‘Hold my hand, Mother.’
‘You. You stop following me.…’
We’ve of course not taken our umbrellas, and when the rain begins to fall in great stinging drops, she pulls me to a stop.
‘I want to go home,’ she says.
‘We’re not going to be long. Just a bit farther.’
‘Why? Why a bit farther?’
‘Because I need to know. Because I’m tired of secrets.’
She doesn’t move. The rain intensifies and Mother looks straight up to the sky, blinking against the downpour, then closing her eyes and smiling as if just about to laugh. I’m angered at this. I’m somehow angered by this silliness, and I pull her harder than I had planned.
She starts to scream. A cracked-throat scream without meaning. It destroys my mind, this sound beyond voice, and it takes me minutes before I notice the lights going on in the windows of the houses around us. The heads appearing in the windows, pupils in the ghastly eyes of monsters, before they roll away.
‘IT’S TOTALLY crazy out there,’ yells Meera. She steps inside, her umbrella still open, and sets two grocery bags down. A slump of vegetables and soft fruit, carrot-tops painting a glaze on the floor. When she looks up, she notices the woman in a grey suit.
‘Meera …’ the woman begins.
‘You fetched my mother?’ Meera says, looking only at me.
‘Meera,’ says her mother again. ‘Listen to me, dear. Help me understand. You’ve worked so hard for your scholarship. We’ve both worked so hard. Why are you doing this…?’
‘I can’t believe you,’ Meera says, still looking at me, a thin smile on her face.
‘Meera?’ her mother continues. ‘Please, dear. Just listen for a moment. Why are you throwing your future away? Are you finding it difficult at the residence? Would you like a better place to stay? It’s alright, dear. Nobody needs to know you’ve dropped out. I’m sure you can find a way to keep your scholarship. You can still be successful.’
Meera continues looking at me with the same thin smile on her face, then turns and walks to the storage room. I follow her alone and watch from halfway up the ladder as she stuffs some clothes and belongings into her dufflebag.
‘Where are you going? Meera…?’
‘Don’t speak to me. Don’t ever call my name again.’
‘Honestly,’ I continue. ‘I didn’t plan this. Your mother insisted on coming. I just wanted to ask her a few questions about you. I didn’t know this was all a big secret.’
‘It’s not a big secret. It’s my life. And it’s none of your fucking business or hers.’
‘I’m sorry, Meera. OK? I’m really sorry. But you weren’t ever honest with me, were you? You’re not a qualified nurse at all. You’re just studying economics or something.…’
‘I never once said I was a nurse. That was you. Your own convenient belief. Your own guilty story.’
‘I don’t care, Meera. It doesn’t matter to me. I just wanted to know more about you. I thought we could talk about things. Maybe help each other out.…’
‘Help yourself out, asshole.’
She bumps her head descending the ladder. She covers her eyes and begins to cry, her mouth in an open silent grimace. I try to touch her but she punches my hand away and hurries away from me towards the front door. A wave of nausea hits me. I can’t plead anymore or follow her. I walk slowly to my room and sit on the bed, overhearing more muffled pleadings from Meera’s mother, but no response. I hear the front door opening and see the ruffling of the drapes with the changing air pressure. Another ruffling of the drapes as the door slams shut.
I’m still sitting on my bed when Mother appears in the doorway of my room. She’s completely naked.
‘What wrong?’ she asked. ‘It look like there something wrong in you face.’
‘Nothing’s wrong, Mother. Please. Let’s get dressed.…’
‘You lying, dear. I always know when you lying. I you Mother, you know. I don’t have to wait for you to tell me anything. I does know.’
‘Please, Mother.…’
‘Is you brother, yes? You worrying because he left like that without saying goodbye. You worrying because you love him. Because he you brother.’
‘Yes, Mother. That’s it exactly.’
Five
I’D FIND HIM SOME DAY, my brother. It would take me a while, but eventually I’d find him. I’d probably be in a small bookstore, that dying sort that makes an effort to showcase new and obscure writers. I’d be feeling a bit self-conscious in that space, not quite smart or cool enough, but I’d stay long enough to have a good look through the poetry section. Every once in a while I’d find a book written by someone whose name I wouldn’t recognize, and so I’d read a few pages and then flip to the back hoping to find a picture or some biographical information. Some poets use aliases, of course. Some might be people you’ve known. And some might be living closer than you’ve ever let yourself imagine.
I’d notice a slim book near the back of the display table. An unknown name, a title that didn’t try to placate or reassure. I’d open the pages and begin to read, admiring first the clarity and freshness of the language, the reverence for plain and simple words like rain and stone and spit. I’d recognize an investment in naming the world properly and a wariness of those moments when language seems to spill and tumble dangerously. But I’d notice other things too, a father’s shoulders heaving at a sink, a mother’s streaked makeup and her burnt-milk emergencies. I’d flip to the back of the book and glance at the black and white picture of the author, but I wouldn’t really have had to do this. I’d have suspected long before that my brother would be writing under a new name.
I’d contact his press by phone and find out about his next reading in town. Another bookstore, a ‘troubled’ part of the city. I’d arrive just before the starting time and choose as inconspicuous a place as possible. Four readers, all poets, all eager with youth. He’d be the only coloured boy, of course, but he wouldn’t be at all nervous in his skin, and the people here, in this small place if nowhere else, would truly see him as a poet. Near the end of his reading, he’d look up and notice me silently mouthing his words. And for the rest of the reading, we’d find ourselves stealing looks at one another, the words of the other poets swimming around us, heard and unheard. We’d both linger around after the reading and we’d eventually approach each other. I’d ask him to sign my book and he’d do so silently with his new name. And then, without any stupid show of emotion, he’d invite me for a drink.
We’d end up having coffee at an all-night pancake place just around the corner. We’d have the entire place to ourselves except for an old man with a shopping bag stuffed with papers. I’d just listen at first and he’d tell me of the review he got in a city weekly. Just one modest review so far, but it was unexpected and encouraging. I’d ask if he was working on something else, and he’d tell me yes, a book-length work on either love or global capital. Maybe both, he hadn’t decided quite yet. He’d tell me of his latest hope to get a grant, though these things were always crapshoots, and he’d use this as an excuse to say that he had to get going since the deadline was coming up in a few days.
We’d rise in silence without exchanging numbers and there’d be for the first time an awkward silence. And, somehow, I’d explain it all. I’d explain that I understood the need for poetry because language can never be trusted and what the world doesn’t need is another long story and all the real stories have become untellable anyway. I’d explain that I understood his use of a pseudonym, since we can only ever write despite ourselves. Isn’t that right, my brother? We can only ever live despite ourselves? I’d explain that I understood it all, even his decision to leave home, to leave me behind. I’d tell him that I had to leave too. I returned home for a short while, but soon realized that any return is futile.
I AWAKE TO nameless fears and the wind blowing ghosts into the window drapes. This time, I’m unable to fall back asleep. I hear a garbage bin being
toppled somewhere outside and the furious quarrels of raccoons. I imagine a noise coming from downstairs, then hear it clearly and know enough to investigate.
Mother is kneeling by the closet at the front door. She has brought a lamp from the sitting room and has managed to plug it in. She has taken off the shade and so the hallway is harsh with light and the air stinks of something that has rested on the naked bulb and burned. She has placed a turned-up baseball cap on the floor and she kneels before this, brushing her teeth. She is brushing with a punishing intensity and she leans to spit into the hat three times before sensing my presence and turning to show me a lurid drool of blood. She turns back and continues brushing beyond anything like need or reason and then suddenly she yanks the toothbrush from her mouth and turns to stare. In these shadows, her eyes are punched holes.
I don’t know when her screaming begins. I don’t hear anything at first and then just a ringing which comes from my own head before growing into a horror barely connected with this woman’s gaping mouth. I don’t know how long the screaming continues before I’m able to find myself again. My image in a black window, some young man stooping over her.
SINCE MEERA’S departure, Mother has entered a darkened state. She doesn’t respond anymore when I ask if she is thirsty or hungry. She looks aside or through me when I stand in front of her, sometimes focusing on objects outside, a weathervane on the property far across the tracks or a discarded pop can or the coils of a garden hose in the backyard. She’ll watch a square of light from the window creeping all day across the sitting-room carpet and up the wall. Or the spidering of a cracked window, a passage of time invisible to me or anyone else.
‘Please try one mouthful, Mother. Just one mouthful.’
She doesn’t seem to know if she is thirsty or hungry. She hasn’t been eating or drinking and her lips are parched and her skin when pinched doesn’t spring back. Her eyes are rheumy but hold no tears. I scrape her untouched breakfast porridge into the garbage, taking a few spoonfuls myself, realizing that I need to be strong for the next little while. Just a little while longer. I set sweets in front of her such as chocolate toffees and mint crèmes and tamarind balls, her favourite. She looks at them blankly. I take one between my thumb and forefinger and put it gently in her mouth. She holds this substance like a stone on her tongue, waiting for some explanation while her own clear fluid drips from her chin. When she slowly and mechanically moves her jaw, my own mouth feels full of something old and exhausted like ash.
She can’t make it to the bathroom anymore. She wets herself and sometimes senses this and is ashamed. She discovers anew the many riddles of her body, the holes in her face, the electric shock between her legs. She continues to wander but increasingly without purpose, like the automatic shifting of someone in pain. I try to take her on walks, dressing her and leading her out of the door, but when we take a few steps beyond her home she panics, her eyes fierce and distrustful beneath her hat. Those strange upright animals and the gaping sky and the crabs like leaves still scurrying about in a climate where they don’t belong. The urgent advice of birds and dogs and the call of air brakes from a passing truck. She can’t interpret the advancing crush of blue that is the lake and she cries for her safety. I take her hand and lead her back to the foreign nation that’s become her home.
‘W … WHEN …’
‘Mother? Would you like some breakfast today, Mother?’
‘When … is the … when is the … girl?’
‘She’s gone now, Mother. But I’m here. I can make you some eggs. Would you like some eggs?’
‘Where…? When…?’
‘SHE LOSING herself. She going she own way,’ says Mrs Christopher.
We’re in the kitchen, Mother, Mrs Christopher, and I, the mid-afternoon light bathing us in a grey haze. Mrs Christopher is standing apart from her and doing dishes, and it suddenly occurs to me.
‘Were you talking to me, Mrs Christopher?’
‘Who else would I be talking to, fool?’
VERY SOON, I’LL have to tell Mrs Christopher that I’m also losing myself, going my own way. I’ll have the courtesy to tell her this time, because I now know what an impossible feat it is to care for Mother. I’ll try to thank Mrs Christopher and express how incredible she has been, the strength that she’s displayed all this time. I’ll say something earnest about the strength of the black women of her generation, and she’ll rightly suck her teeth at the feebleness and belatedness of this gesture. I’ll notice for the first time Mrs Christopher’s thinning hair and the painful swelling of feet in this woman who seems, on the surface, to be so indomitable. I’ll explain to her that I’ll get another job very soon and begin to send money directly from my new workplace. I’ll explain that with the trickling income from Father’s insurance policy she’ll be able to hire herself a full-time assistant. I’ll even guarantee her all of this, and try to give her a cheque to carry things for the time being, but she won’t respond. I’ll finally remind her to keep an eye on Mother’s toenails, explaining that this has always been a special problem, something that you have to watch. Mother might not be able to communicate her pain, you see. Mrs Christopher will pretend not to hear me and walk away.
And this is when I’ll snap, over the toenails.
I’ll ask Mrs Christopher just what sort of son sacrifices his own life for his parent’s? Just what sort of son tells himself that this is generosity and goodness instead of a form of cowardice. An evil, a mockery of existence itself?
I’ll say something like this and wait. I’ll wait for a response sufficient enough to send me away. Something hurtful. Some final curse.
I AWAKE THIS time to the sound of someone smashing things downstairs. I stumble-fall down the steps to see Mother in the kitchen fully dressed, her lipstick smeared red all over her mouth like a wounded clown’s face. She hasn’t moved for days, but somehow she’s pulled the kitchen drapes closed and she’s attacking a coconut with a hammer. In the dim light, the coconut has become a human head, skull fragments strewn about the floor, tufts of wiry hair still attached.
‘Feeling better, Mother?’
She looks at me and moves her mouth in an odd sideways manner but doesn’t answer. She takes another swing with the hammer and succeeds only in banging off a thin corner of the cupboard. The next swing connects with the target and smashes tufts of hair and fluid all over the place.
I don’t have the energy to intervene. I sink to a spot on the kitchen floor to watch her, alive with physical and mental purpose. She picks up pieces of coconut without the shell and with an old grater begins to shred them. Her knuckles sliding closer to the ragged and orange stained metal but never touching it and never wasting a bit of meat. I watch her look around for other ingredients, finding them in their old places. Flour and butter, sugar and soda. She doesn’t measure but pours and shakes out in precise quantities, lucid almost beyond belief. I watch her knead and see the tendons on her wrist growing taut and loose in an even rhythm.
We loved this food, my brother and I. ‘Make us a coconut bake,’ we would say, and Mother would smile and promise to make some when she had the time. Coconut bake and cocoa tea. Not the sickening sweetness of hot chocolate from a packet, but a real drink that has to be cooked skillfully over a stove. Its bitter-rich flavour combining perfectly with the dense warmth of the bake. The perfect food for a winter night.
‘And nothing like my own mother own,’ she would remind us.
But right now, Mother’s lucidity comes to an end. She has managed to set a griddle on the stovetop element, and even to brush some butter on it with a piece of paper towel, but the butter stays cold and opaque on the surface. She looks at the dials on the stove and frowns at the symbols on them. She reaches out and hesitates. She cannot decide which dial to turn and it won’t matter anyway because the gas has been turned off again. Mother pulls her hand away and turns to me. She opens her mouth and at first I only hear soft coughing noises from her throat. I hear it then, or think I hear i
t, a soft, soft whisper.
Old skin, ’kin, ’kin
You na know me,
You na know me.…
‘Mother? ’
She looks now at me for the first time, smiling.
‘Ma ma?’ she says to me, still smiling. Her eyes narrow to slits and her lips pout out to frown mockingly. A little boy’s whiny call, a clownish and horridly pitiful face.
‘Ma ma ma ma ma ma.…’
She is silent throughout the next day and the next. In her remaining days of life, she never speaks again.
‘YOU SAW A soucouyant, Mother.’
‘How old is you, child? Eight? Nine? What would a nine-year-old boy who grow up in Canada know about soucouyants?’
‘You were telling me, Mother. I tried to listen.’
‘Well … it always nice when little children try to listen.…’
A SOUCOUYANT IS something like a female vampire. She lives a reclusive but fairly ordinary life on the edge of town. She disguises herself by dressing up in the skin of an old woman, but at night she’ll shed her disguise and travel across the sky as a ball of fire. She’ll hunt out a victim and suck his blood as he sleeps, leaving him with little sign of her work except increasing fatigue, a certain paleness, and perhaps, if he were to look closely on his body, a tell-tale bruise or mark on his skin.
There are ways to protect yourself from a soucouyant. She’s a deeply neurotic creature, so you might try scattering some rice where you think she’ll pass by after her raids at night. The soucouyant will halt and feel compelled to count every single grain, and so she’ll find herself caught in the light of morning without her disguise of skin. A braver person might also try batting the soucouyant with a stick as she takes the form of a flaming ball. In the morning, you’ll only have to look for an old woman in the village who appears to have been beaten. Bruises upon her. Clearly the one to blame.
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