Boundaries (18 page)

Her father does not acknowledge her presence. He is standing in front of her mother, fully dressed, concentrating on what he is doing. Her mother is sitting on the edge of the bed, her back to the door. She is naked down to the place when the slit begins on her backside. Her husband towers over her, her head barely in line with his shoulders. She too does not utter a word; she too does not turn her head when Anna’s footsteps reverberate through the room. It is a tableau of a husband and wife in a scene so unbearably intimate that tears puncture Anna’s eyes. She stands there transfixed. Time freezes, stops still for the image to be indelibly imprinted in her mind.

She would not have believed her mother’s body so exquisite. It is not a young body. Her mother is seventy-two. Already time has destroyed much of the elasticity in her skin; it sags, but it does not crease. There are no wrinkles on her back. The skin is smooth, fluid, butterscotch-brown flowing from fleshy shoulders down to a certain defined, if thick, waistline, flaring out to voluptuous hips. It is not a body to be found in fashion magazines; it is the body of a mature woman who has not denied herself her passion for mangoes or coconut ice cream, a body softened by fat, a body that would arrest a painter’s eye.

Symmetry, Anna believes, defines beauty for many artists, the alignment of curves and planes and lines that cannot be altered without the risk of shattering its perfection. Her mother has no hair on her head, the follicles deadened by the toxins meant to halt the growth of the tumors. But even her bald head held erect as she faces her husband—regal, it appears to Anna—is essential to the symmetry of the curves, lines, and planes of her body, fixing the point from where the eye is compelled to descend, and rendering the viewer, like Anna, breathless.

What her father is doing is what Paul Bishop has instructed Anna to do. Although she cannot see her father’s hands, Anna is certain he is removing the blood-stained dressing from her mother’s wound, cleaning the drain attached to the last of the sutures.

A man’s man
. She had thought her father squeamish as a man’s man is supposed to be. When they took Beatrice to the doctor on the island, her father’s friend Neil Lee Pak had warned him, “Woman’s business.” Neil Lee Pak advised him that Anna alone should be with her mother when the doctor examines her.

A man’s man remains outside, waiting for the results. A man’s man leaves matters of a woman’s bodily functions to the business of women. But it is her father who does this woman’s business; it is Anna who stands outside in the waiting room.

“If it should happen to me, if the gene passed down from my mother’s mother to my mother should be in me, waiting to erupt, I will know how to handle it,” Anna says to Paula when at last the emotions that tightened her throat loosen their grip and she is able to call her.

“Where are they now?”

“Sleeping. They were so …” Anna breathes in, exhales, and tries again. “I wanted to serve her tea in bed this afternoon, but she was out of her room before I could get there. I knew she was in pain, though she never said a word. She acts as though nothing really major has happened to her, as if losing her breast is no big thing. I don’t think I’d be able to do that. I don’t think I’d be able to suffer in silence.”

“She’s not suffering in silence,” Paula says.

“She hasn’t complained.”

“To you.”

“I don’t think to my father, either,” Anna says.

“It’s her faith.”

Anna does not understand.

“The faith that had her praying for the tumors to go away is the same faith that consoles her now. She doesn’t need to tell you or your father about her pain. She speaks to the Virgin Mary. She puts her suffering in Mary’s hands and so her burden is lightened.”

Paula’s response surprises Anna. “Since when have you become religious?”

“Oh, I didn’t have a conversion, if that’s what you mean. I’m a believer, but I don’t have your mother’s faith. I admire it, that’s all.”

“She spent months locked up in her bathroom praying to the Virgin and all that happened was that the tumors got bigger,” Anna says. “They didn’t go away.”

“Your mother believes her prayers were answered.”

“And exactly how were they answered? She had to have chemo to reduce the tumors before a doctor could operate. They had grown so big.”

“Her prayers were answered when your boyfriend came to visit her,” Paula says.

Anna brushes her comment away. “He’s not my boyfriend.” Paula chuckles. “I stand corrected. When your lover came to visit her.”

Anna does her best to ignore her. “So tell me, Miss Soothsayer,” she says, “how were her prayers answered?”

“You need to have faith like your mother that things will turn out well for you with your Dr. Bishop,” Paula chides her.

“Things didn’t exactly turn out well for my mother,” Anna responds.

“Your Dr. Bishop persuaded her to come to the States. She had surgery here. It was successful. Your mother believes her prayers were answered and she is cured. She acts the way she does because she believes she has nothing to worry about now. The cancer has been removed— not the way she wanted at first, but the tumors are not there anymore. She has faith that her prayers have made it possible, that the Virgin Mary acted in her own way and in her own time. The universe is unfolding as it should.”

The Desiderata. Her mother quoted these same lines on the morning of her surgery.

“Your mother’s religion may have saved her,” Paula says.

“Most of the sins in the world are committed in the name of religion,” Anna replies defiantly.

“And most of the good too,” Paula counters, silencing Anna. She has been critical of her mother’s attitude toward the people who work for her. She has accused her mother of neocolonialism, of bossing Lydia and Singh with the same high-handed, superior manner that the white colonial bosses used to humiliate the people they colonized in the days when the island was a colony. She seethed at the hypocrisy of her mother’s devotion to religion while she continued to belittle those she considered her social inferiors. Then Anna discovered that all she thought was real was not real, that she had used the eyes of an outsider to judge her mother. For she had seen her mother scamper across the lawn with Singh. She had caught Lydia sprawled on the floor in the den watching the soaps.
As the World Turns.
“Madam and I does talk about it,” Lydia had said.

“You may want to deny it,” Paula says now, “but you’re just like your mother.” Anna begins to object, but Paula cuts across her stammerings. “She’s probably in pain as you say, but your mother wants to protect you. She doesn’t want you to suffer because of her. And look at you. You spent your entire vacation with her. You drained her sutures and changed her dressing though you didn’t want to. You sucked it up.”

She could have told Paula right then that it was her father who drained her mother’s sutures and changed her dressing. She could have admitted that before she knocked on the bedroom door, she had stood there, minutes passing by as she tried to build a wall around herself, a barrier that would shield her from longing, or perhaps rejection, and would not leave her exposed, vulnerable. It is shame now that seals her lips, shame for the relief she felt. For it is her mother who has had the generosity of spirit to deny herself for the sake of her daughter. Her mother exercises restraint. She withholds her suffering from her daughter. Is this the lesson she has to learn? Like a wall, is restraint a barrier that protects while it excludes?

“Don’t you have to get back to work soon?” Paula asks, changing the subject.

“Yes,” Anna says. “Tomorrow.”

“Be prepared.”

They are not in the same room, but Anna is sure if they were, if she could see Paula, her friend would be wagging her finger in warning.
Be prepared
.

THIRTEEN

B
ut Anna is not prepared. There is a bouquet of bright orange tulips with yellow tips in a glass vase on her desk. Immediately, she thinks they are from Tanya, a gift to welcome her back to work. More than once she has told Tanya that her favorite flowers are tulips. There is a card next to the vase. She puts down her briefcase and opens it. The tulips are not from Tanya; it is Paul who has sent them to her. Warm feelings of gratitude escalate to rapturous joy. Paul had practically accused her of placing her priorities in the wrong order, putting work before her family, and yet he has cared enough to let her know he still supports her. She has never told him tulips are the flowers she likes best, and yet, of all the flowers in the world he could have sent her, he has sent her tulips.

She is a practical woman, a realist. She has been impatient with her mother for placing her faith on hope, on prayers alone, when science, years of medical research, could have helped her. She has taught herself to rely on reason and on observable fact. Now a vase full of yellowtipped orange tulips jettisons lessons she was forced to learn when Alice abandoned her and she found herself alone in a foreign country without family or friends.
If he
should ask me to marry him, I will say yes
. The words come to her with unshakeable certitude.

Glued to the outside of the card is a photograph of a beach. She recognizes it. It is on the eastern coast of the island where the Atlantic is a roaring cauldron, smashing glistening waves against towering black rocks that will eventually be broken into bits by her awesome power, and leaving winding banners of frothy white surf along the shoreline. A forest of coconut trees bend toward the coarsegrained sandy beach, their trunks bowed by the force of trade winds. Paul has sent her a reminder of the history they share: tulips that grow in the country where they live, a photograph of a beach in their homeland. Inside the card, he has written just a few words:

She stands in front of her desk, her eyes closed, her back to the door, the card pressed to her chest. So full of warm affection for this man who has come into her life, a man straddling two worlds like her, she does not hear when Tanya knocks on her office door or when she walks inside the room. Only when Tanya taps her on her shoulder is she jolted to the present.

“Flowers!” Tanya cradles the petals in her hand. “An admirer?”

Anna slips the card under a pile of papers on her desk. “A friend,” she murmurs.

“Must be a special friend.”

“Yes, a special friend.”

“Lucky you.”

They kiss each other on both cheeks, and when they part, Anna bends down to pick up her briefcase that she has left on the floor.

Tanya steps back and apologizes. “Good Lord. I haven’t even given you a chance to get settled.”

But Anna is grateful for this moment to remake her face, to suppress the joy that had brightened her cheeks, to dampen the sparkle in her eyes, and to put on a smile that Tanya will recognize, the bland, friendly smile she wears at work. “I can’t tell enough how much I appreciate the time you gave me,” she says. “My parents are thankful too, especially my mother.”

“It was the least I could do,” Tanya says.

“And now you’re leaving. Things won’t be the same here without you.”

Tanya sits in the chair next to Anna’s desk and stretches out her legs. “I wish I could take you with me. You are a treasure, Anna. Equiano would not be where it is today without you.”

“I can’t take all the credit,” Anna says. She is facing Tanya now, sitting on her side of the desk. “Without you, I don’t think we would be so successful.”

Tanya crosses her hands over her thighs. “Yes, you have a good editor’s eye. You can find them even if they are buried in the haystack. I told Tim how we found you.”

Anna’s back stiffens. “How is he doing?” She hopes her tone is casual and does not betray the anxiety that has snaked up her spine.

“You probably already guessed that we never intended for him to be an assistant to you the way Tammy Mohun was,” Tanya says. “I figured you’d be the best one to teach him the ropes.”

“The ropes?”

“The business. What we do here.”

“I thought he already had experience in the publishing industry,” Anna says cautiously.

“Yes, but not in a company that is organized as we are. They didn’t have a special imprint for writers of color where he was.”

“So you’re taking him with you? Is that what you want to tell me?’

Tanya brings her chair closer to Anna’s desk. “Look, Anna, there are going to be some changes here. I think they will be good for you. I think you’re going to like them. Tim’s a good guy. He’s smart, a Cornell graduate.”

“Cornell?” Anna is mildly surprised. From the way he dresses, the way he seems to keep his thoughts in check, she would have thought Howard, the Ivy League of the black colleges.

“That’s another story,” Tanya says. “How he got there. Oh, I don’t mean he didn’t have the grades, but it costs a lot of money to go to Cornell.”

“I suppose as smart as you say he is, he must have had a scholarship,” Anna remarks.

Tanya purses her lips, and then, seeming to decide to ignore the sarcasm in Anna’s tone, her lips relax. “Yes, I suppose you can say he had a scholarship. A sort of scholarship anyway. But he earned every penny. That’s what they said about him at his last job. They said he earned his pay. All the books he edited did well. He knows about sales, what people read, what people want. You’re going to find him great to work with, Anna,” she says brightly.

“Work with?” The muscles around Anna’s mouth tense.

“I wanted to tell you about this a long time ago.” Tanya is leaning over the desk, her hand extended, but Anna has rolled her chair backward. “Windsor is expanding,” Tanya says.

“Expanding?”

“This is going to be good for you, Anna. You are in the right place at the right time.”

“The right—” Anna stops herself. She has been repeating Tanya’s words like an immature child who is unable to fully process what she has been told. “What does this expansion have to do with me? Or with Tim for that matter?” she finally says, hardening her voice.