My Mother's Daughter Page 5

  Returning to St. Lucia might have been easier, but that life wasn’t the life she wanted. Whether or not she knew it, cleaning Mrs. Harry’s floors, tediously shining her cutlery, and putting up with her constant demands was changing the trajectory of her life. It didn’t matter that the line wasn’t straight or tidy; its effects would ripple outwards for generations.

  * * *

  —

  Catherine called him while the old couple was out of the house.

  “David, when I was in Montreal I said something really stupid to you about being pregnant. I shouldn’t have said it, and I regret it now, because I really am having your baby.”

  David groaned.

  “I know you’re not happy but I’m not joking this time.” Her eyes began to burn. It was clear to her that he wasn’t interested in being a father and she had made her life more difficult, and for what?

  Catherine waited to see if he’d say anything to prove that she was wrong about him. But he didn’t. She cleared her throat. “I have to get back to work.”

  “Okay, then,” David said with an emptiness that sealed everything.

  Everything David didn’t say made her regret her decision to sleep with him that one and only time. But once she had collected herself, she realized David’s silence didn’t erase the tenderness she felt towards the life she was carrying. “We don’t need him,” she said, rubbing her flat stomach. “I’m going to take good care of you.”

  The impending arrival of a baby somewhat thawed Mrs. Harry’s frosty disposition. When she read in the local paper about sewing lessons at the YMCA, she signed Catherine up. If Catherine had an errand related to her pregnancy or a doctor’s visit, she was allowed to leave work early. And when the couple returned from their latest holiday, Mrs. Harry brought back a baby blanket as a gift.

  Eda and Abraham learned Catherine was pregnant again in one of her regular letters to them. She explained that David was no longer in the picture. Eda wrote back with concern that their daughter would have to raise a child alone and so far from them, but no ink was used to express how they felt about David and his disappearance. They simply offered encouragement. They were proud to have a grandchild born in Canada.

  * * *

  —

  One night, when Catherine was around five months pregnant, she was in the middle of clearing the table after dinner when Mrs. Harry told her she had a phone call.

  Wishful thinking made her assume it was her mother, calling about the baby. She picked up the receiver. “Mama Eda, is that you?”

  “Who? No, it’s David.”

  Catherine nearly dropped the plates.

  “Are you there?” David asked. “I want to come and see you this weekend.”

  Catherine’s heart hammered away. “You can’t come over,” she whispered sharply. “I’m not allowed to have people stay here.”

  “Fine, I’ll get a motel.”

  “I don’t understand. Where have you been and why are you calling me all of a sudden?”

  “I’ve been busy, but I want to see you now,” he said calmly.

  What does he want? Perhaps he had changed his mind about helping her. Maybe time had given him clarity and now he wanted to do the right thing and be a father. Why else would he want to drive four hours from Montreal to come see me? Catherine always knew that if David ever stepped up she would never let any bitterness make her keep his child from him. There was no love connection, but having his help to raise their child in a foreign country with few resources lessened her fears. She told him to pick her up in front of a convenience store a few streets over from the Harrys’.

  * * *

  —

  As Catherine headed towards their rendezvous, she let her mind wander. What would they talk about? What words might David use to apologize for disappearing for all these months? Was he ready to step up as a parent? If he did, could that grow into more? If that was the case, maybe she could give her—their—child a Nigerian name.

  David’s little blue car was parked outside the store. She tapped on the passenger side window and he leaned over and flung the door open. All of her baby weight concentrated in her stomach, so she lowered herself into the seat slowly.

  “How is everything?” David asked.

  “Not bad, just sick all the time.” She caught him staring at her belly. “Yes, I’m really pregnant, and yes, it’s really yours.”

  David switched his stare to the radio and fiddled with the station. She could pick up the faintest smell of soap on his skin. It made her slightly queasy. “I thought I’d find us a motel nearby,” he finally said. “I’m tired from the drive, and it would be good to get some rest.”

  They drove in silence for nearly fifteen minutes, until he pulled into the first motel he saw. Before they went to check in he popped open the trunk and pulled out a six-pack of beer.

  In the room Catherine lay on the bed as hunger pangs rocked her. She had deliberately not eaten earlier because she thought David would take her out to dinner to talk. And now her pride would not allow her to ask him for a thing. David looked content lying on the bed next to her, watching TV. He placed one hand on her belly as the other clutched his third bottle. Catherine wanted to flick his hand off the same way she might swat at a fly. What kind of man shows up with nothing for his child?

  David must have sensed the red laser of her stare. “None for you,” he quipped. “It’s not good for my baby.”

  “Not good for your baby?” She slapped his hand off her stomach. “You come all this way with nothing but a case of beer?”

  “Why are you worrying yourself in your condition?” David said. “I will bring something next time. Don’t worry.”

  Why did you come here? Catherine thought. He hadn’t even asked how she was feeling or how the baby was doing. Showing up empty-handed with no concern for the baby made her lose whatever respect she had left for him. It was clear to her now that David’s trip had nothing to do with her or the welfare of their child. He had wanted to see with his own two eyes if she was truly pregnant. Now that he had seen and even touched her expanding abdomen for himself, he had his proof. He nodded off to sleep next to her. Catherine inched her body to the edge of the thin mattress and prayed for the next day to arrive.

  The next morning, when David finally roused from sleep, his afro was flat in the back and a matted mound in the front that framed his face. Catherine had been awake for a while, waiting for him to get up. She sat and watched as he combed his hair and sipped one of his last bottles of beer. David picked, patted then picked his mane some more, until he got his coarse, tight curls into the shape and volume he liked, though to Catherine, it looked just like it had the moment before. Neither of them said much to the other; the only sound in the room was the persistent buzz of David’s electric afro comb.

  He drove her back to the convenience store where he had picked her up. Their goodbye was passionless, and Catherine didn’t turn around to watch David go, so she had no way of knowing if he watched her leave.

  It’s okay, she told her baby as she moved alone down Simcoe Street. We don’t need him.

  When Catherine called David a few days later, curious to know if he had made it back to Montreal okay, she heard a recorded message on the other end. “We’re sorry, but the number you have tried to reach is not in service. Please hang up or try your call again.” She called the number a second time, but the same message answered. David had changed his number.

  * * *

  —

  Despite being eight months pregnant, Catherine was still working six days a week for Mrs. Harry. She was grateful to have a place to live and work in her condition, but with her due date a couple of weeks away, exhaustion and discomfort ruled her body. One day she gathered her nerve and approached Mrs. Harry.

  “Mrs. Harry, I would like to take a couple weeks’ break. I need to rest my body before the b
aby comes. I feel tired all the time.”

  “Oh…I see,” Mrs. Harry said and looked over at her with an expression that said she had never considered Catherine might be overworked. “I can give you some time off, but I have to find someone to replace you first.”

  Four days later a young woman showed up after answering an ad Mrs. Harry had placed in the paper. That first day she shadowed Catherine. There was much to learn: which dishes were to be used for which meal, how the couple liked their sheets folded, making sure to not enter the home with dirty shoes. The temp didn’t show up the next day, and Mrs. Harry didn’t bother to find another replacement, so even as the early signs of labour rocked Catherine, she didn’t stop working.

  * * *

  —

  A tightening sensation in the pit of Catherine’s pelvis woke her in the early hours of the morning towards the end of August. She climbed two flights of stairs to Mrs. Harry’s bedroom.

  “I have to go to the hospital, the baby is coming early,” she whispered through the woman’s closed door, trying not to wake her husband, who was asleep in his own room down the hall.

  “I thought you said you weren’t due until September. Why does the baby have to come today?” Mrs. Harry murmured, before falling silent.

  Catherine didn’t have a social network; she simply grabbed hold of the people she encountered along her way. The list of acquaintances she could rely on was short and it changed as often as the colours of a mood ring. When Mrs. Harry found her labour too inconvenient to bother getting up for, Catherine rang a woman named Joyce. Joyce was about fifteen years older, from Barbados, and had once worked for the Harrys. Mrs. Harry’s sister-in-law mentioned to Joyce that Abigail had just hired a young St. Lucian woman, and Joyce had rung the house to say hello. Having lived through all of Abigail Harry’s antics, she knew the young lady might need support from time to time.

  “You don’t stress yourself,” Joyce told her now. “You go take your shower, then call a taxi. Miss Abbey got to learn to fix she own breakfast today.”

  As Catherine waited for the taxi to arrive, she heard cautious footsteps making their way down the basement stairs. Mrs. Harry entered her bedroom. “There was a taxi cab in the driveway,” she said.

  “Yes, I called one to take me to the hospital.”

  “Nonsense. I shooed him off. I can take you.”

  Catherine had barely looked at her boss; she was too busy breathing through her pain.

  “You know what, Catherine. I just looked in the fridge. We have nothing to eat.”

  Catherine struggled to stuff items into her hospital bag.

  “Could you be a dear and make us some tuna sandwiches before we leave for the hospital?”

  As the eruptions in Catherine’s core worsened, she climbed the stairs and made ten tuna sandwiches. She cut each one into four squares and freed them of their crusts. Then she wrapped them in damp cloths and placed them in the freezer. No request was a surprise anymore.

  Chapter Six

  I was born on August 29, 1980. A month that saw sixty-five countries, led by America, boycott the Summer Olympics in Moscow to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Months earlier, Pierre Elliott Trudeau returned to power as Canada’s prime minister, and car radios were blasting Olivia Newton John’s “Magic.”

  My mother had my name picked out for months before I was born. A woman with the name Perdita had been a contestant on The Price Is Right, which she had watched every day since she had arrived in Canada in 1976. Mom liked the name so much she wrote it down in her address book in case I was a girl. Many of the nurses didn’t like it. Why would a perfectly normal young woman give her perfectly healthy baby such a robust combination of syllables for a name? But Mom never cared what anyone thought.

  The origin of the name Perdita is Latin, and it means “lost.” My mother didn’t know that when she chose it, of course. She simply liked its uniqueness. She also didn’t know that it’s the name of the heroine in Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale. In this story, a jealous king suspects his pregnant wife’s child is illegitimate. He throws her in jail, where she gives birth. When the baby girl is taken before the king, he orders one of his men to abandon her in a desert far away, where he expects her to die.

  But Perdita doesn’t die. She is only lost, and eventually found.

  * * *

  —

  My mother left blank the section on my birth certificate where the father’s name was supposed to be. She didn’t expect David to ever come and claim me. He had evaporated from her life. The only lead she had about his whereabouts had come from Paulette, who told her he had moved to the States, to the Washington, D.C., area.

  The only person who visited Mom in the hospital after she had me was Mrs. Harry. She arrived with a cactus and a long list of chores my mother hadn’t done before she left. After five days Mom and I headed home to the Harrys’ house in a taxi. The temporary maid Mom assumed would be there while she recovered was nowhere in sight, and the couple wasn’t home. There were hardly any groceries in the cupboard and little sign that the kitchen had even been in use. She took me to the basement and settled me in.

  The next morning Mom went upstairs before eight, after feeding me all through the night. She knew that the Harrys would soon come downstairs for breakfast. Mrs. Harry was a difficult employer, who took advantage of her, but if it weren’t for the older woman, Mom knew, she would have no place to go. And so she set about cooking them a hot meal. And from that day on she went right back to work, picking up right where she had left off. Her routine, even with a newborn infant, was all too familiar.

  Luckily I was a pretty tranquil baby. I rarely fussed and spent most of my days asleep in my basket on the kitchen table. Sometimes Mr. Harry would venture in and play with my toes and talk back to me as I cooed. Mom would stop to feed me, change my diaper, or lay me down for a nap. Closer to the evening she would give me a bath, put me in a sleeper, and place me down in my crib for the night. She’d leave the basement door open so she could hear me while she prepared dinner upstairs. Sometimes it was Mrs. Harry who heard me crying while Mom was off somewhere cleaning. “Cathy, the baby is crying,” she’d call, and Mom would stop whatever she was doing to attend to me. Once dinner was finished and Mom had washed the dishes and tidied the kitchen, her workday was over. That’s when she’d head down to the basement and watch me sleep.

  Much of Mom’s loneliness was replaced by her joy at having me around. There was no time to focus on feeling alone; she had a big new responsibility. Between working more than twelve hours a day six days a week at the Harrys’ and my needs, Mom hardly had any time for anything more than a doctor’s appointment or quick stop at her hairdresser’s. Even when she was out of the house to run an errand, it was never a relaxing outing because she had to hurry home to finish her work.

  After I got my picture taken at Sears that fall, Mom mailed copies to her family in St. Lucia and gave Mrs. Harry a locket with my picture in it in appreciation for allowing her to keep her job. Mrs. Harry thanked Mom and kept it in her night table. Mom also began putting together a special package for David. She filled it with pictures she took of me from day to day with a little camera she had bought. On the back of each photo she wrote down my name and date of birth so David could learn the vital details of my new life. The pictures showed that I had his round face and full lips. My mother believed that a man deserved to see his own image staring back at him, even if he didn’t want to. She gave the package to Paulette, to give to David the next time she saw him.

  During the Christmas season of 1980, when I was three months old, the Harrys took off on their annual vacation to Bermuda. While they were away, Paulette called the house to tell my mom that she had been in D.C. to visit Victor and saw David. He was coming to Oshawa the following weekend to see us, Paulette told her. It was a complete surprise to my mother; she’d had no expectation that my father would s
how up again, though in the outer galaxy of her mind she hoped he might one day, for my sake. She wanted me to know him and for him to know me.

  The fact that Mom was looking forward to the Saturday David was to arrive caught her off-guard. It had been some six months since they had last seen one another, when she was pregnant. After that visit, he had suddenly disconnected his phone and evidently moved to America. Perhaps this visit meant that he was ready to accept me, his new daughter. I lay in the Harrys’ living room in a pink two-piece outfit my mother thought was perfect for a baby to wear when meeting her father for the first time.

  My mother couldn’t stop her eyes from constantly darting towards the clock on the wall. As she sat on the couch with me in and out of sleep on her lap, the day lost its light, and she lost her optimism. Every car that seemed to slow past the house made her get up quickly to peek through the curtains, searching the blackened landscape for the silhouette of David’s afro. Each time she let the curtain fall back into place, because she saw no sign of him. When darkness came completely, it brought on the yellow streetlights, but not my father.

  The next day Mom called Paulette, confused and looking for an explanation, but her friend could offer none. Mom felt silly.

  * * *

  —

  For the first few months of my life, things with the Harrys continued as normal. The work demands had always made Mom feel under pressure, but my arrival turned her bosses’ orders into an even bigger stressor. Mom had hoped Mrs. Harry would relax her orders and the long list of complaints about fingerprints on her figurines, but she didn’t. My mother sometimes thought of leaving, but it was a huge gamble to trade her current stability for something unknown. It was a risk she wasn’t willing to take—until an incident one evening forced her hand.