Kareela Juniper Cove
Kareela
Juniper Cove
Despite my best efforts, I couldn’t access a CarShare until the morning, so after a near sleepless night I called in sick to work and journeyed the almost two-hour drive to Juniper Cove, hands gripping the wheel, my foot hard on the gas. When at last I arrived, shaky and fearful, I stepped into the house that never felt like a home, that, for us, was only a false escape.
I had to pull the story out of my mother, and now I sit across from her and Gran, slack-jawed, my eyes burning, my body pulsing. I replay what I’ve heard, trying to piece together how I got here. How we all did.
“Mom.” I turn to her, the tears sliding down my face. “I just… All these years, to live with that.” My voice quavers. “With what those men did.” I hesitate. “Dad never knew?”
She shakes her head.
“You changed after. With him, too.”
She looks to the window.
As the days stretched on after the accident, she seemed to want nothing to do with any of us. I thought she was fed up with Dad for settling for a low-paying job, for drinking too much, for being so obviously broken she’d had to pretend she wasn’t. Fed up with me, for not being the type of daughter she wanted. For not being enough to make up for Antony. I didn’t know what Gran could have done. Eventually, it seemed like hate. As the years went on, more and more like hate. For Dad, for Gran, for me.
“And this was why?”
At first, she’d pushed me away, while reining me in. Never allowing me out alone after dark. Refusing to let me get my own car—driving me everywhere, asking Dad to, or forcing me to rely on friends. Making sure I always had a phone on me. Making sure she knew where I was. No drinking. No parties.
Control. But not love. As if I were a piece of property and it were her responsibility to keep me in one piece. Not a daughter. Not someone to take an interest in, to love.
Eventually, though, the effort to control faded, and once I moved, it was if, being out of her house, I was out of her life. As if she couldn’t muster up the energy to care at all anymore.
I thought it’d been about Antony. All that paranoia, about Antony. It had to be—at least in part—the terror of simply existing. The exhaustion of it. But…
“The boys from school,” I say, needing to know I’ve gotten it right. Needing to be sure this isn’t some bad dream.
“Just one of them.” Her gaze is still toward the yard, where one squirrel chases another, their bushy tails zigzagging up a tree. “It wasn’t the boy who did it.”
But that was why. She doesn’t say it, not in words—her silence saying it all. “He recognized you.”
“That’s not the point, Kareela.”
Except it is. And I never saw it. Never tried to. I just hated her, and wanted her, and then hated her all the more for how much I loved her and wanted her to love me. To show it.
I think of what I’ve just learned, what Rania and Carson told me, too, the terror Mom lived through, again and again, and all at once, my whole life, our relationship, all the ways I’ve viewed her, seem transformed. “This happened because of me,” I say, “because you defended me.”
“That’s not the point!” She looks toward Gran, and so many moments throughout the years flood back to me. Moments that made me think my mother hated me, the side of me that wasn’t like her. Hated my father, for the color of our skin. For what it had done to us. To Antony. Moments that made me believe she felt she’d made a mistake in marrying Dad, having his children.
And maybe she did. “Mom?” Maybe this was just one more reason.
Late afternoon light streams through the living room window, highlighting the dust particles’ dance. Mom looks sidelong at Gran, then returns her gaze to the window. “Now you know, Kareela.” Her hands slide across her middle, her chin high, her body slightly, so slightly I hardly see it, shaking. “Make of it what you will, and beyond that, let’s just drop it.”
“Mom.” I cross the room and kneel beside her chair. “You have to report this.”
She shakes her head, her lips tight, her back rigid, her body turned from mine. “Report what, Kareela? He didn’t…he didn’t actually… Anyway, it’s too late.”
“He violated you. The other men helped, and they’re still out there; they could do it to—”
Mom swivels, her gaze meeting mine. “That’s not my responsibility. My life is my responsibility. And there’s nothing to say he’ll do it again. It was an isolated incident. He was angry. Probably drunk. When I talked to those boys—to his son—I hurt their pride. I hurt their sense of how they believed the world should be.”
A sick tremor surges through me. “Are you defending them?”
“I’m just saying—” Her voice rises. She shakes her head, inhales, as her speech returns to a level pitch. “The fact that he did…what he did…to me…it doesn’t mean he’ll do it to anyone else. They were trying to make a point.”
“Mom.” Emotion courses through me. Fear. Anger. Desperation. And understanding. So much understanding. First Jamaica, then Antony, then this. “Mom, you’re wrong. You have no idea what else they’ve done, or what they’ll do. And regardless, you matter. What they did to you has no justification. You have to report it.”
“It’s too late.”
“No.”
“It was too long ago.”
I pause, not knowing how much to press, still trying to make sense of so much. “I don’t…” I look between them, then lean forward. “Why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you go to the police then? Why didn’t you try?”
“It was a different time!” She raises her hands in frustration, avoiding Gran’s gaze. Avoiding mine. “Now you know why I fell apart again. Please, let’s just leave it at that.”
“You could get help. Justice.”
She laughs. “Justice?” Then shakes her head. “They’ll think I’m an old woman making up stories, trying to get attention for something that happened—”
“No. Listen.” I grab Mom’s arm. “It’s not like that. People won’t see it like that. They’ll believe you. They’ll understand how much harder it would have been back then. He forced his fingers inside you. That is rape. You have to—”
“Enough!” She stands, her body shaking. “I’m done talking about this.”
“Tell her de rest.” Gran’s voice rises from the silence, her gaze on Mom. “Your ma, she wanted to go to de police; she would have—”
“I said enough!” Mom’s fists clench. “It doesn’t—”
“It all connects,” says Gran. “How yuh become. De fact yuh done with me now.”
“What?” I look between them.
Gran looks to the ceiling, her bottom lip shaking. “What me did to yuh, to all of yuh. How me split dis family.” Now she looks to me. “Yuh mammy was tryin to put yuh all back togetha, comin here, and it was workin. Then me, with me plan, broke it all to pieces, thinkin I was keepin it togetha.”
“So you admit it!” Mom steps forward. “After all these years. How you put Kareela and Kingsley ahead of me. Protecting them, always them, instead of me. Letting those men get away with it. Even after you saw how I was failing. How much I needed you—” She’s shaking, arms rigid, eyes moist. “I needed you to give me permission to speak. To tell me I deserved protection, too. Help, too.”
I look between them, a cauldron of hurt and confusion boiling. Gran’s eyes widen. “No, that not—”
“You never brought it up again,” continues Mom. “Never asked me how I was doing. You told me to forget it and acted like you did, too.” She stops. Breath heavy. Jaw twitching. “Maybe if I could have talked to you about it, had someone to—” She casts the back of her hand below her cheeks, clearing the evidence of the tears she’s let fall. “You left me all alone with it!” my mom half yells, half cries. “You deserted me. You were supposed to love me, too, be there for me, too. And now, what, you want me to explain why I kept silent? When you’re the one who convinced me?”
Gran stands, shakily, her arms out, waving, as if she’s trying to wave away Mom’s words.
“Tell her,” Mom continues, gesturing to me before turning back to Gran. “Lay all my secrets bare. Protect her again, so she won’t have the burden of hating her mother even more for being done with you, for not devoting the rest of my life to someone who cared so little about me.” She takes a breath, her voice lowering. “Well, hate is hate. Should it matter how much? But still you push. Despite me saying enough is enough. Despite me saying the past could stay there, just like you wanted.” Mom shakes her head. “It’s always about them. About protecting them. And I get it—” Her breath hitches. “I decided to protect them, too. But I needed you, in at least some small way, to be there for me, to protect me, too.”
Gran takes another step forward, her lips pressed in a quiver, an expression on her face that seems to indicate she’s fighting not to see years of her life, their life, transformed as the scales drop from her eyes. Her outstretched arm grasps Mom’s. “It about you.” Her voice is strained, confused. “Me use Kareela and Kingsley to convince yuh, and yes, it about dem a bit, but mostly it be about you. For you. So yuh didn’t have to go up against dat man. Dose men, who woulda called yuh a liar. So yuh didn’t have to see dey faces, de face of yuh coworkers, once de whispers started, of yuh neighbors, as yuh stepped into suddenly silenced rooms, knowing de last name on dey lips was yours. I was silent, told yuh to be silent, to protect yuh.”
Mom steps back, anger, and something else—disbelief?—emanating from her like waves.
Gran drops her arm and pulls it to her middle. “Me was here, takin care of yuh. Of yuh family. Me didn’t bring it up because a wound isn’t helped by cutting it open, but by leaving it to heal.”
Mom laughs again. Dry and caustic. “Unless it’s infected.” She flings her hand forward, as if throwing the words. “Then leaving it lets it fester.”
“Me thought—”
“I don’t care anymore.” Mom swallows, her shoulders straightening. “I told you I was done, and I am.” She turns from us, crosses the hall, and disappears up the stairs.
“Me thought me was helping her heal.”
“Gran?” I pivot, my stomach tight, my throat raw, the pain of this, of all of it, like an ocean above us.
Gran shifts her head, her gaze focused on something I can’t pinpoint. “Me suppose after a time, me knew de healing wasn’t happening. Not as it should. Dese t’ings. No one ever really heals. But we move on, and dey become a blip in de length of a life. A moment of bad amidst all de moments of good. Or dey can. Me thought dey should. Dey would. If we kept silent. But me shoulda known. She not like me.” Gran pauses, her gaze still focused on something I can’t see. “She never wanna talk with me again, ’bout anyt’ing, so me thought me what make it worse: me knowing. That she avoiding me because she afraid me gonna bring it up, to her, or maybe to yuh Daddy. Me thought she didn’t want to talk about it. Just like she never want to talk about she boy—de good parts or de bad. So me give her space, and—”
“Gran.” I step toward her. “What was Mom talking about? What did you have to do with all of this?”
Gran turns to me, her expression almost stunned, as if she just remembered I am in the room. “De most important t’ing,” she says, “is nuh to be mad at her. It not yuh motha who created all this sadness. All this hurt. It me. Me and dose men. All dose men.” She pauses. Looking older. Smaller. She reaches her hand out, gesturing for me to join her on the couch. “And me understand if dis not somethin yuh can forgive—stealing yuh mama from yuh like dat. Lettin her break.” Another pause. “But me thought me was doing what would prevent worse breaking.”
My chest sinks. Outside, the leaves sway, the clouds shift in their slow-motion journey across the sky. “Gran, what did—”
“I’ll tell yuh de rest.” She turns to the window, a sigh lifting then settling her thin shoulders. “Yuh motha, she be frantic when she come in. Plannin to call de police. But den…”