We Rip the World Apart

Kareela

The chatter of Dilly Dally’s customers forms a sort of halo around our silence. My mother looks cagey, embarrassed, almost, as I register what’s happening. Gran is blind, or nearly. My mother is putting her in a home.

“She’s putting up a fuss.” Mom exhales, as if the weight of this news has worn her out. “She insists she’ll go back to Jamaica before being dumped in a place like that.” Mom turns her teacup on the saucer, though she still hasn’t taken a drink. “She says she’ll go to her own home, where she knows every inch of the house and property, where she’ll be fine without sight. A ninety-year-old woman who’s half blind and could be fully within the year. Who has next to no money. She still has a house, she says.” Mom closes her eyes and gives her head a little shake, as if she’s fed up with an unruly child—and tired, oh so tired. “A house that’s been boarded up for almost a decade. In who knows what state. And with the store sold, how would she support herself? That would be the cruel thing. The wrong thing. No.” Mom looks to the window and I can’t tell whether she’s talking to me or herself. “A nursing home is the only option. A nursing home is the right thing to do.”

Despite the warm tea that works its way down my throat, a cold settles over me. It can’t happen. Gran—who grew up in the mountains of Jamaica, raised her children there, who never saw a white person until she was a grown woman and a mother of two, never saw snow or highways or people looking at her like she was nothing, worse than nothing, because of the color of her skin, the lilt of her voice—trapped in a place where hers would likely be the only face of color, where the people she’d be trapped with would be some of the same ones who taught their children, their children’s children, to hate faces like hers.

“Mom—”

“What I was wondering”—Mom sets down the tea she hasn’t yet sipped—“is if you thought it would be better to put her in a home here, so you could visit her more easily.”

So I won’t have to are the unspoken words. Anger flares within me. The woman who cared for my mother’s child when she couldn’t has become obsolete, a burden, so it’s time to get rid of her. I put down the mug, lean forward, think of my mother that day I was surrounded. We never discussed the incident again—I’ve never talked about it with anyone—but, like it was yesterday, I remember how she rushed out of the car, wrapped her arms around me, then released me to walk down the long path to the courtyard. How her back was tall. Her head held high.

“Why can’t you take care of her?”

How the minutes passed as I sat there, not knowing what to do, shaking with the fear that had shaken me again just weeks ago when I saw those officers’ eyes, when Carson asked me to speak. I froze that day in the courtyard, dumbstruck at the boys’ words. That word, and how instantly I understood the menacing power it held in a way I never had before. How I understood, viscerally, why she’d had me make that promise, how easily a life you felt secure in could become anything but.

Mom brings the cup to her lips. “I’m going to move. Maybe work part-time somewhere until my pension kicks in.”

She was brave that day, as she stood for someone other than herself. The mother I’d once known, barely remembered, returned.

“Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll sell the house and just travel.”

Then she had the car accident, and all that hope faded away. She became a person who acted, again, like I was a burden. Like Gran was. “Since when do you—”

“I traveled to Jamaica.” She smiles—wistful. “As a young girl. You know that. But then I met your father. Married so young. This will be the first time in my adult life—you could hardly have called me an adult back then—that I can go off on my own.”

She became a person whose hands shook, who sat, as she’s sitting now, in a place with an easy path to the exit.

“I don’t see the point of prolonging things. So if you want your grandmother closer to you, say the word, and we can find her a place here. But say the word quickly, because I’ve called around, and the good places in Halifax have waiting lists. But close to home, I could get her in next week if—”

“Next week!” My voice raises and Mom’s eyes narrow. Her gaze darts to and fro, as if she’s afraid someone will come chastise us. We don’t make scenes in public , I can almost hear her saying. We don’t make scenes anywhere . I sigh and wonder why I’m surprised by this news. For years now, there’s been this unexplainable tension between them that, any time I asked, Gran always brushed off. Saying it was nothing, that my mom was just tired. Busy. That the job at the school took too much out of her.

What’s surprising is that Mom let Gran stay this long after Dad’s death. Probably it was the pandemic, and that Gran still cooked and cleaned, that it was easier to do nothing than make a choice.

“The ones here are more expensive, too.” Mom’s voice lowers several notches. “But I’m willing to pay, because a home close to you will be better for her. For you. She says she’ll do fine on her own. That she can make her own way. But she can’t. To leave her in that condition would be elder abuse.” She shakes her head. “But I’m not spending my final days stuck taking care of a woman who…who…” She looks to her hands.

Who what, Mom? I want to say. Who’s taken care of you all these years? Of your family?

“Let me know by end of day tomorrow”—she raises her gaze—“whether you want to find her a place here. And if so, we’ve got to get her name down on wait lists, we’ve—”

I look away, the anger burning, and think of the women Gran has told me about: Aunts. Cousins. Friends. Jamaican mountain women, most of whom have passed now, but who lived into their hundreds. Which means Gran could live that long, too. Could be stuck in a home for a decade. More.

The answer squirms into the corners of my mind, but I don’t let it formulate. My life is too much already. Everything too much. I close my eyes, my heart breaking for Gran, stuck in this country, with this woman who clearly has no love for her, with a granddaughter who hasn’t called in weeks, visited in months. With all her children under the ground. Two grandchildren as well. And this is what she gets.

“Don’t put her in a home in the Valley.”

“So you want me to look for one here?”

I nod, not able to commit with words. I want Mom to take care of her. I want this to not be happening.

“Don’t look at me like that.” Mom’s shoulders slump, her hands clasped and pulled into her lap. “As if I’m abandoning her. As if she were some great savior who came to pull us all out of our torment. Yes, she came here to help us, but also, it was to help her. She was out there in the country, the mountains, for goodness’ sake. No running water. No electricity. Alone. Traveling over two hours a day to get to and from that store. So I asked her to come. Told her it was to help. But it was to help her, too. Out there alone, she could have been found dead in her home, weeks after the fact.”

I don’t think Mom’s words are true. Aunt Chevelle was still living, though how much care she could have given, I don’t know. But then there were friends. Family. Gran wasn’t alone. Gran didn’t need to come. Mom needed her. Dad needed her. I did. And because of that, now she has no one but us.

To the outside world, Mom always gave the appearance of functioning. She got dressed, did her hair, showed up to work on time. But there were weeks sometimes, when Gran wasn’t living with us, that I had to make my own meals, pack my own lunches, wash my own clothes, tuck myself in at night. And now, this is what she wants for her. “Why do you hate her?” I ask.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Mom laughs, but in the sound, I hear the lie. Maybe not hate, but something close. She bolts upright, jostling her chair. “I need the facilities. I’ll be right back.”

As I watch her walk away, I want to yell out, tell her to get back here and answer the question. In the beginning, there’d been love between them. Closeness. Sometimes at night, I’d lie in bed, lulled by the sound of their whispered voices. With Gran there, Mom helped with the cleaning, the cooking, had more of an interest in me. With Gran there, after we’d moved, leaving the constant physical reminders of Antony behind, Mom had smiled more. Laughed. Been attentive.

Then the accident.

And like an integral piece of a puzzle clicking into place, revealing what’s to become of the mess of pieces strewn around you, I see more clearly now. Mom was doing better and then the accident. That’s when the flip switched—from a mother who was coming back to me, to one that left again, never to return.

She’d spent almost two weeks in bed, hardly speaking, hardly moving, which seemed extreme for a broken arm and some scrapes and bruises. There’d been whispers—Dad voicing concern, Gran dismissing his fears, telling him a brush with your own mortality could do this. And then, when Mom finally rose from her bed, she wasn’t the same, as if the person she’d been trying to become had shriveled up. There was no more genuine effort to show interest in my life. No more dog-eared magazine pages about how to overcome grief or move on after tragedy. She was cold with Gran and barely acknowledged Dad. She became jumpy—sometimes on edge, sometimes as if she were walking around in a fog, barely processing anything. The vacant look in her eyes intensified, and she never held my gaze in the way she used to, to the point where, to pass on pertinent information, sometimes I had to snap her out of what almost seemed a fugue state, hoping she wouldn’t tune out again before I’d finished speaking.

This disconnection happened slowly. Over years. Yet now, I realize, the start of it was all at once.

I’d been angry—that she was checking out again. That I wasn’t enough of a reason to try to get better. That, in public, she gave the appearance of being okay, but at home, it was different. Sometimes on weekends or holidays, she’d disappear to her room, spend the whole day in bed. Confirming Gran’s words, she said she was just tired, that work took so much out of her. Dad tried to make up for it, I think, taking me to lunch or to the local video store to pick a movie. But it hurt that she had energy for work, but not, apparently, for us. At the time, my pain blinded me. It was all I’d thought of, but…

I sit waiting, working up the courage to ask her, What really happened that night? Why did—

But before I make up my mind, she returns, words already on her lips, as if there hasn’t been this long pause in the conversation. “And if you think I hate her, maybe you should do the looking, set it all up, make sure I’m not just dumping her off somewhere.”

My face falls, as if I’ve been gut punched. Is this what she wanted all along? To cast this off on me, wipe her hands of it so I become the one to make the calls, visit the facilities, convince Gran one of these places should be her home.

“I don’t think you’ll dump her,” I say.

“Then we’ll start looking here. We can—”

Keep her with you , I shout internally, but stay silent as she speaks on, my mind back and forth between Gran and Mom, my body hinting at things I’m not ready to hear, not sure I’m able to give.

Mom sets down her tea, lifts her purse from where she’d hung it over the chair, stands, then stares at me, as if I’m the one acting weird. “What are you doing? Let’s go.”

I blink, realizing I must have tuned out her words. She puts on a smile—her public-facing one, and I wonder, was it a relief for her, those early months of the pandemic? When what was supposed to be a weekend visit turned into us all being trapped in the house together for over two months—no work for her, no training for me—when she didn’t have to pretend for the world and didn’t bother for us?

“The facility I was talking about is a few blocks away. So let’s pop in.”

Did she regret when the restrictions eased and suddenly we were out in the world again—masked, but out there? Regret even more when those masks came off?

“It’s beautiful, .” That smile, again, so unconvincing to me now. “The photos online are great. It has activities. It’s not like that awful place we saw on the news during the first lockdown.”

I bite the inside of my lip, the same way she did earlier. “I haven’t finished my muffin.”

She clenches her purse to her middle as one breath passes, two. And I see that something about being here in this public, tightly spaced place is hard for her. Something that goes beyond her discomfort with me. But this tenseness—fear?—she hasn’t always had it. So it can’t be just about Antony. And it didn’t start right after I was surrounded. So it must have been—

“Can you take it to go?”

I look at the muffin, to save myself from looking at her, to give myself time to figure out how I should ask.

“!” She’s frustrated. On edge.

“You said we were meeting for lunch.” I swallow, wanting and not wanting to know. “And you didn’t even eat.”

“I can’t… I need… Look—” She huffs, pink blotches blooming over her clenched knuckles. “I need to get back, to transcribe meeting notes for work.”

Work she’s planning to abandon as soon as she gets rid of Gran.

“We can pop in later,” I say, not wanting to, ever. Wondering what Dad would think of Mom’s plan, whether he’d have had the strength to stand against her, stand up for Gran. “Let me eat. Stay. Chat. You haven’t asked me about my job. My life. It’s been five months since we’ve seen each other.” Spend time with me, says a rising feeling, too primal for actual words. And then, maybe then, I’ll work up the courage to pose the question.

She sits carefully, with a quick 360 glance. “The phone line goes both ways, . The roads, too.”

Guilt, my training tells me, is behind this tone, these words, these actions. Grief. Frustration at a life she never intended. Which means there may be some small fraction of love left. But not enough. And it hurts. It transforms that feeling of yearning to one of rage. You’re the mom! I think, but don’t say. You’re supposed to be my mom .

I shouldn’t be the one to have to ask questions. I glance down at the table, take a bite, think of her grandbaby, swimming and flipping inside me, and wonder if she’d care, if she’d help me work through the pros and cons, or if Thomas being the father would be all the pro she needed. She never exactly told me not to marry a Black man…but in the offhand comments and looks, the straightening of my hair, the modification of my speech, the guidance around my clothes, what I listened to, watched, she might as well have.

“If you have to go, go,” I say, hating my tone—that of a petulant child—furious that I don’t have the answers I crave. Furious that she’s the only parent I have left, and I her only child—yet still, there’s this distance between us. “I don’t want to visit a home today.”

She stands again.

“Just don’t book Gran anywhere without talking to me.”

She nods.

“Thank you for the tea and muffin.” My voice rises, hopeful she’ll change her mind, sit, take me in her arms.

The corners of her lips lift. She pats a hand to my shoulder, lets it rest there for the briefest of moments, as if it’s painful to touch me, but she knows she should. She looks at me the way she has for years now, with a distracted, tense energy, as if the sight of me makes her uneasy. As if, whenever she looks at my face, some other, terrible thought lingers on her mind.

What is it?! something in me yells, again. It had to be that night. The accident. What happened?

She walks away without looking back, the way a stranger would—yet taking so much of me with her. And the other question that’s plagued me for as long as I can remember rises. Why wasn’t I enough?

I put my hand to my abdomen, thinking of how my mother lives like she owes me nothing, like I’m a burden, a responsibility she’s barely responsible for—thinking that maybe we’re not so different after all.