We Rip the World Apart

Evelyn Juniper Cove

Evelyn

Juniper Cove

2022

Evelyn’s head pressed against the aged wood of the window frame. Her eyes closed. Shame flowed through her. Hate. For life. For the way it unfolded. For herself.

A woman who, after all that had happened, just pushed her daughter, her one remaining child, out of her arms. Who’d hesitated in telling her she loved her.

Before that night, she’d been doing so well, had started to truly embrace the fresh start she thought the move to Nova Scotia had given her, but the attack—that final thrust of the knife in what felt like a lifetime of injuries, the silencing afterward—had stripped it all away. Stripped her of the self she’d wanted to become, of her ability to love without fear, without anger, without a sliver of hate—for how much pain that love opened her up to as she tried to protect her daughter, her husband, at the cost of protecting herself.

Evelyn opened her eyes to see Kareela stepping onto the front walkway, turning toward the woods. How many times had she watched her child disappear down that path? Especially during the early lockdowns—when all four of them were trapped in the house. Safe, together, for the first time in years. But trapped, them and the ghosts, the ghosts and all the unspoken words.

Evelyn hadn’t wanted Kareela to go. Just like she didn’t now, the solitude of the woods the perfect venue for violence, especially when raised tensions had rippled through the town. Via a fake account, Evelyn had stalked Juniper Cove’s Facebook group, saw the people who, for the first time it seemed, had become aware of this country’s atrocities, claiming they were ready to learn. To be allies. But also the ones whose hatred flared, who proclaimed the sovereignty and inculpability of the white race.

The pandemic was barely two months in when the news came.

Kareela’s training, which had at first been put on hold, was being conducted online. A good thing, since they were told not to leave their communities, not to embark on any but the most necessary travel. Kareela, who’d been home for a weekend visit when they’d been notified of the first lockdown, had wanted to go to her apartment, get her stuff, at least, water her plants, but Kingsley pleaded no. “That’s the worst spot to be.” Fear in his voice. “That’s where this virus will get you.”

Then, all those weeks later, weeks of enforced isolation, Kareela had been the first to hear about the murder. She’d been scrolling on her phone when a sound escaped her throat that whipped all their heads toward her.

“What?” asked Kingsley.

“Nothing.” She stared at the screen, then lowered her phone, her eyes still looking down, as if whatever she’d seen was burned across her vision. Eventually, in the face of the silence, she blinked and wiped her sweatered arm across her lids.

“What is it, me luv?” asked Violet.

“Nothing.”

Kingsley shifted over, gesturing to the phone. “Sweetheart, what…?”

“Another murder.” She looked up. “By the police.” She stopped. “Trust me. You don’t want to know about it. You don’t want to see it.”

She was right. Evelyn didn’t. But Kingsley reached for his tablet.

“Dad, don’t.”

He watched, silent. Evelyn moved over to him. Violet, too. Their breaths held, at first, but they couldn’t hold them until the end. Not even close. No one could.

When it finished, Evelyn moved back to her seat in the armchair, her hands shaking with all the hatred. The bullets into her boy. Into Omar, a child in the wrong place at the wrong time. The blades into Ella. And then there was the hand over Evelyn’s mouth…and elsewhere. The knee on that man’s neck. And so many others. So many others.

Violet stayed beside Kingsley on the couch, her hand wrapping around his. Kareela looked out the window, jaw tight, quivering.

In the weeks following the news, following those eight minutes and forty-six seconds, all those allies on social media—not just in her town, but the world over—claimed that this, this was what had shocked them into acknowledging the horrors that had been going on for generations. This was the moment for change. As if all the previous deaths weren’t enough. As if Antony’s wasn’t.

The TV stayed on through the day and into the night. Kingsley drinking it in, that all-consuming grief that had started to ease just when Evelyn had sunk so deeply into hers, taking over him again. When the news on TV was about something else, he watched those eight minutes and forty-six seconds on his tablet, as if he could decipher something from it, unravel the past, the hatred that, inadvertently, led to Kingsley losing his life. That led to Evelyn barely knowing her daughter, letting her grow up at arm’s length, for fear of what that hatred would do to her girl, that one day it would take her, the same way it took her boy. Evelyn knew if she loved Kareela as she’d loved Antony, with abandon—each accomplishment, each failure so intertwined with her sense of self they were like her own—she wouldn’t survive.

Though that’s all she’d been doing: surviving.

“It just like Antony,” Kingsley half cried, half yelled when she’d brought him a drink, a few nights before his last, his eyes red-rimmed, his skin sallow and loose on his face, the tablet still in his hand all those weeks later. “The man didn’t do nothing. But dey talk about him like he did. Like he nothing but some criminal. Like he deserve it. And that officer, he going to go free. You just watch. He going to go free. Live he life. Like dey all do. Like dey all always do.”

Evelyn leaned down, in a way she hadn’t in years. She placed a hand against his chin and cheek. She kissed his forehead, handed him a whisky, knowing she shouldn’t, and walked away—feeling his pain, his anger, but unable to express it, unable to find a way through this agony, together.

The autopsy said the drink killed Kingsley. Poisoned him. But it was only a symptom, the physical expression of a death that’d been years in the making, then happened all at once. The grief was what really killed him. The lack of power he felt to change anything about his life. Their lives. The anger and pain with no outlet. She knew that ache, felt it daily, but had never had the taste for alcohol.

Today, Evelyn stared at the gap in the trees through which Kareela had vanished. She shifted her head, looking at the opposite window frame, the scratches she’d made in it as a child as she sat listening to the shouts, the sound of flesh on flesh, the silence that followed.

Loving was dangerous. But she loved Kareela. She felt it when she’d heard her yelling on the phone, heard the hurt and pain in her voice—that outburst awakening emotion that had sat dormant in Evelyn for years. She loved her, but was no good for her.

Evelyn turned her gaze back to the woods. She was tired—the slow inhale and exhale of breath a constant effort—a tiredness she imagined her mother felt. A tiredness that made her empathize with why Kingsley had given in, drank till it killed him—given up on the effort, the burden of love. She’d thought about it, so many times. Had tried once: a bottle of pills that she’d thrown up minutes later, her fingers in her throat, though she couldn’t have explained why.

Kareela, maybe.

Evelyn stood. She kept her gaze on the trail, hoping to see her daughter’s face, to tell her… She didn’t know what. That she was sorry? That she’d wasted her life because of all that fear and hatred and pain? That she was weak and wished she’d been stronger, wished she’d been the mother Kareela deserved? That the best thing, now that Kingsley was gone and Violet would be taken care of—whether in a home or by Kareela—was for Evelyn to go?

To stop bringing her girl down with all her damage.

To find a place to live out her days, distanced from her fear, like in those early days in Jamaica. Somewhere no one would know her or her family—the one she’d been given or the one she’d chosen. Some place where maybe, just maybe, she could feel safe and hope that, somehow, her daughter would be safe, too—from her, at least.

And then Kareela appeared, running out of the trailhead and onto the road, morphing before Evelyn’s vision, flashes of her at fourteen, at ten, at six. Then back again, a twenty-four-year-old woman—strong and beautiful—who, despite every reason why she shouldn’t, was thriving.

Evelyn opened her door and traveled down the stairs, ready to tell Kareela she was sorry, that she wished she’d done better, that she made mistakes.

Leaving wouldn’t be a mistake. Leaving would be the first right thing she’d done in years.