Annaka

by Andre Fenton

  That surprised me. “He always seemed like the kind of guy who wanted the spotlight. He was always after attention one way or another.”

  “That’s what you told me,” Clay replied. “You told me about how the story of him and Nan meeting didn’t align with the one he wrote in the journal. Maybe looking for attention was a way he hid a part of himself. Maybe he was more honest in his private moments.”

  “I still have my suspicions about that one,” I replied. “Which one can we really know is true?”

  “I’d go for the one without the audience.” Clay grinned.

  “There was an audience of one,” I shot back.

  “True, but one he didn’t know would watch.”

  As we stood outside Grampy’s classroom, I began to feel anxious. What if we did find something? And what if it was something I didn’t want to find? There had to be a reason those pages were torn out, after all.

  “You think we might find something heavy?” I asked Clay.

  “There’s only one way to find out, I guess.” He shrugged. “What do you think we’ll find?”

  “I dunno…maybe something about his childhood? It was the one thing he was never really open about. Mom didn’t know much about it, and Nan didn’t want to tell me about it.” I squared my shoulders and faced the door. “I’m just hoping we find something. Anything. What was it like when he first got to Canada? What was his family like? I’d love to know. His past was a secret.”

  “Well, I hope the only thing keeping you away from the secret is this door.” Clay pointed at the numbers.

  409.

  I grabbed the doorknob and turned. The classroom was cold and dark. Grampy’s desk was still there, topped with a nameplate that read Mr. Brooks. Papers were stacked on one end of the desk, along with a framed picture of Mom, Nan, Grampy, and me. I choked up.

  “How come no one took any of it down?” I managed to ask.

  “They must have cherished him here.”

  Clay approached the desk. He picked up the family portrait, examined it with a smile, and passed it to me. My emotions were mixed. That classroom was the place Grampy spent most of his time away from home. I could smell the same lemon air freshener he used in the attic. It was so weird; I could almost feel him there.

  I put the photo aside and tore apart his desk. The pages had to be here. I opened drawers and found loose papers, unmarked tests, and stacks of writing supplies.

  “You have to be here, you have to be here, you have to be here,” I kept saying out loud, trying to convince myself.

  Inside one of the drawers was a wooden box with a lock.

  “What do you think this is?” I picked it up to show Clay.

  He grabbed hold of it, observing each side. “I don’t know. Do you think the pages would be in there?”

  “Must be, but I can’t find a key.” I kept searching in the other drawers. “Where else could it be?”

  Clay could tell I was anxious. “Anna, let’s step back for a minute. Breathe.”

  “I can’t step back!” I looked up. “Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for this? We’re so close.” I kept looking, not realizing the box was slipping between my fingers. I lost my grip and heard a loud crack. The box had broke open, spilling papers all over the floor. My heart skipped a beat. But when I looked closer I saw they weren’t journal entries; they were cards. I picked them up one after another. That’s when tears began to fall. They were the Father’s Day cards I had written to Grampy from Halifax. I’d sent one every year, and I just assumed he had thrown them out. But he had kept them. All of them. I sank onto the floor and began to weep.

  “I’m sorry, Anna.” Clay leaned down. “He loved you very much.”

  “I know.”

  Clay held on to me, and I could feel him, you know. I could feel both of them. I cried for all the times I had wanted to come home. I wished I could have done more. I wished I could have done things differently. But we can’t change the past, all we can do is live it, learn it, and try to do better.

  And I was trying. I was trying my hardest and I hoped he understood that.

  Clay stood up and picked up the photo frame. He looked at it for a good minute. He squeezed his eyes shut. Then all of a sudden, he smashed the frame on the ground.

  “What are you doing?” I was shocked.

  Clay knelt down, picked away the glass, carefully took the photo out of the frame, and picked up a stack of papers that had been nestled in behind it.

  “I had a feeling,” he said. “I think like him, y’know.”

  He went through the papers for a minute. I was still too shocked to move a muscle. Clay’s reaction went from intrigued to interested and then to sad.

  “Oh, Rudy,” was all he said.

  “What is it?” I asked, finding the strength to stand up.

  “We found it, Anna. I think we found what you’ve been looking for.” He held out the pages to me.

  I grabbed the papers, and noticed there was a lot of text. It was all in cursive, messy, and I was frustrated because I couldn’t make out his handwriting. I began breathing heavy because of the anxiety, and I could feel my throat begin to clog.

  That was when I felt Clay wrap his hand around my free one. He put his other hand on my shoulder, and we faded into darkness.

  “What happened?” I asked. I was exhausted.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Clay said as the world around me began to shift. The darkness faded and a dusty floor expanded around our feet. A bed rose from the ground and there was a young woman lying in it. Her face looked familiar.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “We’re in a hospice,” Clay replied.

  “Why are we in a hospice?” I asked as a small black child—he couldn’t be any more than ten years old—entered the room. I didn’t recognize him at first, but it all clicked when the woman in the bed said, “Rudy, Rudy come here.”

  All the warmth in my heart began to fade away, and I could feel intensity in the air; the boy looked scared. He reminded me of…me. I didn’t have a good feeling.

  As he walked closer to the bed I could see tears in his eyes. I didn’t know who the woman in the bed was.

  “Why do you have to be sick?” young Rudy asked, choking back a sob. The way he spoke was different—he spoke with an English accent. That must have faded with age. The woman held on to him. She was young, but her face was very weak. Though I could hear her humming, a similar tune to one Grampy used to hum to me.

  “Why did Mom have to get sick? And how come Dad never made it to Canada?” he cried.

  I was witnessing one of my grandfather’s earliest memories. Then I looked closer at the woman in the bed. She was the woman in the photo album I had found at Grampy and Nan’s house. But who was she?

  “I don’t know what I’ll do without you.” Young Rudy was holding on to the woman’s hand.

  “You’ll find a way,” she said to him kindly. “You always do. You were always the most resourceful one of us.” She tried to smile.

  I looked back to see Clay and he had a sad look on his face.

  “How old was he?” I asked Clay.

  “He was seven. The same age you were when you left.”

  I could hear my grandfather crying. I grew up seeing him so confident, so strong, so ready for whatever the world threw at him. But this was one of his most vulnerable moments, and it was heartbreaking.“I don’t want to be alone,” he managed to say through his tears.

  “You won’t be. I’ll always be with you, I promise.” She squeezed her hand around his. “I need you to be strong, Rudy. The world is a hard place, but it’s the only thing you got.” She coughed.

  The young woman’s face looked sunken and pale, as if she had been sick for a long time. Each breath she took was long, raising the bedsheets. She closed her eyes. I
could see her smile took more energy than it should have. Just like Grampy, she was smiling when the world was trying to take it away.

  “Who is she?” I asked.

  Clay didn’t answer me. He only looked on.

  “Rudy,” the woman was saying now, “I need you to keep going. I need you to stay strong, and true. I’ll always be with you, no matter how lonely you feel. I’ll be above rooting for you like I always have been.” A tear came to her eye. “I love you, so, so much. You’re the best little brother anyone could ask for. You’re smart and funny, and you’re wise in your own weird way. You’re going to change so many lives, I just know you will. Someday we’re going to meet again, and I promise we’ll be together. All of us.” She rested a hand on his cheek and he pressed her hand against it.

  “I’ll never forget you.”

  After she heard that, her eyes closed for the last time, and Grampy’s face crumpled.

  “Annaka, come back!” He was sobbing uncontrollably, gasping for breath. “Come back….”

  I looked over at Clay. His eyes were teary. He gave me a hug, and I held on.

  “I wanna go home,” I whispered.

  “Then that’s where we’ll go.”

  It all faded away—Grampy, the woman, the hospice—but the pain stayed. When I opened my eyes, we were back in the classroom.

  “She was my aunt, wasn’t she?”

  Clay nodded. That’s why Mom named me Annaka. That’s why Nan was confused and said, “Annaka’s not our granddaughter.” That’s why Grampy was emotional when he found out what my name was.

  “He carried that pain for so long, Anna.” Clay spoke softy. “But he always seen you as his light.”

  “Mom named me after her,” I said. “And I threw that name away. That’s why she was so upset when I told her I wanted to be Anna.” I looked up at Clay. “Why didn’t he ever tell me?” Tears began rolling down my cheeks.

  Clay didn’t know the answer.

  All I could do was sweep up the broken glass, pick up the Father’s Day cards, and stuff them back in the box. I was taking it with me. I was taking the portrait and the pages too.

  “Lets go home,” I told Clay.

  Although things were now clear, I still felt lost.

  There was so much on my mind on the ride home. I guess the only thing I wanted to focus on was the road, and to let what I witnessed settle in my soul a little bit. I thought back to when Grampy told me about the first time he heard my voice. He didn’t just cry because he heard my voice. He cried because Mom named me after his sister. Mom named me after my aunt Annaka.

  “He didn’t know Mom would name me that, did he?”

  “He didn’t have a clue,” Clay replied.

  “There’s not much in there about my great-grandmother, is there? His mom?”

  “I don’t think he remembers too much about her.”

  It made sense. He was so young, and so lost. He meant so much to so many people but for the longest time he was alone and surrounded by grief. He was resilient, but before any of that, there was so much pain that I finally understood. I understood why he didn’t want to talk about it. I understood why he only focused on the future. The past can be a painful place, and there I was, chasing history hoping to find clarity. And what I found wasn’t a happy ending; it was a sad beginning. I didn’t open a door and find a solution; I opened a closet and found where he hid his trauma and despair.

  When we drove up the path towards home, it was late, and I saw some house lights on. That couldn’t be a good sign.

  “You know the drill,” I said to Clay. But by the time I glanced over, he was already gone. The front door was open, and I could smell cigarette smoke drifting from the living room.

  “Anna, is that you?” Mom called. She was sitting in Nan’s rocking chair, smoking.

  “Hey, Mom. What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” she replied. Her eyes looked a little red. “How was the party? You get Tia home safe?”

  “Yeah, I drove a whole gang of girls to Tia’s place. They’re probably still wide awake.”

  “Good.” Mom smiled.

  “Nan sleeping?”

  “Yeah, she’s sleeping like a pile of bricks. That woman can snore.” Mom took a puff. “Listen, we haven’t really had a chance to really speak in a while.”

  “I know.”

  Things between Mom and I had been sideways ever since we had the argument. We had given each other a hug after the hospital incident, but after that it didn’t seem like there was much else to talk about. We were both navigating feelings neither of us knew how to translate; we were both hurt in different ways. It made communication tough.

  “I think we should talk,” she continued. “Come pull up a seat.”

  What I wanted most was to get some sleep. My eyes were burning, my head was aching from the noise of the party, and I finally felt like I was breathing right again. But deep down, I knew talking to Mom was the right thing to do. I sat down across from her.

  “What’s on your mind?” I asked.

  “A lot. Are you okay? After everything that happened with Nan?”

  She didn’t even know the other half of the story, and I wasn’t about to tell her.

  “I think I’ll be fine. Tia helped me a lot when all of it went down. She’s a life saver.”

  “Keep that one close.” Mom stuck her cigarette face down into the arm of the chair. “You know, your grandmother said something to me today.”

  “Oh, yeah? And what was that?”

  “She told me that the only way to let go of the past is to not hide from it. The only way to let go of the past is to face it. To not fear it, not let it bother you anymore. Then I thought about how your grandfather spent so much of his life running. Not from any of us, but from himself. He was never open about any of it. I had to pry his past from him. That man didn’t have an easy life, y’know.”

  “I know,” I replied. “I found out some things.”

  Mom looked at me. “Like what?”

  “He had a sister, didn’t he?”

  “He did,” Mom confirmed. “And he loved her so much. He didn’t talk about her often, but she was never far away from his mind. As brave as he was, he was mainly brave about moving forward. He was afraid to dwell on the past, because it hurt him—it hurt him real bad. He hid that part of himself because he was scared, and all he ever wanted to do was be brave.” She let out a breath. “He knew you were brave, and he always wanted you to move forward, even when we were away. He knew there was more out there for you.” She sighed and lit another cigarette. She inhaled and paused for a moment, looking up at the ceiling. “Nan told me the story of him coming to Canada,” she continued. “His mother was already older, and she died of pneumonia shortly after arriving from England. A couple years later, his sister was diagnosed with cancer. Grampy was so young, and they never really told him the details.

  “We assumed his father passed away somewhere overseas. He wasn’t the type of man who would abandon his children. Your grandfather never had anything in this world, so he took it into his own hands. When he found out you were named after his sister, he cried. He let it out.”

  She smiled at the bittersweet memory. “Aunt Annaka sounded like a strong young woman. I knew you could carry her name. I knew you could do it justice.”

  I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything.

  “He lost everything at such a young age,” she went on. “And the only way he knew how to deal with it was to hide it. He hid his past so deep inside him and it pushed people away. I always thought I’d be different—do better. But I ended up doing the same thing. I also hid a part of myself so deep inside that it pushed you away, Anna.” Mom paused. I could see a tear racing down her cheek. “You just wanted to know about your dad. That’s more than a reasonable request.”

  “Mom, we
don’t have to—”

  “I owe you that, Anna,” Mom cut me off. “Your father. He’s still here. He wasn’t a good man. In fact, your grandfather despised him. So did your grandmother. But I learned he wasn’t a good man the hard way.”

  Maybe, I thought, the seeking part was done. Maybe it was my turn to sit and listen, so I kept quiet, waiting for Mom to continue at her pace. From what I’d learned about my dad, he didn’t seem like that great of a guy. I guess my suspicions were now confirmed.

  Mom took another drag on her cigarette before she started in on the next part. “He wanted me to move with him to Halifax, then Toronto. He wanted to start a family business. At least, that’s what he told me when I was pregnant with you.” She rolled her eyes. “He was broke, couldn’t keep a job or stable income. I told him I couldn’t rely on that. Not with you on the way. I couldn’t trust it. But he was determined to go. He didn’t have the money to go on his own, so he was relying on me to for money. One night he tried to break into the house. He wanted to steal as much stuff as he could to sell it. Grampy found him outside after he heard a window break. He had armfuls of their belongings, and he was trying to start up the truck that’s now yours.”

  I was shocked. He broke into my grandparents’ house and tried to steal Grampy’s truck?

  “Grampy went out to confront him, only to be sucker-punched.” Mom shook her head and stubbed out her cigarette. “But it didn’t end there. Your father hated Grampy. He kept punching him over and over and over. I remember I came out screaming at him to stop, but he wouldn’t. He pushed me to the ground when I got close.”

  I couldn’t believe it. “What happened?”

  “Well, your grandmother came up from behind and hit him so hard on the back of the head that he went limp. Grampy called the police, your father went to jail, and eventually prison. It turned out we weren’t the only ones who had been robbed; he had already stolen a car he was trying to sell, and had broken into Ms. Layton’s shop a week prior. You were born shortly after all that.” She looked at me in anguish. “I carried guilt for so long. Not because of you, but because I trusted someone who hurt the people I love. I trusted someone who hurt me, someone who would eventually let you down. I had to live with that guilt, and I was so ashamed that I buried it deep inside of myself.” She shook her head. “He sent me so many letters saying he wanted me back and he was sorry, and this and that, and he had changed. I never believed a word of it. But I knew when he got out of prison he would come looking for you. That’s why I decided to take you to Halifax with me. I wanted to keep you safe no matter what. Because of that, I ended up pushing you away, and I am so, so sorry, Anna. I am so sorry I hurt you.”