Read The Weight of Water Online
Authors: Sarah Crossan
The Weight of Water (12 page)
And then she says,
‘You should have told me sooner.
Do you think Mama is an idiot?
This woman must think Mama is an idiot.
Tata thinks Mama is an idiot too.
It’s Tata and Kasienka now,
Isn’t it?’
I want to tell her that it will
Never be Tata and Kasienka –
It’s true, Tata doesn’t want her,
But he doesn’t want me either.
Mama is up and out the door
Before I can defend myself,
Before I can beg her to stay,
Before I can say ‘I love you
The Most.’
We are playing Scrabble,
Staring at plastic squares and
Pretending to practise our English,
Permitting Polish and Swahili,
When Mama returns.
We know where she’s been because
Her face is swollen,
And she cannot speak.
Kanoro stands and moves to the door,
But Mama puts a hand out to stop him.
Stay.
‘Stay,’ I say,
Holding on to Kanoro’s shirt tail.
He brews Mama a drink
With something in it to help her play
Scrabble without wheezing.
Mama can’t look at me,
Even when I set down a long word.
I am glad Kanoro is here.
I wouldn’t have known
What to do with Mama
When she came home
All mixed up,
Like the letters in the Scrabble bag,
Carrying with her a terrible sadness
And showing it off so
Unashamedly.
Mama is so angry with me.
White,
Light,
Silent anger.
She cooks my meals,
Washes my clothes,
Sleeps next to me at night.
But Mama slams the pots
so I can hear her anger,
And burns the stews
so I can smell it,
And she avoids my eyes;
Not an easy thing to do
When we live together
In one room.
She looks at me sometimes.
Sometimes I catch her looking.
And when I do
She turns away –
Slowly,
Deliberately.
Enraged.
When I tell her I made
The swim team
She still won’t look.
She won’t look at me when I sit
Opposite her at dinner
Trying not to spill anything,
Even eating the onions.
She won’t look at me
In bed at night,
And if we accidentally touch,
She shakes me off like
She’s been bitten,
Like I’m poison.
So now I’m feeling too
Brittle to look at her.
Instead I stare at the
Hem of her dress,
Or a clip in her hair,
Or the rings on her fingers
When we speak.
And it all makes me feel
Like going swimming.
It is
Not my fault
Tata doesn’t
Love you
Any more.
Can I say that to her?
Someone was cruel to Mama at work.
‘Sorry,’ I say.
Mama sniffs.
And now she wants to go home.
‘To Gdańsk?’ I ask.
She nods.
She hasn’t showered in days.
‘Really?’ I ask.
She nods again.
‘When?’ I ask.
Mama shrugs
Then puts her head into her hands and weeps.
There are many Kasienkas now.
She has split into pieces and
Scattered herself about like fallen fruit
Beneath a leafless tree.
One Kasienka is Mama’s girl –
The Kasienka who chews quietly
And sleeps with a teddy bear in her arms.
She is muted and hidden and
Wants nothing more than to run to Tata –
To form a real family again.
Another Kasienka is Tata’s pilgrim,
The tight-lipped teenage Kasienka.
She is frightening and moody.
She is also William’s Cassie,
Shy-eyed and broad-backed –
A swimmer, but a girl before anything else:
A girlfriend with a mouth and breasts.
Cassie belongs to Clair too,
She smells of cabbage and fear.
She is a dumb, defiant victim.
But she is easily demolished.
If only I knew Kasienka’s Kasienka:
When I search for myself in the bathroom mirror
I cannot find her at all.
When I am alone
I do not know who I am.
When I am alone
I am nothing.
You are the new girl in the class
And maybe they will hate you
Instead of me.
They do it like this:
They look,
They whisper,
They laugh.
And it doesn’t sound like much,
But when it happens
Every day
It feels like you’re walking uphill
Carrying a giant boulder on your shoulder.
You are the new girl in the class
And maybe they will hate you
Instead of me.
Maybe they will notice your shoes.
I do.
They are not like everyone else’s:
They are thick and buckled
And you’re wearing knee-high socks
Which no one does.
But I only half want that –
I only half want you hunted.
Mostly I want a friend.
So when the teacher says,
‘Lily will need a partner,’
I throw up my hand,
Offer up myself to you,
And you look at me and smile
And that
Makes
My
Day.
Dalilah wears a purple veil and she is so pretty in it.
She is
All eyes.
I make myself jealous looking at her,
Imagining my face framed,
My hair hidden beneath folds of fabric.
When I see women in the street
With veils down to their feet,
Chadors,
I am jealous too,
Jealous of their concealment,
Of a robe that would cover me
from head to toe
And hide me from the world.
It would be like a kind of armour,
A veil like that,
A veil that covered me
from head to toe
So no one could get in.
At 8.50 a.m. The Bell rings and we stand
To remember
What happened.
But Clair is looking at Dalilah
Forgetting,
Not remembering at all.
And at break we are surrounded
And Marie says,
‘Why did you say they deserved it?
I heard you. I heard you whisper to Cassie.
I heard you say that.’
And Dalilah looks at me because she was standing to remember
What we were all too young to remember
While Clair was standing looking at her.
There are balloons all over the place.
There are red balloons in the house
And more in the garden.
Helium balloons on string
To keep them from being
Captured by the sky.
William’s grandmother
Is having her birthday party
And she wanted balloons
Instead of waxy candles that would
Ruin the cake.
There is a barbecue in the garden
And William’s father
Is wearing a stripy apron and
Cooking everything outside.
Meats mainly.
There is music
Coming from two heavy black
Speakers
Connected to an iPod
And a bouncy castle for the kids.
We both want to bounce
But his cousins are on it and they’re
Young –
And we don’t want to
Be like them.
Then William’s grandmother
Crawls into the castle and starts to jump
And jump
And I laugh
Out loud
With William.
I do not think she is like
Any grandmother
I have ever seen before.
I could not imagine Babcia
Bouncing.
So it’s OK for us to jump
Too.
And we do.
We hold hands and jump and jump
And I squeal a little
When I fall over,
When I fall on top of William,
Which I do
Again
And again.
William’s father doesn’t scowl
When we close
The bedroom door,
Just says, ‘Be good, kids.’
He turns on his computer
