8

 

 

 

 

8

 

 

The city we’re visiting today, it’s one we’ve been to before. At least, that’s what my mother tells me. We must’ve last been here when I was still really young. It has a few streams and canals zigzagging through it. It has unusually narrow roads. There aren’t as many tall buildings, not over six stories anyway, and a lot of people ride around on bicycles. It’s pretty, but kind of worn down, run down, trash in the gutters and faded posters on the lampposts and outer shop walls, half-torn and weathered.

“Let’s see if we can find it,” my mother says.

We’ve been walking this street a long time now, following the fence with its line of trees, looking for the entrance to the park. The fencing that surrounds it has been erected flush against the original low stone walls; a high crisscross brace of metal with barbed wire nesting along the top. Maybe there are problems with crime in the area at night. Probably the park has only two workable entrances now, one on either end. And it’s a big park. We could be walking for ages, following the fence along this road.

“I’m pretty sure it was this one,” she says. “There’s a lake thing in there somewhere. Really more of a big pond pretending to be a lake. I took you one morning to go feed the ducks.”

“Ducks?” I say. It feels like a word I don’t know.

Mom takes my arm and laughs. “Ducks. Why do you say it like that?”

“I don’t remember any ducks.”

“But you loved the ducks.” Her grip on my arm tightens. “I had to keep you from running out into the water to play with them. I think that’s why we had to leave, actually. Stubborn, crazy little girl. You wouldn’t listen to your momma.”

She laughs, her hand slips down to mine and she raises my palm to her mouth for a quick kiss. Then she lets me go.

It’s a chilly morning out here and my jacket is too thin. I wrap my arms around my ribs.

“Come on, girl.” My mother’s elbow nudges me. “Try to look more open. You’re slouching.”

This slouching thing, it’s not the same as when my head drops down and my hair falls in my face. About a year ago, my height finally crept up to meet my mother’s, and then began to take over. I’m a full inch taller than her now, which is bad, and I know it’s bad from the way my mother keeps promising me—herself?—that I must be done growing now, that this is the tallest I will ever be, because my body has to stop sometime and now is definitely the time.

When I step too close beside my mother, it’s like my shoulders fold in. Away from her.

‘Pretty girls should never walk like they’re ashamed of what they’ve got.’

It’s one thing to hide my forehead, it’s another thing to hide my height. Even if I’m taller than I should be, hunching over never looks nice. When I remember, I drop my arms again. I keep my shoulders back.

My mother walks and stands and laughs and talks like she’s nothing but busting with pride over every little thing she’s ever been and ever done, like everything beautiful we see around us is all her own doing. People feel this energy. Even surly-looking strangers catch themselves easing up to her. She’s like a swirl of warm water rolling through the cold. There’s a casual brightness to her that puts people at ease when they’re edgy, lifts them out of themselves when they’re guarded. Like she challenges them to be free.

It’s something I feel too sometimes, watching her.

The road curves left up ahead, and by the way the traffic has been thickening up to it I guess we’re heading toward an intersection or something. Fewer pedestrians, more bikes and scooters. Mini-sized cars, buses, lumbering in-between.

“I think I remember this,” my mother says. Her steps slow, she looks around. The wind whips her hair and sends a strand into her open mouth. She tears it away, red fingernails raking her cheek. Her smile widens. “There was a concession stand or something just up around this corner. A man selling pastries and coffee. I got you a hot chocolate and a cinnamon twist. Do you remember?”

I don’t remember the ducks. I don’t remember wanting to chase them into the lake. Or play with them, whatever. I don’t remember anything about a man with hot chocolate and pastries. I’m not like my mother. I don’t remember everything.

She puts her arm through mine again. As we follow the bend, the view opens up to a three-way intersection with zebra-stripe crossings and bus lanes and bike lanes. The metal fencing links up to a gated entrance, now wide open. There’s a kiosk—not a concession stand exactly but a brick and paint hut thing—exhaling the scents of coffee and chocolate and warm sugar from its open-shuttered window.

“I knew it,” Mom squeals, jumping up and down on the balls of her feet. “I knew it!”

I smile because suddenly it does look familiar, and warm, and sort of cheerful. I smile because younger-me was here once, short stubby legs clunking around in gumboots, tiny hand held tight in younger-hers as we stood at this kiosk and she ordered a coffee for her and a hot chocolate for me, and a cinnamon twist for the both of us. For some reason, I’m pretty sure about the gumboots, even if I’m not totally sold on the hot chocolate. Would I remember that? I think they were pink, with white daisies and Hello Kitty all over them. Or they were the usual dark green, or black.

Actually, I have no idea.

“You wanna feed the ducks?” she turns to me, smiling with her tongue caught between her teeth. “No swimming this time, though, okay?”

The way she nudges me as she says this, it makes me laugh.

“Come on, little duck-lover.”

We walk past the kiosk, and the guy is doing something with steam and taps. The thing he’s turning screech-hisses in his hands, hot like it hurts. The steam hits his face and the skin slides away in thinning layers. I don’t know if he smiles at me, but he’s grinning.

***

Parks with lakes in them always feel sort of stiff, because they’re the kind adults like just as much as kids. There are couples walking around holding hands. Some are teenagers, palms locked with bent wrists like they don’t know if it’s okay to touch each other yet. Some are really old—slow steps, tight-clasped arms. There are lone people, too. Men in suits sit on benches overlooking the water. They have backpacks or laptop cases resting beside them. Many sit with an arm through the strap, I guess to make sure nothing valuable will get snatched away from them in some random, terrible moment. They sit and stare across the lake while they talk on their phones, sip coffee out of branded cups. And some of them sit staring at their hands, at their feet, at something lost somewhere in front of them. There are lone women, too, though not so many. I take a moment to notice one woman, early thirties with neat hair and wearing one of those tight-cut suit jacket things. She stands close to the water, elbows resting on the iron railing. I can tell by the way she stands that she’s nervous, unsure. Her back is too straight, her legs are too stiff. Her lips keep twitching like she’s having a conversation with herself in her head, and some of it is leaking through.

God knows what it is she’s thinking. God knows the things people say to themselves.

“It’s busy here,” I say to mom. “Not too many kids, either.”

I’m wearing makeup today. There are times and places where my mom wants me to, and times and places where she definitely doesn’t. The beauty of my baby-face and my fast-developed body, you see, is my flexible age. Choose between a ponytail or a blow wave. A pink tracksuit top or a short denim skirt. Add or remove makeup and I can go between a tall twelve to a cool seventeen and back again in just one wardrobe change.

Of course, I learned this watching her. Of course, we learned how to do this together.

“Maybe they got rid of the ducks,” my mother says.

But who cares about the ducks?

The lake is flat and green. It smells foul, secret. Like something hidden is rotting somewhere. A low, dank stench trails off the water. It makes me think of fish paste and pickled beetroot. I’m shivering because the water chills the air and my jacket is too thin.

We take a long, slow walk across the park, following the water from one end to the other. There are a few security guys, but they seem to stick closer to the entrances. The public toilets dotted throughout are each set further back, behind the trees, almost out of sight from the water but not so hidden that they’re difficult to find. We find the place where the ducks hang out—by a curved wooden jetty type thing leading out over the water. They’re cute, I guess—the ducks—but I don’t remember them. We pass more people as we explore. They give us brief glances as they stroll by. Nobody here seems big on eye contact with strangers.

No one really looks at us, I mean.

“It’s not the same as it was,” my mother says. “Not even close.” A little worried. “Maybe some kids drowned here or something. For starters there was no railing around the water last time. And the place feels less…less…”

“Kid friendly?”

“Exactly.” She turns for a moment to study my face. “Something feels wrong,” she says.

I’ve got two stiff, square envelopes jammed down the backs of my jeans pockets. There’s nowhere else to put them because my jacket is too thin and it’s one of those fashion-focused things with mock-pockets—zips that open and close but lead to nowhere, contain nothing. Right about now, I’m starting to feel just as useless.

“Are we poor again, Momma?” I say to her. Something is gripping my stomach. Panic stings my nerves, flaring in my fingertips like I’ve touched a flame.

“Hey, kid, we always make a plan,” she says. She’s using her low voice, the soothing one I don’t hear very often. It’s one she uses to reassure me. But I know her—I know she wouldn’t talk like this if she wasn’t worried herself. “We’re just getting a handle on things here. There’s always Susie for now.”

Susie. He seems to like her enough and accept me okay enough, but is it really enough? And even if it is, how long can we trust it to last?

She stops us walking, turns and cups my hands together in hers. “Can I leave you alone for a while?”

Something hideous prickles across my scalp and all at once my jacket isn’t too thin anymore—all at once I’m boiling and I want to rip the thing off my shoulders so I can breathe.

“Not now, please, Momma. It doesn’t feel…I can’t…”

She looks at me for a moment, her beautiful, arched eyes deep with worry. “It’s up to you, doll,” she says. “You know I’ll always leave it up to you.”

Sometimes when I look at my face in the mirror, that look she has in her eyes right now is exactly the same as I see in my own. The desire for home, the hunger for safety. The exhaustion we feel, living in chaos.

See the good with the bad.

You know I’ll always leave it up to you.

And knowing every time I say No is one day more, before we’ll finally have a place of our own.