by Kim Echlin
I liked moving into the smoke.
*
In Hamilton, I made Ma put on the album first thing. The same work-worn hands I had grown up watching on the edges of records now held mine. We listened together and Ma said, Katie, you did it.
I turned over the cover and showed her how I thanked her in print and then I said, Let’s take the kids on the rail trail tomorrow.
It was a hike they liked from downtown up to the escarpment to see the falls. Bea said, I love being in the Canadian wilds. I wish I had a dog.
Ma said, You think Hamilton is the wilds? Baby-B, this is a steel town. Let’s borrow the dog next door for you.
She was entertaining now that I had moved away. Her favourite things were telling stories and smoking and singing. I watched her with the kids and I thought, I’m going to write a piece called “Gold-Thread Slippers.” We played cards and she sang the same songs she’d sung to me, the songs her mother sang with her, and she drummed on the old kitchen table:
What you gonna do when the bed breaks down? Tried it on the sofa,
Tried it on the chair,
Tried it on the window,
Didn’t get nowhere.
What you gonna do when the bed breaks down?
One night when Ma and I went for a walk she said, I’ve been working with some lawyers to get an apology from the government for putting me in Belmont.
What do you want to dig up all that for?
Katie, they didn’t have the right to do what they did.
She tossed her cigarette and said, I’m going to get an apology. It’s for you too. Whether you want it or not.
I wanted her to come back with us for a while but she was stubborn. Ma and I were changing and I knew she was lonely but I couldn’t do anything about it and take care of the kids and keep playing. She’d kept the same job for thirty years and she was never going to leave and she was still looking for something but I did not know what it was. We were connected like the forked branches of a divining rod witching for underground streams.
MAHSA
Monique nailed tin cans and an old shoe to our apartment door. Her arms felt very good around me when I got back from New York and she asked, Ma grande, how could you get married and not invite me? I always wanted to go to a Moslem wedding!
What are these for?
She said, It’s a joke. Fathers give the groom a shoe to seal the bargain and the groom taps his bride on the head with it to show who’s boss. C’est ridicule. The cans ward off bad spirits. I should put some on my door. I have so many bad spirits I need the whole door to be tin. Claude moved out and I’m keeping the apartment and I’m opening a new play next week. You should do the music for the next one. Jean came last week looking for you. He wants us to have a party. I don’t think he knows you’re married. I didn’t tell him. What is Ali like?
Nice, a solicitor.
C’est quoi ça? Un avocat? You sound like you’re talking about someone’s brother.
Never mind, I said. We have to get used to each other.
I went into my old bedroom and I found Kamal’s letters in my bottom drawer. I gave them to her and said, Keep these for me.
She said, Mahsa, this is not right. You’re not in love.
Monique was the single person who dared to say it.
I said, Love can grow. That is what we believe at home.
She tucked my package of letters into her purse and said, Love just is. No matter where you are.
Ali’s first morning in Montreal, he rose and left me in bed. After a few moments, he put his head around the corner of the door frame, said, You haven’t made tea yet?
The congenial first, best son thumped along the hall to the kitchen, banged pots, made tea. He set it on my bed table with a flourish, said, There you go! Then he went to read the papers in the front room.
The praiseworthiness of serving me. Was he trying to be kind? But there was no companionship in it. It was his mother’s voice in his ear, You are better. It was a thoughtlessness about women and servants.
Once there were lazy Sundays with Monique and our friends, coming home at dawn from the clubs on Saint-Antoine, big pots of coffee, passing the newspapers, laughing and talking and filling each other’s cups. Now I was alone. Because I was married.
Ali’s face was handsome but I did not like it. When he was asleep I examined the anxious crease between his eyebrows, and the thin lips under his moustache. His face was softer when he was asleep. When we made love I did not feel him exploring who I was but seeking his own pleasure. These were not things we were able to talk about. I looked on as if it were not me. But Ali was in my bed every single night and I felt unutterably trapped.
I had absorbed that a wife should want to please her husband. I gave in to Ali, thinking he would begin to give back. When I was not compliant, Ali resisted me. The beginning of a marriage is a kind of play-acting, becoming what you think a wife or a husband should be. We were preoccupied with setting up his family’s business and bank accounts, renting offices, making government applications. I helped because I knew the city well and my French was now good. Ali’s mother wrote to me that so far I was a pleasing wife though at times a bit stubborn and she meant this as praise. Ali was not curious about the university but I took him anyway. When we stopped below the enormous statue of Queen Victoria in front of the music building he said, There are too many queens in Canada. It was January and the cold bothered him. I showed him my practice studio. I told him I played the Ritz on Saturdays and I had a gig in New York at the end of the month. I said, When I graduate I will teach part-time and I will work downstairs in this building. Ali said nothing.
Our second Sunday in Montreal I asked him to have brunch at the Ritz while I was playing. We were walking along Sainte-Catherine together in the cold and I saw a French couple with their arms around each other and I slipped my arm around Ali’s waist. He tried to put his arm around my shoulder but our hips hit and we felt awkward and fell apart. The hotel staff made a fuss over him and Monique brought him an International Herald Tribune and he started to read. I said, You should come to New York and meet Katherine.
He said, Perhaps.
I said, Well, I’m going to get ready to play now. See you after.
What?
I’m playing now.
What?
Ali.
You play here, for people?
Yes.
But it’s a hotel.
I told you.
Why would you want to play here?
I make money. It’s fun.
But we have lots of money. You are a student.
I like to perform. I like to have my own money. What?
Ali, stop saying what.
You’re not going to play in a hotel.
Ali, I already do.
I went to change. My sari was low-rise which exposed my midriff and I wore a sleeveless choli under a transparent chiffon shawl. It was a style meant for parties. But a sari is versatile so I pulled up the skirt and covered my head with the pallu for walking in. I could let it slip down later.
I did not need to worry. He was not there when I came out.
I was so angry that I played my gig and then I went to Monique’s and did not go home until late.
Ali rolled over in bed when I got in and pulled off my nightgown. I did not resist. I felt something demanding and insecure in him. In the morning we did not say anything before he went to work. At dinner I said, Ali, we should talk.
What about?
About why you won’t talk.
There’s nothing to talk about.
Really?
Are you going to stop playing out?
Ali, I told you I played there. Did Uncle not tell you I used to play at the Beach Luxury?
Of course. But that is different. He worked there. I don’t want you playing in hotels.
Why not?
It is demeaning.
Ali, you lived in London! Lots of women perform.
But when
you do, it makes me feel that I am not a good husband. It is not respectful. He mockingly lifted his hands and waggled his fingers in a parody of playing piano and said, She is too talented for merely being a good wife. She must flaunt herself.
Ali, this is who I am. I can work and be a good wife, as you do.
Now the charm of our Karachi outings was gone. Again that night I did not resist him. In the morning, we left the house at the same time. At dinner he talked about the new clients he had met and the differences between London and Montreal. London was better. He needed to work on his French. He came into the kitchen, put his arms around me from behind. I was washing the dishes at the sink, and he wanted to lead me to the bed. The dishes were not done, and I had a paper to write, but I complied, pretended I wanted to please him, made my pleasure mirror his, still hoped my feelings might change. There was no tenderness and no loving eyes. We were two strangers in a bed.
Uncle wrote, Ali complains that you are headstrong. Try to be a pleasing wife.
None of them knew about my life here before Ali and the thought of this filled me with secret pleasure.
I had become aware of my first pregnancy in Karachi slowly, with a sense of dread as I discovered the reason for the tenderness of my breasts. This time I recognized the feeling. I was not sure about having this baby. I wasn’t finished school. How would I travel to New York? Monique had had an abortion here. She got hers in a hotel room. When I asked her why she did it, she joked, Maman would have had a fit, the church would have had a fit, all of Montreal would have had a fit, and anyway, I couldn’t take care of a baby and do theatre.
I telephoned Katherine. She said, Oh hell, Mahsa. If you want kids, you might as well do it and get it done. That’s why you got married, isn’t it?
I was too ashamed to tell her I had been forced. But she gave me an idea. I did want a baby. Keep moving on. I could do it all, like she did.
When I told Ali I was pregnant he said, Let’s celebrate! Where shall we go?
I said, Let’s go to Old Montreal. Christine Charbonneau is singing.
I liked the crowded little boîtes à chansons tight against the cobblestones, dark and candlelit, chairs close together and lovers’ hands on each other’s legs under wooden tables.
I was thinking something memorable, said Ali, like Altitude 737.
I felt queasy looking down into the lights of the city from the top of Place Ville Marie. We sat across from each other, the edge of the linen tablecloth heavy against my thighs. I wondered if I would ever feel at ease with my husband. I took a clear consommé with a few croutons, and Ali looked impatient. In those days I still teased him and I said, Now that I’m having a baby, you’ll stop complaining about me in your letters home.
But he volleyed back, I don’t complain.
I was interested in my pregnancy. My body felt loose and sensual, and I wanted sex but Ali’s interest stopped. He took his first trip to London and I knew when he came home that there was more than work in his London business. I did not mind very much. He felt remote to me, like an older brother, contented if he got his way. I teased him, Next time I will come with you to London, but he did not answer. He said, I heard you were playing at the Esquire Club.
Yes, with my teacher, Jean. I’ve always played there with him.
Ali said, My father warned me.
About what?
That you would be strong-willed, that I would have to work things out.
How, mon cher? Ali did not like me to speak any French with him, and especially not to drop in Urdu words. My friends here liked it but Ali said it made us seem foreign.
He said, My father told me to get you pregnant quickly. Then you’d settle down.
He had a way of leaving me stunned. I asked, Any other wisdom from your family?
He did not know that he was insulting me. He thought he was right. I reached for him that night but he turned away. A few days later I tried again and I understood with the feeling of the betrayed that our domestic life was only an accessory to him.
He said, Mahsa, I am working hard to get this business going. I need you to understand that.
So began our habit of silence. There is a Western fairy story about the woman who is made to live with a beast and after she learns to love him, he becomes a beautiful prince. But love cannot be forced. Love is not bound by wilfulness or old story.
KATHERINE
Close to the Doghouse Studios in Brooklyn is a holy doughnut shop where 10th dead-ends with 2nd. I often saw there an old couple staring in different directions. One time the old man got out of his chair to go to the restroom and I watched the old woman check him out. She saw me and came over and said, We’ve been together for sixty-one years. My father said it would never work.
Looks like it did.
Some days I should get a medal. He’s got a bad knee right now.
She said this with the satisfaction of a loved woman, eyes bright, assuming intimacy with me for no other reason than that I was a woman. She had false teeth and spoke with a British accent. I gestured to her to sit with me but she shook her head, He’ll be back soon and we’re going.
Where are you from?
Here. Well, England first.
She had a rattle cough like Ma’s. She said, I got married and two weeks later I moved with him here. I’ve been the custodian at my kids’ school for forty years. Now my grandkids are there. What do you do?
Musician. I’m working in the neighbourhood.
What kind of music?
Jazz.
I don’t know much about that.
I feel like writing something for you.
She was pleased at this, but she was not surprised. Good, simple things had always happened to this woman. Through war and deaths and childhood illnesses she had stayed with the man who loved her. He gave her all he had, and she did not ask for more.
How’d you stay together?
This was something she had thought about. She smiled with those clean, perfect false teeth and said, My kids ask me that too. It’s simple. We were always the most important thing in each other’s lives.
Other people had glamorous jobs and travelled and spoke languages and owned things. She did not. But she had confidence in her marriage. Their love was ordinary and true and hers.
He limped up and put the arm that wasn’t holding a cane around her shoulders and I watched how she leaned into him and fit there. His shoulders were straight and he had the large hands and the strong forearms of a working man. He reminded me of Nan’s Big Johnny.
You ready? he asked. She nodded and their eyes met in a comfortable way. As they left, she put her arm around his waist and he dropped his hand down to squeeze her thin bum. She turned to see if I was watching and smiled at me like a girl, as if to say, See? Then she stepped away from under his arm and caught his hand in hers. She turned back and asked, What you going to call my song? I want to watch for it.
How about “New Thing” or “Long Love”?
I like the first one, she said.
Because she chose that one, I decided to write a tragedy.
MAHSA
What happened?
Jean St. John came into my practice room, smoking a cigarette, dragged over his chair, interrupted me.
What do you mean?
The playing. Ever since you got married, something is different. And by the way, you could have told me.
I recorded a cut on Katherine Goodnow’s first album.
Bravo. But there is something else. I can feel it.
As well now as later.
I am pregnant.
Merde!
Jean, I am happy.
Great. Félicitations. When are you quitting?
I stood up.
He said, Sit down. Play “Thelonious.”
Coltrane said when he played with Monk, he could feel like he’d stepped into an empty elevator shaft. To play Monk you have to stop thinking about anything but B-flat. So I did. I stopped thinking about Jean and the baby and
everything but the B-flat.
When I finished, Jean St. John dropped his cigarette butt on the floor, put it out with his boot, stood, said, Mahsa, you’ve got it. Don’t waste it. People will tell you to quit. As-tu le courage?
Don’t worry. If you deal in camels, you make a high door.
He laughed his delighted-at-me-laugh that I loved. He said, Ma grande, when’s your next party with that women’s-lib comédienne friend of yours? I want to do my scarf dance again.
When I confided in Ali that I was worried about how to finish school and teach after the baby he said, Don’t complain. Each person thinks his own grave is too narrow. He became hovering and wanted me to stay home and he tried to insist that I drink whole milk morning and evening which I hated. To please him I brought home skimmed milk but still he persisted.
Ali, stop. I’ll eat what I want.
Ammi thinks this is better for the baby.
I could hear his frustration, as Uncle was often frustrated by me. At first I had wanted to believe that it was a sign of his affection. But a wife is like a man’s land.
Ammi-jaan wrote, Put your music studies on the back burner, enjoy your baby. Monique said, You didn’t take birth control, you must want to be a mother.
Only Jean’s words—You’ve got it—made me hopeful inside.
Our son was born on June 7, 1973. Asif. Mor used to whisper to Abbu, You are janan asif, which means beloved and pure, and my father used to answer, If you say so, but he liked it. Ali thought I meant the Arabic name that means forgiveness and he said, Yes, the prophet was most forgiving, Asif is a good name.
Ali left earlier and came home later and in the long and lonely and sleepless first months of nursing and walking with Asif, I wished for a woman to share my baby. I chanted my mother’s verses to comfort my new son:
My baby’s smell is all lavender.
Is every baby like mine,
or hasn’t anyone given birth before me?
I telephoned Katherine and said, He’s beautiful, but I’m going crazy alone so much.
She said, I used to sit by the window with a peashooter.