Mothers and Other Strangers

by Gina Sorell

  “Walk with me.” She reached her hand out and I took it. As we made our way through the rows of vines, Ingrid kept her eyes ahead of her and spoke softly and evenly.

  “Rachel had gotten very involved with the Seekers, and Howard had discovered that she’d been giving them money. He was furious when he found out and forbade her from going to meetings. But Rachel wouldn’t listen.” Ingrid paused for a moment, a distant look in her eyes. “I remember the day she brought Philippe to the house,” she said. “I was working right here when I heard her call my name. I looked back and there she was, standing next to him and waving.” She slid her hand out of mine and raised it to her mouth, as if still surprised at the memory.

  “She was standing too close to him and smiling, and it was the way she waved, so excited, her feet practically lifting up off the porch, that I knew.”

  “Knew?”

  “Knew my sister had betrayed her marriage. She looked like a young girl in love that day, like she’d looked when she was around Leo. Her hair was loose, and she had on a sundress sheer enough that you could see the silhouette of her legs through it, and her body arced toward him as if they had been joined only moments ago.”

  Ingrid turned to me and spoke. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want her to be happy, it was that I knew there could be no happy ending if what I suspected was true, and it was. She told me she and Philippe were in love, she wanted to show him where she grew up, where she really came from. She was going to join him in spreading the word of the Seekers.”

  She rubbed her strong hands over her face and sighed. “It was impossible. She couldn’t just leave Howard for Philippe. Without Howard’s money, where could she go? I was furious that she wanted me to keep her secrets for her again, and she accused me of being jealous of her happiness. And maybe I was. After our mother passed away, it had been up to me to take care of Isaac. I was only fifteen when he was born and suddenly I had to run the house and take care of a baby. I thought my dad would come around, would find a way out of his depression, but he never did. Some days he never got out of bed, and I’d clean the house, make the food, and try to tend to the farm. I was in over my head. Sometimes he was so depressed he wouldn’t say a word, and nights would pass without either of us having spoken to each other. It was like that for three years, until he died. You can’t know how draining it is to live with someone who is always depressed, Elspeth.”

  But I did know. I thought about my own depression and the many times Ted had watched me shuffle listlessly in my pajamas from room to room, silent and full of despair and unable to leave the house. He’d felt helpless watching me, trying to get me to eat or bathe, propping me up in a chair by a sunbeam, like some wilted houseplant he was sure could be brought back to life. When I would emerge, sometimes weeks later, he’d confide in me how terrified he was that I was going to stay there in the dark, unable to find my way back through his voice and his touch. He was a grown man, and I could only imagine how hard it must have been for Ingrid as a teenager. I wondered if knowing about my grandfather’s own battles with depression would have made those dark days easier for me to bear, if it would have helped me to not worry every time that I was losing my mind, and losing Ted in the process.

  “When she came by that day with Philippe, saying she wanted to show him where she grew up, I wanted to scream. The farm meant nothing to her, but you could see Philippe’s eyes widen at the possibility of it.”

  She shook her head and closed her eyes at the memory.

  Ingrid told me that if Rachel was going to leave Howard, she needed money. She asked Howard for a bigger allowance on the pretense that she was sending some of it to Ingrid. She said it was the least she could do to help her sister, who’d been burdened with raising Isaac on her own. Then she started collecting jewelry, pieces that were one of a kind or from luxury brands. Things she could sell later on. They cost a fortune, but Howard was desperate to buy her love back, and as long as she stayed with him and away from the Seekers, he gave her whatever she wanted. For a while it was easy for Rachel to obey Howard’s wishes. The group had been having trouble with outsiders who objected to them having black members, and Philippe had asked her to stay away until things calmed down. But things got worse. The Seekers were accused of being an anti-apartheid organization, and the police broke up a meeting, seriously injuring black members and anyone who tried to defend them, including Philippe. Philippe wanted to leave Johannesburg, and Rachel wanted to go with him. She started giving him her jewelry for safekeeping, and word got back to Howard when Philippe had shown off a couple of the pieces to his friends.

  Howard was livid, and when he confronted her, she said she was in love with Philippe and was leaving Howard and taking her daughter with her. Howard said he wouldn’t let some whore raise his only child, and that’s when my mother told him that I wasn’t actually his, but Leo’s. Howard slapped her hard, knocking her down. She belonged to him and him alone, he said. He threatened to go to the police and accuse Philippe of theft, of conning his wife out of her jewels. He was rich, people would listen to him over some foreigner who drifted in and out of the country and stayed at the homes of wealthy socialites. The Seekers were already in trouble with the law, and the police would be more than happy to arrest Philippe for fraud. Rachel panicked. She couldn’t imagine her life without Philippe and the group; they had become everything to her, and she had to protect them.

  “And that’s when she decided to burn the house down, with Howard in it,” said Ingrid gravely.

  “The fire,” I said.

  I suddenly remembered my mother standing over me in the middle of the night, pulling me out of bed, and the two of us running so quickly we practically flew down the stairs.

  “Go see Lafina,” she said as she pushed me out into the night. “Now. Run!”

  I ran past the big tree, all the way to Lafina’s quarters at the far end of the property. I smelled it before I saw it, the rich aroma of wood smoke, pushing me onward, and when I got to Lafina’s door she was waiting for me, standing in her nightgown and one of my mother’s old bathrobes, belted underneath her enormous breasts. She grabbed me to her, and as I heard the sound of the fire crackle and spark, she shoved my face into her warm belly and held my head tightly so I couldn’t look back.

  And then Lafina was gone. Her white bathrobe flying in the dark, like angel’s wings behind her. I saw our house consumed in red and orange flames, and Lafina running toward it.

  “Lafina!” I screamed in horror at the sight of her entering the house. “Lafina!” But she couldn’t hear me. My whole body shook, my heart thrashed in my chest, and I gasped for breath until I passed out.

  That was the extent of my memory, and Ingrid filled in the rest. She was the one who picked us up on the side of the road outside the train station, my mother carrying me in her scorched nightdress and sandals. Lafina had phoned Ingrid when she first heard the fighting, and Ingrid drove to the station as fast as she could.

  As the flames grew higher, Rachel raced out and passed Lafina, who charged into the fire, determined to rescue Howard. She had agreed to help my mother escape, but not to murder. That was the image that always woke me up in the middle of the night terrified: Lafina running into the house and the fire raging. All these years I had feared that Lafina had died in the fire, but it had been Howard.

  The house burned to the ground, and everyone believed that Howard and my mother and I had all died in the fire. There was no other way my mother trusted that we’d be safe. It was only a matter of time before someone figured out that the fire wasn’t an accident, and that’s when the police would come looking for her. She was also irrationally convinced that the police would find out that she lied about her role in the car crash, too. To those who didn’t know the truth, it might look like she was some poor girl who’d worked her way into a wealthy family and stood to inherit a fortune when the sons were gone. So Ingrid wrote our obituaries and sent them to her friend at the newspaper, who had no reason to suspect
they weren’t real. And Philippe, who in many ways owed Rachel, used every connection he had to help get us out of the country and into Canada where we could start over. That was the debt she’d been talking about. Philippe knew what she had done, and he had helped her get away with it.

  “I knew she was hiding something, but murder?” I stared at Ingrid in shock.

  “She was beside herself that night, after her fight with Howard. She was desperately in love with Philippe and believed Howard was going to make good on his promise to put Philippe away—or that he might kill her if she tried to leave. She said the fire was self-defense.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think she would have done anything to save herself, and that meant saving Philippe and the Seekers. When Howard died, all his money and land went to Rachel, then you, and last to me, in the event that you were both dead as everyone believed you were. Rachel had planned it that way. I’d send her the money Howard willed to her when it was safe, and she would live off of it. It was more than enough for her lifetime, but she managed to go through it, thanks to the Seekers.”

  “And yet they’re still convinced that there’s more, that she had a large estate she was leaving to them. Were they right?”

  “No.” Ingrid smiled and put her hand on my shoulder, “the estate is yours.”

  “What?”

  “Half this land is yours. We decided I would farm all of it, what my father left me along with the land he left Rachel, and I would own half. The other half she left for you. She never wanted it or tried to sell it, even when the money ran out and she had to sell her jewelry. She hoped that something good would come from all the suffering this land has seen. It was always meant to be yours, a place where you could put down roots.”

  “I don’t know what to say.” All those years thinking that I was alone, believing that no one cared, and here was Ingrid tending to my mother’s wishes, nurturing the land in the hopes that one day I’d return. “Why did you do it?” I asked. Ingrid could have kept the land for herself, she could have lied or let my part of it suffer; instead she cultivated a fortune whose magnitude I couldn’t yet comprehend.

  “Because you’re family,” she said. She placed her hand on my cheek, and I reached up for it and held it. “My sister chose to take you with her. She could have left you here with Lafina and me. We were willing to raise you, but she insisted. She said she wanted another chance, wanted to do right by you, give you a better life by being a better mother than she had been so far. But I don’t think she knew how.”

  Tears fell down my face and off my chin onto the earth below.

  Family. What made a real family? People who guided you, loved you, and protected you as best as they could, no matter how damaged and fragile you were. Was that what my mother believed she had done? Had hiding the sins of her past been her way of protecting me, just as leaving me the box had been her way of guiding me safely to where I was now, overlooking the land that had been in my family for three generations? I chose to believe it was.

  “Thank you, Ingrid,” I said, holding both her hands in mine and looking into her eyes. “Thank you.”

  “I’m not sure it changes anything,” she said gently.

  But it did. I wouldn’t get those years with my mother back, and knowing what I knew now didn’t mean I could ever completely forgive or justify what she had done to all of us, not least to poor Howard. And yet, it was something. The anger that had lived in my heart for all those years turned to a deep ache as I thought of all Rachel and I had lost.

  “It really is beautiful here,” I said, looking out across the land, unable to believe half of it was mine.

  “Yes it is,” said Ingrid, standing next to me and hooking her arm through mine. “You know, in spite of everything and after all this country has been through, I have never wanted to be anywhere else. This land is real to me. Everything our family has suffered, all the heartache, it will come and go and come again. And like this land, we will sift through it and turn it over and bury it and plant new hopes and dreams and pray for them to grow, harvesting and celebrating and mourning them, then do it all over again. This is all there is. It will be here long after we are gone.”

  I’d always believed that I couldn’t really know where I was going until I knew where I was from, and at last I did. I had a family whose branches were as twisted and fragile as the vines that grew on this land, but in spite of everything, they had endured and were determined to grow and bear fruit that would be transformed into something else. It gave me hope. I stared out into the night and felt the darkness wrap around me in a warm embrace, and in the stars overhead I could feel them: all the people who had been on this land before me, watching over me. I was home.

  The house lit up behind us, and we both turned to see a man standing on the porch waving.

  “Auntie! The kids are dying to see you.”

  “Is that Welcome?” I asked.

  “Yes, Welcome,” replied Ingrid. “Come meet the rest of your family.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I’m forever grateful to UCLA Extension Writers’ Program for changing the course of my life and introducing me to my mentor, the incredible Caroline Leavitt, who has championed this book from its first sentence and has been my cheerleader every step of the way. I wouldn’t be a published author without you. Enormous thanks to my wonderful agent, Stefanie Lieberman at Janklow & Nesbit Associates, for believing in me and this book, and for working with me to make it as good as it can be. Thank you to everyone at Prospect Park Books, especially my dedicated editor, Colleen Dunn Bates, for reading my manuscript even when she was closed to submissions and taking a chance. To Kathleen Zrelak at Goldberg McDuffie Communications and Jennifer Lynch at Publishers Group Canada, thank you for talking this book up far and wide. And to my amazing friend Alexandra Watkins, thank you for giving me a home at Eat My Words, and always supporting me.

  This book was on a long journey, and through it all, my friends, colleagues, and family listened, waited, and hoped, cheering me on from near and far, keeping faith when I had doubt and celebrating with me when it found the right home. Much love and gratitude to you all. Along the way were many drafts and insightful readers, and I’d like to thank Robert Eversz for giving one such read at a particularly critical time. Thanks to my husband, Jeff Clarke, for your love and support, and for years of walking and talking it out, and to my favorite person on the planet, Grady, who adores words as much as I do.

  Thank you to my family members, who mean the world: Lisa, Stuart, Marc, Martine, Gabriel, Grace, Olina, Kayla, Anya, Eric, Jennifer, Matt, Alex, and Margaret. My parents have always loved a good story and have shared many over the years with me. A special thanks to them: my father, Denny Peressini, who has encouraged my writing since I was a young girl, and my mother, Leonie, who has lovingly supported me in everything I do, and who has served as a constant reminder that one must simply “go for it.”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Gina Sorell is a writer who was born in South Africa and now lives in Toronto with her husband and son. After two decades as a working actor in Los Angeles and Toronto, Gina returned to her first love, writing, and graduated with distinction from the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. When she isn’t writing fiction, she’s the creative director of Eat My Words, a San Francisco–based branding firm. Mothers and Other Strangers is her first novel.