Sleeping Awake (24 page)

“Yes you did!” He grabbed my
hands to prevent me from getting up. I felt as if someone had taken a pair of
scissors to them, but I didn’t so much as flinch. “Before you, I was perfectly
happy with my life. I would have died with a smile on my face if only I could
continue screwing models and dabbling in whatever miracle drug would guarantee
me a flight to the moon. And then you walked up to the Jacuzzi, looking like
Lust and telling me that you wanted to be my bed-mate for the summer. You! You
ruined me with your voodoo, and even after you ran away, I wanted you.”

 “I turned my back on
everything that I knew out of some mad desire to make you mine,” Nicolaas
continued. “And for what? Do you know how many girls have turned up here this
summer in various states of undress once word got out that I was in New York?
And I turned them all away. Me! The person who used to believe that monogamy
was synonymous with ‘great bore.’ You made me fall in love with you, and don’t
you for a second pretend as if you didn’t want me to, because you did. So I
don’t care what it takes, but we are going to fix our problems now, because I
am not allowing you to walk away again. I know that you thought that you’d
never see me again, but I had every intention of coming to you if you hadn’t
gotten over yourself by the end of the week.”

“I’ll be in Jamaica at the end
of the week,” I replied. “How did you plan on finding me then?”

Nicolaas looked at me as if
the answer was obvious to everyone but me. “Noira, I’m a member of the Dutch
royal family. Did you honestly expect that I wouldn’t be able to find you?”

His eyes were as black as the
darkest of nights. I winced. Love was such a peculiar thing. It could even make
a stupid girl doubt herself and expect that her lover would realise how
pathetic she was and one day leave. But there he sat, knowing how pathetic I
was, having witnessed my insanity, and telling me that I was the one who was
not allowed to leave him.

“Are we done with this cat and
mouse game?” Nicolaas asked. He took my hand and began making the tiniest of
circles in my palm.

Unable to meet his eyes, I
watched his fingers instead. “I’m sorry for not appreciating you the way that I
should have,” I murmured. “You deserve better.”

“Who could be better than you,
Noira?”

“Anyone,” I said. “I’m not
sure if I would have been a brave enough person to do half of what you’ve done for
me and put up with when it comes to me. I would have written you off as insane
and moved on.”

“I don’t agree, or else I
wouldn’t be with you,” he insisted. Seeing the way that he looked at me made as
happy as it made me ashamed.

“I don’t deserve this second
chance,” I said.

Nicolaas cupped my chin and
tipped my face upwards. “I wish that you would stop being afraid of being
happy, Noira. It’s not a sin to live a full life; it’s a sin not to. I could go
on forever with all of your good attributes, and they’d trump whatever you
think is bad about yourself. I love you for who you are; the good and the bad.”

“Thank you,” I managed.

“For what? Even if you hadn’t
made your proposition that night in the Jacuzzi, I would have found some other
way to see you again. I honestly think that I loved you from the start, Noira.”

I closed my eyes, fingering
the necklace that he’d given me. I’d started wearing it after he’d walked out
on me. I felt the same way about our meeting in the Jacuzzi.

“I was scared to let you love
me,” I began. “I kept saying that I was learning to love and that I was going
to stop letting Philippe dictate the terms of my life, but I don’t think that I
ever meant it. Secretly, I was just waiting for you to leave. And because I was
waiting on you to leave, I didn’t want to need you, and I did things to make
you leave. It’s also why I would pull away whenever you came too close. I
thought that if I prepared myself enough, it wouldn’t hurt when you finally
left. I was wrong. I’ve spent the last few years existing in a vacuum, because
that was the only way that I knew how to survive
¾
living solely by the hour and not thinking about what
happened next. I’m not saying that if you hadn’t come along, I would never have
decided to make myself whole again or that I needed you to rescue me from
myself. However, I met you and realised that if I allowed myself happiness, it
would come. I don’t want to go back to the way that I was.”

“So what are you saying then?”
Nicolaas asked.

For the first time since we
awoke, I looked him in the eye for a more than a few seconds. I took a deep
breath. “I’m saying that if you’ll have me, I’m yours.”

Wordlessly, he pulled me onto
his lap. I felt his love in his kiss; it consumed me entirely. “I love you,” he
whispered, pulling away.

“I love
you,
” I
replied.

**~*~*~**~*~*~**

There were a million things
that I could think of that would have been more interesting than sitting around
the pool that night and waiting for Maman’s heart to stop. Watching the grass
grow. Walking until we found the end of a rainbow. Trying to see the wind.
Anything but I was doing.

 “
Maman
, are
you scared?” Camelea asked.

“Scared to die? No,” Maman
replied. “Scared to leave you girls? Yes.”

 The dramatic changes in her
appearance were frightening. In three weeks, she had decomposed into purple,
bruised flesh and slapped on makeup that failed in its attempt to give her some
dignity. I could see her blood swimming through her veins as she gripped her
coffee cup. When she came up to my room to get me earlier, it was a struggle to
not jump when she took my hand. Her fingers were cold to the touch. I didn’t
want to guess how much weight she had lost.

“This isn't fair.” Camelea
snuggled closer to Maman. Her lips were stripping from her annoying habit of
chewing on them when she was scared.

“No one ever said that life
was fair, Camelea.”
Maman
pulled her closer and kissed her
forehead. I wondered how much it hurt Maman to do that. The doctors had sent
her home to die with a bottle of morphine and the option of having a live-in
nurse. She took the morphine and declined the nurse.

“Do you know how many child
abusers and molesters are out there having the time of their lives and are
cancer free?” I said. “I feel as if God pulled down his pants and took a crap
all over us. You go to church every Sunday, you donate money to charity, where
is your reward?”

I ripped a handful of flowers
from a nearby bougainvillea bush. I wanted to rip every one of those cancer
cells out of Maman’s body. The ground was a graveyard of pink and green as I
twisted and pulled and snapped everything in sight. I didn’t stop until Maman’s
icy hands reached over and clasped themselves firmly around mine. Once again,
she had on her fur coat.

“My reward was having the
three of you.”

“Because we were such a joy to
have,” Cienna said, rolling her eyes.

“You were.”

“Yes I was,” I said. “All
those suicide attempts and…”

“Noira, arrête.”

“Stop what?” I yanked another
flower out of the earth. “Speaking the truth?”

Maman squeezed harder.
“Arrête.”

And for what could only be
described as the umpteenth time that summer, I began to cry. Even though I knew
that it would solve nothing and that at the end of the day, Maman was still
going to die, I cried. When she came beside me and pulled me into her lap, I
ignored the scent of morphine that seemed to ooze from her pores and curled up
like the infant that I felt myself to be. I held on tightly to Maman that
night, and I braced myself for the worst.

“Why are you acting so calm
about everything, Maman?” Cienna asked sometime later.

 “I have to be brave for
my girls.”

*~*

I remember when I first moved
to America; I absolutely hated it. Their English wasn’t
real
English; their
accents were funny. You couldn’t find decent cheese anywhere near our house,
much less good bread. I didn’t know my way around the city, and I didn’t
understand why Americans insisted on sugar-coating everything instead of just saying
what was on their mind. I wanted to go home and make the nightmare disappear.

Then something happened. I
began to understand their English, and I stopped mentally comparing it to the
British Standard English that I had been taught in primary school. I got used
to their accents and learned how to drop my French accent so that I wouldn’t be
teased. Maman found a boulangerie in Manhattan that delivered so that we could
still have our daily baguette. I learned to navigate the city, and soon enough,
I learned to read between the lines of what Americans really meant. I was still
French first and foremost, but I was also slightly American.

As I walked through my almost
empty house, I was amazed at how easily this side of me was vanishing. My
clothes, jewellery, shoes, books, etc. were sent to France via freight plane.
There was nothing to show that I had ever touched American shores.

*~*

I could retrace the trip from
the Donald Sangster International Airport to Catadupa, Saint James, the town
where my grandfather was born and eventually retired to. I did not need to keep
my eyes open to know the bumps in the road meant that we were ascending the
hill, past the town square and veering towards the first leg of Maman’s journey
towards death.

We visited Grandpa Bill once a
year without fail, usually for Christmas. This year, we would be making the
trip early, because Maman would not be around for the annual family feast.
Grandpa kept a farm on his property and food, as well as medicine, was obtained
from his land. We sometimes went swimming in the river, and the water was so
cold that you had to jump in before thinking about it or you’d never make it.
We got drinking water from the nearby spring, and it was better than any
bottled water that I’d ever tasted.

The fisherman came by every
Sunday after church, and we’d go to a local grocer for meat on Saturday
afternoons. It wasn’t unusual to wake up to a vender walking through the neighbourhood
and screaming, “Broomy! Broomy! Come get yuh broom dem!” There were no malls
where everything was available; you had to know someone who specialized in
something and go to their house or their tiny shops. Tailors, dressmakers,
shoemakers, barbers, bush doctors—they were all there in the town and I
knew the name of every one of them. I remembered all these things and more as
we silently took in the scenery, but not once did I forget the real reason why
we were there.

When we get to the farm,
Grandpa Bill was standing on the stairs that led to the porch. He was wearing
his uniform, a white button up shirt with cotton pants and a straw hat. He’d
been doing work on the farm before we came. As I took in the sight of his greying
hair and smooth, charcoal skin, I remembered piggy back rides up the hill that
led to his house and clinging tightly to his shoulder so that I wouldn’t fall
as he scampered about and pretended to be a horse.

As soon as the car stopped, my
sisters and I were out, once again transformed into children, racing each other
up the drive to get the first hug. I won.

“Grandpa!” Camelea squealed.
She kissed both his cheeks and wrapped herself around him as if he was the buoy
that she needed to keep afloat. “I’ve missed you,” she murmured.

“I know, chile.”

 “Camelea!” Cienna
yelled.

Camelea pulled back slightly
and paused long enough to stick out her tongue at Cienna.

“Still impatient, Petite?”
Grandpa teased.

“Pa!” Cienna flew into his
arms and threw herself against him. As dainty as she was to have earned the
nickname that he had given her at birth, Grandpa still stumbled a bit as she
wove her tiny body around him like a snake.

“Did you miss me, Pa?” She
rubbed her nose against his.

Grandpa was a different person
when he was around Cienna. Like everyone else, he was incapable of resisting
her charm, but there was more to it than that. She was his favourite, possibly
even more than Maman, his darling girl, and everyone knew it. I wondered how
Philippe felt watching them, knowing that she had channelled all of her love
and affection that she’d once had for him and entrusted them to Grandpa.

It was my turn next. I rubbed
my face against his stubble, transported back to the days when I would ride on
his back and ask every question that popped into my head. “I’ve missed you.”

Grandpa stiffened.

Philippe came up behind us,
and a deep frown borrowed its way onto Grandpa’s face. “Philippe.”

“Hello, William.” Philippe
nodded and leaned back on his heel. He dug his hands into his pocket.

“Come, Trischa.” Grandpa took
Maman
’s
hand and led her away. “You’ve got to fill me in on what I’ve been missing.”

“He’s not a fan of you, is
he?” Cienna commented.

For once, she didn’t sound
like she was revelling in Philippe’s misery. I decided that the cool of the
main house was more important than Cienna’s peculiar behaviour and walked away
from whatever moment the two were having. As I walked towards the van to get my
bags, I caught Philippe’s reply.

“He never forgave me for what
I did to you girls.”

 “Blood is thicker than
water,” I mumbled, reaching into the trunk for my suitcase.

“Indeed,” Camelea agreed.

It was the first time that
Camelea and I had spoken since our fight in the Dominican Republic. She must
have realised this as well, as she paused. I winked at her, pulled my suitcase
out and began my ascent up the driveway. We may not ever become the best of
friends, but there’d be no more animosity between us.

*~*

We transformed into little
girls in Grandpa Bill’s presence. If Cienna, Camelea and I weren’t whining and
begging Grandpa to make our favourite Jamaican dishes, we were out back
climbing the mango trees and swinging from the branches like they we were
Tarzan and Jane. Maman laughed at all of this and spent most of the first few
days curled up on the sofa with Grandpa, going over old photographs and gaining
some well-needed pounds from the sweet potato pudding that “Daddy” had made
especially for her.

The rain began to fall a week
into our stay. Grandpa Bill would joke and say that Jamaica only had two
seasons: hot and rainy. Rainy lasted for about three months. This time, I did
not sit by the window pouting because I was unable to go outside and play as I
had when I was a child. We were gathered in the living room, listening as the
rain beat against the roof, playing Kalooki. It was an Irish card game that was
similar to Gin Rummy; Grandpa had taught it to us when we were younger.

 “Call!”
Maman
announced. She did a little dance in her seat.

“How many calls have you had?”
Cienna asked. Her eyes narrowed as she tried to peer into Maman’s hands.

“This is my last one, and now
I can lay!” Maman grinned gleefully.

“Not fair.” Camelea folded her
hands and pouted.

Maman
stuck her tongue out at her. I’d never
seen her happier than she looked that day in the small room with its lack of
elegant furnishings and a ceiling fan cooling everyone. Anyone looking at her
could have easily seen the beautiful young woman who danced from dusk ’til dawn
at the various “happenings” of the late 70s and early 80s. It was no wonder
that Philippe felt the urge to go over to her table and introduce himself as he
was passing by the restaurant on Rue Mouffetard. He’d been taking the back
roads to the metro in order to avoid the tourists at the Panthéon when they’d
met. Perhaps that was why Maman never joined in on our relentless complaints
about tourists ruining everything.

Maman and Philippe seemed to
be on their second honeymoon and had disappeared for the first few days to lock
themselves in a villa at the Half Moon. My sisters and I spent those days
staying up until the early hours of the morning playing dominoes, Ludi (Ludo) and
Kalooki with Grandpa Bill. It was almost enough to make us forget why we were
really there.

*~*

Cienna and I were down by the
breadfruit trees when the front door flew open and Grandpa came running out.
After dinner, we’d decided to play marbles, and the shade that the trees
provided was the best location in the humid yard. It was especially beneficial
because there was a flat surface down there.

When Philippe came out behind
Grandpa with
Maman
in his arms, we dropped the marbles and ran up
the driveway.

“What happened?” Cienna
screamed, slamming the car door behind us.

Grandpa drove furiously down
the lane as Philippe held
Maman
. She looked like a butterfly
struggling to not be suffocated by her cocoon.

“We were playing dominoes when
she fainted,” Philippe replied.

There was no need for any
further explanation. The rest of the car ride was silent. When we got to the
Cornwall Regional Hospital, Philippe disappeared with
Maman
.
Grandpa, Noira and I sat in the waiting room and did the only thing that we
could do: wait. There were no tears, no words, just silence. My mind was as
blank as the white wall that I stared at. After about an hour, Philippe
returned. He looked as if he’d been to war and back.

“Is Trischa alright?” Grandpa
stood.

“She has an irregular body
temperature, which is why she’s been complaining about the heat all day.”

“So her fever will go down,
and she’ll be fine, right?” Cienna asked. Her eyes were pleading with Philippe
to tell her what she wanted to hear.