamous reputation and foolish behaviour that she’s spurred to take painful action. Stella disowns Laurel for her own good. Stella’s ultimate triumph occurs at the end of the movie as she stands defiantly behind a gate in the rain, accosted by a police officer, watching her daughter marry her own rich prince, Richard Grosvenor III, in the living room of her ex-husband’s home. Stella walks away from the festive scene, fierce satisfaction visible in her eyes; her mission complete, all her previous mistakes as a mother erased by one unselfish decision.

  Over the years, there have been many people, especially women with children of their own, who have intermittently accepted me into their lives as a surrogate daughter, who have said of my mother what two women on the train say about Stella Dallas: Some women don’t deserve to have children. And it would be easy, as my mother hurries about the gallery waving her arms in the air, smiling desperately, announcing, I want to be doing marvellous things all the time. Marvellous things like movies, plays, exhibitions, and when they take my journalist card I feel marvellous, to chastise and ridicule her (or write her off as mentally ill) as women chastised and ridiculed Stella Dallas for wanting so much for herself at the expense of her child. But who doesn’t want to feel marvellous? I do. Stella does. Some people are just not capable of seeing how their desires affect those around them.

  And although some women have welcomed me into their lives—as a teenager, usually because one of their sons or daughters was a close friend, then later on as a responsible and promising young artist and academic—offering “motherly” advice and affection, meals and sometimes even board, I have always known, deep down, the designation of “honorary” daughter was a deliberate, albeit well-meaning, illusion. Most of these women were happy to include me in their roster of dinners and Sunday afternoons and family movie nights because I was grateful and rarely any trouble whatsoever, and because it also made them feel good about themselves, like charity work, to create some sense of familial comfort for my tumultuous life. But if push came to shove, if my grades dropped and I became a drug addict, or if I hooked up with some meathead boyfriend, or if I got sick and needed help paying my bills, I knew without a doubt that the telephone would stop ringing, the invitations to dinner would stop arriving, not to mention that no matter how much free work I performed for some of these surrogate parents I would never receive an allowance or inheritance.

  There was one woman whose name is so painful to my lips that I cannot utter it, even here. After moving out of my father’s home at fifteen, I rented a room from her and so lived with her and her ten-year-old daughter, a child with tons of affection and energy who leapt into my arms whenever I walked through the door. “We’ve fallen in love with you,” this woman declared, and then one day she and her fiancé, a reserved well-to-do medical doctor with a passion for jazz, took me out for brunch and proposed that when I went off to university I could return for vacations and visits like other students back home to their families. It was strange that while I was contemplating the ramifications of this arrangement—how much hurt this would cause my father, how wonderful to gain a spritely little sister—I was still paying rent, but a lease is a lease, right? And then everything changed. First, a friend of her fiancé’s—a twenty-something musician—asked me out. A week later, I arrived home smelling of beer after a long-weekend camping trip with friends. All at once, she claimed I was a bad influence on her daughter, she was worried I’d come home one day and tell her I was pregnant, and so she thought it best if I found somewhere else to live. Adopted child to abandoned child. Just like that. I loved her more than I could remember ever loving my own mother. I never heard from her again. And only once did her daughter seek me out—without her mother’s knowledge, I’m sure—when I was working the counter at the drugstore; she literally ran into my arms and wrapped her legs about my waist as she used to do, planting kisses all over my cheeks. When she bolted out the exit—perhaps her mother was shopping in the mall or waiting in the car—her brown wavy hair bouncing through the air, I felt a longing so painful I thought I had been shot in the chest.

  There is a big difference between a real child and a pretend child. A pretend child can never be a burden. Never be complicated. Never disappoint. I’ve learned to accept each and every gift from a surrogate mother as just that, a gift, a kindness you can never count on again. And I have valued every delicious meal and night out, every expression of interest in my schooling or my books, every birthday gift, every warm hug I have ever received. Eventually, of course, all these women become consumed with the lives of their real sons and daughters. But I do wonder if some ever think about me, if at Christmas Eve or Easter dinner while passing the mashed potatoes or cranberry sauce they ever ask, Do you remember Priscila? When Priscila used to join us? What a story! She didn’t have anywhere else to go. She became an author, you know. We always knew she would land on her feet. Now when anyone says “You are like a daughter to me,” I can’t help but die a little inside.

  I lived with my biological mother until the age of eight. Since that time, I have now lived with her a grand total of five days. Five days! One hundred and twenty hours! Maybe seventy awake. Do I have a right to judge her after only this? Consider her guilty or wrongly accused—and of what charge exactly? Does anyone “deserve” to have children? I have known women who are natural caregivers and nurturers born to raise children, and those who have not a single affectionate bone in their bodies—biology gave each equal opportunity. What did
this woman think motherhood would entail? I have no idea. Except that she must have hoped it would be “marvellous.” For some lucky mothers, I’m sure it is. Did her children disappoint her? Does she think she disappointed them? Or does she put the onus for everything on a freak accident that ruptured her perfect marriage to the man of her dreams who once read her Indian love lyrics?

  If it were up to me, I’d write nothing, she tells me. I’d just be going out and enjoying what other people create. I go to these places early so I can talk to people. It’s the people I am most interested in.

  While I know this statement from a woman who has not asked her estranged daughter more than two or three questions about her own life in five days of conversations seems baffling, disingenuous, even irritating, I am acutely aware that she adamantly believes what she says. And the truth is, I’ve met this type of person before—one who claims to care deeply about the underprivileged, the oppressed, but who shows little genuine interest in anyone but themselves and never goes out of the way to help a suffering human being. My mother cares more passionately about the landscape painting in front of us than she does about me. Or about the landscape. And she thinks that means she cares about people. That’s the truth. Plain and simple. I just want to find out why.

  I love myself. I really love myself. I do only what I want, she announces as we cross into another room. When I came from Canada things were very difficult for me. I had to start over professionally.

  And we had to start over emotionally, I want to say. We are now a family defined by so many pains we don’t know which to choose for our coat of arms.

  I had an amazing childhood, she gushes, stretching her arms as wide as the room. I was happy all the time.

  I add my own voice-over: We were sad all the time. Angry all the time. Happy only when we could forget. When we were reading books, or playing sports, or watching movies . . .

  My father only allowed me to read the New Testament until I was an adult, she continues. I was his favourite. My father begged my mother to visit me in Canada. I did not want her to see how I was living. It was embarrassing.

  Maybe strike up some music here: But you didn’t care how your children were living.

  I live, I die, makes no difference to me. But I do not want to be in the hospital or in a wheelchair. This I could not stand at all.

  Because you’ve seen it. And yet, where is your empathy for those of us who have lived with it longer than you and for the man who has had to endure his wheelchair for the sake of his children for this long and more . . .

  Your father hates Jesus on the cross, likes Jesus resurrected much better. Victorious, not a victim.

  Zoom in above my father’s mechanical bed. My father has only crosses in the house. . . .

  Voice-over rebuttals kept to myself, my stomach cramps again, this form of silence toxic, corroding from the inside. I’m starting to panic and I think it has less to do with meeting my mother, as maddening as she is, than with the fact that I’ve put far too many important things into the hands of someone I do not trust. It is hard to live with someone twenty-four hours a day you do not trust, especially someone you are dependent on to negotiate a foreign country for you. And yet, my mother believes she is being generous with her time, her emotions, her monologues, and her overbearing love: a philanthropist of the heart. The problem is I’m not a charity. I wish women who speak of love would understand that.

  I would like to rest a bit at the hotel. This pleases her. Because my stomach is still bothering me, she informs me she will leave me there tonight while she works on her articles at the internet café in the shopping mall. I can sleep.

  Annoyingly, I am hurt. A break from the relentlessness of my mother’s orbit would be nice, but I don’t want to be stuck in the hotel from afternoon until morning. Besides, she has proudly proclaimed several times that she has taken a hiatus from working during my visit because she wants us to spend as much time together and see as much of Brazil as possible. Has she grown bored? I’m offended—I thought I was good company, desirable company; most people think so, why not my mother?—then discard this train of thought as it matches too closely my mother’s own. And if she’s really so worried about my stomach, wouldn’t she want to watch over me, offer me hot compresses and ginger ale? I know she hasn’t acted like a mother for some time, but this would be more in line with what real mothers and daughters do. Wouldn’t she want the opportunity for such a screen test?

  I offer to accompany her later to the shopping mall, after a short nap. She can work and I can buy some souvenirs. Oh no, she replies, tapping the car seat definitively. You will stay at the hotel. I will go out and work. You will stay in bed.

  Once back at the hotel, the fight begins.

  My mother paces the small living room like a caged animal. You are never happy. You are always upset. I do not understand why you are acting like this all the time when I have done nothing but please you and be wonderful to you.

  Excuse me? My forehead is moist with anger. I’m trying not to lose it now.

  I have done everything for you and you are not happy. This is very hurtful. Very hurtful.

  I’m hurting you? How?

  Your stomach is bothering you. You want to come back to the hotel. You have something every day that bothers you. You are far too sensitive.

  I can’t believe my ears. I look about the living room, with its orange-brown décor, fold-out couch, my underwear drying on the backs of two chairs, then back to my mother’s face, her eyes electric and whirling like projector reels, and I can’t stand it any longer. If she’s going to accuse me, I’m going to countersue. I’m far too sensitive?

  Yes.

  I’m far too sensitive?

  Yes.

  YOU are so full of yourself, I spit, advancing toward her. You spend the whole day talking about yourself, never once stopping to ask me anything or to let me speak. You talk, talk, talk, all day, and you never listen.

  I ask you all kinds of things today and you are still in a bad mood.

  You don’t ask all kinds of things, and when you do you give me no time to answer, you ignore my answer, or you talk over it. And to say I am always in a bad mood—I have told you often how grateful I’ve been to you on this trip, how wonderful the museums and exhibits are. But if you expect me to just listen to you all day long about yourself and act like everything on this trip is a marvellous dream, mother and daughter side by side as if we’ve never been separated in our lives, you are completely unrealistic.

  Frizzy hair wild, my mother stops her pacing and juts out her chest as if she’s conscious of taking up as much space as possible. Then, Priscila, she says, smiling condescendingly, if I felt this way about someone, I would leave.

  Like a tranquilizer dart, the thought takes hold with a vengeance. The room starts spinning, my mother’s smile widening in slow motion, my legs buckling underneath me. I lean against the couch. I can’t believe that I have been so trusting that I have not printed out a schedule of return flights to Toronto in case something like this happened. My thoughts are muddy but logical: I will phone Chris, order a cab to a Holiday Inn, get the hell out of here on the first available flight, rescheduling fees be damned. But, as with any breakup, I want to be clear on who is leaving whom. I come here after twenty years to see my mother who abandoned us and you are telling me to leave?

  My mother’s smile does not waver—when did she learn to use smiles as weapons? If your purpose here is to be mean to me, then yes. I did not abandon you. I left your father. There is no need to bring up the past. It does nothing. I live only in the present, Priscila. I do not care for the past. My mother, utterly calm as she says this, slaps her hands dismissively. There is no ambiguity in her decisions, in her philosophies, or in her ways of handling unpleasant situations. If I am not prepared to submit to her reality, I am not welcome. She won’t even accord me the leap of faith or poetic licence she grants without a second thought to a filmmaker’s universe, or a poet’s lines, or splotc
hes of paint thrown upon a canvas.

  I grip the arm of the couch, force my words forward: I believe in the present, but also in the past and the future. You can’t control time.

  And in a moment the slow motion ceases, her calm speeds into anger like a thunderclap, her hands waving about manically. Her face is white. She powders it, but it is whiter than it should be for someone of her natural complexion. It looks like it’s cracking, like bad cement. You have no right to judge me. You will not believe me no matter what I say, so what’s the point? You want to throw garbage at me. I live a fine life. Mother and father do not live for the child. Mother and father do not exist. I live for myself. I have my freedom. People like me. If you don’t, that’s fine. You don’t have to come here and spend any time with me at all. I will not let you be mean to me.

  I am being mean to you because I have a stomach problem?

  Instead of answering, she shrugs. I don’t have to understand her logic, I just have to accept it.

  I am being mean because I sometimes don’t agree with all of your many, many opinions, or think that everything unpleasant in life is worth escaping from? Why do you think I came here?

  She scurries into the adjoining kitchen and from behind the protection of the counter stares back at me as if she is pondering a new appliance. I don’t know. I have a fine life here. I escape to the movies, I enjoy myself.

  I really can’t stand it. You think you live a better life than my father?