Kareela
After my mother leaves the café, I pick at my muffin, its moist deliciousness lost on me. Putting my complicated feelings and questions about her aside, I focus on Gran. Blind. I swallow through a dry throat, take a sip of lukewarm tea. Gran, in a nursing home, strangers around her.
At least in Halifax, there’d be the chance of Black and Brown faces—with stories similar to her own. People who immigrated for family. Maybe even other Jamaicans, descendants of the Maroons. They could talk about that. That they were kin, though hundreds of years apart.
I step the plate away. Maybe Mom’s right, and it’s not like that exposé. Gran could like it. Companionship. Community. She certainly didn’t get that in Juniper Cove, not since Dad died, since I left.
That’s the core focus when she talks about home. How everyone, regardless of blood, is considered family—taking care of your neighbors, your neighbors taking care of you.
I step through the two sets of café doors, wanting to call Gran, see her, drive to the Valley right now. But if I called, she’d hurry me off the line, no time for talking ’bout dese t’ings . If I showed up, aware of her blindness, like the tender awareness of a fresh wound, I’d fall apart.
So I return home, where Thomas and I have been flitting and weaving around each other for days, acting as if everything is fine, while he places a prenatal vitamin beside my breakfast plate or bowl each morning, while I dutifully swallow, knowing since I haven’t decided, I should be living as if either decision were possible.
“Where’ve you been?” he asks when I step through the door. “Out with Jasmine?”
I listen for something behind his words—fear, frustration, jealousy—something to tell me he’s not as good as he seems. But hear only curiosity.
“No.” I turn from him, open the fridge, stare as if gazing into an abyss. “With my mom, actually.”
“Your…?” He sidles over, his back against the counter, his gaze on mine. “Did I know she was coming for a visit?”
I close the fridge door, the action in place of a sigh. “I didn’t know.”
“Is everything—”
“Gran’s blind. Or almost. She will be soon. Mom wants to dump her in a home.”
“Oh. Wow. Wow.” He nods, clearly processing this information. “It just…came on?”
“Apparently she’s been hiding it for years.” I stop, remembering her skin on mine, papery thin yet full of such substance, her hugs, the scent of her food—tantalizing, sharp, spicy—which smelled like love, which was. “And I didn’t see it. I didn’t even know.”
His hands land on my shoulders, guiding me to the table, setting me into a seat. “You have your own life, Ree. A busy life. And if she was hiding it…”
“I know.” I swallow and a ball of stress squeezes down—painful and hard. “Mom was talking like she’s going to put her in some nursing home near Juniper Cove,” I say, “because it’s cheaper, easier, faster. And Mom’s moving. Which means Gran would be alone. Like, really alone out there. But I don’t even think that’s what it’s about. I think she just said that so she could put her in a home near me and it would seem like a favor, like this good option. So—”
“Wait, what?” Thomas stops me. “Your mom’s moving? Where?”
“She didn’t say. Just away. To start over. New job. New life, and—”
“In her sixties? And she has no idea—”
“Thomas.” I let my hands flop, not wanting to make space to think any more about Mom, about what this move would mean—if her leaving also means she intends, once and for all, to leave me. “This is about Gran. About what’s going to happen to Gran. Not my mother.”
“Did you tell her about…?” He leans in, trying to keep the hope from his voice.
“No.” I rub a hand along my arm, imagining, again, how that conversation would have gone.
“Well, maybe you should. Maybe, if we decide to keep the baby, she’d move here. Wouldn’t that be nice? And maybe your gran could move into a home here, or even, with you close by to help, maybe your mom would reconsider and—”
“It wouldn’t be nice.” My shoulders stiffen as I try to keep the annoyance out of my voice. To remember that he hasn’t lived my life and so is speaking from the perspective of someone whose mother is wonderful—who cares. “And she won’t reconsider.”
He nods. “The blindness is awful. But the move to a nursing home here, you’d see her way more, most likely. So that’s a good thing, right?”
The answer hovers in my mind, not in words, but a feeling.
“?”
I breathe in, out, not meeting his eye.
“?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Not sure about…?”
I shake my head, stand, not able to articulate the solution, even for myself. “Gran says she wants to move back to Jamaica, where she knows the land, her house, her property. Where there are people who could help her. Not family. I don’t think there’s any left. They all emigrated to the States or the UK, or disappeared never to be heard from again, or died. But neighbors. Friends who are like family.”
His voice is slow, cautious. “Is that a possibility?”
I keep my gaze averted. “Gran doesn’t know who is and isn’t still there. There was no phone line when she left. No internet…satellite maybe.” I turn back to him. “It’s everywhere, isn’t it? And cell phones? But Gran doesn’t have their contacts. She hasn’t spoken to most of them in a decade.”
“So?”
“I’m hungry.” I place a hand on my belly with a smile, as if I mean something more by my words, as if my raging hunger is something to be excited about, as if I’m not merely trying to end this conversation, to give myself time to process the past hours. “How about we go out to eat. Maybe take a harbor walk after?”
He stands, clearly not duped, but taking the hint: this isn’t something I want to discuss. Not now, anyway. And he doesn’t want to upset me, not with the ultrasound in three days.