by K. E. Silva
I don’t know exactly which part of me never wrote back to Susan. But it was a part of me that, like my mother when I was just a child, crawled into her bed after work every day and stayed there for years.
Some things you don’t get over for a long time: You can say goodbye, fly thousands of miles, pass month after month, all without really moving forward.
The things that make you stick in time to this spot or that can take years. Or they can happen in an instant.
I don’t consciously think much about the day my Uncle Martin found Susan and me making love on the cliffs at Godwyn, about the bulge in his pants and the hatred in his voice stopping me cold in my tracks, gasping for air, searching shaky ground for some semblance of cover.
I don’t think much about the letters I received, like clockwork, every week from Susan after we left Baobique, asking me how on God’s green earth I could hide from her. Yet I pictured her asking me those questions as I read each and every one of the letters, her surgeon’s hands grasping the air in front of her, trying to stitch our severed pieces back together—the only constant at the end of that grasp, the emptiness of a fist closing in on itself.
It was that last letter that got me. Startled me into panic. When Susan said she’d come to the States, I didn’t know what to do. No one had ever just handed themselves to me that way before.
And I wasn’t ready. It was as if I’d been nodding off at the top of the stairs and my mother had risen, washed her face in the porcelain sink next to her bed, opened the door to the master bedroom, and gleefully asked me what I wanted for dinner.
Susan’s letter came to me like that, an offer I was simply not prepared to accept.
* * *
Standing outside Godwyn’s shelter, like Granny’s big copper to catch the rain, I dreaded going in to my mother, felt as if I was leaving the storm just to enter its eye.
Inside the house, Fatima had finished the chicken and rice, grated enough soursop into juice to fill two pitchers: one for the fridge, one for the freezer. She wrapped up her things in a crinkly plastic bag and started down the drive before waving goodbye—maybe so I couldn’t find something else for her to do before she went. Like me, she didn’t seem to mind the rain; took her sandals in her hand.
That left just me, my sleeping mother, and Uncle George and Grampy come in from the weather. The four of us, a cacophony in my head I wished would hush.
Shhhhhhhh. The rain agreed.
Something to do would help. I still had Cynthia’s hearing to try as soon as I returned to California; the continuance was only good until then. So I searched around for a nubby pencil, a couple sheets of loose paper, and worked on my opening statement—to soften the head of the hammer the new appellate decision just placed in my client’s hand:
It is not easy to live right. It is not easy to be a mother. Like most of us, Cynthia was not given a blueprint with which to raise her daughter. She does not have an agenda. She does, however, have a biological and, at this point in time, a legal right to Sadie that Linda does not.
And while life is not usually as simple as that, this case is.
Would that it wasn’t, though. Would that I could have argued Linda’s side instead of Cynthia’s.
Family. There are many things that symbolize it. But let’s take just one. Home.
Their house having signified home for Linda, Cynthia, and Sadie for the past four years. 5050 Great Highway, San Francisco. Their very own house. Bought with their very own savings. Painted, mowed, cleaned, repaired with their very own hands. Kept dry with a $50 sump pump, two garden hoses, a screwdriver, and four-hour checks, ’round the clock, to keep the rainwater from rising to the top of the crawl space under Sadie’s room and coming inside. Their house. Home to two grown women, one small child, and one slightly overweight corgi, all of whom felt safe inside since their first night of arrival, in the cold of February with both heaters broken and a fireplace unsafe to use. Family. With a backyard brown from the sun nine months out of twelve, except for the bright green path directly above the leaky sewage pipe, upon which grows the healthiest grass in the neighborhood. Home. At the edge of Golden Gate Park and above what was once the shifting water of the Pacific. Land reclaimed.
Up until three weeks ago, Linda was, legally, Sadie’s second mother. And she did what mothers do: She put a roof over her daughter’s head; she put food in her daughter’s stomach; she kept her warm and dry in winter. Today, Linda continues to do what family does for family. Fight.
This one, though, is a losing battle. The courts have spoken.
Soon, I would likely win my first real case. And I wished I wouldn’t.
Like it or not, I had a responsibility to my client. Just as, like it or not, I had a responsibility to my mom. But those mantles others saw on me, of daughter and attorney, I did not wear comfortably. All this speaking for others had me losing my own voice.
CHAPTER 18
So it is true. You do exist.
Susan’s voice, crisp and direct, called me back. And instantly I was in Baobique again. My heart raced.
She continued, linen skirt in bold batik, walking firmly as her words, I’d heard the U.S. Postal Service hadn’t disbanded. The only other possibility I could think of for so many unanswered letters was that you’d passed on. Like your uncle. Or maybe you were a ghost all along, a figment of my overactive imagination.
I let her swing away, held still for all she had. I deserved it. Didn’t answer. I waited with my eyes on her espadrilles.
She’d cut her hair short against the heat; black wirerimmed glasses framed her green eyes.
But I couldn’t look her in the face, for fear she’d see through to something I wasn’t ready to show.
And she, not vindictive, changed the subject for me all on her own. Softened, I hear your mummy is not well. I’ve come to check on her.
I rose from my paper at the dining room table—let lie my future argument, etched thick in lead, put down my mother’s pencil, and brought Susan to her room. Thank you, was all I could say.
In her bedroom, my mom was as I’d left her the night before, naked under the cotton sheet, so flat and motionless she could have been dead. But wasn’t. I could see her chest rising, falling, rising, falling, to some slow internal clock.
Susan took her side, moved mechanically, unencumbered by the years that this image took me back, seeing my mom in bed again while the world swirled in chaos outside cedar planks, nearly rotted through.
I stuck close to the perimeter of the bedroom, only there to answer questions when asked.
Has she ever been like this before?
I stared blank at the bed, then right to closed shutters.
Susan’s were not the first letters to which I’d withheld a reply. Once or twice a semester in college, my mom would write me. Her scrawl, legible to only the two of us—lines and lines I never read. I would take her letters from my mailbox in the student union, hide them deep under the books in my backpack, then pile them up at the back of my sock drawer as soon as I returned to my dorm.
How could I tell Susan, Yes, she slept through my entire childhood. Can’t you see the scars? I couldn’t. And that’s not what she meant anyway. So I told Dr. Hill the truth: Yes. For some years, when I was young, she had long spells like this. Hoped she could help.
We are not as quick to medicate for a major depression in Baobique as they are in the States. Supplies are expensive. So I think we should wait a bit and see if she comes out of it on her own.
Voicing statements that sent me crashing, without even a hint of apology for what she’d just said about my mother, Susan moved to the shutter, turned its creaky wooden handle counterclockwise, and threw it open.
Defensive at her nonchalance, I pushed back, My mother’s not that depressed.
Susan looked at me like I was a complete idiot, left the bedroom. Me, standing in the middle of it, staring at my mother’s flaccid face.
Sharp and too-loud behind thinning walls, the telep
hone rang analog from the dining room bureau and scared me from my spot.
I hated talking to people there, but Susan was a guest, so I was the only one to answer. Unfortunately, Fatima’d remembered to remove the receiver’s lock.
I picked up to my uncle, CarCom to CarCom. Jean, this is Martin. Granny is ill. Is Susan at Godwyn? I just spoke with Leonard and he said she went to check on Sophie. His voice breathy with alarm.
Oh my God. What’s wrong with Granny?
Where’s Susan?! he yelled, but not at me. A boy, Uncle Martin teetered toward tears.
From across the bureau, Susan had heard, heeded my tone, took the receiver from my outstretched hand. She listened to my screaming uncle, unruffled.
* * *
It took us some time to move my mom to the backseat of Susan’s Subaru. She used smelling salts to wake her. We dressed her in practical clothes: sweat pants and rubber gardening boots.
Sometimes it took a whip, sometimes a carrot, to keep my mom moving. But for Granny it took the strength to hold that whip, that carrot, out in front of my mom. Trouble followed when she lost her grip.
Gain title! Gain title! That’s all my mom was ever thinking about. Her world manageable, maybe, only one thought at a time. Everything else, just too much.
But things were changing by the minute. Her eyes mostly closed, right then it was up to me to see it all; adjust accordingly.
Ever since I’d known Granny, all she’d ever done was sit on that porch of hers, tell us all what to do. Up until that morning, with Mr. Hill and his threats about Uncle George.
Susan pulled us up to Granny’s wrought iron gate, cut the engine, and, before I had time to even turn to the backseat, was halfway inside Tours’ cement walls, sea blast chipping away. Susan with Granny, left me with my mom. I went to her grudgingly, like I’d pulled the short end of the stick for that particular event; unbuckled her; patted tiny slaps on her cheeks to bring her to.
Charles will be here by tomorrow morning. Uncle Martin, not two inches from Susan’s heels, as my mom and I approached.
Through Granny’s bedroom door, opening onto her front porch, I could see her lying there. Motionless as my mother would have liked to be, if I wasn’t underneath her left armpit, dragging her into the second bedroom.
Before laying her down, I pulled off her rubber boots. After, covered her, clothed in soft cotton. Her tight curls flat with sweat against her forehead.
That morning, a sea change, everyone lying down by afternoon.
It seemed, sometimes, the way they carried on, at each other’s throats at every second, there was no love lost between my mom and Granny.
I knew my mom felt closer to Auntie Lillian, all the way in England, than she did to Granny, just across the hall. Auntie Lil took my mom in some, during second form, after Granny’d given up on enforcing her futile One-Mile walks and started regarding my mom more and more with disgust and dismissal.
Jean, Susan broke my reverie, I’m going back to the hospital. I have rounds to do. You should stay near your granny, she is not well at all.
Will she be all right? I whispered. Some things should not be voiced so loudly.
I don’t think so, Jean. She’s had a heart attack. And she’s very weak, Susan said softly, with a sad smile. Despite her iron fist, your grandmother is ninety-five years old. She cannot hold on to you all forever.
Should we take her to the hospital?
It’s up to you all. Martin thinks she wouldn’t want to go. And there’s not so much more we could do there for her. We’re already over-capacity.
I started to panic. But we should do something!
You are doing something. You came here to be with her. You cannot stop time itself, J.
Uncle Martin was outside on his cell phone talking, I think, to Uncle Charles.
My breath was hard, like the weight I was carrying had just doubled.
Susan assured me before she left that she’d be back directly after rounds at Grampy’s hospital, then too full for Granny, and left me alone with my family.
The wind outside strong, strong.
* * *
I moved from my mother’s side to my grandmother’s, pulled in a lawn chair from her front porch, placed it on the urinestained carpet beside her bed, the same bed from which my mom and Auntie Clara last year failed to lift Uncle George in time for the toilet late one night—leaving his mark.
Granny lay there, weak, in a bed steeped in death, looking at the ceiling—the only thing moving, her eyelids for the blink—perhaps waiting for Grampy to come get her in his old black motorcar, drive her away to a new home yet again.
Uncle Martin, frantic on his cell phone, prepared to leave in his Four-Runner, pointed directly to me as if he was singling me out to make a 911 call, told me, Jean, stay with Granny today. I’ll be back this evening. Zoomed off through Granny’s imaginary boundary.
Auntie Clara in her own house, out back; Valerie in the kitchen; my mom across the hall in an altered state; it was just me and Granny.
Nothing to do but sit. I stared through wrought iron, past standing strands of Australian rebar, to the sea and its low horizon with the day’s stormy clouds. Everything swirled: the trees, the mountains, the sea. Looking out, a tiny piece of me was glad I wasn’t flying in right then and was already there with my two feet on that slippery ground. At least I didn’t have as far to fall; the worst that could happen, a few bruises here and there.
But it was too hard to sit still. And Granny wouldn’t want respectable visitors to see her that way. So, I took the toenail clippers from her dresser and one by one clipped off the curly gray whiskers growing from her chin and upper lip as she breathed and blinked, breathed and blinked.
From Granny’s clotheslines, behind the kitchen, Valerie explained that de wind is pushin’ de rain away. No one knew how she did it, got Uncle Martin’s shirts for court so white, down there by the river with a hard brick of detergent. But only the men were allowed to tell her. I don’t know how you do it, girl, Uncle Martin would say when he dressed for morning hearings, there, up north at Granny’s, even though Valerie was just as old as he was.
The clothes, on lines between a frangipani and a cedar, clipped to the rope like tethered birds.
As women, though, we couldn’t comment because even though she really was, Valerie wasn’t allowed to be better than us at anything. My mom preferred her Maytag, took the last of the money from her settlement with Harold and shipped it out in a big plastic container along with her jeep, her green gardening rubbers, and her Wolfe range.
* * *
My mom had told me she could see when Uncle George was about to pass—some slight flash of panic, a few extra breaths of this world’s air. She’d taken his hand and squeezed it, put her other arm around the back of his neck, pressed her cheek to the top of his high forehead, told him over and over: Let go, George. Let go. Against his struggle to stay.
I didn’t do it on purpose, exactly, but I let go Granny’s hand because Auntie Clara came in dressed for church and said she was off to some big Methodist service in Tete Queue, Granny’s home township. I needed to get out. So I left Granny alone with Valerie in the kitchen; left her and my mom to fight out their silent battle over Godwyn, deep in sleep on opposite sides of the hall.
Auntie Clara drove.
On the way to the church, we passed a cement foundation that was supposed to have been an elementary school, stopped beside it for a view of the sea. The building was started by Uncle George’s party before the last election. But then Hill’s party beat them out and blocked construction because of spite.
There was no reason Granny was a Methodist other than the fact that she’d always been one. Same with my mom and Auntie Clara.
When we got there, I was introduced to people I would not remember under the host congregation’s octagonal gazebo at the top of a hill on the side of a mountain, overlooking the sea. Outside, two flamboyant trees bursting orange. Their statement, perhaps, against the mono
tony of the event.
The service was a big one, made up of all the island’s circuits. We sat by congregation. Auntie Clara and I had to squeeze between a mother and daughter who used to work for her, cleaning and washing laundry, until the mother walked off with six yards of paisley fabric my cousin had sent down from Florida. They framed us in matching paisley dresses. Auntie Clara proclaimed she had never seen anything so bold, such brass face. But what could she do? She was in church.
Each congregation took a turn standing, singing a hymn of its own choosing. There were a total of eight congregations. Auntie Clara complained about the length of the service, started counting the number of each group’s verses. Said to a woman in front of her, But these are too long. They’ve ten!
I stared out the hole in the wall closest to me, signifying a window, felt the breeze on my face, my neck; looked toward the sea. I wasn’t quite sure if I was glad I’d gone or whether I should’ve stayed by Granny’s side. But maybe sometimes, when there’s nothing to be done, simple motion isn’t as meaningless as it feels.
The minister offered a middling sermon about the conversion of their religion’s founding father on a street called Alder’s Gate, in London. On the front of the handout printed up for the occasion, a Caucasian couple held a book of hymns. Around me, not a single white face in the crowd.
CHAPTER 19
Maybe it was Grampy, snuck into Auntie Clara’s backseat, retracing his way back to life with us this time, come to get Granny; take her back.
Maybe there’s a type of knowing that just can’t be explained, because by the time we returned, I already knew, even as we pulled slowly up to the gate at Granny’s front porch, up alongside Uncle Martin’s car, and Susan’s.
I jumped out of the car while Auntie Clara was still rolling it into position, ran inside to find Susan, arms folded, above Granny’s stiff body, Granny’s eyes still staring up at the ceiling, frozen in waiting. Her son at her side.