Still, my earliest memory of her is nice. I think I’m looking up at her from my crib. It’s night and she’s smiling at me. Maybe it was a dream.
I grew up with her. We lived in my grandparents’ house. It wasn’t a terrible place. My grandfather was a bookkeeper who lived long enough to know his unwed teenage daughter had disappointed him by getting pregnant. My grandmother, a housewife, followed him to the grave when I was six. My memory of Granny Rose is blurry. She was sick for a long time, since I was a baby. I hardly remember her, except that she was bedridden and her room was always dark and smelly. Going to kiss her goodnight was like entering a haunted house. She would stare at me. It was terrifying. But in old pictures, she was proud and stern and pretty. Her hair was a long, shiny plait flowing from below her church hat right down to her breast. She looked nothing like my mother. We got our looks from my grandfather’s side of the family.
I remember Granny Rose’s funeral better than I do her. There were a lot of flowers. Like, a lot. Plenty of old people smelling of camphor and rum, singing hymns I didn’t know. Plenty of strangers on the church steps kissing me and telling me how much I looked like my late grandpa. I remember piling into a big car to go to the cemetery with my mother, some cousins I didn’t know, and Aunty Jillian. To be honest, I mostly remember Aunty Jillian. She was so different from my mother, so happy and smiley, even though it was a funeral and everybody was kind of sad. But I could tell they were sisters. They talked the same way. And when Aunty Jillian wanted to, she could make my knees shake with one harsh word just like my mom could. With Granny Rose dead, they were all the family I had left. Cynthia didn’t make any effort to keep in touch with her other relatives. She depended on no one but herself.
Cynthia always worked. I spent a lot of time at the library, where she left me as long as she could from the time I was old enough to read. She grumbled that her job was boring and that the school that employed her took her for granted, but she had to do it anyway. “Everybody has to work to live,” she always said. “Nobody owes you anything.” Over and over, she said that I had to be responsible for myself. “You can’t rely on anybody else. People will disappoint you.” That was how she was, and that’s what she expected of me. We didn’t talk much at all, not like mothers and daughters in the movies. We didn’t have warm, loving conversations over tea and biscuits.
I’ve never seen my mother cry. She’s just not the crying type; she’d quicker hit you than let you see her weak or wounded. I think part of what she never accepted about my illness was that it seemed like weakness to her. Mom expected everyone to be able to just deal. Lonely? Deal with it. Man left you pregnant at sixteen? Deal with it. Hate your job? Deal with it. Don’t break down, don’t trip. Just quietly and efficiently deal with whatever it is that’s bothering you. Deal with it alone and shut up. When I got my period for the first time, she handed me a pack of tampons and sent me to the bathroom. I read the instructions and figured it out, eventually. While Akilah was celebrating getting into the convent school, I resigned myself to my fate. The school I’d passed for was infamous: understaffed and with a reputation for student violence. But I had sat the exam. I had to live with the consequences of my actions.
I don’t blame my mother for my illness. I don’t blame her for sending me away, either. I’m glad she sent me to Canada. I’d tried my mom’s method and I’d still wanted to die. Everybody isn’t wired the same way. Jillian and Julie are the best thing to happen to me. They let me be myself here.
Though I wanted to go into hiding and never come out, Jillian and Julie made me go with them to meet my mom.
The airport was a cavernous, frightening place, like a cross between a market and a supermall. It had a huge, high ceiling, with ranks of uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs. Nothing was familiar, even though I had only recently come through there myself. Everywhere I looked, I saw miserable passengers who seemed like they were lost dragging enormous suitcases around. They congregated below the arrivals and departures screens, watching the lines of information continuously updating. In between, there were uniformed flight crews pulling smart black carry-on cases on wheels, striding purposefully from one end of the airport to the next. Though it was daytime, neon lights lit the book, candy, and souvenir stores. A stuffed horse made of fluffy, plush fabric called my name, but I didn’t stop to say hello, just threw it a longing look before trailing after Jillian and Julie to the crowded arrivals hall where we would greet Mom.
After checking a screen to confirm her flight had arrived, we squeezed into a spot between a family of four redheads and a Jamaican couple. I kept looking around for something I could recall from my own arrival.
“Blurry memory” does not cover it. Try “Good night, Port of Spain; good morning, Toronto! Good afternoon, Toronto; good evening, Edmonton!” Probably for the best. I cried myself to sleep the first few nights at my aunts’. Who knows what that flight would have been like without the medication to knock me out.
My Edmonton airport memories were vague, but wasn’t there a baggage carousel that snaked out of a hole in the wall, carrying suitcases and bags? Wasn’t there a sound it made? Clang-bump-hummmmmm. Maybe. “Remembering your trip here, muffin?” Julie asked.
Impulsively I said, “Nah. I was thinking about the baggage carousel. Can I ride on it?”
“No!” Julie chuckled. “Please don’t try it. It’s dangerous and I’d have to tackle you. I’m too old to be scrambling around on the airport floor. So undignified.”
We laughed together. It was easy to be myself around her. I was comfortable. So comfortable that I had blurted out loud one of the many random things that crossed my mind from time to time. Fortunately, I didn’t have to worry that I’d disappoint her by saying something ridiculous. It still felt hard to be completely honest. However, I tried. It was mortifying to admit it, even to Julie, but there was a hole in my brain and I couldn’t remember arriving in Edmonton. “I don’t remember this airport, Julie. I took a lot of tranquilizers so I wouldn’t freak out on the flight. I was not exactly in good shape when I traveled, right?”
She stopped laughing. “True,” she agreed. “How are you doing? All set to see your mom?”
I didn’t get a second to answer. My mom must have parachuted off the plane before it landed. There she was, the first Toronto arrival, dragging a case behind her.
“Cynthia!” yelled Jillian, pleased as punch to see her sister. Jillian’s last trip home had been ages ago and they hadn’t seen each other since. My trip into exile had been planned over Facebook and phone calls. We traveled to Port of Spain to the Canadian High Commission for an interview that was so quick it passed like a dream. I was out of the hospital one day and in the air soon afterward, heavily medicated and flying as an unaccompanied minor to my recovery in Edmonton. I’d had a passport as a form of identification since I was small, but this was the first time I’d gone anywhere with it. The single immigration stamp on my passport was smudged. The maple leaves on its edges as blurry as my memory of arrival.