Chapter 41 Then
Then
James
Some people have hazy memories of their childhood, brains wiping away and fogging up the past until it remains only a vague impression, brief flashes of clarity.
It’s not like that for me, my early years as sharp and clear in my mind as my adult life.
In some ways, those early memories are clearer, purer.
It’s because of this that I can’t forget how potent my parents’ indifference toward me has always been.
Sure, I was the younger son, and stories of spoiled younger children would constantly be spilling out of people’s mouths: friends, family, teachers.
But it just wasn’t my reality. I actually used to embarrass myself arguing about it in school.
Well, Mommy wanted one child and to be named partner at her firm, but instead she has two children and nothing interesting to say at dinner parties. We all do things we don’t want to sometimes, darling. Eat your greens.
I was four when she said this to me. Shockingly, that knowledge of being unwanted has stuck.
Boys are cruel at the best of times, and the boys at my boarding school might have been even worse, so when I accidentally called one of our teachers—the hottest one—“Mom” in the lunch hall when I was twelve, the already existing mommy issues I’d put on display made my life a living nightmare.
One of the older boys overheard and nicknamed me Little Edie after Oedipus.
Few of the boys my age knew the full origin story, but everyone knew that it meant I was a “mommy-fucker,” as it was so eloquently put.
It fucks up a boy’s brain having the concept of fucking his mother become a constant throughout his day, Little Edie picking up steam as a name.
And if that didn’t suck enough, I’d then return home over the holidays paralyzed by the need to spend time with my mother and the opposing need to not seem like a needy, mother-loving freak.
To prove them all wrong. Because I wasn’t Little Edie. Just James.
Whatever I wanted or was trying to do was irrelevant in the long run. My mother’s indifference toward me was so violent that the more I pulled away, the more content with me she seemed.
It’s with all this in mind that when I met Chioma in the leisure center in the next town over, I was immediately drawn in.
It was the summer I was fifteen. I’d been with Will at the time, his friends larking about doing laps while Chioma and her friends were practicing handstands in the shallows.
I was in the middle of a race, eyes blind to the gleaming legs stuck into the air with pointed feet.
The collision was slow but embarrassing all the same. I was ready for the angry words and mean looks. I’m someone who was always in the way, it seemed, and here I was in the way again. But as I gabbled out an apology, she gave me a smile with kind eyes.
“It’s okay,” she said.
We got chatting. She laughed at jokes I didn’t know I was making.
Laughed at my “posh voice” but seemed to like it.
When I told her things, she didn’t immediately try to argue with me.
Prove me wrong. It was easy as we bobbed around in the water.
And although I noticed Will’s friends elbowing one another and pointing our way, the creeping rash of embarrassment that started to rise over me was eventually transformed into something else.
“He’s not bothering you, is he?” one of them said, splashing over.
“No.” Her voice was bright, beautiful.
“Because I can always get him to fall in line, you know,” he continued.
I then noticed how he was puffing his chest up.
How he wanted to look important in front of her.
And I looked at her again and took in how pretty she was.
Fine braids, bright eyes, white smile. The boys didn’t put up posters of girls who looked like her in the dorm rooms, but I could tell that they thought she was desirable.
“I can do a wicked handstand, you know,” he went on.
“Actually, we were kinda chatting if you don’t mind,” she said. He looked confused. “As in this is an ‘a’ plus ‘b’ conversation, so please ‘c’ your way out of it.”
She crossed her arms and raised her brows at him expectantly. He muttered, slipped beneath the water, and slid away.
“God, I hate boys like that,” she said with an eye roll.
“Tell me about it,” I said, matching the roll and determined for her not to ever think of me as a “boy like that,” either.
Things with Chioma snowballed quickly after that.
The texting was fun, even if a lot of phrases went over my head.
And there was fresh attention in the school corridors.
A lot of the questions were derisive, but a lot more were pure fascination.
I’d hit it off with a pretty Black girl from the local comprehensive, and suddenly I was the most interesting boy in my year.
Suddenly, I was no longer Little Edie or Eeds. I was James again.
The nature of my schooling meant I could only see Chioma over the holidays, but that was fine by me.
People’s interest in me tended to wane as soon as it waxed.
Other boys at school, teachers, family friends, were used to my loud and gregarious older brother.
Expected the same of me, only to find themselves rapidly disappointed.
A large and vocal part of me worried Chioma would eventually come to the same conclusion as everyone else.
That I was a little boring. But with term time enforcing so much time apart, she never had the opportunity to get bored.
A few days stolen together here or there felt special.
So much so that our relationship lasted until we’d both graduated from our respective schools.
She found me interesting, my Latin recitals impressive, my family home astonishing.
I hadn’t known how good it could feel to be admired.
Hadn’t known how a few superficial things could make me worthy in the eyes of someone as smart, as funny, as genuinely cool, as she was.
I wanted it to stay this way forever. It triggered something unsavory in me when other boys were too friendly with her, but she was always clear she only had eyes for me.
Reassuring. I was fully out of my brother’s shadow and in a spotlight of my own for once.
To celebrate our last summers at home before uni—me going to Exeter to study economics, and Chioma off to UCL to do medicine—my parents invited Chioma to join our family holiday to Corfu.
They knew how cut up I was about our plans to land at the same university failing.
I didn’t get the grades for UCL, and Exeter had rejected Chioma for reasons she couldn’t make sense of.
I could already feel the distance between us.
And I mean that in a tangible way. We had months to go until we’d be so many miles apart, but I could feel her already withdrawing from me, our conversations shorter and further apart.
Long-distance relationships at uni never work, she started saying. I wanted us to be the exception.
It took three meetings with our parents for Chioma’s mother and father to eventually agree to let her go on the holiday.
It was one of those moments that reminded me of how culturally different we were.
But once they gave their permission, we were so excited we could barely contain ourselves.
I suppose we didn’t know how badly things would work out.
The day that it happened, we were in our villa, enjoying a lazy morning. Will and Chioma were getting on like a house on fire. I didn’t like it. I’d come downstairs in the morning to find them huddled together at the kitchen island, laughing around mouthfuls of muesli.
Maybe on balance, I’d been a bit naive about the whole holiday.
Even with the trepidation of our impending distance cooling the relationship a little, being with Chioma still made me feel like a rock star.
After almost two years of dating, my family, while friendly, hadn’t made the effort to spend masses of time with her.
I thought spending more quality time with someone so great who clearly thought I was worthy of adoration might get my family to start seeing me through Chioma’s eyes.
But all that happened is they found a new appreciation for how clever and smart she was.
Fell more in love with her. Over humid lunches where we kids were allowed a little wine, Dad would crack jokes about what she was doing with me.
Mom would sit beside her in the evening shade of the pergola, books splayed open on their laps, and later over dinner, they’d trade passionate whispers about what they’d read.
And Will…They’d never spent a huge amount of time together before.
I always thought he fell into the category of “boys like that” in her eyes.
But there could be an edge to their respective senses of humor that they’d found slotted well together.
On this morning, Will and Chioma were turned toward each other on their sun loungers, nattering away as I lay silently beside Chioma in the shade.
It was too much sharing her with Will, of all people.
Seeing her distracted by his dazzle. So I hatched a plan for us to have some time to ourselves.
A couple of hours on the beach, just the two of us.
“Wait—you’re not gonna take me with you?” Will asked.
Chioma threw me a Well, shouldn’t we? look with her eyes. I threw a Please let me have some alone time with my girlfriend back at Will. He let it fall, uncaught, and waggled his brows at me.
“C’mon, you two lovebirds aren’t gonna leave me alone with the old folk?” he asked with a wink. “Besides, only I know how to get to that secret beach with the good diving rock. You got lost for an hour trying to look for it last year, James.”
“Oh, James, the pictures looked incredible!” Chioma says. “Let’s go there.”
And so the three of us went off.
When we came back, red-eyed and without Chioma, it was immediately obvious that something had gone horribly wrong.
It’s one of the only times I remember my mother’s arms wrapped so tightly around me.
And when I was able to find my voice, I told them all what had happened.
How Chioma had drowned. How we couldn’t save her.
The coast guard was called. The police, too.
But after two weeks of looking for her body, they gave up the search.
It would have taken thousands that her parents didn’t have to hire a commercial diving team to keep looking.
Thousands my parents wouldn’t give them, no matter how many times Chioma’s mom showed up on our doorstep asking.
That was when the restraining order was placed; they said it was about protecting me, but really, they just wanted the problem to go away.
If Chioma’s mom stopped showing up, then people would eventually stop asking questions, and the shame of Chioma’s untimely death on their watch would die along with her memory.
I don’t think Chioma’s parents have ever forgiven us—me—for what happened to their future doctor. They’ve certainly never forgotten.