Climbing over Josh’s inert body, I crept out to get a glass of juice from the fridge. As I suspected, Julie was scrubbing away at the counters, getting rid of a vicious maroon stain next to the sink.
“Bloody red wine,” she muttered as I walked in. “Hey, muffin. How was your little party?” she asked with a tiny smirk.
I blushed. “Oh, it wasn’t like that,” I started to explain.
She laughed, swatting me with a damp tea towel. “I should hope not! I was kidding, honey. I’m glad you’re making a friend. I was worried that you’d never talk to anybody outside this family ever again.” Her teasing smile was gentle. I felt happy and excited and couldn’t wait to tell her about the whole thing.
“We just played music. Talked. He’s really nice,” I said. I wanted to explain more, about how easy he was to talk to, how he understood about my depression. How we sort of kissed. Almost. But the words were caught up in my chest and wouldn’t come out. Instead, I mumbled again, “He’s really nice.”
Her smile told me she understood.
I poured some juice and drank it, feeling my stomach beginning to rumble with hunger. I glanced at the clock on the microwave and was surprised to see it was after eight already.
“If I were back home I would have been in church by now, starting Mass,” I told Julie. “Mom insists we go to church every week, and I don’t even know why. It’s not as though she’s all that devout.”
“Maybe she likes the routine of it?” Julie asked. “The predictability? Could be nostalgia, too. Every time I go to a puja I feel like I’m a little girl, safely back at my aji’s house in Toronto. We cling to rituals, don’t we? Humans are funny.”
I could kind of understand some of what she said; I liked familiar routines, too. But I didn’t see the point of going to church if you didn’t want to be a real Christian and were doing it only for form’s sake. Or for memories. My memories of church were one long blur of boredom and skepticism. A God might exist. Did he need to be worshipped and adored or was that our shtick? It seemed like a waste of time—but maybe that was just me. I shrugged.
I was still standing in front of the fridge. I opened the door and stared, trying to figure out what was quick and easy for me to have for breakfast.
“Here,” said Julie, reaching around me to grab a stack of cheese slices from the dairy compartment and a bag of English muffins from a packed shelf. “I’ll toast one for you.”
“Thanks. Julie, can I ask you something about Jillian?” I was finally ready to ask about that conversation I’d overheard, when Jillian said she wished she was my mom instead of Cynthia.
She responded with a cautious nod. “But really if you have something you want to know you should ask Jillian herself. She won’t bite,” she teased.
I opened my mouth to ask the question and flaked. I shoved the muffin there instead. I wasn’t ready for this conversation.
I ate the crisp, warm bread with melted cheese, mulling over what she had said when Josh’s dad came in, wearing a T-shirt and boxers. He was stretching and yawning and scratching, looking like a man from a movie, obviously hungover. If I wasn’t sure before, I was convinced then that I didn’t like him much. How such a boor could have made such a considerate son was beyond me.
“Morning, ladies,” he said, in between huge yawns that smelled of sour liquor. “Julie, what has your niece done with my son?”
I said good morning and looked intently at the fridge and shoved more into my mouth so I wouldn’t have to say anything else. While they talked I took the opportunity to go use the bathroom, washing my face and brushing my teeth and generally trying to look slightly less jacked up than I had when I crawled out of bed.
I needn’t have worried. Josh was still fast asleep when I tiptoed back into the bedroom. In fact, he slept until nearly noon. His dad woke him right before they were to drive back home. He only had time to give me a quick hug, squeezing my hand and promising, “I’ll Skype you,” before leaving with his dad. I thought I’d probably see him again soon. I hoped I would, anyway.
* * *
—
When Akilah called that evening, we did an exhaustive analysis of the whole three-way conversation, and then further discussed every second of the almost-kiss and the hand-holding that followed it. We agreed we’d have to wait until the next time I saw Josh to make further judgments. But she thought it was a great sign he was going to install Skype on his phone just to message me. I still hadn’t turned any of my social media accounts back on. It took him another day, but eventually I heard from him: Sup. Miss u. Immediately, I formed a group chat with him and Akilah.
* * *
—
That week drifted by with me staying mostly at home listening to music, watching movies from Jillian’s enormous collection, and surfing the net. I toyed with the idea of starting a new Instagram account, but then changed my mind. I wasn’t ready yet to do anything so public. The idea of anybody crawling through my pictures and making comments filled me with terror. Instead I contented myself with obsessively watching BuzzFeed videos on YouTube. Josh and I messaged each other briefly every night. Nothing serious, just about movies we’d watched and music we’d listened to that day. Slowly we were getting to know each other. Emphasis on “slowly.” But I held on to the memory of the way we had almost kissed, and the tingly feeling of my skin on his when we held hands.
I was at peace, starting to feel like the world wasn’t such a bad place. I saw Dr. Khan and I was starting to get the hang of writing in my therapy journal.
Then my mom called again. From the airport in Toronto. She was coming to Edmonton. She was almost here.
journal session 5
Dr. Khan keeps pestering me to talk more about my mother.
What else is there to say? I don’t know. Dr. Khan said to just start writing about her in my journal and see where it takes me, so here I go.
Cynthia gave birth to me fourteen years ago. She was sixteen; she finished her O-Levels with a baby bump. I have a picture of her when she was fifteen, and one of her with me at my christening, but there’s nothing from when she was pregnant. I don’t know my father. There aren’t any pictures of him either. I don’t know how they met, or even who he was. My birth certificate is blank under “Father’s Name.”
That doesn’t bother me as much as Ki-ki thinks it should. Everybody has a dad, she says. Yeah, of course. Men and women have sex and that’s how you make babies. Duh. Yet women get pregnant and men don’t know about it unless the women tell them. Cynthia never told me what happened. Sometimes I imagine that they were childhood sweethearts and he died young. Who knows? Cynthia sure wasn’t talking. She never got married. As far as I knew, she didn’t have boyfriends, either. Sometimes she went on dates with other singles from church, but nothing ever came of it. Cynthia wasn’t exactly warm and welcoming.