by Kim Echlin
I don’t feel like myself anymore.
You’re not supposed to. Get out. There must be some other mothers. Better yet, get a babysitter.
You cannot clap with one hand. Ali softened toward me, delighted with his son. I spoke of going back to school but the months dissolved into a year and he brought home clients to entertain and we went to the new mosque on Laval Road in Ville Saint-Laurent. The community was small, two rows of men at prayers, and I watched Ali joining this new community. His contentment depended on my agreement to not be myself. Now I was to be a new mother and a hostesswife, charming, invisible in plain sight.
My hidden life grew more complicated. Asif slept and I practised. I found a babysitter so I could play at clubs with Jean. When Asif was fourteen months old and I was already pregnant again, I told Jean I was having another and he said, Es-tu folle? Monique embraced me, said, A girl, make me a girl, you idiot, I do not know why you are doing this, but at least have a girl! And sure enough it was a daughter that I named Lailuma, and then there was all the baby-touching again, and sleepless nights and nursing and two children to hold and feed and bathe and care for. Monique visited my milky, sticky, dishevelled world, said, Can’t you put them both in their cribs and come out for coffee with me? Then we’ll go to a film. You need a break from this madness. I laughed and handed her Lailuma.
She said, I’m not having children. But I’ll be an aunty to yours.
Katherine said, Girls are great. Bring her soon. We’ll play.
I was fooling myself by appearances I myself was creating. Ali went to London for business and came back refreshed. He was habitually irritated at home, a strained man, caught between Western ways at work and resisting them with me and our children. I tried to be a djinn under the floorboards. But one day, annoyed, I said to him, You are probably still in love with your London girlfriend.
He said, I can’t help it that you were too young to marry. You were so intent on telling me you had lovers that you never asked me about mine.
My words smashed like a glass on the floor.
For the second time, he did not ask but he stored this against me. Our young marriage was full of silences. We fought and turned away and did not work things out and in this way we created a shallow life. I was nursing and looking after the babies and trying to play, and Ali was building his business and trying to shape the appearances of our family. He was not much interested in its real textures or in me. He began to talk about taking us back to Karachi to see his parents and I told him I would not go, that I did not want to see Uncle.
A few days later, Monique was playing with Asif, stacking a small pile of blocks for him to knock over. She wore her curly hair piled on top of her head and horn-rimmed glasses pushed up.
I sat facing her, cross-legged on the floor, nursing Lai, her flower mouth tugging hungrily, my milk like a drug to her. I said, Ali wants me to take them back to Pakistan for a visit. I can’t go.
Why?
I’m afraid.
Of what?
I wanted to tell her about my parents but I could not. I said, My uncle forced me to marry. I do not want to see them.
Forced you?
I only got married so I could come back.
I did not want her to feel sorry for me but I did not trust her to understand. With shame, silence.
Monique made Asif’s tower higher. His small hands tried to balance another block on top. I watched his tiny lips tighten in concentration. Then she said, Are you afraid they will force you to stay?
This time when Asif’s tower fell he started to cry. Monique coaxed him to try again and I burped Lailuma and held her close and felt her tiny muscles widen and relax and her head drop in a smooth curve from her neck as she fell asleep. I tucked her into the couch, picked up Asif and with a light laugh said, Feeding time at the zoo. Come into the kitchen. Tell me about your new play.
Monique said, Leave him, Mahsa. You are not yourself anymore.
Where would I go?
I thought, How could I manage? What about the children?
But the next morning when I took them for a long walk, I passed by my old bank with the two standing lions. I rented a safe deposit box for my passport. Then I went to the university clinic, got myself the pill, paid cash for it, and hid the packages in a hollowed-out copy of Zola’s Nana because Ali never read French novels.
I phoned Katherine to tell her I was so tired I was not practising. She said, You’ll start again. Don’t worry. It’s natural. I remember days when I did not have time to write even two notes. Keep going. If you get robbed of your dreams, you get robbed of life.
KATHERINE
T was jealous of my first recording. He’d recorded a lot as a sideman but he did not write. There is no mystery to writing. People write because they can’t not write. Same with playing. T couldn’t not play. But he was experimenting with macrobiotics and Scientology and the Free Life Communication project and psychedelics like a lot of the cats were. He moved west when things fell apart, when he got addicted to heroin. He said it felt like the sound of a rock dove cooing in a feathered nest. It was a hard time. When I saw him we made love as if it was a good thing because it was. But I was angry at him. He was mostly gone for years.
He said, Katie, I don’ want the kids to see me like this but I want to see you.
See me, see your children.
Katie, don’ be a hardass.
I mean it, T.
But I let him in and we were tender in bed. I said, You gotta get straight, and then I tried to reach down to bring him closer but he started talking and I knew he had planned the things he wanted to say. His voice was soft and not remorseful. It was the voice of a man who is struggling hard to tell his thoughts.
He said, I have to leave. Things have to be the way they are. There are things I have to learn.
I know, T.
Every time I see you.
Me too.
You keep writing.
I want to be on the road like you. But somebody has to raise our kids.
He said, I get drawn into things. Some not so good things.
We set words aside for naked touch. I would have liked to be free enough to get drawn into things. He let me pull him up and we were inside each other. We were always inside each other one way or another.
Later, resting, I asked, How’s your other family?
He grinned. You gonna throw my clothes out the window if I say anything?
Men like women in a rage over them.
He said, Babe, let’s talk about us.
Next time I won’t use a bag.
He pulled me closer. The kids needed him, that was one thing. And the other thing was that I never stopped feeling that damn little flip when I saw him, so I decided not to bury my love. If you cannot imagine being betrayed and still being in love, then you haven’t been in love. I wanted to play, to write. I wanted my kids. I wanted him.
MAHSA
Katherine held tiny Lailuma close, cupped her large hand under her head like a cap and said, She’s perfect.
I called Ali as soon as I arrived at her place, left a message, said, I’m in New York. Don’t be angry. I had to go. I will be back in a week.
I felt like myself again and I decided not to worry about my problems while I was there.
We played the Surf Maid for three nights. I ran upstairs and nursed Lai between sets. Katherine said, You’re playing better than before. Babies suit you.
It was good to not be alone. On our last day in the city, we went on an outing to Central Park and Katherine rented fishing rods and we kept the baby on the blanket between us while the kids went down to the lake. Everyone was lazy and satisfied in the warm afternoon sun, and Katherine and I talked about music and planned to go up to the Cookery and I nursed and changed Lai and she watched the light on the leaves with eyes that were grey like mine. I said to Katherine, Let’s live like this all the time. She said, Yes, let’s.
Suddenly Bea came running to us, Asif’s gone.
We can’t find him.
I had been watching him on the shore. And then I was busy with Lai and talking with Katherine and my little boy disappeared.
I looked out and there was a hole in the world. The surface of the pond was flat. Was he underneath? Eyes open, dead, his small body sucked into the mud? Would police divers come and dredge the bottom and bring up the limp body of my little boy? Or had an evil person, not an ordinary person, snatched him and was already hiding him in a locked room in the horrible throbbing city behind us, dyeing his hair, renaming him, hurting him? Would he be found years from now and say to me in a flat, teenaged voice, Why did you not find me? What would I tell Ali? How could I go back to Montreal on the bus alone, with no Asif? It would be the unforgivable end of one life, the beginning of an unthinkable one. Katherine ran along the shore in one direction and I ran in the other. How long had it been? Three minutes? Ten?
And then the hole filled in. There he was. A quiet toddler near the water, bent over something on the shore, crouched under a little bush out of sight. Absorbed, touching pebbles, sand, shore-mud. Examining his world. His little lips were parted lightly as he breathed through his mouth in wonder and his eyebrows were lifted in curiosity. I ran to him and I put my one free arm around him and pulled him close to me and the baby, and he looked up at me with startled eyes, his concentration harshly interrupted and he started to cry. I do not know why I did not squat down beside him and look with him and coax him away from the shore but I did not. I pulled him away as if my imagined dangers were more important than his contemplation of what was real. I called to the others and brought him back to Katherine.
She said, All children get lost sometimes. Bea used to hide under the clothes racks in the store and I’d have to look for her feet.
The kids told their getting-lost stories because now it was safe to be lost, because they had always been found by mothers who were determined to love them.
I got on the bus for Montreal reluctantly after our week away. I thought about staying. Katherine said, You could get some good teaching gigs here, you know. But I said, I still have to complete my degree. Anyway, he’s their father.
Lailuma was fussy on the trip and Asif kept waking her and we were all exhausted by the time we got home. I put first Lailuma, then Asif to bed and went back to have tea with Ali. He had been affectionate with Asif and cold with me and when I came back to the kitchen he closed the door and said, Sit.
I hated it when he closed doors.
He said, Do you know how many people depend on me for their livelihoods? And you go running away to New York with our children without telling me so that I have more worry. Am I not enough for you? Is this life not enough for you? How do you think this looks?
It was a carefully practised little speech.
He said, What kind of mother?
He paced and spread his arms in the air. I had seen him make this impatient and demanding gesture with his employees. He said, You should be here with your son. Your behaviour is shameful. I have given you everything.
Ali, stop! I won’t be treated this way.
He counted on his fingers, You have a son, a home, a good living from TradeWorld. Why can I not go to work without concern? I have done everything I was supposed to. What is this carelessness for me? My wife—broken word!—you are shaming us. Mahsa, I cannot succeed if I do not work the way I do.
Ali, before you came I made my own money. What I do does not get in the way of your work. Why should you have choice and I none?
If you had not married me, your uncle would have kept you back there, living in some Karachi-cloister, getting your nails done, having the massage-wallah. I give you everything. The children are mine.
He meant to shrink me. I said, I’m not stopping playing.
He flung his mug across the room, tea splattering, the cup breaking against the sink. The thick colour under his skin frightened me.
I pushed past him and ran out into the darkness. Was I so worthless? To ask for love from Ali was like asking a man without arms to hold me. Everyone affirmed that he was good, his mother, his employees, his customers. He was urbane and charming and a good manager. I walked through the darkness up the mountain. I could leave. But he would take Asif. I could try to hide, but if I lived in hiding, how could I survive? Why should I need to disappear? I walked past couples holding hands and men with their backs half turned from me. From the lookout I watched the river. Where would I go? To New York? Could I move in with Monique? How had this trap of a marriage happened?
Nothing new came from my flailing. The same thoughts circled inside, go or stay, leave the children or not. I was a woman who was shameful. Was Mor shameful? Was this who I was? When I got home Ali was still dressed, sitting under a single light in the living room. I thought, He looks old.
His face was flat and determined but I could see in his eyes a shine of fear. There was room for me still to resist. He said, Mahsa, why can you not understand? I work hard and I make a good living for us. I am respected. I want us to be a good family.
I said, I work hard too, Ali. I do everything for our children. My playing does not get in your way. We must try to compromise. I would never try to stop you from doing what you want to.
He slammed his hands on the arms of the chair, got up, and without another word or touch we went to bed. I put my hand on his arm and he rolled away and our life together became that night more meagre.
In the morning I felt flattened in a dark oven pit in the ground, bread slapped against a hot wall. What would I do? What choice did I have if I wanted to keep the children? Make it work. I would force myself to be cheerful, like a poor relative in a rich man’s house.
Fifteen years passed. I carved out what our family could be. I tutored students at McGill in the mornings and when Ali was in England I hired a babysitter. There was a new club called Biddle’s that I liked to play at with Jean. I went to New York once a year. Ali always complained, Why are you so difficult? We loved staying at Katherine’s, living crowded together in her small apartment. Asif learned to play chess with Dexter, Bea got Lailuma dancing. We took day trips up to the Cloisters to see the flat wide-eyed Madonnas and the femmes couverts, to walk through the wide breezeways and herb gardens. We walked to the Morgan Library and looked at the secret passageways and Mesopotamian writing and sculptures of the naked goddess with owl talons and eagle wings. Once, when I had a bit of extra money, we all went to the Plaza for tea which pleased Bea. Katherine and I watched our children growing up together and it was good to share them with each other. Only Jimmie was difficult. When Asif was older I let Jimmie take him out to second-hand record stores and gave them money to bring back something interesting. But I used to secretly hope that neither of my kids would get defiant like he was, and experiment with drugs like he did. Katherine was always worried about him and I tried to encourage her, said, He is tender and tough like you.
She answered, You don’t know. Things sail into Jimmie out of nowhere and stick and sting and the more he flails the worse they hurt him. When I walk down the street with him, I try to imagine what he feels walking with me. Teenage boys are warriors without armour. They do not have yet what they need. People see us together and stare.
I had noticed this.
All my life, she said, I’ve ignored certain things. But I cannot ignore my children’s pain.
Jimmie said to me about Katherine, She’s only part white.
I told him, My father was American and my mother was Afghan. Everywhere is mixed. At school Lai and Asif are the only children with parents from Pakistan, but in their classes are children from Haiti and Senegal and they learn English and French.
But Jimmie was too caught up in his own turmoil to hear, and what seemed to be anger on his surfaces I recognized as the rawness of loss, of a boy desiring what he could not have.
Each summer Ammi-jaan and Daadi came for two months. This was a burden and the time I dreaded most in the year. They did not like to hear me play in the livin
g room so I set up a small keyboard with a headset in our bedroom. Ammi-jaan had a wrinkle between her eyebrows like Ali’s, but on a woman’s face it made her look perpetually angry, even when she was not. Her talk was critical under a guise of helping, my seekh kebab could have been more moist with slower cooking, Lailuma’s skirt was too short, would I not like to take them all shopping? She said, Is Asif not handsome like his father? Is he not brilliant with his French? Lailuma’s grades were always better but I did not contradict her and took the children on long walks up the mountain where Ammi-jaan could not walk. In all the years I did not go back to Pakistan because I could not bear it. I sent Aunt a letter at Eid and when she wanted Western magazines and vitamins I mailed them to her with photos of the children. I received a letter from Kamal who had moved to Australia. It felt shocking to see his handwriting and as I opened it, blood pounded in my ears as if he himself were in the room.
Dear Mahsa,
I have started this letter many times and I still do not know how to begin. I recently heard a cassette tape of you playing. If the date is correct, you were still a student when you made it. The label is: Metamusic. I would recognize your playing anywhere. It has been a long time, Mahsa. It does not seem possible. If this early recording is a sign, you have surely done very well. I liked hearing your voice reciting poetry.
I will not bore you with the details of the life of a former Karachiite consultant which I am sure would interest you little. I have never forgotten you. When I heard your music, I heard sounds from our days in a Karachi that has disappeared. Perhaps you have not forgotten me. I am thinking of coming to Montreal. I will finish this letter now, as I do not know whether or not it will reach you.
Yours, Kamal
I read the letter all afternoon, smelled it, absorbed it. Was that a salt smell? The sea? His skin? The paper was alive and I memorized the words and burned the letter in the kitchen sink and did not write back.
One night Ali surprised me, said, Let’s go to the 737 for dinner. Do you remember? He had completed a big deal and felt good. We dressed up and watched our city turning white with fresh snow. Ma chanson ce n’est pas une chanson, c’est ma vie. Our waiter glanced out at the wild and swirling flakes, said, A lovely evening, and Ali said, I will never get used to this cold, but I smiled, shrugged, smoothed, said, C’est beau, vous avez raison. Ali and I chatted as we had in earlier times. He told me about a new business acquaintance in Pakistan, received with pleasure my praise for his good year.