Fourteen August 1997
FOURTEEN
“You wear memory like a charm, like a weird sort of hedge of protection. Like it’s going to keep you from getting hurt. It’s a dangerous thing, to use memory that way,” Kiju had once said to me.
I was home for a weekend right after I’d ended it with a boyfriend.
Kiju had liked him, thought there might have been a future for us.
I wasn’t of the same opinion. Kiju was cooking and I was telling her why we broke up.
He wanted to get married and I didn’t. Something about us—not him, but us—wasn’t right.
“You have put John on a pedestal, and while I know the love you used to share, I also know that love like that can also be dangerous, especially to the tender-hearted.” She walked over to where I was sitting, my hands wrapped around a cup of tea.
“And I know you think yourself to be tough, but you can’t always be.
And holding on to a memory like that will keep you a prisoner. ”
Kiju’s wisdom echoed from the grave, reminding me that even in her absence, she could still be the voice that spoke a common sense I sometimes lacked.
Now, I was unsure what I thought of William.
He was neither good nor bad, I didn’t love him or hate him.
I had no idea what I would think of him tomorrow, next month, next week, or twenty years from now.
He was meant to be a footnote in my life story, but now I knew there would always be a part of him around.
“Hi,” he answered on the first ring, sounding cheerful.
“Hi.”
Then silence. I took a deep breath.
“I was wondering if we could talk, face to face.”
“Everything okay?”
“Yeah. I just need to chat.”
“Okay. I’ll hop in the shower and be there in an hour.”
“Sounds good.”
As I put the receiver down, I wished he were here now, or that I had gone to him. An hour to obsess over what to say was going to drive me crazy. I wanted it to be done. There was no way I could think about the future until he knew.
When he arrived, his knock was gentle as he opened the door.
I’d been staring out the window when he pulled in the driveway.
As I watched him approach, my heart quickened.
Without words, without a hello, he came in, kissed me on the cheek and sat down on the sofa.
He may have been mostly Scottish, but I could see the Mi’kmaq in him then.
Or maybe I saw what I wanted to see. Or what I hoped I would see in our daughter, because I knew this child would be a girl.
“I’m glad you called. I really wanted to see you before I left. They pushed up the dates, so I am out of here the day after tomorrow. Just gotta finish up some paperwork.”
“Oh,” was all I could muster.
I joined him on the sofa but couldn’t look at him. I focused my eyes on a knot in the pine that was leaking through the paint on the windowsill. I was about to speak when he took my hand, turned it over and kissed my palm.
“How about once more for old times’ sake. A good way to say goodbye.”
It seemed like an easier decision in the moment, to let that be our goodbye. He stood, took my hand and led me to the bedroom.
Maybe I wouldn’t tell him after all.
“I want to show you something,” I said as I crawled over him.
We had been pressed up against one another in the twin bed.
The heat of summer fused our naked bodies.
Sweat bonded us where our legs intertwined, where my arm rested on his chest. The cheap fan, bought when the first heat wave of the summer passed through, was ineffectual even with the windows open.
The humidity seeped in under the doors and crawled through the window, soaking us.
My feet hit the floor with a thump and I welcomed the tiny bit of coolness it offered. I threw on the shorts and T-shirt that William had so enthusiastically removed an hour before.
“Get up,” I said. I took his hand and pulled him up.
William already had children, but he rarely talked about them, and I didn’t press.
I knew there were three, two girls and a boy, and they were out on their own.
He had grandchildren too, two of them, I think.
I didn’t know if they were boys or girls.
I looked at pictures once, old and creased from being in his wallet for a decade, but I never pressed him to disclose anything about his life before we met.
I’d never told him about my childhood, the scar or the reason I left the city to move home.
And I certainly never told him about the birthing tree.
William put on his jeans and T-shirt and I led him out the door.
The night was eerily quiet, the sky bright with stars.
At the end of the path, the tree came into view.
I stopped and my breath caught. The tree looked bigger somehow, its branches stretched out, broader than I remembered, the base wider, the roots that held women longer, protruding from the ground at more distinct angles.
A trick of the light, or of time, or of memory.
“This is the birthing tree,” I declared, then let go of his hand and walked up to the tree.
“The what?”
“The birthing tree. It’s where our women would come to have their babies.”
I crouched down and ran my hands through the dirt where my mother had given her life so that I could have mine.
I don’t know why, but my stomach lurched and I felt as if I might pass out, or throw up, or both.
I looked up, hoping the stars in their stillness would settle my dizziness.
But all I saw were leaves. The tree obliterated the sky.
The branches above me turned and twisted; I saw a blur of rotation.
The world seemed to be turning. I thought I might fall. I felt his hands on my waist.
“Careful. You okay?”
“Just dizzy. Probably the heat getting to me.”
He held my hand as I sat down between the branches the way I’d seen so many women do in the past. William slipped behind me, using himself as a soft place for me to lean. I settled against him. I could smell him, the sweat, the residual scent of sex, a hint of cologne. I breathed it in, all of him.
“I was born under this tree. The same moment my mother died, during a summer thunderstorm. There was no rain. Kiju, my grandmother, said she cursed the earth for refusing to cry at the death of her daughter.”
I could feel the rise and fall of his chest and my own breathing synced with his, our bodies moving together.
“My Kiju, she used to help guide babies into the world. And her mother before her, and her mother before her. She would make the medicines and sing the songs passed down. They were the only songs I ever knew in Mi’kmaw.”
“Knew? Don’t you still know them?”
“No. Sometimes I remember a snippet, but they are mostly gone from me now.”
Since returning home, I had tried my hardest to recall the songs. But only the melody came to me. In the quiet, I started to hum. The sounds vibrating in my throat felt familiar, but I could no longer retrieve the words. Perhaps I no longer deserved them.
“That’s beautiful.”
“I helped my Kiju. I even helped with a baby girl named Faye. My first and only birth.” I sighed and let myself relax into him even more.
His hands were around my waist, resting easy on my stomach.
He didn’t ask any questions, about these people he didn’t know.
He didn’t move to leave, just sat holding on to me, and I let myself be held.
William kissed me on the top of my ear, drawing me out of my own thoughts.
“I want to tell you about me. I don’t need you to do the same, but I wanted you to know a bit about my life.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t know who my father is, I have no brothers or sisters that I know of, my mother died giving birth to me.
I have a hard time loving. There was a man, his name was John, I think I just gave up on love after him.
I was so young, and you know how young love imprints on you?
He was, and still is, the person who I compare everyone to.
Even you. It’s not fair, but I can’t help it. ”
William remained quiet, somehow knowing I wasn’t finished.
I turned my head to look at him and he raised his hand and outlined the scar, running his finger down the side of my face, letting it rest at my jaw. “And this?”
“A young man was full of rage and he took it out on me. I don’t know why, and I don’t like to think about it.”
“How?”
“With a knife.”
I felt him stiffen under me. He took his hand away and bent his head to look closer at the scar.
“Where is he now?” There was anger in his voice.
“I don’t know. I think he’s dead, or in prison. I haven’t seen him since the day he did this.”
“Why would he do this to you?”
The old hurt came rushing back. The pain of Kiju asking what I’d done. I was still facing him, the dark obscuring his features and, I hoped, mine.
“Are you blaming me?”
“Of course not. It’s just—”
I didn’t let him finish. “Just . . .”
“I didn’t mean anything by it, Aliet.” He reached out to take my hand and I let him. I think I was losing the energy to be angry. I had spent so much time being mad at the universe and at the people who left me that I was exhausted by it all.
“I don’t know why. You’d have to ask him. And I don’t want to talk about it any longer. There are other, more important things we need to discuss.”
I turned back around and settled against him.
I looked up into the branches again, took a deep breath.
I knew I needed to tell him here, under this tree, the tree where his daughter would eventually be born.
I knew that the tree needed me to tell him here, to etch my girl’s story into the rings, deep inside.
“I’m pregnant.”
A slight breeze rattled the leaves above us.
“That’s pretty serious.”
“I know you’re leaving, and this is not something you wanted or expected.”
“No, it’s not.”
“If you are thinking that I did this on purpose, I didn’t.”