Chapter 4: Mother, Make Me A Big Grey Cloud (So I Can Rain on You Things I Can't Say Out Loud.)
"Um...you take my room and I'll take the couch," Sara said to her mother. The professor attempted to carry her mother's suitcase to her room but her hand was taken away roughly.
"Don't you even dare," Evelyn's deep tone rang in the silent apartment. It reminded Sara of all those times she had to share eighteen years of her life with this woman. Sara was so fragile and sensitive these past few days. The last thing she needed was someone yelling in her face. "I mean...you just had three surgeries. I don't want your cuts to open." The second time the old woman spoke was more gentle. She felt her daughter's slight flinch when she spoke up the first time. The last thing she too wanted was to yell at her. Those days were gone.
"It's been a year. Even more. I'm fine now. I even exercise. My doctors said I can do anything." Sara reached for the suitcase again and pulled it to her room.
When her mother called only a day before, telling her she's visiting for a few days, Sara couldn't say no because her mother had already made up her own mind the way she always did. She also could use a little distraction from all the excessive thoughts of Tegan rejecting her and laughing in her face just three days ago. She had never felt so foolish and stupid. Tegan's words were still singing inside of her the bitterest of songs.
"Marriage?" Tegan laughed loudly. "Are you out of your mind?" She laughed more. "Yes you are, you just said it. Do you even know what you're asking?"
Sara sat back in her chair. She looked at her student with a blank expression on her face. "Wh..why do you say this? I know what I'm asking? I'm asking you to be my wife. I'm giving you a huge promise and I'm sure of it. I want you to be with me. I love you."
Tegan nodded at first. Then a chuckle left her lips. "Is this your promise? Tying me to you by a piece of paper that really means nothing? Is this the way to convince me you're not gonna walk out any minute you feel like it?"
"It means everything to me," Sara shouted. Tegan took a step back. Sara didn't know what else to do. She's offering the rest of her life. She's giving everything. "It looks like...I don't really mean anything to you. I'm offering you everything. I'm chasing you. Asking you to believe me but you just don't want to be with me." Sara started crying. Tegan took another step back.
"I don't know you much. I barely know anything about you. I can't marry you thinking life will be great and we'll live happily together. God, Sara, you say I'm a kid but look at you. Look at you for one second. You don't even explain anything. You just demand and want and say." Tegan took another step backward. "I love you. You know that. But I can't trust you and you also know that."
"What can I do to make you trust me?" Sara asked breathlessly. She was pathetic. She felt pathetic.
Tegan shrugged. "I don't know. Figure it out." She took another step backward till her hand was touching the doorknob. "Have a good day, doctor," she said as soon as she opened the door.
On Friday they did not speak. Sara taught in silence and Tegan thought about the mistake she might have done. Her fear was in a place she could not obtain or even comprehend. She was asked to be a wife to her lover. It's those same dreams she had two years before. But she didn't believe in happiness anymore to believe she could be a wife and be happy. She knew a storm would be coming and she thought of the many signifieds the signifier 'storm' held. It could be an endless circle. An endless variety of storms. One could birth the other till they all led to...death.
Tegan did not even tell Jeremy about it. She thought and stayed awake. She wrote and read. She tried to understand what Sara meant. But that's the issue, Sara didn't even speak. Sara was the teacher and she wanted to give all the teachings and not be taught. They needed to speak about it. But what if it was too late? That also awakened her all night. Her mind felt like a basket full of different types of jewels entangled and there was no start to her chain of thoughts and definitely no end. Everything was mixed up and it made her head spin. Even a shower didn't work. Food was not an option because overthinking meant nausea and nausea meant puking her guts out. That's why her blood tests were so terrible. Because Sara was back. Sara the mother of all burdens and thoughts. And now she wanted to marry her. Imagine what her thoughts would be with Sara being her wife...all day around her. Tegan imagined herself ending up as a skeleton.
But Tegan loved Sara. And there was a bird singing in her head melodies of what it felt like to wake up to Sara's body. There was the bright side at the end of the chain of thoughts after all. It's not all black, it's not all white, it's a mix. Not only waking up to Sara, but waking up as a wife. How come the word meant something bigger when she herself scolded the older woman telling her that words on paper forming their unity meant nothing? And now she was thinking of them as everything.
Tegan ended up in a twirl of migraines all through the weekend.
As for Sara, she was dealing with her mother's visit and her broken heart and her childish misery. She stood by her window while her mother looked around her small apartment. Sara looked outside like a hopeless lover in fictional novels. Well, she was a hopeless lover, wasn't she?
Her mother inspected the place with an eyebrow raised and arms folded against her chest. Sara looked back at the petite woman. Evelyn looked too young for her age. She was only fifty-four and she looked as young as her daughter. Sara remembered how Tegan's mother, who was the same age, also looked pretty young for that age, but not as young-looking as Sara's mother. It was quite funny how their mothers were the same age but she and Tegan had such a great gap between their own ages.
Evelyn always had that sharp appearance, calm and collected halo around her, and a confident posture as she stood. Sara inherited those traits. Her mother also cried a lot, and Sara did so too. Growing up, she never really paid attention to it, but now she could remember heaps of fuzzy images of her mother crying alone, scared somebody would see her. Sara also had the same hair colour as her mother. But all other physical features were taken from her father. Her mother had green eyes. Her father had hazel ones. Her facial structure was the same as her father's as well as her lips and nose. But she was as small and short as her mother.
"That's such a small place," Evelyn said. She turned around and looked at her daughter.
"It's enough for me," Sara answered.
The mother nodded and walked up to her daughter. "Your dad left you some money, you know." It almost never touched Sara's mind that her father had died just six months ago. Maybe because she had considered him dead since ever. She attended his funeral but she did not cry. Not a single tear was shed. And she could not bring herself to cry over him because she never cared about him much to do so. Perhaps only when she was a small child and was loved by her young parents. But then everything was shattered between them when she grew up and tried to be who she always wanted to be.
"I don't want it." Her mother; however, wanted to make amends for all those lost times between herself and her daughter. Sara was simply not very interested. Evelyn tried. She tried by moving to Vancouver. By visiting everyday and attending every chemotherapy session. She donated a kidney, a whole kidney to her own daughter and was now living with only one.
"I thought..." When Sara's hands were taken by her mother, she pulled them away quickly with a flinch. "I mean, I heard you're into someone and you wanted to settle down? Your apartment is so small for that." Sara looked at her mother for a long second. She wondered if the woman knew it was a woman she was after. They never spoke of these things anymore. And now that Stacy's blabbering mouth was spreading the news, she wondered if her mother knew.
"Until then, I'll manage by my own. Plus, I have some savings and now I'm working." Sara sat on her sofa. "Why are you here?" She had to ask. She couldn't wait longer to do so.
"Because I was worried." The answer came right away. "You don't talk to me. You don't call. I get your news from Stacy and I feel like half of the things she says are lies." Sara laughed at that part. Something felt strange and funny about the way her mother said it defensively. Kind of like herself. "You seem so miserable and lonely."
"That's because I am," Sara said. She admitted it.
"Well, why?" Evelyn desperately wanted to know what her daughter was up to. She was a mother after all. Just like all mothers. No matter how many differences she had with her daughter, she still worried, cared, and thought about her kid. Especially now that her husband was dead, she felt more free to show the care she had been locking in. She felt more free to even think. She didn't know she was imprisoned until he was gone. She just wanted to fix things somehow.
"I'll go make dinner." Sara did not give any response to her mother. Coldly, the subject was changed and Sara was already walking to her kitchen. The professor shook her head while walking. What did her mother even want to hear? She couldn't tell her all these things when the woman never let her speak a word of her mind the past God knows how many years. It was always a bad thing to express one's own mind in that household. It was always a bad thing whatever Sara was doing. When Sara cut her hair and dyed it blond, the mother did not speak to her for days. When Sara did this, she was not spoken to. When she did that, it was all the same. Now the woman wanted to speak and take and give. Sara simply couldn't do that. She didn't even know how it felt to have a mother-daughter relationship. She always wondered if it affected her relationship with Tegan or enhanced her need to be a mother in order to give all that affection she was not given. It's either this or she simply loved the sense of being a wife and a mother.
Jeremy didn't know what he was supposed to say to Tegan when she asked him what he thought of Sara's proposal. He knew his friend quite well and he knew if he spoke what he believed in it would lead to quarreling. He was not in the mood for that. In fact, he was in the mood for a good drink and quiet music and nothing else. No talking, no thinking, no laughing, no crying. He told Tegan he didn't have a saying. Tegan, of course, glared at him then rolled her eyes.
He would tell her if she was ready to listen. But she was never ready to do so. He also knew her the way her mother did. She took people's advices but never followed them. She did the exact opposite. He would tell her that marrying Sara would ruin her life the way he thought dating Sara would do so. He would tell her that marrying someone whoever they were at this age would not be good for her. He would tell her she's stupid. He would throw it at her. She's stupid, she didn't know what she was doing. He would tell her that Sara was chasing her to fulfill her own loneliness. He would tell her Sara wanted many things before she died not having them. He would warn her and advise her but what's the use? His friend always, no matter what, followed her elastic soft heart and sought love like a blind man competing to race animals.
"You don't want to speak to me?" Tegan said while chewing on a piece of chocolate. "Is it because we're not sleeping together?" She took another bite.
"What does that have to do with it? We had a deal." He looked at the woman he loved sucking the melted chocolate off her index.
"You make it sound like I'm a prostitute." She took the last bite and spread her chocolate-covered hands in front of her. "Just like babies." She got up and walked to the kitchen.
"What do you want exactly, Tegan?"
Tegan washed her hands while looking back at her friend. "Nothing," she whispered to herself. She was not even back with Sara and Jeremy was acting childish. Maybe it's time she left this place. Living with him and sharing one bed while sleeping with him was one thing, and living with him while sharing that bed knowing he loved her and she loved another was a totally other thing.
"Look, I'm going to the bar." Her friend stood up. "Might stay up late. Don't wait for me."
"I'm coming with you," Tegan jumped in. "I have nothing to do and I'm bored." She was already putting on her Doc Martens. "Plus, I could use some good beer."
"We have beer." Jeremy did not want her to come. He wanted to be alone.
"You don't want me to tag along?" Tegan's defensive tone made him sigh. He shook his head.
"Come on," he said. He walked to the door and waited for her to leave before him and then closed and locked it.
Sara finished washing the last dish then poured herself a glass of red wine. Her mother was sitting at the kitchen table with her own glass in front of her.
"You're so neat and arranged," Evelyn said. "And who taught you how to cook so well? That sweetness in the beef went so well with the broccoli and onion on the side. And you cooked the meat so well it melted in my mouth. That was delicious." That compliment made Sara smile genuinely for the first time since her mother had showed up. It was obvious that her mother was quite impressed and wasn't merely trying to win her heart by feeding her lies.
"I taught myself." Sara took a sip of her drink. "There's not much to do when you're at home all the time by yourself."
"Oh, I thought you were dating someone all the time? I mean that's what I heard. And I did hear some voices whenever I called you." It was the first time ever they were facing each other and simply speaking about matters Sara didn't want to speak about. Sara wondered why her mother was asking now. Whenever Sara visited in the past years they barely spoke about anything. They mainly fought and argued and Sara always ended up storming out of the place after a three day visit.
"Ya," Sara whispered. "I did date a couple of people. First relationship I was home most of the time because I worked for few hours while my...partner worked for long hours. Then you know, I went to America and met Jack. I was finishing my PhD at home while pregnant and I taught myself most of the things I know now." Sara chuckled. "I used to get hungry and run to the kitchen and then I'd come up with something."
Evelyn laughed and drank her wine. "You're a natural. I used to do that all the time. You were still an infant, I'd feed you and then I'd go to the kitchen and take whatever I had and try new things. Then your dad would come from work all cranky and he'd eat everything."
"He was cranky even when he was young?" It felt like Sara knew nothing about her parents. It felt like she had erased all her memories about them. "I mean for God's sake, he was what? Twenty-four? Twenty-five?"
"He was always cranky. Angry at whatever it was. It's like he had a stick up his ass or something." That made Sara laugh.
"He wasn't really that angry when he used to put me to sleep. I mean that's all I remember of him when I was a child. It's like I don't know what happened to my memory. It's completely gone." Sara rubbed her temple in hopes she'd get some memories of her father but nothing was given. "And then it just got bad when I was older." Her mother nodded.
"So what do you do each day? Are you healthy now?" the mother asked.
"I go to work. I come back. I sleep. I prepare what I'm going to teach. Eat a bit. Work out a bit. Read. Maybe watch television. Same cycle each day." The mother nodded again. "What do you do, however?"
"Mostly the same...except for the work part." Her mother did not have a bachelor's degree. She had Sara at eighteen and married her father while pregnant with her first and only child. She did not go to university after that. "Doing some charity work. Sometimes I take the pianist's place at the church."
"Interesting." Sara was not that interested, however. It's what her mother had always been doing.
"I'm thinking of...going to university." That part caught Sara's attention. She almost choked on her drink. "I know it sounds strange and I'm old but I have nothing to do. Nobody to cook for. Nobody to wake up to. To make morning coffee for. To give the newspaper to. To hear rants about everything he didn't like and everything that's bad in society. To listen in silence and shut up because whatever I'd say would mean nothing. And you're taking good care of yourself. You've always been. There's just no need for me and I feel useless. Totally useless. It's like I'm all on my own in this world."
"Aren't we all?" Sara said to herself. She never thought her mother would be feeling that way. A bit similar to the way she was feeling. It felt strange to think of her mother as someone who felt that way, as someone who owned feelings. God, it felt absurd and ridiculous. "Being in a relationship isn't an option? You're still young. Your sex drive is even higher than mine."
"Sara," the mother said bashfully. Her daughter was amused to see deep red blotches on both sides of her cheeks. Sex was never a topic discussed between the two at all. She had never heard her mother speak of it unless it was necessary. Like that time she was caught with Stacy. Her mother asked her if they were having sex and Sara confirmed that they were. That was one of the rare times. "I'm too old for all of this. I don't even know how to love." Sara wondered if she had ever loved her father even though she was sure there was no love between them while she lived in that household.
"I guess going back to school is good. Why not, right?" Sara stood up, took her glass and her mother's and walked to the sink. "Mum, I'm gonna go out to the bar. I like to do some reading and drink each Saturday. Do you want to come?" She was hoping her mother would decline but she invited out of politeness.
"Oh, no. One glass of red wine is fairly enough to make me fall asleep anytime soon. I'm exhausted. I'm probably going to bed earlier than I usually do." Sara nodded. She secretly sighed in relief.
Tegan watched as her friend continued looking at two women chatting with their drinks in their hands. They stood at the counter while she and Jeremy sat at a booth. Her friend's eyes never for one second shifted away. She was confused which one of them he was interested in. The one with the shoulder-length dark hair or the one with the long burgundy hair.
"Why don't you go talk to her if you're into her?" Tegan asked. Out of inner malice and drops of jealousy that she was not able to comprehend, she was insanely curious to find out what her friend was thinking or feeling at the moment.
"Who?" Jeremy looked at her. He was thinking too loud in his head when a woman that reminded him of the friend seated beside him occupied the blank space he was staring at. She was with a friend and he wasn't able to stop staring and thinking about all those things this woman could have done to break someone's heart the way his friend was breaking his.
"Whoever you're looking at. One of the two. Go talk to her."
"Oh...I...What do I say?" Tegan rolled her eyes. "You're the one into girls...What do I say?"
"And you're the one into girls as well. Jeremy, Jesus...go say anything. I've never done this, I don't know." And that's because everybody was already in love with her. Those people she slept with, they were all in love with her. Even the girls she slept with only one time, they at least liked her or fancied her. And yet, she was always searching for someone to love her.
Jeremy was about to stand up and go to the woman when another woman passed in front of him. In a flash of light, the professor looked to her left because she felt someone staring at her. She stood in her place when her eyes met Jeremy's. Her beer in hand and a book in the other, she almost tripped and spilled her drink. By then, Tegan had already noticed her. At first impulse, she wanted to smile, but then she remembered she wasn't supposed to smile for whatever reason she was not supposed to smile to the woman she was raining love for.
"Got a GPS attached to my body? Wherever I go you're there?" Tegan asked Sara's frozen frame.
"I come here each Saturday," Sara responded in a self-justifying demeanor.
Sara indeed did go to the bar each Saturday since she had returned. It was her usual hangout spot to read and drink in peace and silence before she had ever noticed Tegan's bittersweet existence. Admittedly; however, she was always hoping she'd spot the woman one Saturday or the other by chance. It never happened until this exact day when Tegan was not on her mind because her mother occupied that space instead.
"I'll...go talk to that girl." The rush of jealousy and anger splashed inside Jeremy's heart and brain like a fountain of cold water spraying all that's dead and making it alive. He acted on instinct and decided to seek the girl he had been eyeing for the past half an hour. It was the only way he could keep himself calm and collected.
Tegan and Jeremy stopped their weekly bar hangouts with their friends since that day Tegan slept with Emy and broke up with Sara. She did go to the bar, but not on a specific day, a specific time, and did not sit on a specific table. She hadn't been there since the semester had started, however. She never expected to see Sara there again. The idea was just not born in her brain. And now she did not really want Jeremy to leave her alone in front of Sara to go talk to a girl. She looked at him for a second. She begged him with her eyes.
"Can I...join you?" Sara asked, but Sara already invited herself, sitting next to Tegan. She was still resolved to get the girl she loved and that was another chance to talk to her. It's another chance she couldn't possibly waste.
"Uh...I..." Tegan stuttered.
"Excuse me." Jeremy stood up in a rush and walked right to that girl he was looking at.
"Another victim of the Tegan suitors?" Sara turned her face from looking at Jeremy to look at Tegan's beautiful one.
"We're not together," Tegan exclaimed.
"I did not even assume that," Sara said, then she tsked. "See how you're so defensive that you shouted it?" Her tone was so calm and icy it was driving Tegan mad. "You're happy like that? He must be something in bed."
"That's none of your business." Tegan didn't even understand how Sara was able to tell that she and the man had been sleeping together...or had slept together. And Tegan didn't even know how to deny it because she was so focused on proving Sara wrong even though she knew she'd fail.
"No, I guess it's not." Sara sipped of her drink while looking at Tegan sharply looking at her. "But...is he so good that you don't want to be with me? Does he make you_"
"Stop," Tegan shouted. A couple of people turned their heads to look at them. Jeremy didn't. He was laughing and smiling and joking with the girls. "You're like...a mess." Tegan used the words everybody used with her.
"Oh, I am. I definitely am." Sara rested her head on the table and sighed exasperatedly. Tegan looked at her till tears collected in the older woman's eyes.
Tegan looked all around her. She felt a sense of secondhand embarrassment with what her professor was doing. "How many glasses have you had?" she asked.
"I just got here." Sara wiped her tears and sat up again. She took a sip of the drink she just remembered she had in front of her.
"What do you want now?" Tegan asked.
"You know what I want." Sara's eyes traveled down Tegan's body and stopped at her hands on her lap, then they traveled up once again till they met the hazel eyes underneath the dimness of the lights. "I don't take no for an answer," she whispered.
Tegan didn't say anything after that. They both sat in silence. Defeated hearts and miserable peace were all they had. Tegan wanted to talk but she couldn't, as well as Sara. Maybe the silence was good for them. Maybe it's what Tegan wanted.
"My mum is here," Sara said after awhile.
"Is that why you seem so...exhausted?" Tegan couldn't find the proper word to use and she didn't even think 'exhausted' was the proper one. Sara looked paler but not exactly exhausted. She looked defeated and all her nerves were toyed wickedly with.
"I'm just not used to it," the professor said. "When I went back to Vancouver with Stacy I had to tell her about the cancer. She insisted I return to Calgary but I didn't want to because I just had nothing to do with her."
"Stacy took care of you?" Sara nodded. Tegan nodded too. Her eyes shifted to Jeremy chatting with the girl then back to Sara's misty ones.
"She had just gotten a divorce back then and so I stayed with her. I needed someone to do the daily stuff. You know, helping me to the bathroom, bathing me, changing my clothes, feeding me at some point." New information were being told to Tegan. She pictured the friend doing all that Sara had mentioned and pictured herself trying to do it. She believed she could do it because she loved Sara. But a part of her wondered why she cheated when it was too much to take. She wanted to get away when Sara's illness took her happy smile out of that apartment they once shared. "My mother came down to Vancouver instead. It was a bit surprising, but I guess she's a mother..." Sara faltered as she tried to understand her mother's mind.
Tegan; however, she instantly thought of her own mother coming down to Montreal upon realizing she was miserably in love with Sara two year before. "That's kinda ironic." The student chuckled.
"She was there all through therapy. But lived alone because I didn't want her near. My father was sick and she didn't leave me even though I started recovering. She gave me her kidney. My father was hospitalized and mother was still with me in the same city. I was alright. I was fine and I was already working on getting back here. He died and then she went back. I went to the funeral and returned before her. She returned after two weeks and said she had sold the house and was now settling in Vancouver." So much had happened in Sara's life and so little had happened in Tegan's life. It was always too dramatic and eventful every moment in her professor's life. "Of course I left. I was too scared she'd follow...And here she is. She's at my place trying to be my friend when all my life she was this spectre-like enemy to me. Always there but unacknowledged because, you know, she birthed me, breastfed me, supposedly loved me and took care of me. But I just can't see it. I can't see her view. Maybe because I'm not a mother, maybe I don't understand, I don't know. But I want her to go because her presence is suffocating."
"My mother and I hadn't talked to each other for a month." Even though Tegan felt the need to say something that would throw pity at Sara's feet the way the woman required, she instead decided to reveal her own dissension and discord with her mother.
"Why not?" Sara's need to take the younger woman in her arms and hug her was almost awakened when Tegan shifted this way and that with a childish pout on her lips.
"I told her..." Tegan sighed. "I told her you're back and that I didn't know how to feel. She was just angry. I didn't even say I wanted to go back. I mean...I said I wished but I couldn't...but she got angry and told me not to speak to her and just do what I wanted to do. Sara, she hasn't called since then. I only called once and she was so cold to me so I stopped calling and she didn't call again."
It all went back to that day the professor had sat with the mother of her lover to make a deal so clear and honest on Sara's part. It did make sense why Sonia had acted that way, but she wouldn't really expect her to act so cruelly. "You said you wished to go back to me?" Sara asked.
"In theory," Tegan reached for her glass and took a swig of her beer.
"Just tell me what's not making you come back to me?" Sara insisted again.
"Can we not talk about it now? I'm just so damn tired."
"Are you okay?" Sara asked worriedly.
"All those pills...the atmosphere, you, Jeremy, everyone and everything are making me dizzy." Tegan decided she should be pitied too. "You ever loved your mum?" Sara's past interested her. She desired to know more.
Sara's teeth appeared as her lips widened with a breathy smile. She closed her eyes as a memory flashed like lightening right in the back of her mind. She opened them again and her smile widened. Tegan stared in confusion. Sara shook her head with a bigger smile and said, "I remember it was very cold that day." Tegan listened, not knowing where Sara was trying to get to. "November as I could recall. 1992..." Sara laughed when Tegan did first. The younger woman was still not born yet. "Ya. I was very very sick. Extremely sick." Tegan's facial expression changed into a grave, worried one. "I was a very weak child. Being a premature baby and all, you know. I was always sick. But that one winter I had a terrible infection in the middle ear. I mean it was just a casual flue but Stacy and I decided it was a great time to compete over who would finish more popsicles than the other." Tegan laughed. "Ya, I ended up in the ER after winning. Anyway, I got better but I was still very tired and dizzy that day. Too much medication, three injections. I could say I was drugged. Like literally high on flue medication."
"The other day I took my antidepressant pill and a paracetamol and I was so high. It was like weed."
Tegan didn't know why she had said that. The smile Sara gave her was like those motherly smiles she used to give her. Maybe she was childish. But Sara considered it adorable that she had mentioned that. It was like all those times she said something random in the middle of a serious conversation. It was endearing. She deserved a hug that Sara was not allowed to give. Her arms were aching to have the younger woman in her embrace.
"I bet it was like that for me too," Sara said. "Mum took great care of me that day. She told me to choose any film I wanted to see and she'd take me with whoever I wanted to. I was so damn babyish back then. I'd take mum wherever I went. We were not really close but I was, you know, her child. Her baby child and she was happy with that. I was innocent and naive and she was happy with it."
"Like my mum." Sara agreed with a nod.
"I chose The Bodyguard. And I chose Stacy to come along and we all three went to see it. I still remember it. That moment Whitney Houston sat there with her white suit on that chair and sang. It was that exact moment my heart fluttered and my tummy cramped. I looked at Stacy and her eyes were wide and vibrant and I noticed her beauty in a different way. I looked back and I felt things towards the actress I was not supposed to feel. I didn't even know what I was feeling. It was excitement and delirium and heat all at once. I sweated excessively and felt an unfamiliar kick in my female organs that I've never felt before.
"And it was also that moment everything went downhill afterwards. My mother just became my shadowed enemy. Someone I was set to defeat in order to be free and wild. I was fighting each second I had to speak to her. Every word was like a weapon she used against me. Whenever I hinted at my sexuality I was crushed with words that put me down. I was always watched. It's like it hurt her too much that I was not a part of her. That I was someone different and someone she did not want me to be. It hurt her that I was able to choose by myself. With my father it was just plain homophobia, but with her it was more complex. It was like we were fighting over who would win in controlling me. Myself or her.
"My love simply faded with time. And it was never back.
"Just an hour ago she was mourning the fact I was able to take care of me without needing her. It's like she wanted for my life not to have any true meaning without her around. I don't think she'll ever change."
Tegan's frown and furrowed brows expressed her own entanglement of thoughts. She felt something similar when it came to her mother but not in that complex sense Sara had described. She feared her end would be like that. She feared her love for her mother would fade one day. She feared her mother would stop loving her.
"Don't worry, Tegan," Sara said as if she had read her thoughts. "Your mother loves you so much and is just worried. Trust me, I know. She loves all of you. Mine never did. Mine wanted to construct me the way she thought a fine daughter should be. Your mum is simply a careworn woman who'd want her daughter to be happy and not hurt."
"How'd you know?" Tegan asked.
"I simply do," Sara answered. "Call her. Talk to her. Tell her you rejected me and tell her when you're going to take me back I'm not going to disappoint." Sara winked and Tegan furiously blushed.
"What makes you so sure I'll take you back?" Her ruddy cheeks exposed her intentions, anyway.
"I know my loved ones." Sara's hand reached for a curl that covered Tegan's right eye and pushed it back to have a better view of the hazel spheres. "Prithee, don't take too long. My heart is clouded with care."
"You're such a poet." Tegan shook the woman's hand away with a roll of her eyes. Sadly, she was a fool for poets.
She and Sara looked at the man laughing with only the girl that slightly, in Sara's eyes, looked like her lover. "It appears that your buddy has found some delightful company. Shall I escort you to your chamber?"
"If you're going to speak like that all night I'm gonna call the police on you saying a single forty year old lady has been harassing me here all night. They'll find out you're my professor and you're done."
"Bitch." Sara nodded. "Just my type."
Sara and Tegan walked to the apartment she and Jeremy were sharing. Tegan was hoping her friend wouldn't come back with that girl he was with. If so that would be quite awkward. Even Sara thought so.
"You live here now?" Tegan nodded. "That's not his old place, right? It was two streets down." Tegan nodded again. "You know, it would be kind of awkward if he returned with that woman and found you on that bed. In for a threesome?" Sara winked. Tegan scowled. "Still really moody like old times?" No answer. No head motion. No expression but a scowl. "Alright, then. Simple old Teetee." But at that, Tegan couldn't help but smile.
"Goodnight, professor Sara," she said sharply and started walking towards the building.
"You know, a really nice goodnight text would make sad Sara a happier single forty year old lady." No answer was given. She was only faced with Tegan's ass swaying slowly as she walked in the cold of winter to her building. "So bitchy. So lovely," the professor said to herself.
When Sara went back home, her mother was on the sofa in the dark. "God," Sara shrieked. "You scared me." She had her hand on her chest.
"I went to sleep and then I...You're still bleeding?" Sara squinted her eyes. "Your sheets had blood on them. I changed them. I tried to sleep but I got so worried and I couldn't sleep."
"Oh...no, that's...Sorry, I forgot to change them. Ya, I bleed at times. It's normal. It's just really dry...down there and I..." Sara couldn't continue speaking of this matter with her mother. "I just bleed sometimes. It's normal. Don't worry." She forgot she had slept naked the night before. Sometimes after a good orgasm she bled and it was fine. The night before she finally had a good orgasm even though she was crying the entire time she was giving it to herself.
Sara walked to her room and took off her parka. She reached for her pajamas and started changing quickly. Her mother followed and Sara turned around, not wanting to face her. "Why don't we both sleep in your bed? I don't want you to sleep outside."
"It's fine," Sara said.
"Please. Sara, please. Just sleep next to me in your bed." Sara turned around and looked at her mother for a second then nodded. The mother smiled.
Sara went to the bathroom first then went back to her room. Her mother was already in bed. "Are those my sheets when I was young? The baby blue ones that I loved?" Sara put her hand over the sheets and felt the texture. They were hers.
"I kept them all these years and when I was back home to get everything out to sell the house I took them with me. I even brought you your blanket. The one we were looking for when you were pregnant. I finally found it. I even found your baby clothes and toys." Sara looked up at her mother's possessive strong eyes. She tried to smile but couldn't. She wanted to know what the old woman was feeling but she also couldn't. "I didn't want to look around for your sheets and be mistaken for snooping and such so I put these. You don't mind, right?"
"Mum?" The mother looked up and stared directly at her daughter. "Would you do anything for your child to ban them from seeing someone they loved because maybe that someone hurt them? Like would you do it out of love or care or what?"
Evelyn blinked for a moment and then said, "I'd do anything to protect my child. Anything I could. I'd take a bullet for my child. It's a mother's instinct, Sara. You're a mother too. Wouldn't you have done that for Alice?"
"Mum." Sara froze like a statue.
"Is it about that person you love? Tell me, Sara."
Sara was shaken. She was frozen. She didn't want images to return but they weren't even returning. They were like electric shots inside her brain. They were like that one poem: A heap of broken images, where the sun beats...
"Sara." Evelyn took her daughter's shaky hand and pulled her towards her. "I'm sorry I mentioned her." Sara closed her eyes.
"I don't remember anything," Sara said slowly with a voice like stones on frost. "I don't remember her. I...I remember waking up and she's gone. I remember...nothing."
"Sara, you held her. I took you to the neonatal unit. The nurse handed her carefully to you. Don't you remember?" Sara shook her head quickly. "You...you even attempted feeding her but she was too weak. She needed intensive care so she was immediately back in the incubator." Sara's heart started beating too quickly. Her memories were safely chained and now they were being unleashed by her mother. "Next day we did the same thing. The nurse said she wouldn't latch on and you insisted you'd try. You cried when she didn't and the nurse told you she's too small and weak and shouldn't even be out of the incubator."
"Why are you telling me this?" Sara shouted.
"I...I'm sorry." Evelyn didn't know if her daughter was having some sort of memory loss or denial. Sara seemed clueless. When she talked to Stacy about it, the woman told her that Sara had lost all that memory. But Stacy also assumed that Sara was pretending not to remember any of that.
Sara, on the other hand, she remembered having an early birth that resulted in miscarriage. That's what she and Jack agreed on in the hospital after their loss. That's how she had seen it all these years. She insisted on seeing it that way so she wouldn't hurt her brain. When the news were delivered to her she didn't want to hear how and why. She knew her flesh and blood had no chance of surviving with an early birth that gave her such a weak child. Therefore, she pretended it was a miscarriage that she had because it was so in her brain. All these details about her carrying her daughter for just a risky minute were not there. She harboured them in some dark alley inside the depths of her brain nerves.
"How did she die?" Sara asked with a quivering voice. She decided she should know. She decided she deserved to know what she refused to know all these years.
"A week after. She was just too small and weak. Her heart stopped functioning."
"I don't remember." Sara blinked. "What happened next?"
"You cried a lot. You slept a lot. You took it upon yourself. You didn't want to talk to anybody but Jack." Sara remembered that part. Jack was her comfort even when she was a bother to him.
"You were there," Sara said. Evelyn nodded. "Dad was not." The mother shook her head. "I wish I don't remember. Why did you make me remember?"
"I'm sorry," Evelyn said. "I'm sorry, baby. I didn't mean to. I just meant to put you in the picture. To me you're a mother too even if your baby left." Sara didn't want to hear that. She wanted to kill another memory and sleep it away. She lay on her side and wept. "I'm sorry, darling." Sara continued weeping. She wanted her mother to go home. She wanted this woman to disappear. Each word came out of her seemed intentionally aiming to stab her where it hurt the most.
Jeremy walked in his dark room after two hours. The lamp besides Tegan's resting head was switched on by the said woman. She squinted her eyes in the dark as her friend undressed himself. She sat up and yawned.
"I thought you'd be with her all night. Seemed like you two clicked." Jeremy got beside her and nodded. "What happened?"
"I was supposed to go to her place. I just couldn't. I really couldn't. I have her number, though. She's not that bad. Good sense of humour."
"Maybe I should leave this place," Tegan said to herself.
"No," Jeremy said. "No. Not yet. You're not even secure with a job yet."
"Don't you want to bring girls home? Have a life?"
"We'll talk about it later. I'm tired." Jeremy ended the discussion. They both went back to sleep.
In the morning, Sara woke up with sore eyes. She rubbed them and reached for her phone. Her mother was not beside her and it felt like one of those normal days she woke up alone. Shockingly, she found a text message from the girl she wanted to get a text from the most. She opened it with a rush.
"Sweet dreams, Dr. Clement," Sara read loudly. Her smile reached from one ear to the other. But soon it faded when she realized she hadn't responded to Tegan because she was too busy weeping her way to slumber.
Good Morning, Tegan Rain. I should have had more hope that I'd receive a text by you last night. It made my morning, however.
Thought it's one of you silly mind games.
I swear to the dearest thing you own I have just read it :/
I believe you.
Sara put her phone down and walked to the bathroom. It's amazing how a young woman made her day and turned it upside down. She washed her face, brushed her teeth, and then changed her clothes. She walked out and found her mother in the kitchen. A cup of coffee was quickly handed to her and a plate of mini cinnamon rolls with pancakes on the side was put in front of her. She gasped when she saw her most favourite sugary breakfast meal since she was a child. Without her noticing, her mother embraced her side and pecked her cheek.
"I love you. You know that, right?" Sara nodded only to brush off the awkward touch and embrace that her mother had put her in. She knew too well her mother did not really love certain parts of her. And to her it meant her mother did not love her.
That day went smoothly for both Sara and Tegan. Tegan spent it studying and Sara took her mother to places she hadn't seen before. It was her first visit to Montreal. She loved the place but insisted on fishing more details about Sara's life.
"I can't just learn stuff from Stacy. That one never shuts up and never gives me something useful." Sara laughed. "You should get a car. Do you want money?"
"I'm going to get one soon. If I wanted money, I'll ask. Okay?"
"Okay," Evelyn said. "And call. I want you to call if I don't. I just want to feel like you care sometimes." That part awakened bits of Sara's guilt. She nodded.
"I will. I care," she said in a rush.
Monday morning, Evelyn stood at the bathroom door watching her daughter apply her make up. "Look at you. Who would've thought. Make up and a skirt." She pointed at Sara's black skirt. "If I showed teenager Sara with her blonde hair all of that she would yell at me and tell me not to force her to be someone she's not."
"Your point?" Sara said aggressively.
"N...nothing. I'm just surprised that is all. Your hair is even longer. You're suddenly all girlish."
"I used to wear dresses and had long hair when I was with Jack."
"Ya," the mother said. "But then you went back to your ways and_"
"My ways?" Sara exclaimed. She pushed her mother on her way out of the bathroom. "What ways exactly are my ways?"
"Being with...women? It's a woman you're after, right?"
Sara's patience was running out. She closed her eyes and opened them once again. She remained silent while putting on her black oxfords. She looked up and saw her mother looking at her. Suddenly, she had the urge to rain on her mother all the things she had never said before.
"My ways are that I am a bisexual woman. I am into both men and women." Sara was speaking loudly. "My ways are that I love to experience with my attire since I was a child and you know that. I love to look masculine and feminine all at the same time. Jack loved those parts of me even when he stopped loving me. Stacy loves them. Everybody does but you and father."
"Calm down," Evelyn's deep octave reverberated in the room. "All I wanted was to see you happy and normal. That's all I wanted. Yet things kept standing in your way and that hurt me. I just wanted you to love and be loved and have a child and just be...normal."
"Goddamn it," Sara screamed. "What's normal, anyway? That I look like you? Act like you? Marry a man I never loved like you?" Silence met Sara's ears when she paused. "You don't even know what love is you can't speak of it and wish it upon me when you married someone only because he fucked you and got you knocked up one time."
"Watch your mouth," her mother shouted.
"No. I'm done watching my mouth in front of you. I'm tired of you acting as if you're the dove spreading peace when you just crawl like a little worm biting on everything that's good. You mask your distaste with my decisions and throw words that make me feel less of a human here and there. I see it. I'm not dumb."
"I don't do that." Her mother was crying.
"Yes you do. Goodman it, you do. I was never scared of anyone in my entire life more than I was scared of you. I was not terrified with my cancer the way you terrified me with every judgmental look from those dead eyes of yours. And each time you spoke as if I was never going to be happy and succeed because of my decisions made me believe I was forever going to be a failure till I became one. I couldn't hold a relationship. I couldn't be anything. Pain chased me everywhere till I believed I'm an antagonist in this life. I believed I'm the real plague and I'm a project unfinished and left to decay in this world. I believed everyone was there to give up on me so I had to give up on them first in order to convince myself I'm in control of my own life when it was your stupid ideas and methods planted in my brain all along.
"Sara, wear this. Sara, walk like that. Sara, don't talk about that. Sara, keep your opinions to yourself. Sara, don't read too much you might know too much and it will ruin your brain. Isn't that what you used to say? Nobody will ever love you if you continued sharing your strange opinions. Nobody would want someone who thinks this way. Nobody would be with someone who acts and dresses that way." Sara was crying as well as her mother. "You said it. All of it. You always said it and I always believed it because you shaped what it's like to be normal and loved and I was not it. And I'm never it to your eyes but I am to me." She put her face in her hands and sobbed.
She was late for her class and she couldn't even manage facing her students in this manner anymore. Everything she had locked inside of her in the past had found an escape route that Monday morning.
She felt relief resting at her chest. She felt purified and purged of all her past woes. She felt clean and empty of dread and fear. She felt like she's a human being who's satisfied with all that she was. All the components that made her beautiful and ugly at the same time, those were hers and there to be loved, cherished, nursed, and taken care of. She was a person who was alive like all those people around her despite every stitch her body had witnessed and every tear the time had seen. She was Sara and she loved every tiny part of Sara even if her mother or whoever else did not love it.
Her mother decided to leave that morning. She took her suitcase and left the apartment. Sara did not feel happy nor sad. She felt relieved and satisfied. She rested on her mattress with eyes staring at the ceiling above her head and thought about the steps she was supposed to take with the new life she was leading. A life full of acceptance of her past, present, and state of mind.
She reached for her phone as it buzzed. It was a text message from Tegan.
I tried to resist the urge not to text you but my worry won. Why didn't you come to university today?
I need to give you something. It's necessary. Are you willing to meet me at your street right now?
My street?
I don't wanna go up to your place. I want to give you something and I want you to be alone when you take a look at it.
Sure. I'm there already. Tell me to come down when you arrive.
It was time Tegan also knew everything about Sara. It was time Sara opened up and told the world everything about her, not just Tegan alone. But first, she'd start with Tegan. And first, she'd want Tegan to know the reason she had broken up with her and left her. She folded the page that told that particular story.
When Tegan came down, Sara was waiting for her with that notebook in hand. Tegan's eyes widened. Sara was well-dressed but her eyes were smeared with make-up and her face smeared with exhaustion.
"What happened?" Tegan asked.
"A lot," Sara answered. "I'll tell you about it...but first." She handed Tegan the notebook. "You need to read this first. You'll know all that I feel about you and myself and everything. You'll understand everything."
"That's your notebook, though. Nobody is supposed to read it." Tegan felt overwhelmed and slightly worried. Her heart was shaking inside her chest.
"You are supposed to read it," Sara said. "Start with the folded page. It's the most important of them all."
"You're scaring me."
"I want you to know everything. I want you to know me well. I want you to love me, pity me, and be with me."
"Sara." Sara's anguish was crystal clear on her features. Tegan felt sorrow reaching her through Sara's barren eyes.
"I have to go. I'm going to leave you alone to read. My door is always open for you."
Sara left. Tegan went back to the apartment. Her shaky hands messed with the pages. She saw drawings and writings and different scribbling as she flipped through the pages till she reached that particular folded page.
'April, 2014
'Storms are standing at my gate. Numerous ones in colourful forces. I thought I did not fear colours but I am rather mistaken. Each day births a fresh pain. Each day I'm kicked down where it stings and aches. I wake up promising a better morning for her but I end up making her nights end up in mourning.
'The least I expected was for her mother to visit. As I have said, it was not bad...but now I take my words back.
'Today I made a cheap bargain with the old woman. I made a deal. Yesterday she told me not to respond to her daughter's text messages because she wanted her daughter to think of herself and not me. I felt selfish that I wanted her to think of me as well. Tegan sent one text after the other and I cried salty tears on my own.
'This morning her mother, the doctor, arranged a meeting with me. I picked the place because she was unfamiliar with this city. We sat at the same table I sat with her daughter at and I pleaded to be with her daughter. She told me I was going to die. She said I was not a fighter because I was fed on by my cancer. She's a doctor, she knows better.
'And since she knows better she promised me that if I came back with a healthy self and an undamaged mind, I could be with her daughter. I promised marriage like a fool. I promised eternal love and I promised everything. I promised things I'm not sure I can give her now that I am writing this.
'She thinks I do not want her company but I desire it more than any other. I am only doing what a lover should do. I am discharging her from my burdens. I am releasing her into her vibrant youth, even though I wish to occupy it for my soul. I do not have hope in returning and I wish I'd be with her till the last breath I take. But I was to be a mother once and I have the heart of one. I cannot leave her to sustain my illness with me when I cannot do so myself. I cannot allow her to suffer being in an infertile love. A love that would eventually birth death and no more.
'I took Sonia's orders and signed the deal with my own tears. If I ever returned by a graceful miracle, I shall court her and love her. I shall take her to be a wife for me and that's a promise to keep me fighting despite the war I've already lost.'