Page 89 of Kiwi Gold
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Laila
Long John trotted to the front door and barked. Just once, a lowWoof,his hairy white ears pricked up. After that, he loped into my bedroom and stood, his head on one side, listening.
I didn’t wonder why. I’d heard the door opening and closing, the sound of Lachlan’s footfalls. He was home.
I stood there myself, my hand outstretched, touching the bedroom wall, listened with all my focus, and heard nothing. Which felt wrong.
Why? I couldn’t even have said. Something was making my heart beat harder, though, and it wasn’t anticipation. It was dread. There was too much wrong, and it didn’t feel like rebuilding the drawbridge on my sandcastle. It felt like the next wrong thing was about to smash down and hit me in the head, like that tile in the bath.
I flashed back, for some reason, to a warm summer night like this one. I’d taken the bus home from Poppy’s house, then walked from the stop, my steps leaden, my school bag heavy on my shoulder. I’d had new togs that day, and had swum with Poppy in her parents’ oversized pool, keeping one eye out for thirteen-year-old Jax, who was already tall and already beautiful. At dinner, Poppy had teased him about his crush, a tall, fit blonde on the netball team, telling him, “I saw her writing both of your names on the inside cover of her notebook. She loves you, too. Who knows? Maybe you’ll get married someday. Maybe she’s the great love of your life.”
He’d grinned, seeming not at all abashed, and my heart had sunk so low, it was in my shoes. And, yes, my mother was ill at this time, but the blow to my romantic non-prospects had hit harder.
Maybe that was normal, though. I’d swear that Yasmin had been more crushed about Monk this morning than she’d been about Kegan last weekend. Or, if I were honest, after he’d died, because how well had she known him, really? Or maybe children instinctively shielded themselves from hurting in the worst ways, and focused the hurt instead on losses they could bear. You couldn’t fathom losing your father at age five, or losing your mother at fourteen. You could cry over your monkey, though, then work for half the morning, with Priya’s help, on sewing up his mangled leg and attaching it again, and feel your world turning right-side up.
And you could cry over a boy instead of your mother’s cancer, because your mother took up half your sky, and losing her would be nothing but terrifying blankness, exactly where your certainty should be. It would mean your world upside down.
That night, when I’d been fourteen, and so sad? I’d come in, had kissed Mama and Baba good night, told them I was tired, and gone to bed with the desolation sitting like a hard, hot ball in my chest. And fifteen minutes later, when I was staring into the dark, the tears rolling down my temples and soaking the sheets, Mama had knocked softly on the door, then come inside to sit on the edge of my bed. Her dark hair was plaited at the side and fell to her hips, and her dressing gown was a lavish, deep purple silk brocade, the blue flowers woven into the fabric shot through with silver thread. Purple for mystery and for Ramadan, she’d told me, when she’d pulled it from its box after that solemn month had ended. A gift from her own mother, and in it, she looked like the princess her parents had hoped she’d be.
“What is it,ya habibti?What’s made you so sad?”she asked, smoothing my hair back from my face in the glow of the nightlight that I’d started turning on again lately. I wasn’t scared of the dark anymore. I was scared of my thoughts when I woke.
How could I tell her what I’d been crying over? My concerns felt small, and so selfish. At the same time, the lines of strain on her face, her hollowed-out cheekbones, filled me with dread, and now, I sobbed.
“Ya albi,”she said, gathering me into her.My heart,it meant. “Tell me what it is, so I can share it.”
I said, barely getting the words out, “I should be sad about you. That you’re ill. And Iamsad about you. I am!”
“I know you are,” she said, “but that isn’t always the way hearts work. Hearts have so much room for love, but so much room for pain, too. The pain comes because of the love. Tell me what’s causing your pain tonight.”
When I did, the words halting, my eyes burning anew at my foolishness, the hopelessness of what I felt, she didn’t laugh. I said, “I know it’s probably not real. Not real love, I mean. But itfeelsreal.”
She answered, “Feelings are always real, but they’re not always true. Right now, you feel as if you’ll never be happy again. The darkness is real, but it will pass. You have a tender heart, a beautiful heart, and it was made to love. ‘Never’ feels true, but it isn’t. Remember that. The sun always comes up in the morning.”
“What if …” I tried to say. “What if …”
“You can tell me,” she said. “You can ask me.”
“What if you … die?” I could barely get the last word out.
In answer, she held me closer, her hand passing over my hair, my cheek, leaving her love behind. “Then,” she said, “you’ll have to carry me in your heart. But your heart is strong, and it has room.”
Feelings are always real, but they’re not always true.
Why was I thinking about this now? Because there was still no sound on the other side of the wall, and there should be.
He hadn’t called me, though. He’d barely texted me. How could I let myself want somebody, again, who didn’t want me back? Or couldn’t want me enough, not in the way I needed to be wanted?
You understand the pain of others,the fortuneteller had said, her huge, heavily lined eyes full of compassion.But I think you take care, these days, that it doesn’t become your pain, hmm? Too much care, maybe. You build walls around your too-tender heart, but you are alone behind them.
Even as I hesitated, I knew what I was going to do. I went to the tiny closet and shoved the clothes aside until I found it, there at the back. A silk brocade dressing gown, in deep purple with blue flowers woven into the rich fabric, shot through with silver thread. Something I never wore, because I wanted to preserve it, but I needed it now. I tied the belt and thought,Your heart is strong, and it has room. Not just room for your pain. Room for somebody else’s, too.
Where was that dread coming from? I was sure, somehow, that there was pain on the other side of that wall, and I needed to set my own fears aside and find out.
I stuck my feet into jandals and slipped out the back door.
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