Sleeping Awake

by Noelle, Gamali

  *~*

  We transformed into little girls in Grandpa Bill’s presence. If Cienna, Camelea and I weren’t whining and begging Grandpa to make our favourite Jamaican dishes, we were out back climbing the mango trees and swinging from the branches like they we were Tarzan and Jane. Maman laughed at all of this and spent most of the first few days curled up on the sofa with Grandpa, going over old photographs and gaining some well-needed pounds from the sweet potato pudding that “Daddy” had made especially for her.

  The rain began to fall a week into our stay. Grandpa Bill would joke and say that Jamaica only had two seasons: hot and rainy. Rainy lasted for about three months. This time, I did not sit by the window pouting because I was unable to go outside and play as I had when I was a child. We were gathered in the living room, listening as the rain beat against the roof, playing Kalooki. It was an Irish card game that was similar to Gin Rummy; Grandpa had taught it to us when we were younger.

  “Call!” Maman announced. She did a little dance in her seat.

  “How many calls have you had?” Cienna asked. Her eyes narrowed as she tried to peer into Maman’s hands.

  “This is my last one, and now I can lay!” Maman grinned gleefully.

  “Not fair.” Camelea folded her hands and pouted.

  Maman stuck her tongue out at her. I’d never seen her happier than she looked that day in the small room with its lack of elegant furnishings and a ceiling fan cooling everyone. Anyone looking at her could have easily seen the beautiful young woman who danced from dusk ’til dawn at the various “happenings” of the late 70s and early 80s. It was no wonder that Philippe felt the urge to go over to her table and introduce himself as he was passing by the restaurant on Rue Mouffetard. He’d been taking the back roads to the metro in order to avoid the tourists at the Panthéon when they’d met. Perhaps that was why Maman never joined in on our relentless complaints about tourists ruining everything.

  Maman and Philippe seemed to be on their second honeymoon and had disappeared for the first few days to lock themselves in a villa at the Half Moon. My sisters and I spent those days staying up until the early hours of the morning playing dominoes, Ludi (Ludo) and Kalooki with Grandpa Bill. It was almost enough to make us forget why we were really there.

  *~*

  Cienna and I were down by the breadfruit trees when the front door flew open and Grandpa came running out. After dinner, we’d decided to play marbles, and the shade that the trees provided was the best location in the humid yard. It was especially beneficial because there was a flat surface down there.

  When Philippe came out behind Grandpa with Maman in his arms, we dropped the marbles and ran up the driveway.

  “What happened?” Cienna screamed, slamming the car door behind us.

  Grandpa drove furiously down the lane as Philippe held Maman. She looked like a butterfly struggling to not be suffocated by her cocoon.

  “We were playing dominoes when she fainted,” Philippe replied.

  There was no need for any further explanation. The rest of the car ride was silent. When we got to the Cornwall Regional Hospital, Philippe disappeared with Maman. Grandpa, Noira and I sat in the waiting room and did the only thing that we could do: wait. There were no tears, no words, just silence. My mind was as blank as the white wall that I stared at. After about an hour, Philippe returned. He looked as if he’d been to war and back.

  “Is Trischa alright?” Grandpa stood.

  “She has an irregular body temperature, which is why she’s been complaining about the heat all day.”

  “So her fever will go down, and she’ll be fine, right?” Cienna asked. Her eyes were pleading with Philippe to tell her what she wanted to hear.

  “Her lungs collapsed. They have her on a respiratory machine.”

  Grandpa sat down. If ever he looked like an old man, it was then.

  “She has a virus, but they don’t know what it is just yet,” Philippe continued, taking a seat as well. “Her white blood cell count is low; it’s a side effect of her cancer treatment. She’s vulnerable to everything right now.”

  Not only was Maman going to die, she was going to die a lot sooner. Someone's arms were around me. Philippe. I leaned against something wet on his shirt’s sleeve. I hadn’t realised that I was crying.

  "I want to go in,” Cienna announced. “I want to see her.”

  I pulled away from Philippe and wiped away the tears from my eyes. "I want to go in as well."

  Philippe nodded. "I have to warn you, she's hooked up to a lot of machines."

  "I don't care; I want to see my mother," Cienna said.

  We walked in silence with Philippe leading the way. The room was dark; it took a while for my eyes to adjust. Once they did, I held my breath at the sight. There, among the sheets, was a woman. She looked so tiny, almost as if she were about to break.

  “That's not Maman." I stiffened. The others turned to look at me.

  "That's not my mama." I started to back out of the room.

  Grandpa's hand reached towards me.

  "No!" I jumped back and reached for the door handle.

  "Noira," Cienna said softly. She sounded so much like Maman that it scared me. The way that she said my name reminded me of the way that Maman would say it whenever she wanted me to behave. It was almost as if speaking my name were an offense.

  But I wasn’t misbehaving; the person lying beneath the sheets wasn't my mother. I opened the door and ran outside before any of them could say another word. I ran all the way to the waiting room and took a seat. Sooner or later, one of them would come out and tell me that it was all a joke. The sickly woman with purplish-blue rings around her closed eyes wasn’t the person whom I'd grown to love.

  Cienna appeared from the direction of Maman’s room. "Hey."

  "Hey." I looked up at the ceiling.

  "She's asking for you."

  I started counting the cracks on the ceiling. "She’s awake?"

  Cienna shook her head. "No. But she keeps saying your name in her sleep."

  "You go," I said.

  She shook her head again. "You're her baby. Not me."

  ''I'm not a baby. Babies get hugs and all the attention. Babies get sent out of the room when bad things happen; I'm being called in.”

  "You want a hug?" Cienna joked.

  “I don't know what I want.”

  Cienna bent slightly to hug me anyway and whispered in my ear. "Well I know what Maman wants and that's you. Are you going to grant her wish, or are you going to sit here feeling sorry for yourself when you shouldn't be?"

  "Shouldn't be? She's dying, Cienna. Right now. She's actually dying before our eyes."

  "Which is exactly why you shouldn't be feeling sorry for yourself; you should be feeling sorry for her," Cienna said, standing straight.

  I looked at my sister differently then. Whatever happened to the self-conceited Cienna who simply didn't care about anything that didn’t make her the centre of attention? When did she grow a heart? Maybe I wasn’t the only one to change that summer.

  Slowly, I got up from the chair. "I suppose that I should go in there. She’s spent most of the last few years holding vigils by my bedside, after all."

  Cienna nodded. "You should return the favour."

  When we get to the room, Philippe gave me a small smile. Grandpa sat beside Maman’s bed, like a watchdog, and looked on sorrowfully at his dying child.

  "Noira..." Maman wheezed.

  I walked over to her bed and the tubes that had replaced her organs. "Je suis là, Maman."

  She'd lost even more weight; she was the one that we should have been calling Petite. I held her clay hands, dried up from her system’s meltdown.

  "Noira…” Her eyes fluttered open.

  "Je suis là." I replied.

  She nodded weakly and coughed. “Water.”

  Seconds later, Philippe was holding a cup of water to her lips. I backed away then, away from the mocking tubes and the abrasive scents. I went and st
ood beside Cienna on the other side of the room.

  Much later, after Maman had fallen asleep and her doctor had finished examining her, Philippe made an announcement. “Nous sommes aller en France. Les médecins…Sorry William, the doctors aren’t very optimistic about how much time she has left. They can’t even guarantee a month now.”

  “She,” Philippe paused. I looked away as he sniffled. “She wants to die there. I’ll call my pilot tonight. We’ll have to be ready to leave by tomorrow afternoon. The doctors have agreed to discharge her on the condition that we immediately return to France and get her into a hospital there.”

  Cienna squeezed my hand. I didn’t flinch as something wet fell down my shirt. I couldn’t tell if the tears were hers or mine.

  “William, you’re more than welcome to come with us,” Philippe added. “She’d want you there with her in her final days.”

  Grandpa didn’t respond. The only signs of life were his shudders as he rested his head on Maman’s bed and moaned, “Mi chile… Mi chile…”

  When we returned to the house, Camelea met us in the drive. She had been asleep while we were off playing our various games.

  “Maman?” she asked, opening the car door.

  Slowly, I shook my head. Luckily, Grandpa Bill was there to stop her from falling to the floor.

  *~*

  Grand-mère invited herself to dinner on our first day in Paris. We had just returned home from the hospital when the housekeeper announced that she had rang ahead to be added to the seating list.

  Everyone was on high alert. There was no time to contemplate why she’d suddenly decided to meet with us, her half-breed grandchildren. Thirty minutes later, I joined my family in the parlour in our mutual states of disenchantment and waited on our most distinguished guest. The butler arrived at exactly seven and announced Grand-mère. We rose.

  “Maman,” Philippe greeted her. He was surprisingly calm and not at all lapdog-like, which had been his usual form whenever his mother rang or sent for us.

  Grand-mère surveyed the three of us for a moment. She looked like an old fuzzy strawberry with her rouged cheeks, pointed nose and wisps of white hair pulled back in an austere bun. I could just imagine what was going through her head as she stared at us, her impure grandchildren.

  When I was younger and didn’t know any better, I had assumed that she favoured Cienna because she too had been unable to resist Cienna’s charms. As I got older, however, I noticed the difference in the way that she treated Cienna, Camelea and myself. Cienna had inherited Philippe’s milk paste complexion, and everyone assumed that she was white. You had to look twice to tell whether or not I was Caucasian, and most just assumed that I was from some exotic locale like Brazil. Poor Camelea, she got the worst of Grand-mère’s wrath. She tanned so easily and always had a slightly darker tint than the rest of us. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her shift slightly under Grand-mère’s gaze.

  “Camelea,” Grand-mère said. “Are you feeling alright, dear?”

  “Oui, Grand-mère,” Camelea replied.

  “You look rather pale,” Grand-mère commented.

  “Je vais bien,” she murmured. I couldn’t tell if her deadpan voice was out of fear or our shared need to get on with the evening and end it as painlessly as possible.

  “Perhaps a tan then,” Grand-mère continued. “If your mother is up to it, you girls may vacation at my villa in Monaco.”

  “That would be lovely,” Camelea replied. “Merci, Grand-mère.”

  Cienna and I exchanged looks. Since when did Grand-mère want any of us tanning?

  Grand-mère sat, and we followed. For a few minutes, we were in complete silence as Philippe prepared the cocktails. What shocked me the most was that after eleven years of wishing all manners of ill against the woman, I felt nothing as she sat across from us with her back painfully straight in her incessant refusal to touch the back of her chair.

  “I trust that you have all become settled into your home?” Grand-mère asked after taking a sip of her drink.

  “Oui, Grand-mère,” we chorused.

  “Good,” she replied. “If there is any way that I may be of assistance to you girls, please do not hesitate to let me know.”

  We nodded politely. The maid came to announce dinner. I made it my personal duty to sit as far away from Grand-mère as possible. I didn’t trust her sudden civility.

  Once the first course was laid and the maid had left, Grand-mère spoke again. “Do you still dance, Noira? There is a ballet that is opening next week.”

  “Non, Grand-mère.” I made sure to look directly at Grand-mère as she spoke. You never spoke to Michèle Saint Clair without giving her your undivided attention.

  Grand-mère looked up from her soup. “Well do you still appreciate ballet?”

  “Oui, Grand-mère,” I replied.

  “Good, we can all go and see the ballet together; I’ve a box at the Palais Garnier. I’m sure that your mother still appreciates ballet. I remember her mentioning it once.”

  I really didn’t think that Maman would like to go anywhere with Grand-mère, but I wasn’t about to say anything. We continued eating in silence until the second course was laid and Grand-mère spoke again.

  “I heard that you have developed a keen interest in fashion, Cienna,” Grand-mère said.

  “I have,” Cienna replied.

  “Then the two of us shall have to attend a few shows during Fashion Week, won’t we?”

  “Oui, Grand-mère.” The smile on Cienna’s face was genuine. She’d gladly sell her soul to attend Fashion Week in Paris.

  Grand-mère smiled, and Cienna grinned along with her.

  The rest of the meal followed that pattern. Grand-mère would ask questions to find out what we liked and then arranged future outings for us. Grand-mère never did anything without a reason, I knew, and eventually her motifs would have to be revealed. The revelation came when we retired for coffee.

  “I am sure that you girls are wondering why I have invited myself to dinner tonight,” Grand-mère said, setting aside her coffee.

  We stared ahead expectantly.

  “I have to come to make amends,” she continued. “I am not too old to admit that I have wronged you girls in the past, and I am deeply ashamed of this. I should not have waited until your mother was dying, but as you know, it takes serious matters in order for one to realise one’s wrongs.”

  I took a sip of my green tea. I was beginning to get used to it, though I still longed for a cup of either Earl Grey or Darjeeling.

  “I feel as if I have sinned against you in tearing your family apart. I hope that you will allow me to try and bring us together again,” she went on. “Je suis désolée.”

  She should be sorry. She was the reason for all that was ruined eleven years ago.

  Camelea finally spoke up. “The past is in the past.”

  She and Grand-mère locked eyes then and slowly, Grand-mère nodded.

  “Well,” Grand-mère said, standing. “I won’t interrupt your evening any further. We can arrange everything once your mother returns and is feeling a bit better.”

  Her driver brought the car around for her and within five minutes, she was gone.

  “Well that wasn’t awkward at all,” Cienna said, linking her arms with mine as we walked up the stairs.

  I laughed, “At least it’s over with, no?”

  “I suppose,” Cienna consented.

  Behind us, Camelea sniffled. I’d no tears left for Grand-mère; I’d no tears left for anyone.

  **~*~*~**~*~*~**

  ¯ CHAPITRE DIX-SEPT¯

  ON MY WAY

  Maman had initially refused to go to a hospital once we arrived in France. She was adamant that she not die in one. Philippe convinced her to be admitted temporarily so that the doctors could monitor her while he arranged hospice care. She’d return in a week to live out the rest of her days in a room on the first floor.

  Philippe had a nutritionist come in and talk to the ch
ef. The doctors had Maman on a strict diet, and until she died, we had to be on it as well. Her nurse arrived the next day, and when she got to our house, I knew that she’d have a role as well. We all had a role in Trischa Jeannot-Thompson (Saint Clair)’s Final Days. We didn’t know when opening day would be, but everything had to be perfect until then.

  I walked through our home. Eleven years had passed, and not much had changed. I didn’t know what death felt like, but I was sure that what I was experiencing was similar to ghosts who’d come back to check up on their loved ones. Our family portrait, which was taken when I was nine, still sat proudly above the mantel in the library. The rocking chair still sat in the corner of my room. I even still had my old toy chest. It was as if time had remained still and waited for us to get back to reality.

  Memories of running down those hallways naked, because I refused to wear clothes, came to mind. I went through a naked phase when I was three, and my nounou was not amused. After she got my clothes off for my shower and I managed to escape, I’d run out my room door. I’d make it all the way to stairs before I had to stop and figure out how to unlock the safety gate.

  Now, there was no attendant. There was no safety gate to protect the three young girls who lived on that floor. The maid who patiently waited at the bottom for me to go past her was unfamiliar. I wondered how things would be with us all back there again. Would we have dinner together every night like we used to? Would we go to Wallonia before Maman died and go horseback riding at sunrise? Would we go fishing with Philippe again and tease Maman with the scaly creatures? Would we still have to attend Mass on Sundays?

  Maman’s credit cards had been closed. Her name had been removed from our joint bank accounts. The house in NY had quickly sold. The furniture auctioned off at a hastily organised estate sale. The maid had been given a good reference and a hefty bonus. Friends had tripped up the driveway, like clumsy mourners, to bid their farewell. Her will had been revised. Mementos had been given to her dearest so that she could live on through them.