“Mom, I’m pregnant… It’s not his baby.”
Her face fell. The words aged her.
“I’m sorry,” was all I could say.
“What people said… it was true.” She looked at Kal like he was an ac-complice. “And the father—who is he?”
“His name is Liam.”
She refused to look at me, and stared out the window. “Leee-aaaam.” Her voice was quiet and mean. “That same boy. What people said… they were right.” She stared at me in controlled anger, waiting for me to answer. “All this time. You lied… What were you thinking?”
“Mom, I love him.”
She was unmoved, so I told her again, so that this one time there could be no misinterpretation. “Pyaar.”
She stared behind me, looking over my shoulder, somewhere into the past.
“Love? You always believed what you saw on tv, what you read in books… those silly stories… It’s not real, Meena. This,” she said, fisting her heart, “this is what’s real. This is love. A mother’s love for her child, that is real… and now look what you’ve done,” she said, her face crumpled in sobs. “You’ve thrown it away, and for what?”
I placed my hand over my stomach. “For this… Mom, I’m going to have the baby.”
“Alone?” Her voice was pinched in contained sadness.
“You raised us alone.”
“I didn’t do it alone. It wasn’t the same… Your Mamaji, your Masi, I had family.”
“So do I.”
My mother turned to the side, refusing to meet my eyes. “You ask too much. You have always asked too much.”
I stepped back slowly, distancing myself as I’d always done. Kal reached for my hand and whispered “Let’s go.” He said it a few times before I moved, before I made my way outside.
“Go where?” I asked as we drove away from the house and turned off the street.
“You can stay with me for a while.”
“What about Irmila?”
He reached for my hand. “What about her? It’ll be fine.”
I waited in the foyer of their East Vancouver rental while Kal went upstairs to explain my situation to Irmila. They spoke in harsh whispers that tapered at the end. I tried not to listen, instead staring at the walls, which were adorned with Egyptian prints on papyrus and questionable local art that was as colourful as the neighbourhood residents whose loud voices and reaching eyes penetrated my skin as we’d walked by. “Hey, pretty lady, where you going?” they’d asked. I’d turned around and answered “I don’t know,” and though Kal was right there, his hand in mine, I’d never felt more alone.
3.15
T he day I packed to move into my own place, Sunny locked himself in the den. He didn’t come out even when I knocked on the door to tell him I was leaving. I leaned my head against the door, listening to the sound of him on the other side. I imagined that he was sitting in his leather chair, staring out the window, the way he often did when he’d been working too many hours.
“Sunny. Please. Open up.”
No answer. Compared to his rage, his silence was unsettling, a har-binger. A few days earlier he’d turned up at Kal’s house, argued with him about my staying there, and called me a bitch and a whore. “And you,” he said pointing his finger in Kal’s face like a madman, “you were supposed to be like my brother.” His face was red, the veins in his neck protruding, so hot and wiry that I thought if I put my hand on them I’d feel his pulse, be able to slow it down. He’d left in an angry rush, speeding away in his car, leaving us with the silent fatigue of him, the perpetual exhaustion of not knowing what to do.
Now I knocked again. An offering. An explanation of why. I talked into the door. When he didn’t answer, I left with my belongings packed into the back seat of my car and drove across the bridge into Kitsilano. I’d put a down payment on a Craftsman house with “potential,” which I would come to realize was only a euphemism and real estate term for a fixer-upper. At first I would call Kal when something needed doing, but one night when the hot-water tank burst and my basement was filled with two inches of water, Irmila suggested I call someone else—“a professional,” she’d said. I hadn’t called him since and eventually he’d stopped calling me. I told myself it was for the best.
Night was the hardest part. The house settled into its bones like an old woman; its moans and whispers kept me up. I sat up in bed and called Serena, who updated me on family happenings. Whenever she said things like “Oh, you should have been there,” she would go quiet afterwards, the silence full of apologies and condolences. “Don’t worry, Mom will come round,” she assured me after one such sequence. I nodded, forgetting she couldn’t see me. “Meena, are you still there?” I told her yes, but that I had to go, and hung up.
I reached for the baby booties I’d started knitting to go with the blanket my mother had sent. I threw the ball of yarn across the bed and consulted the knitting-for-beginners, instructions that I’d torn out of a magazine at the doctor’s office. When we were children, my mother had knitted while we watched television. The click of her knitting needles sounded like the crack of my grandmother’s false teeth, and I flinched each time she crossed the needles in a loop, as if part of me were being caught up in her weave. She always started her knitting session by tossing the loose ball of yarn onto the floor, and within an hour would have collected it in needled rows of tight stitches that amounted to nothing but the satisfaction of repeti-tion. Each night she would look at her stitches and stretch the warp flat, and when she saw me watching would hand me the last unbound stitch and let me unravel the whole thing. To my recollection, she had never finished anything until now. When I received the blanket, I called and thanked her. She asked me how I was feeling and I told her that I was fine, because she deserved that much, even if it was a lie.
Now as I crossed the needles, looping the yarn, I wished she’d taught me how to knit, I wished she’d had the time. After an hour my hands grew tired and I got out of bed and put the knitting away. I looked out the window. The last few blossoms on the trees rustled, falling in graceful turns, twisting their way down on the edge of a breeze. I traced their path with my eyes. Down the street a car started and crept forward slowly. The window rolled down and the driver leaned out as if he were reading house numbers. I ducked back behind the draperies when I realized it was Sunny. I rarely saw him without the presence of our lawyers, and even then he didn’t look at me. He spoke about me as though I weren’t there, his words a riddling of bullets. “She can have the car; she can have the Chippen-dale chairs—but not the dining room table.” When I’d remind him that I didn’t want anything but the divorce, he would pause, restrain himself and then continue on with his list, cataloguing our life, dividing us up, drawing things out, re-inserting his presence in my life one piece at a time.
After a few minutes, I peeked through the side of the window. He’d parked, switched his engine offand was watching the house, looking up into the lit windows. I picked up the phone as if it were a weapon and put it down only when he drove away. I felt my heart give way, collapse in fear, and I rushed downstairs to check the locks. I slept with the lights on.
When I came home from work the next day a moving truck was parked in my driveway. A crew carried boxes and filed in and out of my house. I shimmied by the men, my growing abdomen scraping by a stack of boxes.
“Excuse me,” I said.
A man in a plaid shirt and ball cap looked up. “You the owner?” I nodded and he thrust a clipboard in my face. “Sign here.”
I signed. “What is all of this? And how did you get in?”
He pointed to Sunny’s name at the top of the requisition form. “He left it unlocked for us.”
“He did? He doesn’t even live here,” I explained.
“Look lady, we just deliver the stuff. Okay. You got questions, you can call the office.”
I nodded and moved out of their way, watching them stack boxes and bubble-wrapped breakables next to a growing mountain
of furniture. I picked up the phone and called Sunny. He was calm when I asked him what he thought he was doing.
“It’s your stuff. From the settlement.”
“Yes, I know that, but how did you get into the house?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“They said that you let them in.”
“Did they?” He was quiet for a moment. “Well, they’re wrong. Maybe you left the door unlocked or something. Apparently pregnancy makes women absent-minded.”
“Sunny stop it… I saw you last night. I saw you.”
“Stop. You want me to stop—no, Meena, I haven’t started yet. You think you can just walk away. No. Things aren’t over until I say they are.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You figure it out,” he said, and hung up.
I sat on the sofa, phone in hand, watching the men stack the rest of the boxes against the wall before leaving. The next day I had the locks changed.
3.16
T ej ran a razor blade through the packing tape, slicing the box open. She dug her hands into the Styrofoam chips, pulling out pieces of fine china. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked, carrying them outside to where Serena was pricing items.
“Yeah. Time to start over,” I said, bending over and lifting up a box of glassware. “To let go.” I hadn’t opened the boxes since Sunny had had them delivered, and finally after a month of staring at the piles and stacked furniture knew I had to get rid of them, to remove him from my life a piece at a time.
Serena yelled from across the lawn like a referee calling a foul: “No lifting for you. Go sit down. We got it.”
“I’m fine,” I assured her and unpacked the box, adding it to the rest of my belongings that were strewn on the lawn. It felt strange to bargain the value of things, to watch the piles of designer decor fall into hands of junk collectors and treasure hunters. They held crystal up to the light, inspecting the diamond cut of the glass, and tested out the dining room chairs as if they were Goldilocks.
“How much for this?”
I recognized the voice. It was Irmila. She was wearing a paisley strapless summer dress, and flip-flops. Her hair had grown and grazed her tanned shoulders, making me wonder if she and Kal had been on vacation or had spent their summer lying on the beach. “This one? How much?” she repeated, holding up a hand-painted ceramic vase from Chile.
“Thirty-five,” I said.
She perched her sunglasses on her head and squinted. “Surinder? I mean, Meena, is that you?”
“How are you, Irmila?”
“Good. Wow, look at you.” She stared at my abdomen with the same amount of shock that everyone did. “I didn’t realize you were so far along. When are you due?”
“Not until October.”
“Wow, you still have a ways to go,” she said, counting offthe three months on her fingers. “A Libra or maybe a Scorpio, just like Kal.”
“How is he? Kal?”
“Good, really good,” she said, admiring the house. “We’re doing well. We’re thinking of buying a house soon… I forgot that you lived in this neighbourhood. Kal will be so surprised when I tell him that I bumped into you… Thirty-five, then?” she asked, reaching into her wallet.
“Tell you what, just take it.”
“No, I couldn’t really.”
“Please.”
She thanked me and tucked the vase under her arm.
Kal knocked on my front door later than evening, the same vase in his hands. He handed it to me when I opened the door. “I gave it to her,” I said.
“And I am giving it back.” I invited him in and he took offhis coat while looking around the room. “I haven’t done much decorating yet.”
He turned towards me. “You’ve been busy. I mean, look at you.” He paused and smiled. “You look great.”
“You seem surprised.”
“Not surprised, happy. Pregnancy suits you.”
“Thanks.”
We were both quiet for a moment.
“So Irmila tells me it was quite a yard sale.”
I smiled at his small talk, almost surprised that we’d been reduced to it. “Yeah it went well. Whatever we didn’t sell we donated to charity.”
He nodded, and looked out the window, pressing his palm against it. “These are single-pane windows. You’ll want to change them before the winter. I can look into it if you like.”
“Thanks, but I’ve already hired someone to do it before the baby comes.” “The baby.” He whispered it slowly, the word popping from his mouth in syllables. “I still can’t get used to the idea.”
“The idea of what?”
“You as a mother.”
“Tell me about it.” I laughed and motioned to him. “Come, let me show you the baby’s room.” The sound of our footsteps filled the space that conversation should have. I opened the door to the nursery. “Serena helped me decorate.”
“It’s a girl?” he asked, glancing at the stack of baby clothes on the dresser.
“Yeah. This is her at twenty weeks.” I showed him the ultrasound picture, outlining her features. “Pretty amazing, isn’t she?”
Kal looked right at me. “Yeah, she is amazing indeed.”
I put the photo down and smiled. “It’s good to see you again.”
“I don’t know why I haven’t come around sooner. I just—I’m sorry.”
I fiddled with the stack of baby clothes, unfolding and refolding the tiny pink sleeper sets. “It’s okay. You have your own life and Sunny is your cousin. It’s all complicated. I get it. I really do.” The baby kicked. I winced and reached for the door jamb to steady myself. I rested my hand on my stomach, pressing in on her foot. Kal watched, mesmerized. “You want to feel?” He nodded and placed his hand on my stomach. “That’s her head,” I said, moving his hand. “And that is a foot.” His hand jumped with her kick. “I swear she does somersaults in there.”
He placed his palm back on my abdomen, both of us quiet as we imagined her universe in mine. His face brightened as she squirmed beneath his palm. “Wow. That’s so amazing. You’re lucky.” He moved his hand away. “Irmila doesn’t want kids.”
I sat down in the rocking chair. “Maybe she’ll change her mind.”
“Maybe… But sometimes I wonder if we should even get married. How do I know that she’s the one?”
“If you’re looking for advice on love, you’re probably asking the wrong person. I’ve managed to make quite a mess of things.” I tried to laugh.
“Did you love Liam?
I shook my head and smiled. “I did… and I do.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t know… With him, I mean with us… love was a lot like faith.” “So, what, you just believed?”
“Yeah, sort of.”
“And that was enough?”
“It had to be.”
Kal paused and looked out the window. “Meena, Liam called the other day. He asked about you.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing… It’s not for me to tell.”
I didn’t say anything.
“He’s living on the Sunshine Coast now.” Kal reached into his pocket and handed me a piece of paper.
“What’s this?” I asked, taking it from him.
“It’s his phone number. I thought you might want to call him.”
3.17
M y contractions started in the middle of the night and by the time I called Serena my water had broken and I was delirious with fatigue, crying for my mother, desperate for something or someone to numb the rolling pain of steady contractions, the tension and pull of being split from the inside out.
Once I was admitted to the hospital, the nurses examined me, telling me not to push even if I wanted to. After a few minutes they called the doctor. The baby was breach and kicking to come into the world feet first. Serena propped me up, telling me to breathe. The nurse administered an iv drip to slow my contractions. “Is there any
one you want us to call?” she asked, a preface to the explanation of complications and “sign here” forms being thrust in my face. I motioned to Serena to get me my purse and handed the nurse Liam’s phone number.
By the time I was allowed to push, I was only half alert, pain taking my mind to other places, pulling me back, tossing me away. Moments were like rooms, long and narrow, something to get lost in, something to run out of. I dreamed with my eyes open.
It was two states of physicality, opposing forces so strong that even inside the pain there was a fervour and an ecstasy where my thoughts deferred to the design of my body and being. Serena held my hand, said things—reassuring things that, once said, evaporated into my screams of being broken and torn.
Three hours later, Leena was turned and tugged from me. My body relaxed and spasmed in the shock of afterbirth. The intense cold trauma of being two and then one settled on my skin like a thousand needles. I held her for a moment, felt her against my breast, fists batting at the air. I couldn’t hear her screams. The moment was outside of sound. I fought joyful fatigue. My eyelids were weighted. My body, now sewn, felt full of stones. I slept in a flood of night.
When I woke it was to the soft shapes of dawn, to the sound of Liam’s voice. He was holding Leena in his arms, staring out the window. “It’s okay. I’ve got you. You’re fine. You’re fine.”
3.18
Liam spent most days and some nights at the house until some nights became every night and his staying was no longer a question. When he moved in, he dropped his suitcases at the door, his definitive arrival our homecoming, Leena’s birth an impetus for everything. He unpacked quickly, hanging his clothes in the closet, piling his books on the nightstand, storing his camera equipment in the hall closet, and when he was done he sat down next to me and looked around the living room, his eyes acclimatizing.
“Are you sure this is what you want?” I asked.
He looked at Leena asleep in my arms and put his arm around my shoulder and pulled us both into his quiet embrace, then kissed the top of my head. “Yeah, this is all I want.”
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