AWOL

by Jennifer Barclay

  Jonathan Bennett’s first novel, After Battersea Park, was published in 2001 to critical acclaim. His next book, Verandah People, is a collection of short stories and will be released in 2003. Originally from Sydney, Australia, Jonathan now lives in Port Hope, Ontario.

  030Destination: Mexico

  THE MOTHERHOOD ROADSHOW

  Alison Wearing

  When I was pregnant, people were always warning me that “children change your life.”

  The comment bored me. Since the day I’d left home at seventeen, I had changed jobs, addresses, countries and living languages more times than I care to count. “My life’s never been the same two years running,” I would think. “What’s so monumental about this change that everyone feels the need to warn me?”

  I should have noticed that what they were actually saying was “children chaaaAAAWOWOWOWOWAAAnge your life.”

  If people had only enunciated properly, I might have paid more attention.

  I’ll freely admit that I went into motherhood a bit naively. I thought having a baby would be like having a cat. Feeding, litter/toilet-training, dangling toys from a string. I knew there was more to it, of course, but I assumed that to be the general idea. It never occurred to me that I might not continue to live after the birth the way I had before. Being in a relationship, I’d already caught on to the notion of monogamy and remembering to call when I wasn’t going to be back for dinner. Besides diapers and barf blankets, what else was there?

  I had a beautiful pregnancy. Manageable nausea and no strange cravings apart from that awful powdery white cheddar cheese popcorn. I took long walks, read long books, travelled to Israel and Cyprus, house-sat a huge mansion filled with wildly expensive art, went hiking in south Texas, even finished writing my own book while the fetus was still the size of a fig. Change? Ha.

  Prior to giving birth, I enjoyed spending hours of every day in complete solitude and adored places of isolation. While I cherished the company of good friends, I had always had a strong allergy to groups of any kind.

  Almost from the moment I slipped my hands under my baby’s arms and pulled him from my body, however, it became clear that the job of caring for children is a task for a community, not one person on her own. The image of a solitary parent sitting in a house by herself, trying to meet the nearly constant needs of an infant is, in fact, the picture of a form of insanity. Nature never intended children to be raised in anything short of a communal setting.

  The price of my life of independence, privacy and mobility, I realized, was that I had virtually no sense of community. My closest friends were flung over three continents; my family spread from Vancouver to Halifax. I don’t know why I didn’t notice until after I gave birth that none of my friends in the area had babies, but I didn’t.

  I had done enough solo travelling to know how to cope when everything that I believed and took for granted was upended. But this—this—was utterly different. This time, everything around me was familiar and I was the part that had changed.

  “Try playgroups!” people said when I explained my feelings of isolation.

  Now I don’t know how this statement resonates with other people, but these words, when spoken in that cheerful voice people use when they’re trying to be helpful, felt like the death penalty to me.

  Eventually, though, I swallowed my apprehensions and decided to give it a try. On a blustery day in January, I zipped my little guy into his bunting bag and trekked to our local family centre. It was filled with brightly coloured plastic gadgets, rangy kids already buzzing on too much sugar at ten in the morning, and fluorescent lighting. I was welcomed very sweetly and invited to join a circle of mothers. We were told to introduce ourselves with our name and our favourite snack.

  Once we were familiar with each other’s eating habits, we gathered our children onto our laps to learn the words to a piece of music entitled, “Inky Linky Pinky Stinky,” which we sang together more times than I thought humanly possible.

  When it was all over, I went and stood in the glorious blizzard outside. “Let there be no doubt, Alison,” I said to myself. “Life has chaaaAAAWOWOWOWOWAAAnged.”

  I considered advertising for friends. “Creative mother of small child seeking like-minded people in similar situation to share our children and conversations that extend beyond the merits of teething gel.” But I could never get the wording quite right. I talked to any interesting-looking mothers with infants whom I chanced to meet. They would smile politely when I suggested we do something together, go snowshoeing, whatever, but we never, ever, did.

  My solitude melted into a loneliness I had never before experienced. Being alone (with my baby) was exhausting and draining. I had found almost no one with whom I felt a meaningful connection, and I couldn’t bear the small talk and niceties that the get-togethers with other moms required. Not to mention all the sitting around.

  This, together with severe sleep deprivation and the realization that I could no longer even go out for a walk to the bloody driveway and back by myself, led me into what is clinically known as post-partum depression but which should be renamed, to my mind, Women Very Sanely and Rationally Understanding What is Happening to Their Erstwhile Free and Independent Lives.

  The day I received an invitation to a toy party, I felt my life was as good as over. I did the only reasonable thing. Called a travel agent and began pricing tickets to Mexico.

  When I announced my plans to spend a month in Mexico to my partner, he was very supportive. He knew I was a traveller by nature, meaning that my soul is fed by journeys; and that if my spirit was flagging, this was exactly what I needed. At seven months of age, my son was still nursing exclusively, so I wouldn’t have to worry about him catching any intestinal nasties. It seemed an opportune time to travel.

  ——

  I’ll never forget the feeling as I waved goodbye and walked through the airport to the departure gate: every inch of my skin was tingling.

  Flying was a breeze. We slept, nursed, played with ice cubes, did a lot of bouncing up and down on the empty seat beside us, drummed on the tray table. Arriving in Mexico City filled me with excitement. As our taxi buzzed out of the city, I peered out at the vibrant, colourful street life: open-air shops and fruit stands, restaurants painted in gorgeously audacious colours and bursting with people, music and cacophonous voices. The lyrical lilt of Mexican Spanish made me smirk with delight.

  The taxi brought us to Tepoztlan, a village in the mountains south of Mexico City, to a rental house I had found through an ad in a Canadian literary journal. We arrived after dark. The proprietor, a British woman, met me at the gate with a flashlight, furrowed her brow when her beam of yellow light caught on the baby slung on my hip—“You didn’t tell me there was a baby”—and led me to a small house in her garden. “The front door sticks a bit,” she said as she kicked it open. “The lights are here.” A bulb dangling from the ceiling lit up a tiny kitchen. “Toilet is there, bed’s upstairs. There’s no hot water until morning. I’d watch where you put your baby, there are scorpions everywhere. I put a loaf of bread and some eggs in the fridge for you. Shouldn’t need anything else until morning.”

  She offered me a perfunctory “good night” and closed the door behind her. I stood there, pack on my back, bags at my feet, baby on my hip, for ages.

  The trip, door to door, had taken about fourteen hours. I was bathed in sweat. When I peeked into the bathroom at the little tiled shower, a scorpion skittered along the wall away from the light. There was no place to put a baby down. I ate a few handfuls of bread and tried to cook up some eggs, but I couldn’t figure out how to hold the match and turn on the gas with only one hand (the other hand was holding the baby), so I gave up and had more bread. I tried to get our things upstairs, but the tiny winding stairway was so narrow, I couldn’t squeeze through carrying both a backpack and a baby. I dropped the pack and let it tumble down the stairs. After lifting back the sheets to check for scorpions, tucking the mosquito net in all the way a
round the bed, nursing my son to sleep, and crying a little, I fell sound asleep fully clothed.

  ——

  I awoke to the crowing of roosters. Opened my eyes and watched an enormous black spider rappelling down the length of the mosquito net. I ducked underneath, scooped the spider into my shoe and dumped it out the window. When my son woke up, all jolly and gurgly, I sat with him on the front steps of our little house and adjusted to the heat, the texture of the air, the scent of my surroundings.

  It wasn’t long before Ann, the proprietor, appeared.

  “I’ll take you up to the market this morning so you can do some shopping. I can’t imagine how you’ll manage on your own. I mean, with a baby …”

  We drove up to the market and left the car at what Ann called “the car park with the best view in the world.” I agreed. Lush mountains on all sides, vermilion flowers dripping from stone walls and terraces, and a bird’s-eye view of the marketplace. The sun carved light from every bit of stone.

  I tied a hat under my son’s chin, perched him on my hip and toddled to catch up with Ann.

  “Oh, I used to be a journalist,” she replied to my questions of how she had ended up here. “I met my husband in Chile, and we moved here almost forty years ago. He was Mexican. Died ten years ago, just about …”

  We reached the market with its sacks of fresh spices, tables heaped with every imaginable fruit, mountains of fresh vegetables, fabrics, hot plates frying up tortillas, quesadillas, itacates. The vendors, mostly indigenous women with dark skin and broad smiles, called out to us as we passed. “Hola gordito!” they laughed, reaching out to touch my son’s pudgy white arms.

  “They’re calling your baby ‘little fatso,’” Ann laughed. “He is so much bigger than Tepoztecan babies. They can hardly believe their eyes. Then again, I’d say he’s big by any standard. How do you manage?”

  I wound around the maze of stalls, gathering food and supplies in one hand and balancing my baby on my hip with the other.

  “Look at you, you can hardly move,” Ann said, taking one of my bags. We lumbered back to the car and heaved the bags into the trunk, then turned to enjoy the view one more time. “I don’t think I adjusted well to family life,” Ann began, squinting into the distance. “I just put so much of myself into it that part of me shut down. It’s an enormous sacrifice, but I think if you’re a good mother it has to be.”

  We drove back to the house in silence. I thanked Ann and schlepped my bags inside. I was exhausted but couldn’t sleep. Stared out the window instead, wondering what on earth I was doing there.

  First thing the next morning, I decided to master the art of carrying a baby in a sling (a long piece of fabric that secures a baby on the hip and ties together at the shoulder). Someone had given one to me months before, but because it’s practically impossible to wear with bulky winter clothing, I’d never used it. I unrolled it from my bag and tried to wear it as I had seen some of the women in the market doing the day before. It took a bit of shifting and fiddling, but within a few hours, I’d decided it was the most brilliant contraption ever designed.

  With my son slung comfortably and contentedly at my breast, I could light the stove, chop vegetables, carry groceries over long distances, even hike in the mountains. I explored the enchanted village with its narrow cobblestone streets, bougainvillea dripping over balconies and walls, houses rich in ochres, crimsons and terracottas. Most days we walked into town, where my son was taken into the welcoming arms of one of the market women, who laughed and shooed me off to do my shopping and snacking with both arms free. I took showers at night, wrote in the early morning, filled an entire journal in a few weeks.

  I am breathing for the first time in months. Breaths of colour and light. I feel exhausted but strong; so strong. With every detail of this exquisite place, I am inspired. Inspirited. Nourished.

  I sit amidst a chorus of birds. Calls for beauty. I float on song. Dry waves. The flowers within view are of a colour that feeds, seduces, my eyes. I open myself wider and focus, feel myself absorb that colour until it is part of my body. My flesh is a radiant violet.

  My life has changed, but my core is the same. Intact. Alive. With every day here I feel myself coming back to life.

  I washed my son in a bucket outside in the garden. Washed our clothes in the same bucket while he sat beside me, marvelling at the texture of avocado as it is squished between the fingers, smeared onto the belly and into the hair. I basked in the simple peace of our existence. And enjoyed being a mother.

  Ann and I became friends. I grew to love her wry humour, her honesty, her opinions. She grew to love having a baby around, applauded his squeals, laughed at his efforts to crawl: “Look at you! You’re a beautiful blond seal!”

  On one of our last mornings, as we sat in the garden, Ann spoke of maybe selling the place and moving back to Britain. Even after all this time, she said, Mexico didn’t really feel like home. “Though I’m not sure Wales will either,” she added.

  “I know what you mean,” I said. “Sometimes I feel like such a foreigner at home, and so at home, briefly, in other places.” And then I looked at my son, merrily removing teabags from the box, examining each one as though it were a precious stone, and laying it on the grass. He has no idea he is in Mexico, I thought. He makes magic with whatever is in front of him, wherever he is.

  When my son was eighteen months, I took him to Vietnam, but I can honestly say that after spending almost a month in Hanoi, I have no idea what the city is like. I spent so much time with my head down to toddler level, watching for approaching hands or runaway traffic that I scarcely looked up. Large cities and small legs, I’ve learned, are not the happiest travel combination.

  Fairly regularly these days, I am asked, “Where to next?” To which I can only respond that, for the moment, I am quite content where we are: tobogganing down the hill behind the house, skating on the pond, snowshoeing over to our beautiful little studio at the edge of the forest, letting the car sit abandoned for weeks. My partner and I talk of spending a year in Finland, visiting friends in the Czech Republic, building a cabin on Manitoulin Island, maybe travelling to Bhutan. But today, it feels wonderful to enjoy this extraordinary, fascinating, awe-inspiring moment right-right-right here.

  Alison Wearing is the author of Honeymoon in Purdah: An Iranian Journey. She lives with her partner and son.

  Mafikeng, 1996.

  031Destination: South Africa

  STATION ROAD

  Sandra Shields

  It was three in the afternoon and Station Road was thronged. The street got its name from the train station built here during the 1890s when this South African town, Mafikeng, was a sleepy outpost of the British Empire. Makeshift stalls lined the sidewalks, overturned cardboard boxes with wares spread out on top: bananas, umbrellas, Nelson Mandela posters, bags of peanuts, cigarettes, cheap perfume, a box full of day-old chicks all soft and yellow and peeping. Horns honked as minibus taxis headed out of town. A vegetable seller called me over to ask if I was really leaving and could he go back to Canada with me.

  The only white street vendor on Station Road sat in front of the butcher shop with a picnic cooler full of milk at her feet, and the automatic shotgun of the shop’s security guard watching over her. She was an Afrikaner woman with a quiet voice and thick glasses. I had money in my pocket from a friend who wanted me to buy myself a farewell beer, but after a year in South Africa, I had drunk more than enough beer, so I bought a two-litre Coke bottle full of fresh farm milk instead. I tried catching her eyes but they were small and floating at the bottom of her glasses. She didn’t say much, just handed me the milk and went back to her knitting.

  Six years before, I had spent several months in this dusty little city, falling in love with a man who then followed me to Canada where, together, we watched apartheid come to an end on the evening news. At the beginning of 1996, we left winter behind in Canada and made our first return visit to South Africa on a one-year open ticket. We had arrived fu
ll of hope and intensely curious to see how the place had changed.

  It was a Saturday morning in the middle of summer when we drove back into Mafikeng. The city is in the north of the country, up against the border with Botswana, and its claim to fame is that the Boy Scouts were started here during the 217-day siege that began the Boer War back in 1899. At first, everything looked familiar, the same red plain spread out around us, running off in the direction of the Kalahari Desert, palm trees still graced the main streets leading into town. The wealthy homes lining the road were unchanged except that the fences were taller. The high school David had dropped out of was still there.

  We soon reached the central shopping district where the sidewalks were relics of the colonial era, built like verandas with overhanging roofs. The stage-set was the same but the cast had changed colour and swelled in number. People spilled into the street and crossed wherever they wanted. Pieces of cardboard and old plastic bags lay in the gutters. Every few feet, vendors leaned back against the storefronts with goods spread out around them, their faces impassive.

  We parked and got out of the truck to walk down the block to the shop where David used to work. Hundreds of blank and staring eyes hit our white skin. We walked faster. It turned out that most whites didn’t walk much at all anymore. From their cars they waved grimly at one another. Behind the razor wire that protected their homes, they told true crime stories. “Get one of the fifty-thousand-volt shocker devices,” an old friend advised over rum and cokes in his plush living room. Exotic fish were swimming in the tank built into the wall above his head. His wife nodded, “The tear-gas guns are good too,” she said.

  It took me months to learn to walk these streets comfortably again. Like everyone else of my colour, I watched from the car window until, by degrees, I eased out of that protective shell. The wide stares remained, but I learned to stare back—not so much staring as meeting people’s eyes and acknowledging a shared humanity. Like the woman selling milk, whites in South Africa kept their eyes to themselves. People in Canada do the same, so I was good at it. In taking to the street, I tried to escape the dimensions of my own skin and followed the lead of everyone else out there by saying hello.