The rest of you, p.18
The Rest of You, page 18
‘Squeeze softly for a second, and make sure it’s at an angle – yeah, just like that. Careful it’s not too close to the edge, though. Yeah, you got it.’
Jak looked pleased with your work, and you felt their approval rise in your chest. You hadn’t realised how much you’d needed a win, even a small one like that.
‘She won’t talk about it with me, not really. We went to the hospital today, and – I asked all the questions because she was just quiet. Like, if she buries her head in the sand, maybe it’ll go away, which is just fucked.’
‘She’s probably just scared.’
Jak finished piping the cakes as they spoke, and you felt yourself get rigid.
‘I’m fucking scared too! She’s all I’ve got left, and I’m not gonna waste time pretending shit isn’t happening!’
‘Ssh! You’ll wake her up.’
Jak had a serious look on their face, but you wanted to scream back, suddenly not caring if Ma Gloria woke up, if the whole street woke up. You wanted to rage, smash all the cupcakes and break all the dishes and wreck the house. Maybe if you made enough of a mess, enough noise, you could undo this thing. But now Jak was on your side of the table, their arms wrapped around you, their body shaking against yours. It took some time to realise that it was you who was shaking, your body making you both rumble, your sobs wetting your face. And your hands clutching the end of the table as if you meant to crush it between your fingers. You rode the wave of your tears for a while before they subsided.
Later, Jak had made you a second cup of black tea and an herbal tea for them. They flicked through the books you had brought downstairs and read the back cover of one titled You Are Your Best Thing.
‘Let’s see. Tarana Burke says, “We often carry our trauma in similar ways, but the roads that led us to the trauma are all so different. We must pay attention to that road. That road is our humanity.” Yikes, this is not bedtime reading, Whit.’
‘I’ve only just started it. Well, I meant to start it.’ Jak nodded at your haphazard reply, holding on to the book and passing it from one hand to the other lightly, like they were thinking something over. You felt the sudden urge to interject. ‘It’s from a client – that’s why. I mean – a client recommended it as a good read.’
Jak put the book back down again but let a hand sit on top of it.
‘Have you read Not That Bad? That’s a good one too, a collection of essays.’ Jak paused for a moment, watching your face before continuing. ‘Essays by trauma and sexual assault survivors. But it’s also about living in a culture where you feel unsafe, dealing with it every day.’
Their hesitation suddenly made sense to you.
‘Shit, I’m an idiot. I shouldn’t have left the book out. Let’s talk about something else.’
You reached for it, but Jak slid it away from your eager
hand.
‘Why are you reading this? It’s not really for work, is it?’
Jak held the book up again to assist their questioning, and you had a flash of the Tuck Shop, your throat suddenly dry, your voice hoarse. You gulped down some of your lukewarm tea.
‘I just gravitated toward it the other day. There was this book fair on in King’s Cross, and I just thought… God, it’s stupid.’
‘Better say it, then.’
‘I wanted to read about people who’ve been through the worst thing. See how they came out the other side. Then maybe I can cope better with what’s happening with my ma. It’s a weird thing to do, I know.’
Jak shrugged. ‘Sometimes when things feel chaotic, you wanna try anything to feel a bit normal again. Even if it feels unconventional, and ya know…’ Jak took a moment, and you breathed a sigh quietly, happy they didn’t think you were completely losing it. ‘Well, I was gonna say, Chantelle was getting into tarot, and I don’t know much about it, but she said it grounded her when her nan had that scare a few years back.’
You hadn’t talked about Chantelle for a while. But hearing her name, recognising the fondness that Jak clearly still held for her, melted something inside you a little. You suspected Jak didn’t want to talk anymore about it, though, given they had stopped looking at you and were packing their things away. You noted the small recommendation they had imparted on Chantelle’s behalf and tried to move on to other things.
You brought some extra bedding from the airing cupboard down to the living room and said goodnight to Jak, though you could both see the sun beginning to creep through the gap in the curtain. You hoped you would hear Ma Gloria wake early as she usually did, in time to tell her Jak was there so she wouldn’t get the fright of her life.
At some point after crawling into bed, you fell into a dream where someone was reaching toward you. Their long fingers on your arm, your thigh, against the tips of your own fingers. You felt a warmth and familiarity that quickly became sinister, the Bard’s face emerging from the darkness suddenly, wrapping himself around you like a snake. You lurched awake, gasping for air, with knots in your stomach and no one else in sight.
Chapter 22
Copenhagen, 1996
Aretha
Aretha was learning that she liked the cold in Denmark. It could freeze her bones if she stood outside for too long, but once she stepped down into a shop, bar or restaurant, the warmth of the fire might be waiting, the steam from a hot cup of something ready to soothe the coldest of patrons. So by the time summer arrived, she felt a double joy at seeing the sun, at walking outside without a jacket. Some days she let herself enjoy the city of Copenhagen as it was, forgetting her motivation to travel there in the first place. To say goodbye to Bobby. To find Viktor. What she would do when she found him, she was not sure. She could not give it too much thought, not until she had located him.
She enlisted the help of a new friend, Sofia – an African American woman from Chicago who had travelled to Copenhagen for a one-year study-abroad opportunity and to use her new journalism degree to find her Danish father. In the midst of her search and trying to learn Danish, she met Aretha in the same language school. Aretha was already excelling faster than most in the class, and she was intrigued by Sofia, the only other brown face among the white students. Sofia offered to buy her a coffee.
‘I need serious help with this stuff, and you’re basically as good as the teacher. So, help a sister out? You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours?’
Aretha had never heard this idiom before, and she laughed, confused.
‘You want help with your Danish and a… back scratch?’
Sofia’s laughter was an explosion of sound, all joy without the filter, and Aretha was immediately smitten. They had a deal. In return for tutoring, Sofia would help her track down a white Danish military officer with some ties to Ghana. Aretha was ready with an invented story about how he was an ex of her sister’s whom Aretha wanted to confront over a betrayal, but Sofia never asked for an explanation.
‘I got you.’
And that was that. Sofia’s command of the local language was improved because of Aretha, and Aretha’s social circle in Copenhagen was expanded because of Sofia, her affable nature and her ability to gather the lost and lonely until a community formed. Three months later, Aretha had almost forgotten her request, so enthralled was she in this new life of food and art and language, and her new job in the Ghanaian Embassy as an executive assistant. So Aretha was surprised one evening when Sofia met her outside her office building, revealing news she had been holding on to all day. She had found Viktor.
He was living in a rundown building on the outskirts of the city, in an apartment with three other men. He seemed to be doing odd jobs around Freetown Christiania: cleaning and security, mostly. Aretha felt the weight of this knowledge on her shoulders again, and the cloud of what had brought her to Copenhagen in the first place seemed to return. As did her obsession. She visited his apartment building as soon as she could, waiting a few feet from the entrance for someone to exit so that she could sneak in. She took the groaning lift up to the seventh floor, his apartment number memorised. It was the middle of the day on a Saturday. He might not be home, but perhaps she could find a way to break in, have a look around, find some weakness of his to exploit? She laughed at herself for a moment, standing outside his door. She was not a super sleuth, and she was watching too many detective shows with Sofia. This wasn’t like her at all. She needed a plan and an opportunity. A real one.
Aretha had hoped that hearing Viktor had fallen from grace would have satisfied her, that it would have been enough. But it wasn’t bringing Bobby back. It wasn’t reducing any of their pain. And it definitely wasn’t the justice she had been looking for.
But she was good at being patient. So she kept abreast of his movements. And she dipped back into the life she was building, becoming closer with Sofia with each new week, heading into something beyond what Aretha had previously thought she could ever have with another woman. And she knew that she couldn’t return home again. Not when there was still unfinished business, and she now had this other life, this other part of her that she was allowed to discover. So she stayed.
Chapter 23
London, Present
Whitney
You felt as though you had been watching things tick along since your thirtieth birthday. The calendar told you that was six months ago. Your moments no longer felt linear, though time still dragged with slow steps when you wanted it to move much faster, or it broke into an anxious run when you would have given anything for it to stop completely. And you were trying to be in the house more, getting reacquainted with the colour of the walls, the hum of the fridge in the kitchen, the rattle of the front door when someone closed it too
hard.
You had been awake since the early hours, waiting for another difficult day to begin. You stretched fully and got up from the armchair in the living room, shuffling through the doorway and into the kitchen in search of coffee. The tile was cold on your bare feet as you stood by the electric kettle waiting for the gentle click once it had boiled. After filling your cup – black, two sugars – you reentered the living room to sit back in the big chair facing the window. You could watch the sun come up that way, watch the day unfold. There were photographs of Auntie Aretha and your parents, pictures you had found in an old photo album, scattered across the coffee table behind
you.
Ma Gloria was gone, and you were alone.
Chantelle was still in Kingston when she heard the news about Ma Gloria and had jumped on the first flight back to London. She returned with a glowing tan, a new sense of purpose and open arms for your grief. Her arrival had summoned a downpour, and you met her at the door of your new-old home, the rain behind her perfectly framing what had been some of the worst days of your life. Chantelle had come with a small suitcase and stayed with you for a week, cooking, cleaning, making calls that needed to be made. Jak dipped in and out between jobs, and you remained in a grey haze. A month later, Chantelle and Jak wore your family’s black-and-red funeral cloth as a show of love and solidarity. You hoped to blur away the whole week, to fade into the background of mauve that formed the groups of people around you. You only felt a connection when you looked up and saw Chantelle and Jak, helping you keep a small grip on reality.
You were told that your grandfather was too elderly to make the plane journey from Ghana, so as Ma Gloria’s closest blood relative in London, you had to take part in customs you had only recently become familiar with. You were dreading the viewing of the body; you hadn’t wanted to see any part of Ma Gloria there, in a final resting pose, in her favourite dress for the last time, a sleeping beauty pinpricked by the thing you had been terrified of for months. Chantelle stood with you when it was time, walking you over slowly to the open casket of mahogany; it needed to be solid to carry the most precious person in your life. You tried to remember what Ma Gloria had told you, that you needed to look ahead, to not turn back. So you didn’t close your eyes, you kept them open and looked at her lying there. Your first thought was that she might be cold, winter already bringing a fresh chill in the air. Your mind twisted on you, and you asked Chantelle where Ma Gloria’s coat was, as if she would know. As if what you were asking made complete sense. She told you she’d help you look for it later if you wanted. You smiled back at her in your grief, unable to capture what you wanted to convey, which at that time was simply abject despair. Still, Chantelle and Jak stayed by your side the next day, from the service at Holy Grace to the celebration of life in a newly renovated community hall near the church. Both friends alternated toilet breaks, making sure you were never alone, that you got something to eat. Pastor P hovered nearby, carrying out his own form of protection by ensuring you weren’t crowded by the rest of Ma Gloria’s church family and other aunties and uncles you’d never met before. At one point, you laughed to yourself, and Chantelle looked worried that you were finally losing it. So you held her hand to reassure her and whispered the thing you were pondering over: that Ma Gloria had organised her own funeral, had set things in motion long before she passed, designating Pastor P to carry out her exact specifications so you didn’t have to.
‘This one will be the last burden I carry for you. It is well.’
It was this memory, this recollection of one of your last conversations with Ma Gloria, that made you push back your chair, leave the head table and propel yourself toward the doors of the hall. You caught a glimpse of Jak as you rushed past, seated on one of the guest tables. They watched but seemed to know not to follow you. Outside, you tried to gulp in mouthfuls of air between sobs. Your hand on your chest trying to slow your own heart rate, you smelt almond and salt water, the odd mixture pinging your memory from long ago. You recognised Auntie Aretha before any words were exchanged between you.
‘Whitney? Wow, look at you.’
Her voice was softer than you remembered from your many phone calls, or perhaps it was just the nature of the day that was inviting gentleness toward you. She was taller than Ma Gloria – which wasn’t difficult – but they shared a face. A crooked eyebrow, prominent cheekbones, a broad nose and square teeth rarely exposed – Auntie’s smiles were just as withheld as Ma Gloria’s. She wore the family kente, of course, as if it were made for her, her curves visible but modest, her makeup nonexistent, but her skin shining anyway, as if she had arrived from somewhere far better than Bounds Green.
‘Hello, Auntie.’
She took you in too, a moment of searching each other’s faces – her for the past, you for your future. The embrace came naturally, pulling toward each other, your tears starting up again, hers unknown to you because your head was buried in her neck. The softness of her skin was the same as Ma Gloria’s, and you almost buckled at the knees, knowing then how much you had missed it, that you would never be in the presence of Ma Gloria again. Auntie Aretha took a step back, looking you up and down, brushing away your tears with a manicured thumb.
‘Come, let’s talk, eh?’
She spoke with certainty: another difference between the sisters. You followed her back into the community hall building, watching her gesture to someone for two chairs at the back of the room. A man you didn’t recognise brought them over, and she sat with you to the side, in the carpeted reception area. The music in the main hall was getting louder. It was starting to sound like a party, and you weren’t ready for that.
‘I wanted to be here yesterday, but my flight got cancelled. I’m sorry.’
Auntie Aretha bowed her head in regret, and you fought the urge to comfort her, unsure of what that would even look like.
‘You’re here now.’
‘And how are you? Really?’
A question you’d been asked so many times, you should have already had an answer prepared. Yet still, nothing.
‘I…’
You looked at her, hoping she would fill in the silence, make sense where there was none. She looked away as another thought seemed to cross her mind.
‘I am sorry it’s been so long too, and that this is how we are meeting. It’s funny, I was preparing for you both to come and visit, finally. Glory wanted to surprise you, or maybe she was making the plan knowing that… anyway. We got to see each other after all.’
A sad smile and then more silence between you. But you didn’t want to leave where you were; you felt safe in her presence, even in the absence of words. And then, there were your questions.
‘How is Denmark, Auntie?’
‘It’s good. It’s a good life there. You would like it, I think.’
‘I’ve always wondered why you chose to be there and Ma Gloria here, but then she – she told me about my father. About what really happened to him. And how close you both were, so maybe… Is that why?’
Auntie Aretha’s face didn’t change, but her fingers jumped in her lap slightly, spooked on her behalf.
‘Well, we were good friends, but he was more like my brother, you know? Because we were close in age. I went for his funeral and just… never left.’
‘You wanted to feel closer to him, over there? I get that.’ Auntie Aretha nodded, her eyes already a little glazed, pensive. She was opening up now, in ways Ma Gloria never seemed to feel she could with you. ‘What was he like?’
You hadn’t known you would ask until the words were in the air, hovering over you both. She smiled then, big and wide. A beautiful thing to see.
‘He was very kind, intelligent, so, so stubborn – we had that in common! And he was caring, just like your mother, Tina. But most of all, you were the love of his life. He would have done anything for you. We all would have.’
‘I wish I remembered him.’
‘Hmm.’
She was holding something back, but she had also given you much more than you’d ever had before. You wanted to keep going, to continue sitting with her like this. To feel this closeness that was developed before you even had conscious memories of it. She was the last bit of you, of Ma Gloria, of your mother. That was how it felt.
