Chapter 2: THE LETTER
by Shireen Jeejeebhoy
She hesitates on the last step of the staircase, her right hand on the square newel post, its wood worn comfortingly smooth by many years of hands resting on it. It’s the mail on the scuffed wooden floor that’s stopped her. This morning’s letters are lying there, higgledy piggledy, in front of the rad with its slab of wood on top -- their hall table. And she wonders: why does Dad always drop half the letters on the floor when he brings in the mail? Why does he toss them, the ads too, toward their hall table? It’s like he doesn’t care that half fall on the floor. He goes around them as if they’re not there, just goes back to the kitchen like it doesn’t matter. Aban will pick them up.
“Yeah,” she mutters to herself, “I’ll pick em up.”
In all the years she’s come down the stairs and has automatically picked the mail up off the floor, this thought has not occurred to her. Now it’s followed by others: Is he, like, clumsy? Does he drop them deliberately 'cause she’ll pick them up anyway? It’s not like anyone else does it. It’s like it’s her job to pick them up and take them to Mom at the kitchen table. They’re never for her; she never looks through them first. Mom would be mad if she did. She shakes her head clean and moves again.
She bends down and, one by one, pokes her fingers underneath the letters’ edges until they’re all in her hand. She throws the ad mail into the scuffed recycling box at the side of the rad. She flips through the letters surreptitiously, quickly, and suddenly pauses. A bright white envelope with blue lettering stares up at her. It’s addressed to her, in her full name. It looks, it looks ... legal. She looks at the return address. “Myerstein and Associates at Law” it reads. From a Toronto address too, some place called “First Canadian Place.” Sounds posh and arrogant. What can it mean?
“Aban,” her mother cries down the hallway from her perch at the kitchen table. “Are you going to stare at those all day or bring me my mail?”
“Coming Mom.” She shakes her head and sorts the letters into an alphabetical pile for her mother, taps them even, picks them up in her right hand and carries her one letter in her left hand, slightly behind her back. She walks down the hall and places the pile squarely in front of her mother, who sets aside the section of the paper she was reading and takes them as is her due. Aban sits down in her chair and stares at the letter, forgetting to hide it underneath the table. She doesn't understand how she can have a letter addressed to her.
“Why are you staring at my mail?”
“It’s not for you.”
“Your father’s then.”
“It’s not for him neither.”
“It’s for you?”
“Yes.”
“Must I ask you twenty questions. Who from?”
“Some lawyer, some big law firm in Toronto.”
“Let me see.”
“No. It’s for me.”
“Aban, it’s best I look at it first. You never know what lawyers will send you, and I don’t want you being upset. Law firms in Toronto only mean trouble.”
Aban obeys Mom always but not today. She rips the letter open with her fingers, uncaring of the ragged edges. Astonishment doesn’t impair Mom’s reflexes. She lunges across the table for it but fails, as Dad flaps the paper he’s reading into a higher position. He reaches round the paper for his milk-drowned muesli with his spoon, scoops up a full spoonful, and brings it back round the paper without spilling a drop. A loud slurp emits from behind the Sports section. Aban glances over at him, and Mom almost gets the letter this time. Aban leans back fast, dangerously so, in her chair. She unfolds the letter and begins to read it silently, her lips moving.
Finished, Aban lowers the stark white sheet of paper to stare at Mom, who has both a furtive and angry look on her face. “Grandma was alive? You said she was dead.”
“No, you said it.”
“You never said different.”
“It’s not my fault you assumed.”
“But, but ... I was a kid.”
“You’re still a child.”
“I’m twenty.”
“You see, you talk like a child.”
“Why did you say she was dead?”
“I didn’t say it Aban, you did.” Mom settles back down into her seat and resumes spooning up her muesli in that careful way she has while lifting the top of the paper up from the table to ostensibly read it.
“Dad? Did you know she was alive?”
He doesn’t reply, just remains behind his paper.
She returns to the letter. “It says here that she died, like, this year, and, like, she left her, her entire estate to me.”
“What?” her parents chorus, dropping their papers and complacent expressions.
“She left all her stuff to me, including some house on some street in Toronto.”
“Well, you’re not going,” Mom declares firmly. Dad glances over at Mom expressionless, then lifts his paper back up to his face.
“We had nothing to do with that woman for a good reason Aban. And you won’t have anything to do with her now.”
Aban peers at the letter again. She feels something, some feeling she hasn’t felt before. It stirs in her, and she’s uncomfortable. She drops the letter down next to her plate. She gets up and moves to the kitchen counter. She takes the loaf of bread out of the bread drawer and hacks off a thick slice. She never can slice neatly; the edges are always messy. She senses Mom’s disapproval seeping through her back although Mom’s back is to her. No matter how much she tries, how many times Mom has shown her, she can’t slice bread. It’s the first and only thing Mom taught her to do in the kitchen. She bundles the loaf back into the bread drawer and places the slice into the shiny toaster oven. She shuts the lid and turns it on, turning her head away from the sight of her fingerprints on the silver-coloured metal. She waits. It dings, and she opens the oven to remove her slightly toasted slice of bread. She pulls a jar of cherry jam towards her, unscrews the lid, and knifes out some jam to spread on the toast. Uncharacteristically, she leaves the lid on the counter, the jammy knife next to it, and carries her toast back to her place at the kitchen table. Mom comments that it’s going to be another hot day and exclaims that it’s all the fault of climate change that they’ve had no rain this summer. She snaps the paper to punctuate her point. Aban drops the toast on her plate and lets it lay there as she stares at the open letter. Mom hadn’t removed it. Mom knows she won’t go.
But she wants to.
She shifts in her seat and takes a sip of the chicory Mom had poured out for her when her parents had sat down for breakfast earlier. As always, it’s lukewarm. But she barely notices. That letter is scorching her side vision. She picks up her toast and bites into it, jam spilling onto her hand. She keeps biting and chewing, biting and chewing until the toast is gone. She licks the jam off her hand.
“Aban!”
Aban grabs a wrinkled cloth napkin from the holder in the centre of the table and finishes wiping her hand. She drinks her chicory in one long pull. She bangs the mug down on the pine table with its scratches and dents and looks guiltily at Mom’s disapproving glare over her paper.
Aban wipes her hands back and forth on her worn khakis and peeps at the letter again, its two short edges sticking innocently up into the air, its middle flat on its back on the table. She wipes her hands again. She frowns and unwillingly picks it up.
The lawyer in high-falutin English explains that he is the Executor of her grandmother’s estate, the estate of her father’s mother. Her grandmother has left a substantial amount in funds, most of it residing in a savings account at some bank she’s not heard of. But then what does she know of banks; her parents do her banking for her. Well, Mom does. When Aban had first begun working at their shop in town, Mom had said to her that she’d hold onto her earnings to pay for rent and food for her own good. She’d acquiesced, for Mom was right all the time, and anyway Mom would never do something to harm her. Mom looked out for her, not like her other kids’ moms.
Then why didn’t she know her grandmother was alive, that she could’ve seen her anytime she got old enough to travel on her own?
But when has she travelled on her own anyway? Everyone knows she’s not old enough yet; she has to be in charge at the shop first and to save up. Besides, as Mom has told her many times, and Dad agrees, Toronto isn’t safe. Toronto is a bad place where people get mugged and cars run you over.
“I’m going,” Aban declares to the ceiling.
“What?”
“I’m going to Toronto, to see this lawyer about her, about my grandmother.”
“We’ve had this conversation already. Rip that letter up. You’re not going,” Mom flaps the paper back into a reading position to emphasize her point.
Aban looks over at Dad. He hasn’t moved, if anything his paper looks iced over.
“Dad? Should I go?”
“Do as Mom says Aban,” he mumbles at her through his paper. “She knows best in this. We had good reasons to keep you away from her, as Mom explained to you. Don’t stir things up now.” He resumes reading, or so she assumes.
“Look Aban, we’ve gone over this before.”
“Not with me.”
“We didn’t have to. We -- your father and I – discussed her back when you were little, after a particularly distressing visit from her. You were upset. And I won’t have you upset. She had been trying to push her views on to us, telling us all about her bourgeois ideas, and then she’d started talking to you about it. I told her expressly that she was not to talk to you about certain subjects, and she ignored me. I will not have anyone ignore my wishes. You are my daughter; I am the only one who decides what you will and will not learn about. I know what upsets you and what doesn’t. I didn’t want you learning about these things, being upset by things too old for you.”
“What things?” Aban doesn’t remember anything about her grandmother, yet she has the feeling she’d last seen her when she was nine years old. A memory floats up: she's performing a ritual for her dead grandmother. She's throwing flowers into a stream that runs in the woods behind their home. Mom’s sharp voice jerks her from that memory.
“None of your business.” Mom’s right hand, the one with the large opal ring on it, slaps down on the table. Aban jumps. “We made our position clear with her. She knew what our views were. I had moved your father away from that place, away from her. I didn’t want her influencing him or you at any time of day or night. Being further away from her, making it harder for her to see us was good. I could limit her visits that way. I told her that she could come visit us if she wanted to see you, but we did not have the time to visit her. We were busy opening up our new shop, setting up our lives here. But when she came, she had to obey our rules, and being out of her element, she had no choice. Or so I thought. If she wanted to see you, she had to obey me. I told her what subjects were off limits. I didn’t want her interfering and upsetting you. But she wouldn’t listen to me.”
Mom inhales sharply and leans forward. Her voice quavers with indignation. “She had the temerity to speak of Atasgah, against my express wishes, and she upset you, making you ask us all these questions, wanting to travel to Toronto to learn more, and ... and ... indulging those thoughts. I wasn’t having any of that. We had just opened up our shop and had ordered a full inventory with the money from your father’s inheritance from his father. It was stressful starting in a new place, alone. But we found peace in our little shop with its crystals and rune stones. We still have that lilac crystal, our first one, as a talisman to our new life. But whenever she came,” Mom pauses, anger sticking the words in her throat. She swallows. “Whenever she came, she shattered the peace we were so carefully building up. After she got through with you, all we heard from you were these arguments and questions. You were so upset. You were only nine, but she could get you riled up and asking questions, questions, questions. All these questions that I didn’t want to deal with! I shouldn’t have to deal with. Worse, she had the temerity to talk directly to you instead of through us. She was disturbing the peace of our home and our shop, so I warned her she could not come again if she continued. Your father was in agreement. He agreed with me that his mother couldn’t come over anymore, that our family was complete with him, me, and you. We were good enough for us, and she had to show us respect and to do things my way if she was to come into our family, to be part of our family -- else she would suffer being alone. Well, she didn’t get the message. She wouldn’t stop. She wouldn’t show me respect.” Mom pauses again, her chest heaving in indignation and rage. “So she suffered.” Mom settles back in her chair.
Aban sits, silent.
“Your father agreed with me. He told her not to come anymore. We weren’t going to have anything to do with her anymore. It was not our fault you assumed she’d died. It was easier that way anyway. It was better for you. Now rip up that letter.”
“Okay,” Aban says. The large, livid opal on Mom’s right ring finger mesmerizes her. It seems to be shooting tongues out at her. Mom had never known her own mother; this opal is her only link. She shivers.
Mom is watching her. Aban drops her eyes, licks her finger, and uses it to lift crumbs off her plate while she watches Mom watching her watching Mom covertly back until Mom, with a satisfied half-smile, disappears behind her section of the paper. Dad hasn’t moved; he hasn’t flipped a page of the paper he’s so avidly reading. Quickly, she slips the letter off the table and into one of her pants’ pockets and rips up the envelope loudly.