Fight Like a Girl - Sheena Kamal Page 0,68

her voice when she asks, panicked, “Where did you go?”

“Nowhere, Ma. I’m right here.”

“Tell me about Junior,” she says. She’s been doing this a lot. Ever since she woke up from the accident, she’s been encouraging me to reach out to Junior. I think it’s because she’s scared that if she dies, I’ll be alone. I tell her all about him working at the garage. About him postponing uni for another year so that he can make some more money right now. She nods and tells me that sometimes you have to do that.

But she’s made sure that I don’t, and that my tuition is paid up.

“Sometimes I close my eyes and I see you win that fight. You know the one where you got a belt?”

I pitch my voice low, to match hers. No abrupt movements. No sharp noises. There’s only infinite gentleness for her now. “Yeah, I remember. But it was a tie. A split decision.”

“No, you won, baby. I saw it with my own eyes.” I don’t know if she did. I don’t know if she was ever there, or if we’d both imagined her in Florida. She finally notices the fresh braids and nudges one of them with her chin. “Your father loved the smell of coconut in my hair,” she says, her lids falling closed again.

“Ma,” I say. “Why did Ravi have Dad’s phone?”

“Mmmm…” Ma sighs. She’s almost in that dream-state, the one she enters into most afternoons, and into the evening. Maybe that’s why her accent comes back strong. “Your father dropped it that night, when they fight. Ravi picked it up after. He wasn’t supposed to. He should have just left it on the ground.”

It was the last thing I didn’t know. But, you know, I’m not sure what difference answers make. With Ravi and Dad dead. Ma like this, a black widow who can’t even move her legs.

She falls silent. I think she’s asleep when she hits me with this: “I know you didn’t mean to kill him. You were driving, it was dark.”

“There was rain,” I remind her.

“Yes,” she nods. “The rain. But you hadn’t seen him. You didn’t mean to.”

My hand on the wheel of the car and, suddenly, her hand on mine.

Outside, two shadows, one seeming to freeze the moment before it disappears into the woods, the other stepping away from the car.

Away or toward?

Does it matter?

A slight bend of pressure on the wheel.

Her or me?

Doesn’t matter.

I wait until I’m sure she’s asleep again before I press a kiss to her head and rub some warmth into her shoulders and pull some of her heat into my hands. My ma, she’s had it so rough. Now I hope she gets to be a little bit easy. “Yes, I really did.”

I put some money in her purse, not because she needs it, but because she likes to know there’s a little extra in there just in case. Then I leave before the weak fall sun sets behind the trees. Leave before she gives herself to the night, sheds the skin of her broken body, a body she broke for me, hers, and becomes fire.

In her dreams or mine? Does it—

thirty-seven

It’s all coming back now.

It had been raining that whole day, with thunderstorms in the forecast for the evening. When your aunt who can’t keep her mouth shut showed up to sweep you off to dinner; she was late coming in from the airport because of the weather.

No amount of protesting could stop what was inevitable.

When your Ma who can’t keep her legs together gives you that look (you know, that one) it’s all over for you. You’re to be squeezed into a narrow table at the hakka place on the other side of town, listening to them gossip about people they used to know back home and the particulars of running a roti shop in this economy. There is complete disgust at the endless appetites of Trinidadians. You can’t get away with small roti, uh-uh. They must be large and filled to bursting or else the pot-bellied diaspora will turn on you in a second. There’s some discussion about the diabetes epidemic sweeping the island. You secretly agree that it’s not undeserved. You wish for a level of self-awareness about the connection to diabetes and the sodium/fat/sugar-laden food you’re about to eat, but the moment for that passes with the rumbling of your stomach.

You order hakka chow mein and vegetable balls in hot garlic sauce and hope there’s enough nutrition in the meal to feed your muscles, make them sturdier, stronger. The meal is strangely tense. Ma and Aunty K keep up the chatter, but their attention isn’t in the room with you, so you tune out and let your mind wander. They don’t say anything about your lack of participation, and don’t seem to mind in particular.

This is what you remember most about that night. It was meant to be a spontaneous gesture, a fun dinner with your kooky aunt, but everyone was acting strangely and you were feeling a bit ill. There’s some mild heartburn after dinner but you insist it’s nothing as the three of you duck under a single umbrella and sprint to the car.

Raindrops, yeah, but not on galvanized roofing. You’ll wonder at it much later, how the musical quality of rain deserted you on that night and you didn’t even notice. The chatter continues into the car, but it’s only Aunty K this time. There’s an attempt at the radio but Ma’s nerves can’t take it, so she switches it off and you’re left with the sound of heat whooshing through the air vents and a voice that’s easily drowned out.

Ma’s phone rings and because you’re next to her, you hear Pammy’s voice on the other end, shrill, as if in warning, before Ma gives you an annoyed look out of the corner of her eye and shifts her body so you can’t hear anymore. Whatever Pammy says upsets her. It has something to do with Dad. He’s not home yet, or something, and maybe that’s a problem. He’s late. Her hands shake before she pulls them away. Squeezes one in the other, a silent bid to stay calm, then returns them to her knee.

When you pull onto the road to your townhouse co-op, when you’re about to turn into the parking lot, one of those hands shoots out, grabs the steering wheel…

To what? Help you? Stop you?

You’re driving, but the both of you turn the wheel.

The both of you steer the car into the drunk man stumbling around the parking lot.

You both killed your father.

Both wanted him dead.

* * *

You walk now, through the university campus.

Your boyfriend, Jason, has his arm around you. The two of you are closer now, ever since he showed up at the hospital to help you get through what was happening with your Ma. He’s been so sweet, and you finally know what good dick is. You’ve also begun to hate that term and love reggaetón. He’s forgiven you for everything because of what you were going through at home. He’s a really good guy.

You think he loves you, even though you’re not a fighter anymore. You think he loves you because you’re not a fighter anymore.

Maybe you are, just a different kind.

After he leaves to go study, you walk alone.

You didn’t go to Ryerson like you thought you would. You decided on the University of Toronto, because you miraculously got in and you think it’s a better school. That’s what everyone says, anyway. And you like walking through this pretty downtown campus. You’re going to do business management regardless, so why not do it somewhere with nicer buildings and lots of green space. Somewhere so big you can be anonymous. Just a face in the crowd. Surrounded by throngs of students who look just like you.

No one will recognize you here.

You get to be a person without a past, and that’s for the best, isn’t it? Because what’s real about the past, anyway? You don’t know. Maybe you never will.

What you do know:

Your father’s face.

A story that ends with a thud.

A shadow slipping into the woods.

It was a dark, rainy night. Moonless, and thank God for that.

A slide out of a nightmare.

the end