Read by Rebecca Yeo
‘You should write to her,’ Carolin says. Carolin who does not have children, has arrived with gifts. A Hungry Caterpillar book for the baby. A red felt hat shaped like a bell for me. We already have a Hungry Caterpillar book, two in fact, but the hat is inspired. I turn it over in my hands, feeling the give of the felt.
‘I can’t write to her. What would I say?’
Carolin leans forward, affectionate, impatient. ‘Tell her you’ve had a beautiful son and that you want her to meet him.’
‘Yes she would. She’s your mum.’
I feel a spike of hope because, surely.
‘If she could just see him,’ Carolin carries on. ‘I mean, look at him.’
We take a moment to gaze at Ruben. He will be three weeks old tomorrow. He still has that puckered look of a newborn. His fingers flutter as though he knows we are watching him. His nails – too terrifying to cut – are long.
Carolin makes more tea and I settle down on the sofa. Ruben needs a feed but it takes him several attempts to latch on. We are still getting the hang of this, he and I. There is the pain in my nipple as the milk rushes down and then he begins. He sucks in threes. Suck, suck, suck: rest. Suck, suck, suck: rest.
The last time I saw my mother was at Chinese New Year two years ago. I drove down alone, all the way through London and out to Farnham to tell my parents that I was engaged. Andrew had volunteered to come with me, to introduce himself and help me explain but I told him not to. I knew that the prospect of me marrying and English man would be enough for my parents without the reality of Andrew, all six-foot three and green eyed in their living room.
Had I known my dad would hit me I would never have gone. To be hit as a child is one thing, but to be hit as an adult is another.
‘Sugar?’ Carolin asks.
‘Two please.’
‘You don’t usually.’
‘I do now.’ I shift and the baby drops off the nipple. His mouth hangs wide as a trickle of milk rolls down his cheek.
‘You could write and send her a photo? She couldn’t resist a photo,’ she suggests.
‘You’d be surprised.’
Over the years I’ve said very little about my parents to Carolin. She has no idea, for instance, that my mother grew up believing it shameful for the first child in a family to be a girl. It isn’t that I’m embarrassed, but I don’t think Carolin would understand; she doesn’t have the instinct for it.
Which may be why Carolin can’t see there is no point in sending a letter. My parents truly feel that I betrayed them by marrying against their wishes. And by the standards they grew up with, they are right. To send them a letter now would only aggravate their outrage.
‘You’re tired.’ Carolin says, bringing me the tea.
‘I’m fine.’
‘No my lovely, you’re tired and I’m going to go.’ She kisses my forehead. ‘Don’t you dare move. I’ll let myself out.’
I listen to the click of the front door and transfer Ruben to my left arm so that he can hear my heart in his sleep.
*
In the end, the letter I send is very short. My mother, a child of the Revolution, is embarrassed by terms of affection so after some debate I do not begin: ‘Dear Mother,’ but simply: ‘Mother’.
Every word is difficult. I have not written in Mandarin for years and my calligraphy is no longer good. I spend a long time considering how to describe Ruben. My Rubeeny, my Rubenesque, my Ruby boy. How to convey the enormity of Ruben? After several attempts I decide simply to write that I have a son and that I have given him the Chinese name Fa. Fa means beginning and he signals the beginning of a new period in our family. I explain that he is strong and that his eyes miss nothing. I invite my mother to meet him because he will need the guidance of his grandparents to grow. I do not mention Andrew. Or that I am lonely. I do not say that I need my mother.
Once the letter is finished I take it immediately to the post box, pushing Ruben in his buggy though he is hungry and mewls all the way.
*
‘Have you heard anything?’ Carolin asks when we meet again several weeks later.
I sip my tea, it is too hot and scalds my mouth. ‘Not yet.’
I am tired today. Ruben woke every hour in the night. He has a slight cold and his nose is blocked so he cannot feed. I am dizzy and disconnected with fatigue. Before having Ruben I hadn’t realised it possible to be this tired.
‘Nothing at all?’ Carolin asks, which strikes me a stupid. Either my mother has been in touch or she hasn’t.
‘No.’ It grates that Carolin’s cashmere cardigan is the exact blue of her eyes. That there is a pretty flush in her cheeks from the walk from the station. That Carolin is not tired. ‘Anyway,’ I ask to change the subject. ‘How did your date go with that guy on Wednesday?’
‘Theo? Uhh.’ Carolin reaches for a biscuit and bites into it, catching the crumbs before they fall. ‘He was actually quite good looking but …’ and we are off. We have been talking about men like this since we were students together in halls. The pattern is familiar though the men, quite naturally, have changed. Now that Carolin is recently divorced (a short marriage, a move to Hong Kong, an unfaithful husband) a new and rich seam of suitors has opened up for discussion.
As we talk I move about the kitchen which this morning is full of sunlight, the first real sun of spring. I wipe down the sides, boil the kettle, replenish the biscuits. Every now and again I go over to the bassinette on the floor to check on Ruben. The sun filters through the eucalyptus tree in the garden casting shifting shadows over his face. Like this, asleep, he is so beautiful.
I am grateful that Carolin does not mention the letter again. In the last week I have caught myself conducting imagined conversations with both my parents. Now that I have Ruben and I know what it is to love a child. I have no memory of my mother ever cuddling me, or of either of my parents kissing me.
*
I do it entirely on impulse. One moment I am sat watching the birds in the garden, feeding Ruben and thinking of nothing very much. And then, without planning it in any way, I am up and going to the drawer where we keep the takeaway menus, old calendars, cards for taxi companies. I shuffle through, find a card, dial the number.
‘Where do you want to go?’ asks the girl at the cab office.
I don’t have to think. ‘The Peaceful Garden, 157 Angel Street, Farnham.’
‘That’s a long way. It’s going to cost you. Are you sure?’
‘I am.’ It is a Tuesday. My mother will be in the shop alone.
As we move through the streets of north London and out towards the M25 I hold Ruben’s podgy hand. ‘You are going to meet your granny,’ I whisper. ‘She will give you a big cuddle and say: I have such a clever grandson. Yes she will.’
When we arrive outside the Peaceful Garden nothing has changed. The same white sign with green writing hangs above the shop window, the same menu is pasted to the glass.
I open the door. There is no one at the counter. My mother will be out the back preparing cod for the lunchtime customers who come for fish and chips with Chinese curry sauce. The car seat is heavy on my arm so I put it down on the tiled floor, gently, because I do not want Ruben to cry out.
There is a movement in the beaded curtain which leads to the back and then my mother comes through expecting a customer, or perhaps a delivery. She is thinner. Her dirty dress makes her look old.
‘Did you get my letter?’ I ask. The Mandarin comes easily enough.
My mother does not reply. Instead she lifts the flap in the counter which makes a kind of door and comes though, her eyes on my son. Eventually she smiles. She approves.
‘He is strong, as you wrote,’ she says.
‘Yes he is.’
And then her attention goes from Ruben to me and I am surprised at the hope in her expression. ‘Have you left his father?’
I am tempted to say yes. If I say yes, I will be a good daughter again. If I say yes, my mother will love me again. For a moment I am silent and in that moment we are together: me, my mother and my son. Three generations. The possibility of a lifetime like this stretches out.
‘No Mama, I have not left him.’
‘If you have not left him why have you come?’
‘To see you.’
Something in my mother contracts then. ‘What happened to you Mei Ling? I was so proud of you.’
‘Mama.’
‘Your duty was to me.’
‘Mama.’
‘You owed me a peaceful end to my life.’ There is a coldness in her voice which frightens me. ‘Now you owe me nothing. Go.’
I feel hot and fluid as I leave. I walk to a nearby park and find a bench to sit down. Ruben is fussing now and I struggle to undo my bra while searching in my bag for my phone to call Andrew. Around us the town goes about its business. I listen to the traffic, children released into a playground, a train in the distance.
*
Eighteen years later I sit at my kitchen table waiting for my son to come home. It is his birthday. Eighteen today. He is late. I have baked him a cake. It sits in the centre of the table, white. Perfect.
I have been speaking on the phone with Carolin. Carolin who has left to live in Florence with an artist. She calls every Sunday for an hour or more. We rarely talk of men these days. In fact she didn’t mention the artist, nor did I mention Andrew (though, in my way, I still love him). We talked instead of our children. I complained, as I usually do, that Ruben is never at home. And about how, when he does appear, it is with a girl – a funny little ginger haired thing who skits up the stairs without meeting my eye. Carolin promised me that I shouldn’t worry. She agreed that he will, when the time is right, find a suitable wife.
The autumn sunlight fades. The cake casts a longer and longer shadow across the table. I remain where I am, unmoving, waiting.
(c) Anna Giokas, 2015
Anna Giokas worked as a journalist on local newspapers in London before studying for an MA in Creative Writing at UEA in Norfolk. She is now at home with her two small children and writes whenever she gets the chance. She is working on a collection of short stories about motherhood.
Rebecca Yeo trained at the Guildford School of Acting; originally from Singapore and South Africa. Film credits: Panic (White Night Films); Friday Night Dinner 3 (BBC 4) Kiss The Water (BBC Films) Theatre credits: Colony Part 1 (KCL) Filth (Soho Theatre), Fried Rice Paradise the Musical (Esplanade Theatre); Jus! (Drama Centre).
Our special Parent & Child night was held on Tuesday June 23, 2015 at the Peckham Pelican to raise awareness and cash for The CATS Foundation, a charity funding research into the devastating genetic childhood diseases Tay-Sachs & Sandhoff.
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