by Stephen Law
“Your dad was good to me.”
Shaz remembered her mom saying that.
Wondering why she had bothered to ask an honest question she jumped up, but her mom grabbed her hand and pulled her back to her seat
“Sit down. We don’t talk much, you and me. And maybe we should.” Her eyes were soft. “Let me tell you a little something about you and your dad.”
Would she have wanted to hear that? How good he was. She wanted to hear why her dad toyed with them, edging in and out of their lives at his convenience. She wanted to conspire against him. Pay him back, together, with her mom.
“When you came into this world, your dad was at sea.”
It was a common refrain in their house — “out to sea.” As though it exempted him from any obligations he had on land. He used it to excuse his behaviour, even long after he wasn’t out to sea anymore.
“I didn’t tell your dad when I found out I was pregnant, not at first.” Her mom reached for her again like what she was about to say might frighten her off and she wanted to have a good grip so Shaz couldn’t escape. Shaz remembered this, as though she too were having a flashback like Audrey and Albert reliving their lives on the screen. She felt a twinge in her belly. “And it wasn’t because I was ashamed. It was because I felt free. Your dad helped me feel free.”
“I don’t get it.” She didn’t, not then. How could having a baby make her mother free? You were shackled once you had kids. That’s why at church, at school, everywhere, they lectured against the perils of premarital sex and the dangers of teenage pregnancies.
“Your grandfather was strict you see. Don’t get me wrong — in his way, he loved us. But, it was a hard row for him. Work didn’t always come easy, and he wanted more from life than he got. And I was like you, and probably like him in many ways too.”
Her mom worked and took care of them, but it had never seemed like she had ambitions, like she wanted to go anywhere and do things, not like Shaz. It was hard at the time to see them as alike in any way at all.
“Your dad and I had started seeing one another. But on the sly.” She grinned, maybe at the thought of sharing such secrets with her daughter. “Your grandfather would have mounted reinforced-steel barricades to keep me in if he could. So, I had to do some clever sneaking to be with Donald.”
Maybe they weren’t that different after all. But she didn’t smile. She didn’t acknowledge it. She hadn’t been ready to admit the same to her mom.
“One day, your grandfather got a job in Yarmouth, which meant he was going to be away for three days. And I thought heaven was showing me some mercy. But, then I got nervous it wouldn’t happen, and then it did. As soon as your grandfather went out the door, I counted out twenty minutes, just to be sure, and then scooted out right after him.”
“And it was me and your dad walking around the city, like we were the all to do. We felt like we could go anywhere and do anything. Walking downtown we came upon this lineup for a club. Your dad, as you know, is spontaneous” — her mom looked at her like a co-conspirator — “and prone to grand gestures.” She threw her arms out wide. “So, we joined the line and went in, not knowing what in heaven we were getting ourselves into. It could have been a lineup for prison detail for all we knew. But wow! I know it seems silly, but I had never really heard jazz before. Not played like that. I remember a guy was playing trumpet, and don’t forget, I played the trumpet in church, but him …” Her mom fixed her hands like she were going to play the notes and lifted them up, saluting the sky. “It was like he seeded and bloomed this garden right before our eyes.”
Shaz was not sure what sounds a garden made. Maybe it was the same way she could conjure colours, vibrant, with depth, swirling and shifting, playing with light, to explain the world.
“There was a freedom to it, with notes bouncing off the walls and ceilings, coming together and separating. It was like they took out all the rules and were making new music that hadn’t been played before. And, you know, I was coming out of church gospel that had all the spirit and soul, but this was music that was flying without a net. It was exhilarating.”
Reds flung onto walls, bright greens and purples splattered in the air while gold rivulets sparkled like fireflies on water. A cornucopia of colours. It was something Shaz could understand.
“After that, I snuck out almost every night. I would set it up so that my room was dark and I could get my clock radio to turn off after I’d split. Later, I discovered, your nan would go out fixing the plants around the window that I trampled on, erasing any sign of my escape. I was sneaking out of the house, but I was also sneaking into the clubs, because I wasn’t of age.”
Her mom had been a rebel, much the way Shaz herself had felt at that age. She moved from the end of the bed and lay down, staring upwards as though the scene with her mom was broadcast on the ceiling.
“There was this one place, Pepe’s on Spring Garden. It had a disco lounge downstairs. Your dad would walk through the kitchen like he owned the place and slip me in a side door and then through the service entrance so we could dance in the basement. The music, though, baby … Your dad and I would listen to some of that music. Mmmmmm.” Her mom paused as though she were back in the lounge, back in her youth.
“Now we couldn’t dance everywhere, you understand. Being who we were and all. Sometimes we’d just stand beside each other, and he’d be tapping out the rhythms on my arm. And in the places where we could dance, we’d rip it up. Now, your dad liked REO Speedy, David Bowie, and some such. I think he liked their hair. But me, I was into Smokey Robinson and Rick James. But then, after seeing Idrees Sulieman playing at the Palace … I was all jazz.”
Music had filled their home. Something was always playing in the background. Her mom and little Desmond danced around the kitchen to the Buena Vista Social Club. It was something she’d done too when she was younger, bopping around the living room, kitchen, the bedroom. Not anymore.
“So, I’m telling you, hearing jazz and walking around with a white man, it just seemed, like everything in the world was possible.”
“You know, once I had tasted it for myself, I just wanted more. I started thinking I was all that, and I would go to Montreal and be the next Clora Bryant or Valaida Snow.”
Her mom in a band? That seemed a stretch and so out of character. A flight of fancy for her mom consisted of watching Oprah with a bowl of peanut M&M’s and a diet Pepsi.
“And then I was pregnant. My period hadn’t come. And I knew. I felt different. I felt heavier, even though I actually lost weight with you at the beginning. I felt calm in my belly, but there was something that was giving me butterflies.”
Is that why she was remembering? Shaz brought her hands to her stomach on the bed. Butterflies in the belly. That’s what she’d had too. It’d been an accident, despite her mom being the kind that provided condoms at the breakfast table one morning when she was in her teens, reckoning she and Frank weren’t just studying the great Impressionists in the basement. A moment that forever linked marmalade and Trojans in her mind. But this was later, after she’d moved out. She had always taken precautions, never left it up to the guy, never had a scare. Seven weeks. Forty-nine days. She didn’t tell Frank, not when she’d found out, nor when she miscarried. She’d just been accommodating herself to the idea. It would probably have changed everything. Shaz curled up into a ball, holding herself tight. The film resumed over her head as though it had only paused to allow her to catch up.
“I only told your dad when he let me know he was going back out to sea. I hadn’t been thinking about that. I didn’t understand. I thought he could stay with me, with us. But in the navy, order are orders. So I was left, newly pregnant, at home, with my parents. Your dad fancied I could meet him in Marrakesh as they were heading to the Mediterranean. We could meet on the tarmac, have the baby and then build a new life.”
That sounded like her dad �
� fantastical declarations, like promises at Christmas and birthdays. Shaz wondered if her dad had really invoked Marrakesh, or whether her mom’s mind was still on film classics and she had simply inserted Casablanca into the scene.
“And I ended up in Montreal instead. I thought I could form a band, go on the circuit, pretend I wasn’t pregnant.”
Shaz hadn’t told anyone, joining in the secret silences of women. She hadn’t gotten around to deciding if the baby was something she wanted or not. A choice she had. Culturally, financially, she wondered if it would have even been possible for her mother. Maybe an abortion was what her dad would have chosen if given the chance.
“It was your dad who came and found me in a tiny apartment in the St. Denis area. I had a hotplate, one chair, a table and a single mattress with bedding I picked up at the Sally Ann. I worked as a seamstress at a factory in the day and as a waitress at a late-night jazz club until my belly was too big and the owner couldn’t pretend I wasn’t just getting fat anymore.”
That seemed about right, her mom scrounging around in some dingy apartment alone and her dad nowhere to be seen. Where would Frank have gone? What would he have done? He would have stayed with her. She was sure of it. They would have raised the child together.
“If we had stayed in Montreal, it might have worked. We could have lived there together. Black and white could get lost in the big city. But not in Halifax.”
Shaz pictured herself speaking French, eating at streetside cafés, a fashionista whirling around le nouveau culture. Things could have been different. She wouldn’t have lost the baby there.
“Your dad was on furlough, he had to get back. And your grandfather had died.”
An angry grandfather replaced by a deadbeat dad.
“I couldn’t have been here with you while dad was alive. Dad’s temper was quick. And he didn’t approve of your father. And not just because he was white.”
There were lots of good reasons to despise her dad. If the two men had faced off with one another, she imagined grandfather would have been able to take him, fix her dad a beating.
“When he found out about us, that I was pregnant,” her mom rubbed her shoulder like it might still ache, “well, I couldn’t live at the house. Mom slipped me money, thinking I would hide out in Halifax or the Pier or something. Donald was gone at this point and I was alone. That’s how I ended up in Montreal.”
A wistful look crossed her mom’s face. “And, you know what baby? I would not have wished it any different. Having you and being in Montreal, that was one of the happiest times of my life.”
She remembered how the anger started to peel off her at that time. So much angst about her father, yet her mother was there, in front of her, giving her everything she had. It was the kind of mother she would have wanted to be.
”I had you. You were in me. I could feel you. And every night when I went to bed, exhausted and tired and in a space that was mine, I would rub my belly and talk to you, sing you lullabies I learned from a French lady who sang them as we stitched mounds of blue overalls. I was free, Shaz. You were about to join my life and nothing could have made me happier.”
Placing her hands on her arm, she gave her a squeeze. “And I’m happy now.”
Deep brown, the colour of her mother’s eyes that seemed to flicker and draw light when she smiled.
Then, it was as though the movie she’d been watching was suddenly over. She could almost hear the tick tick of the film reel coming to a stop. The screen went blank. Pulling a pillow over her head, Shaz shifted in bed. If the child had lived, would Shaz have been more like her mother, or her father? She wished she could be certain.
She flipped onto her belly, pillow, blankets, everything bundled over her head, as though she could shut out the thoughts and sounds from her mind. Instead, she found herself in the midst of another memory onslaught.
They were going out, as a family. A nuclear family, just like the ones she learned about in school: a father, a mother, kid. Just like other people. Shaz was twelve and her dad was trying to be the dad she needed — again.
Her mom had fixed herself up with make-up and though she tried to hide it, fretted over what dress to wear. Old Mills whisky in a mug with ice in hand, her father sat on the couch with her nan, in silence. Her mom came into the room and Shaz was pleased — her mom looked nice, had chosen well. With a kiss to the cheek, her dad gave her mom a passing grade as well. Nan stayed out of it.
A strand escaped the clasp on her hairclip and Shaz had to shove her mom away from trying to fix it. Then her mom went to smooth down her dress, as if it hadn’t just been ironed. “I’m fine,” Shaz had said. She knew she, too, looked good for her dad; he had smiled for her when she came out.
Going out for dinner was not something they did very often. Not ever as a family. With her mom she’d gone everywhere — shopping, church, vacations, visits, excursions. With her dad, she could count on one hand the places she’d been: the park, the movies, the mall, and, once, a lake.
The three of them together. She could still picture the restaurant clearly in her mind. She’d wanted to order ribs to show her dad how grown up she was, hopeful that not being a little kid anymore would mean things might go smoother. Maybe he just wasn’t good with little kids.
“The lady will have the chicken salad, and for the little one, the kids’ spaghetti.” He ordered a steak for himself. “I want it rare, so you can still see the pink. No peas, just carrots and chicken gravy on the side.”
He asked the waitress to read the order back to him to make sure she’d got it right. When her mom tried to order a milk for Shaz, her dad intervened, insisting on a Shirley Temple. That’s when they started to bicker. Shaz ended up with the milk. Her dad drank beer.
He spent a lot of time looking around the restaurant while she tried to hold his attention with stories about school — the frog guts someone put in Miss Stein’s desk, the picture of a summer picnic she’d painted that had been displayed in the school hall longer than anyone else’s. She described how she and Aleysha had skated on Red Bridge Pond and two days later someone had broken through the ice and almost drowned, but his attentions were elsewhere.
When the meals arrived, Shaz began to twirl the spaghetti on her fork
“I said rare. Pink, do you get pink? This is overdone.” He sent the plate back to the kitchen. “And I don’t like peas!” he shouted as the waitress retreated behind the swinging doors.
“Really, Donald. Do you have to make a scene?”
Her parents quarrelled and her food got cold. People were staring, not like when they’d first come in — surreptitiously — but freely now.
The tablecloth was the long kind that hung down like a skirt, hiding their knees. As the waitress struggled to meet her father’s demands, Shaz sunk lower and lower in the chair until, catching the edge of the cloth under her leg, the plate of spaghetti, glass of milk and half-eaten roll cascaded onto her and then onto the floor.
“Dammit you idiot! What a mess! You’ve made a mess of everything.”
Nuclear families, nuclear wars.
A cab delivered Shaz and her mom back home.
If it had ended there, it would have gone down as one bad night where no one had behaved their best. If that had been the case, she might have ignored it, or forgotten about it, burying it alongside all the other slights. But, it didn’t end there. There was the day after.
Shaz sat with her mom together at the breakfast table, quiet allies. Then, in the next moment, her mom was running to the bathroom to throw up. When she returned, she placed her hand on Shaz’s back and said, “I’m pregnant. I was going to tell you last night at the restaurant. We were going to tell you.”
A letter from her father a few weeks later, postmarked Halifax, informed her he was back out to sea.
Having a baby in the house would be an adjustment, but Shaz began to hope thei
r family of three might pull him home. She prepared for the idea, wondering if she would have to share her room. A sister would be nice — lots to teach her. She rounded up her old dolls, picked out different dresses and costumes she could dress her up in. She started a scrapbook for pictures and mementoes for a family album. She was going to be the big sister, and they were going to be a family.
She’d gotten it so wrong.
Shaz flipped in the bed, sheets twisting into a funnel. She threw her pillow to the foot of the bed, angling for a new position. Enough, enough, please enough …
“Do you want to be part of the birth?” Her mother moved around slowly, as though in someone else’s body. Shaz had to fetch things from the cupboard and pick up things she’d dropped. “Nana will be there. You can come too.”
Donald sent a message from the ship: he was not sure if they were going to dock in time. His absences had drained her of expectations, siphoned off her love. She was worried she was going to stop believing in him the same way she had stopped believing in the Easter Bunny.
When her mom’s water broke, they sped off to the hospital.
“Are you coming in?” her mom asked.
Shaz looked at Nan, then at the chairs in the echoey waiting room. She considered just staying out of it, until it was over and she could take her little sister home. But the waiting room was empty and cold so she followed her mom.
She was fine at first. The nurses were there, saying things, doing things. Moving out of the way, Shaz shrunk herself into the corner from which she watched Nana’s face, gauging what was happening.
Her fingers ached for days later from clutching the armrests. Sounds came out of her mom she’d never heard before. Moans progressed to screams, and Shaz felt the inside of her belly harden and tremble in time with her mother’s contractions. Somehow her nan seemed to manage to keep eyes on both of them, offering reassuring banter — “she’s fine” to Shaz and “you can do it” to her mom.