by Dionne Brand
I loved Yara. I cannot say it enough times. I loved Yara as I loved myself. Or as I loved myself as another self, with Yara’s coordinates. There will never be recrimination between Yara and me. I know this because Yara opened the terrain in me for feeling. I’m not saying that I was able to traverse the entire geography of that terrain, but I became aware of its existence. Because of this discovery, I can’t in good conscience relitigate our time together in the common way of other people. I won’t go over it and whine about the things that happened. I will not accuse Yara of betrayal or abandonment. I don’t have hard feelings toward her. I have only gratitude for being jolted awake, by Yara, from the slumber, the disturbing slumber of the normative. Each day with Yara I was drenched in relief. Some days I felt as if I’d escaped from a prison camp—the prison camp of my former self. When you have escaped from a prison camp, all the leaves have a new tint, as do all the cars; you have a new skin, and all the people around you, you see with a new alertness. From Yara, with Yara, I entered the life I now have, like emigrating to a new country. But let’s leave the similes there, since like became is.
What I did not know was that while I sat in Yara’s kitchen and stared at the sink, sublimating the movement of Yara’s friends around the room, while I caught a thought deeply related to my thesis topic, Josie Ligna was busy at work undermining my connection to Yara. I’d decided, under my new dispensation, that jealousy was a vestige of the heteronormative practices that I despised. So when I found myself in the fawning presence of Josie Ligna at Yara’s flat, I observed her without erupting into verbal assault. I’d never seen this side of Josie Ligna. I’d only been privy to her knife-like intelligence, her murderous analysis and her forensic ability to dig up obscure Romanian theorists. I now wonder if Josie Ligna hadn’t written those texts of the unknown Romanian herself and then presented them to us because we wouldn’t have accepted them as her original ideas. Josie Ligna, I knew, had once lived in a threesome. She was far beyond my naïveté. The man in the ménage had been a dubious soldier in Srebrenica—a scorpion. He had tried to force his dreadful story on me once when our study group met at Josie Ligna’s townhouse. I don’t know what he saw in me that led him to the conclusion that his story would be safe with me, or forgiven by me. I was offended and, at the same time, terrified. There was an aura of threat about him, even as he begged for forgiveness. His body had a catlike threat to it, ribbed but sinuous under the kurta he affected. So he stood there, at once prepared to purr supinely as well as pounce. This is the way power works—it wants both power and forgiveness. I hate this kind of greed in the powerful, the belief that their most heinous acts ought to be understood and forgiven. And if not, they will kill you. This man, Josie Ligna’s husband, was like this. Josie Ligna’s wife was a timid bird, who said very little as she flitted around Josie. Between Josie Ligna and this man, what a life the bird-wife must have had, between the viper and the scorpion. Yes, Josie Ligna was a viper, albeit dressed in ivy. After the visit to her townhouse, the next time I saw her at the university, I asked Josie Ligna what in hell she was doing with that guy. She said he was looking for redemption and that he had seen the inside of his soul, unlike many of us. Well, I said, “I’ve seen it too and there’s a solid murkiness there.” Josie Ligna thinks that she can handle any situation. She’s a humanist, whereas I am a…well, certainly not a humanist. Humanism is the graveyard of people like me.
Having got tired of the scorpion and the bird, it appeared, Josie Ligna was now snooping around my door. What could she offer Yara that I couldn’t? Total agreement. Suicidal agreement. I was galvanized by this thought. I’d seen Josie Ligna manipulate the scorpion and the bird. I had to save Yara. I rose from my chair against the wall, and foregoing any intellectual cut and parry, I said to Josie Ligna, “Get the fuck out of here, now!” I don’t usually subscribe to this type of language and neither did Josie Ligna, so she was as caught off-guard as I. She, the snake, looked at me and knew exactly what I meant. We understood each other perfectly. Not our usual idiom but…The other people in the kitchen making posters or placards, or whatever it was, for Yara’s new project stopped what they were doing with surprise. Josie Ligna gave a nonchalant shrug, collected herself and headed for the door. Yara had an astonished smile on her face. She burst into laughter, and between gasps asked, “What the hell! Where are you coming from?” Yara spoke like her mother, like someone from another era. “Where am I coming from?!” I said. “She is a snake in the grass.” At this point I couldn’t help using the cliché. “And she has her eye on you but I got my eye on her.” I had no idea where this language had come from but it seemed appropriate. Yara’s mother, the piano player, had once come to visit and this is how she spoke. The idiom was direct yet metaphoric and it warned of a secret knowledge and wisdom. The mood in the kitchen became festive. I sensed an acknowledgement that I had joined the band of Yara’s strays, and I went back to my thoughts—specifically, to working out if I should use Eric Foner’s Who Owns History? in my second chapter. John Blassingame would also be relevant to my thesis’ purposes in terms of the effects of plantation life on masculinity and femininity. Right. A theoretical point was clarified. Yara came to sit beside me, pressing her body against mine. She was acknowledging my expression of love for her in running Josie Ligna out. But I would like to think it was more too—as if I’d rescued her from the machinations of Josie Ligna. As intrigued as Yara was by these manoeuvrings, she knew that Ligna was a different proposition from me. I loved when Yara sat next to me like this. Also, sometimes when I was washing the dishes and I was angry with her, she would come and stand silently next to me, then reach to touch my hand or my back. She would touch my hand or my back, then lean against me, and all my anger would dissipate. I would forget what I was upset about.
Josie Ligna was not the only person I had to drive off from messing with Yara. Yara had many infatuations; people were drawn to her for the same reasons I was. Yara encouraged these infatuations, and generally I did not see them as a threat. I sometimes think that Yara brought these infatuations to meet me so that I could get rid of them for her. She was kind-hearted and could not do so herself. I have said, I see the world from a cautious angle—even though this view is never beneficial to me in ways I can discern. I can see after other people’s well-being but not my own. Accordingly, I could analyze Yara’s loves and infatuations. I could tell which ones were trouble, and to a great extent Yara trusted me with this, since, as brave as she was, she was defenceless against perceived need. As I told her many times, not all need is need. Some people have bottomless need and it can swallow you up. Once, I remember, Yara brought someone all the way home from a trip abroad, from Tokyo, someone highly infatuated with her, and I had to take that someone to dinner and soothe her because Yara disappeared for two days. I didn’t mind. This woman was lovely, the kind of woman with a sense of humour and esoteric information, like how to diagnose camber on an axle and how to use a wrench. Her name was Chiyoko and if we hadn’t met under these circumstances we could’ve been friends. So we hung out for two days until Yara returned and found us putting in the new elbow joint under the sink. Then Yara threw a tantrum, saying she had a play to rehearse and could we leave? I drove Chiyoko to the airport and promised I’d get in touch if I were ever in Tokyo. Josie Ligna was another kettle of fish altogether. I note that I seem to fall back on verbal clichés only in reference to Josie Ligna. Perhaps only colloquial speech at its most reductive can express my outrage toward her. Or perhaps none of Josie’s and my regular academic speech could express our desire for Yara.
Yara travelled a great deal, to Fringe Theatre festivals around the world, to international mobilizations for human rights, and to counter economic summits to the G7. I wouldn’t say each trip, but often she would return with someone else, someone like me and unlike me, someone who had come apart in their life and ideas. Then they would meet Yara. And how could I blame them for their infatuation—after all, it had happened to me and I was grateful
. I couldn’t bind Yara to the normative, to an uncritical monogamy, a monogamy unexamined and taken for granted. And I couldn’t deny Yara the full and true expression of her sexuality, especially on the basis of an uncritical acceptance of the norm. The normative was a doldrums we had all been lured into by the forces of capital, et cetera. This is what I knew and felt, even as I also felt a certain sting of jealousy and loss whenever one of these people showed up with Yara. In my analysis this “sting” was a vestigial emotion that probably predated capital, or perhaps had its root in capital, but was nevertheless what remained of different social relations and circumstances. My theory of myself is that any idea I can understand—that is, if it can be explained along ethical and moral lines as essentially unharmful, and as contributing to my intellectual life, my growth as a human being—I will embrace. And who was I, my theory theorized, who was I to claim hegemony over Yara’s body? I’ve never wanted control of anyone, least of all their body. And least of all Yara’s. Yara. I wanted Yara to have all she wanted.
The final woman Yara brought to her apartment tried to kill herself. She was from Sweden. The moment I saw Marit, I pulled Yara aside and said, “I’m not taking care of that one.” Yara grinned in a nervous way, then became defensive and said, “I never asked you to take care of anyone.” Then she laughed. But I saw her impending desperation. Yara had made a proposal to the Fringe Festival in Stockholm. Someone named Marit had heard of Yara’s work and invited her to submit. Then this Marit had arranged everything and Yara was on her way. We had parted at Pearson airport in Toronto and she had promised to call me as soon as she landed at Stockholm Arlanda International. I was frantic when I didn’t hear from her the next day, and then for a week. I read the newspapers; there were no plane crashes. I called the main Fringe line and received this message: Stoff, står för konstnärlig frihet, chansen att få pröva sin idé på en publik, möjligheten att skapa nätverk och kreativa samarbeten med andra artister samt att få utvecklas och inspireras från en uppsjö av konstformer.
I could make no sense of this. It was just advertising, I expect. I extrapolated creative from kreativa.
Finally, I searched Yara’s desk for some contact she may have left behind and found a Marit Ahlstrom at the Blackeberg Station Theatre. I left a message with a man named Allvar and a week later Yara called. She said, “Hi…” then there was a pause. I said, “Why haven’t you called? I’ve been worried!” She said, “Oh, everything’s fine. Why would you worry? I’m here at Marit’s.” As if I should know! As if she’d told me this is where she’d be. At the someone called Marit’s house! As if I ought not to have raised the alarm about her disappearance. I said, “Okay, see you when you get back!” and hung up. I knew that Yara was in love.
Yara returned three weeks later, saying that Marit would arrive in a few days. I went back to my apartment in a state of upset, having swallowed all my inclinations to cross-question her as to what was going on. After all, I knew what was going on—Yara was in love and Yara would soon be out of love and I would have to drive Marit to the airport and say Yara’s goodbyes.
I saw right through Marit when I met her. She was not transparent; she was absent. I take that back. There was someone there, someone so concentrated around an incident, or a day, or an experience—and I struggle here to identify what, but some concentration so inevitable it was pinpoint small. And, I hesitate to say, lethal. I said to Yara, “Who is that?” And I said to Yara, “You have no capacity to fix her.” Yara always dismissed my misgivings, and in the main she was correct about my trepidations. I’m not inclined to mix it up, to dirty my hands in other people’s lives, and I am often wrong about character. But Marit was absent in a way that none of Yara’s other projects had been. In my opinion, Yara herself often stepped over the line—her own line. She misjudged also. And with Marit, Yara and I came to an impasse. I was tired now of the constant upheaval of the physical and mental space of our relationship. I had my dissertation to worry about and I couldn’t bear to watch Yara prance about, Marit in tow, repeating and espousing the same formulas about class and class war—Marit, silent and adoring. I stuck to my own apartment. I was conflicted, naturally. I didn’t quite know the threat Marit represented. I can’t say that I spoke two words to her, nor she to me. She wasn’t malevolent, but some indeterminate bad feeling hung over her. She had a furtive eagerness. I’m making all these assumptions based on little evidence, simply her look, and a feeling. Or perhaps I’m fudging responses based on Marit’s subsequent suicide attempt.
It’s often the case that some women fill themselves with the self of the beloved. Marit struck me as this kind of woman: an absence in her, waiting for Yara to fill it in. The few times I saw Yara and Marit together, that furtive eagerness in Marit, that vacant place mirroring all of Yara’s antics, disturbed me.
A day before Marit was to return to Stockholm, Yara found her hanging from the bathroom door, a belt around her neck. Yara called me from the hospital. I hurried there. Yara was devastated. I kept her company during the days the hospital kept Marit under observation. We argued about what to do with Marit. I wasn’t very helpful on that. I found Marit’s act violent. I said as much to Yara. Why had she done this, I argued, it was such a brutal act—an act either to get rid of herself or to bind herself to Yara. It was dreadful, I said. While all this may have been true, it wasn’t what I should have said. Yara accused me of being harsh. I knew Yara was terrified at the burden Marit now represented, and no doubt Yara was in a different position than I was. The weight of Marit’s life was now upon her. I didn’t think that Yara deserved this and I made many clumsy attempts to say this to her, realizing that I could only hope that some of what I said had a creeping effect. I calculated that eventually it would. Yara called me callous, jealous and harsh, but I felt that I had to risk these assessments of my character in order to save her. I didn’t want Yara’s dear life to be sacrificed to the millstone of Marit. After all, they’d only known each other a short while. I told Yara that whatever had brought Marit to this had nothing to do with her. “This surpasses you,” I said. “It predates you.”
At last, Yara brought Marit home from the hospital and nursed her for several weeks. I couldn’t bring myself to visit. I called each morning to see how things were going, and of course I slipped in my advice to get rid of Marit as soon as possible. Yara would hang up in the middle of my diatribes. One morning, knowing it was I calling, she answered, saying, “Got anything good to say today?” To which we both laughed. This is when I knew that she was out of the hellhole into which Marit had plunged her. Yara had a wonderful sense of humour and it had been buried for weeks during the debacle. Marit’s brother, Allvar, came and finally took Marit home. But the whole incident caused my relationship with Yara to take a turn. It didn’t deepen our bond. We didn’t grow closer. I grew more impatient of Yara’s projects—human and political—impatient and wary. Exhausted too. And Yara, with whatever she had ingested of Marit’s distress, became more frantic, creating more and more social advocacy projects for the homeless women she brought home—drama groups, soup vans, et cetera—all without money. Let me explain. I applaud Yara, but she had a new project every day and I saw Marits appearing everywhere. Our relationship didn’t so much end as fade out in this flurry. It faded out in arguments and in comments from her about my lack of real commitment, and from me about her tendency for hasty judgments. I felt Yara’s anger at what she called my indifference. I flung back that she hadn’t tried to understand my work. I had to complete my dissertation—these things, too, have effects, I told her. She was unconvinced.
We are still friends, Yara and I. And some years later, I’m still writing my dissertation. I can’t but feel that she was right about me. The daily evidence bears it out. I inhabit a small room in the world. Outside my door, the dreck piles up and I do nothing about it but think.
* Sanders/Teoria
I keep the photograph of Odalys face down on the top bookshelf. I am afraid of her spirit, to be f
rank. Odalys believed in spirits. I’m not superstitious in the least. You might ask, then why don’t I throw that photo away. It’s a picture of Odalys and me jumping the broom at our wedding, and I keep it to look at myself in another time and incarnation. Odalys herself is also in another time and incarnation, and I wonder who she is now. I wonder who she was then. Then, when we appeared in the photo, I thought that I knew Odalys and Odalys thought that she knew me. The photograph is a record of this knowing. Knowing is so liminal. Even knowing one’s self. As well, the photo is as a record of the misunderstanding and misrecognition that it now transports. One can look at it the way I have in those last sentences. But the photograph, when it was taken, was taken to record a happiness. Not the misunderstandings and the misrecognitions. As I said, in the photograph I knew Odalys, that is to say, there was the Odalys that I knew. No, I didn’t know Odalys, the more I think about it. I was yet to understand Odalys. I was yet to meet her. We’d met and knew each other in the formal ways of meeting and knowing and having intentions, in the general ways accepted as normal. We’d appraised each other, in the provisional way that lovers do, by attaching great depth and significance to the provisional. How, after all, do you “know” anyone? You take in certain physical and emotional characteristics that you’ve aestheticized, ignoring the facts. You listen to what a lover has to say, taking in the erotic music of their sound, their timbre, while dismissing the lyrics. Consider: “I don’t like eggs.” You never hear this statement, truly. You hear the statement’s quirky chirp, not its unreasonableness, nor its true intentions that are a criticism of your own habits. Nor do you truly listen to other statements like “I want to go on a cruise to Norway”; “I hate reading fiction, I only read biographies of famous people”; “I hate theory, what is theory anyway.” That is why I hate, to this day, music with words. The words are always dreadful. The chords, the movement from one note to the other, these are bearable to me and seductive, especially because they say nothing that we are supposed to know.