We Rip the World Apart

Evelyn Toronto

Evelyn

Toronto

2004

Evelyn stared at the door for hours, waiting for Kingsley to return, to tell her it’d been a mistake, that some other parents’ son lay on a cold slab. Or even better, for Antony to saunter in, still buzzing from the crowd, the energy of all those people who wanted change.

It couldn’t be true that her boy was dead. His heart stopped, his eyes vacant. It couldn’t be true that he was gone and she lived on. How could she live on?

She continued to stare, Kareela in her arms, the girl’s chest rising and falling in a perfect, unending pattern. Evelyn should put her in bed, pull up the sheets, but Kareela was the only explanation for why Evelyn’s body hadn’t disintegrated into a million pieces the moment Antony ceased to be, this child, this firm, breathing body, the one thing keeping Evelyn tethered to the earth.

As streams of sunlight crept around the ruched edges of the curtains, the door opened. Evelyn stood, hoping.

But there was no hope. No words. Only their eyes, speaking everything they’d never be able to say.

Kingsley turned from Evelyn with a shake of his head, down the hall and into their room, leaving Evelyn still standing, trembling, with Kareela asleep in her arms.

Several hours later, Kareela asleep on the couch, Evelyn walked to their room and stood before Kingsley’s open eyes as he lay on the bed, waiting for him to move, cry, yell. At lunchtime, she came again to that vacant stare, whispered his name.

Her chest didn’t seem to rise and fall the way it should, her limbs felt numb, broken. She returned to their daughter, who needed food. “Mama,” said Kareela, setting herself on a kitchen chair, “what is shot ?”

Evelyn’s body stiffened.

“Mama?”

“Hush.”

With a clatter, Evelyn placed a bowl of cereal on the table and stepped to the window, her hand on her throat. When evening came, she placed that same hand on Kingsley’s shoulder, jostled it. He lay as if paralyzed, eyes still open, red and raw.

Evelyn’s mother had lain under the covers for days at a time, that first time, when Evelyn wasn’t much older than Kareela. Before that, Helen’s middle had grown large, so big Evelyn couldn’t fit on her lap. A pile of twin hats, sweaters, and booties grew along with her mother’s belly, with her smiles and winks. A secret. A big surprise. And then the mound was gone, along with the whispers, the smiles, the knitting, the needles. When Evelyn shook her mama, her body jostled then settled, jostled then settled. When Evelyn caressed the bruises on her mother’s pale cheeks and arms, it was like caressing a soft doll, rather than a living thing.

The next morning, Evelyn got up, because Kingsley didn’t. After making Kareela peanut butter on toast and sending her to school, she called her office to say she wouldn’t be in. When their phone rang, she answered it, and spoke to the receptionist of Kingsley’s department. “A family issue,” she said, her shaking voice seeming to amplify in the cavernous void that hovered around her. “I’m not sure when he’ll return.”

That afternoon, Evelyn set a ham and cheese sandwich and a glass of water beside Kingsley. Less than forty-eight hours earlier, she had stood watching their son, letting pride flow through her, when she should have been wrenching him down from that podium, dragging him home.

“Mama, when will Antony be back?”

Evelyn spun. Kareela leaned against the door, feet bare, hair a mess, lips pulled together and cocked to the side. “The policeman said he didn’t make it. What didn’t he make?”

Pain squeezed like a vise—her heart closing in on itself. “Kareela, shh.”

She guided her daughter out of the doorway and across the hall. She tucked her into bed, then lay beside her all night, Kareela’s torso pushing and retreating against Evelyn’s, along to the rhythm of their breath. The way Antony’s once did.

Had he heard her voicemail, words to bolster his courage? If he hadn’t, would he have dropped to the ground with the rest of them? Would he be here now?

In the morning, she took Kingsley’s sandwich away, leaving the water. The phone rang and kept ringing, but she didn’t answer. She turned the TV on, tuned to the Family Channel and its promise of a constant stream of animated figures and sassy tweens.

Kareela curled into Evelyn’s lap, and Evelyn, for the first time, realized she hadn’t thought much about those two lost babies. What it meant to her mother—never meeting them. The reason why. Evelyn had thought, instead, of the shift. Her mother going from living to existing. Her mother not really her mother anymore. Hiding in the room. Doing the bare minimum. Her father out longer and later, and when at home, angrier and rougher.

She’d thought of herself. How she hated it. Hated her mother, sometimes, for caring more about the loss of those babies than about her. Evelyn lifted her arm and wrapped it around her own baby. Squeezed.

“Mama.” Kareela looked up, eyes and cheeks wet, a plea to her voice, as if she’d been saying Evelyn’s name over and over. “When is Antony coming home? I want to see Antony.”

“Sweetie.” Evelyn wanted to scream, to crawl into bed, too, and turn out the light. She wiped Kareela’s cheeks, wishing she could draw away all the tears from her daughter’s eyes, all the pain. “Antony’s not coming back. He is dead now. So he will never come back.”

“But, Mama.”

“No questions.” Evelyn rocked in the chair she’d always rocked her babies in, her eyes burning. “Please, sweetie, no questions. Not right now. And no more tears.”

Less than a week later, Evelyn imagined rain falling on warm earth, a ceiling of umbrellas above them, something to hold on to, to shelter them. But their hands were empty. The day shone as brightly as it did on the day of Evelyn and Kingsley’s wedding, on the day of their son’s birth. A good omen, she’d thought then. But today Evelyn wanted rain so hard she could almost see it. She wanted, too, for the crowd to disperse. His schoolmates were fine, people who’d filtered through their doors over the years, sat at their table. But all these other people. People who knew an Antony she’d only gotten that one glimpse of. People who shook her hand, Kingsley’s, who promised they’d continue the fight, do it for Antony. All in the name of Antony. She wanted them gone. She wanted them to stop.

No! she screamed with no sound emerging. Go home. Stay alive.

She nodded, murmured thanks, accepted hugs.

An altercation. Except it wasn’t, said one young woman. “They’re lying.” She shook her head, jaw clenched and quivering. “They’re lying, like they always do. Antony didn’t cower. He didn’t lie on the ground like the rest of us. He stood, that was all. He stood, hands raised. He spoke. He took one step forward.”

Evelyn focused on her legs, keeping them rigid enough to stand, wanting and not wanting to hear the words as waves of some foreign feeling flushed through her, some seed of an emotion, a thought, growing. An altercation, the officer at the door had said. Self-defense, when Kingsley had gone to the station after the morgue, demanding answers.

Their son, the aggressor. Their son, nothing more than a political criminal, according to all those talking heads on the news.

The woman—a girl, really—moved on and Dani’s arms wrapped around Evelyn, as they had so often these past days, in between organizing the casseroles that arrived, calling the funeral home, arranging a service, sitting with Evelyn as she rifled through photos, then deciding for her which one to have enlarged.

A pastor who knew none of them spoke about Antony as if he knew him. Spoke of his bright future. Of his passion. The papers had said the opposite. Said he and his compatriots ignited unrest, put lives in danger. That the officers, as always, were simply doing their jobs. Protecting themselves. Protecting society. The young man’s death was a tragedy, of course, but…

But.

As the earth fell, Evelyn gripped Dani’s hand, wanting to grip Kingsley’s, but his were full of Kareela, the girl clinging to him, head nuzzled in his shoulder. The doll Violet had slipped into Kareela’s hand when she arrived from the airport dangled from the girl’s fingers. Upon seeing it, Kareela had pulled it to her chest instantly, clung to it as if the doll’s dark skin and dreaded hair weren’t that of a toy, but of her brother reincarnated.

Evelyn stepped toward the hole in the ground, stopped, knowing she couldn’t fling herself into the grave. That they’d pull her out. That even if she kicked and screamed, it would do no good.

Still, she wanted to, to protect her son from those lumps of earth. If they had to fall on him, she wanted them to fall on her first.

The crowd thinned. Flowers fell, mixing with the loose earth as Evelyn stood, her hand still gripped in Dani’s. Kingsley, less than a foot away, felt thousands. Violet wrapped her arm around her boy, leaving Evelyn separate, disconnected from the only family she had left.

Eventually, after it was only the five of them and the gravediggers, after Kingsley had set Kareela down, grabbed a shovel, and joined the men hurling pile after pile of earth on their son, each thump of dirt on the casket prompting an internal scream within Evelyn, after Kingsley moved so vigorously that the diggers stepped aside, it was done. Kingsley handed the shovel to the nearest digger. They all turned. Evelyn looked back, expecting it to be a dream. Expecting Antony. Knowing, as she stepped away, a part of her would stay here always.