Sleeping Awake (15 page)

“We haven’t seen each other in
a week, Noira. Have your feelings for me simmered?” he leaned casually against
my bedpost and took another sip of his coffee.

If anything, they’d only grown
stronger.

 “It’s barely been four
weeks,” I said.

“And your point is what
exactly?” he asked. If he had yawned, I wouldn’t have been surprised. Nothing
that I was saying could get through his thick scull.

“You can’t allow yourself to
love me in only four weeks,” I said. To prevent myself from slapping his
obstinate head, I gathered the remains of our breakfast and placed them into
the bag that they came in.

“Says who? The girl who’s
scared to be in a relationship?” Nicolaas folded his arms.

“I’m not—”

Before I could say anything,
he had bridged the gap between us and taken the bag out of my hands. I watched
as it fell to the floor. He pulled me into his arms.

“Don’t lie.”

I breathed in his scent, once
again feeling its calming effect.

“Why are you holding back?” he
asked.

My eyes fluttered as he tucked
a loose strand of hair behind my ear. My skin burned under his touch.

“I’m not going to hurt you,
Noira. I just want to be with you.”

“But
you barely know me,” I replied. “How can you know that you can love me?”

“I
know enough about you to make that decision. If you’d just stop running away
from me, you’d see what I meant.”

“How?”

“You’d start feeling the same way.”

“After
four weeks?”

“Stop
it,” he commanded, softly.

 “You’ve never been in
love,” I pointed out.

“So what? I want to fall in
love with you—hell, I may already have.”

“In four weeks?”

He groaned. “So what if it’s
been barely four weeks?”

I felt like something had
lodged itself in my windpipe. Unable to control myself, I started to shake.
Before I knew it, I was once again crying a river. Nicolaas lifted me up and
brought me to the bed. He didn’t say anything as I lay there in spasms; he just
held me.

I wasn’t sure if my episode
had been brought on because of the withdrawal or the fact that my emotional
attachment to Nicolaas was so unsettling to my nervous system. Either way, once
I managed to gain control of myself, I was mortified.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered.

Nicolaas kissed my neck. “You
have nothing to apologise about.”

“You’re just being nice,” I
said, sniffling.

“Stop beating yourself up,
Noira.”

I pulled away and sat up,
burying my head in my lap. “Bryn says that this is because of my father.”

“I would have to agree with
him,” Nicolaas replied.

I looked up. “You think that I
have Daddy Issues?”

“Every woman has Daddy
Issues,” Nicolaas said. “Either they’re running away from any man who reminds
them of their father, or they’re trying to find someone like him.”

“And what about you,” I asked.
“Are you running away from your mother or trying to find her?”

“Neither,” he calmly replied.
“I snorted and fucked my way through those issues during my university years.”

I laughed. I knew that he was
being serious, but I could not control myself. I laughed so hard that fresh
tears ran down my face. If only I had his courage. He didn’t seem to give a
damn about what anyone thought of him, his past or how he chose to live his
life. He simply accepted himself, flaws and all, and chose to live instead of
existing.

“It must be fun to be you,” I
said, finally calming down.

He shrugged. “For the most
part. It’s not so fun when you’ve stripped yourself emotionally in front of a
woman and she leaves you hanging by a thread, waiting to see if you’ve made a
fool of yourself…”

I kissed his cheek and curled
into him. “You haven’t made a fool of yourself. You just chose to enter my Mad
House.”

“And what caused you to build
one?”

“You mean what’s my Daddy
Issue?”

“Precisely.”

 “He used to be my favourite
person in the world, but he abandoned me when I was twelve, and now I think
that every man will be like him and leave me—The usual.”

Nicolaas turned my face
towards his. I barely felt it as his lips brushed against mine, but it was as
if I had been shocked by a jolt of electricity.

“I think that I’ve proven to
you that I have no intention of going anywhere.”

I didn’t reply.

“Mooi,” he whispered.

I looked up at him.

“I’m not your father.”

“My father wasn’t always an
asshole,” I replied. “People change.”

“Stop it, Noira,” he said.
“I’m trying to be very patient, but you make it very hard sometimes. You cannot
spend your life assuming that everyone will leave you in the end. I have no
immediate plans of abandoning either you or our potential future children. You
can either take the risk and have this turn into something great, or you can
sit here in your room brooding over a man who was stupid enough to leave you
and cut himself from your life.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

“Essentially, it is simple.
Make a choice and stick by it. Either allow your father to dictate the terms of
your life and your happiness or take control and start living.”

I hadn’t thought of it that
way. A part of me was inclined to believe that Nicolaas was right. I could
either start living or try to protect myself and remain unhappy. But what if it
wasn’t so simple?
Was
Philippe controlling my life? My immediate gut
response was “Yes.”

“What are we doing, Noira?”
Nicolaas asked. Based on his tone of voice, and the look of gravity on his
face, I knew that my answer would either send him away forever or make him
stay, roaring thunder and all.

I thought of the look in his
eyes as they met mine. How he only paid attention to me when we went out. The
smile that appeared on his face whenever I walk into the room.

“Mooi.”

I looked at him properly for
the first time since he entered the room, without the anger and the suffocating
fear.

“You make me feel safe,” I
whispered. “I don’t think that I’ve ever felt this safe with anyone. I saw you
in that hot tub, and it felt like I was coming home. I felt as if I’d always
known you. Now that we’re so sewn together, I’m scared about what will happen
to me if we break up.”

“We’re not going to break up,”
Nicolaas said. If there were a physical definition of serious, it would be him.

“You don’t know that,” I
replied.

“Mooi,” he sighed. “What are
we doing?”

That would be the final one. I
wasn’t sure if I’d be able to do it, but I knew that I wasn’t ready to let
Nicolaas go.

If it was to be hell, I
decided, then it would be hell.

“Learning how to fall in
love.”

**~*~*~**~*~*~**

The following Sunday, my room
door burst open and Cienna came running inside. I was about to give her a
verbal whiplashing that would send her scampering back to wherever she came
from when I saw how anxious she was.

“Qu'est-ce que c'est?”
I asked.
I was trying to untangle the
unruly knots in my hair.

“Your mother is cleaning,” she
announced.

I rolled my eyes.

“The house is clean,” Cienna
continued. “The maid came yesterday, remember?”

I shrugged. “Maybe she’s
bored.”

Cienna groaned and fell
backwards onto my bed. “When was the last time that you saw your mother clean
the house? She
never
cleans.”

I opened my mouth to protest,
but she was right. In the month that I’d been home, she hadn’t so much as taken
out the garbage.

I set the comb down on down on
my vanity.
“What
do you think it might be?” I asked, joining her on the bed.

She shrugged. “I don’t know… A
man called a couple of days ago…”

My eyes widened.
“Un mec?
You
don’t think...”

“What?”

I shook my head furiously.
“Mais
non. Ce n’est pas possible…”

“Spit it out already!” Cienna
demanded. “What’s not possible?”

“Peut-être elle a un copin?”
I finally said.

Cienna burst out laughing.
“Nice try, Noira, she’ll never date again. Not after...”

“Fuck
him,” I retorted. “She can date if she wants to.”

“Yeah,
but she hasn’t,” Cienna pointed out.

As
far as we knew, Maman hadn’t so much as flirted with another man.

“What
could it be?” Cienna kicked my bedpost.

“Hey!”
I snapped.

“Sorry,”
Cienna frowned. “I just hate not knowing what’s going on!”

The door to my room opened and
Camelea walked in.
Maman followed
. She was as solemn as a Buddhist
monk as she stood in the doorway. I glanced at Camelea for answers. She raised an
eyebrow at me and sat on the edge of the bed. Cienna had been right; something
was going on.

When Maman didn’t speak right
away, I started tugging on the bedspread to avoid squirming. She didn’t look
sad, she didn’t look happy; she didn’t look like anything.

Finally, she opened her mouth
to speak. “We’ll be having a guest for dinner tomorrow evening.”

*~*

I’d be lying if I said that I
was surprised when
Maman
announced that Philippe would be joining
us for dinner. I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t feel. There was a
slight buzzing in my ears as the silence that followed bounced between us like
a stray tennis ball.

Maman
seemed oblivious to the change in the
atmosphere as she continued. “He’s been living in Garden City for the past
year. He wants to see you girls.”

I hadn’t thought about what it
would be like when Philippe finally returned. After we left France, I didn’t
imagine such a thing was possible. I wasn’t surprised when the volcano of our
mixed emotions finally erupted and spewed curdled anger everywhere.

“Suh wah? Because him sin dem
a bite him, wi fi pretend seh everyting alright?”

The buzzing grew louder as
Cienna used a Jamaican phrase for Philippe being on bad terms with his
conscience.
Maman
looked appalled by her utterance.

“Cienna Saint Clair, I don’t
know where you’ve gotten that little attitude of yours from, but you need to
drop it. Fast.”

“What are you not telling us?
Why now?” Cienna barked. Gone was the carefree woman who beamed for the camera
and sashayed down runways in diamonds and furs. Anyone who looked into Cienna’s
eyes could easily see the little girl, curled up into a ball and crying along
with Camelea and myself as we waited in the dark for someone to come and tell
us that it had all been a joke—Philippe hadn’t left us, and Maman hadn’t
refused to see us.

Maman returned her laser-like
glare. “There is something else, but you’ll find that out after dinner. And
yes, I expect all of you to be at the table this evening. He is your father and
you
will
be present.”

Cienna snorted. “He’s more of
a sperm donor than he’s a father.”

“Call him whatever you want,
Cienna. You’re still going to have to see him for a few days. All of you.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “You said
that he was coming over to dinner. How does dinner turn into a few days?”

“That will be discussed
tomorrow night. Until then, try to act with extreme maturity.” The last
statement was directed at Cienna. Maman’s eyes rested on her for a few seconds
before she disappeared through the door.

I remained on my bed with my
head against the bedpost long after the others had gone. The buzzing in my ear
was incessant and seemed to fill the room. Grey spots danced before my eyes,
until they merge and everything became black.

Of course Philippe would
appear when I was finally coming to terms with my issues and attempting
normalcy with Nicolaas. Why wouldn’t he time his entrance so that he could
screw with our heads again?

It was only seven-thirty at
that point, but I didn’t care. I went to bed.

*~*

If I hadn’t known any better,
I would have mistaken Maman for one of the more extreme cases at Golden Ridge.
Mumbling under her breath and glancing slyly at the crockery that was
conspiring against her, Maman belonged in a straight jacket with a nurse who
never left her side.

As requested, we had all
showed up for dinner the next evening and were sitting in the parlour watching
her across the hall as she flittered about the dining room. A glass almost
dropped from her shaking hands. None of us attempted to help her.

When the doorbell rang, my
sisters and I grabbed the couch in synchronized movement. I felt like a severe
anaemic, but no amount of iron consumption would correct my weakness.

The doorbell rang again.

Maman
slammed a glass onto the table. “Will
one of you please get the door?” She screamed.

Maman
never raised her voice.

Cienna sucked her teeth in a
long, slow manner and began examining her nails. The fear in her eyes could
have burned a hole through her flesh. Camelea paled; the whites of her knuckles
were even more pronounced as they tightened around the edges of the cushion
that she clung to. Clearly, I would have to be the one to answer the door. Like
a heavily pregnant woman, I pulled myself up from the sofa and walked out of
the parlour.

When I was younger, I used to
wonder what it would be like when I eventually saw my father. They were
fantasies really, figments of a lonely girl’s imagination. We’d wake up one
morning to a letter sent by express mail telling us that he was miserable and
that he was coming to get us. He’d arrive that afternoon, and we’d forgive him
because after all, everyone made mistakes. We’d all sleep together in Maman’s
bed like we sometimes did when I was a child. Philippe would hold Maman the way
that he used to, as if she were the last beacon of light in the world and if he
blinked, she’d disappear and he’d be eternally consumed by the darkness.

Fantasies, however, are for
children, and I eventually grew up. I stopped thinking about Philippe and our
life in France. It’s a horrible moment when you realise that your father isn’t
coming back.

My hands shook as I opened the
door. I took a deep breath and swung it open before my courage failed me. The
man before me was awkward, like a shy homecoming king pushed to the front of
the parade. He bore a nervous, lop-sided grin that appeared to be hastily
sketched onto his face.

After all these years, he
still looked as I had remembered him. Not even the specks of greys in his
otherwise brown hair and the faint traces of crow’s feet around his eyes could
have diminished the boyish charm that he always had. I could easily see why
Maman fell for him; his face was as charming as it was handsome. Our eyes met,
and mine widened with the realization that despite all this, I had missed him.

“Noira,” he spoke.

It was the same voice that
used to tell me that I had done wonderfully after he presented me with flowers
at my ballet recitals. He used to call me
danseuse étoile
, his prima
ballerina, and I’d smile, fantasizing about the day when I’d be centre stage.

“
Dan
…”

Whatever I felt for him
disappeared. I jumped backwards, stung by his attempt to touch my hair.

“Don’t call me that,” I
hissed. “I gave up dancing.”

His forehead resembled a flow
chart with lines going every which way. “But you loved dancing.”

“I’ve stopped loving a lot of
things.” 

“Oh.” His voice dropped to a
whisper. His eyes no longer met mine.

“I’ll take your jacket,” I
announced. “You may go on through to the parlour.”

Wordlessly, he shrugged out of
his jacket and handed it to me. As I opened the door to the coatroom and hung
up his jacket, a single tear escaped. I quickly wiped it away. I kept my
distance as I followed behind him and took my seat beside Camelea.

We weren’t exactly the most
optimistic bunch, having somehow managed to be coordinated in all-black
ensembles. His eyes ran slowly from myself to Camelea, then onto Cienna. Cienna
jumped up, as if being attacked by biting ants, and fled. Camelea ran behind
her. Saint Camelea, always the one to try and save the day.

Maman
went back to nervously setting the
table. Philippe dropped into an armchair. He tugged at his collar and loosened
the top button. Maman’s nerves must have really been frayed, because she forgot
to offer him something to drink. I sure as hell was not about to. I stared at
him, as uncomfortable as I knew that he already was. I knew that it would make
him even more so; I wanted it to.  

“Cienna got sick by your
sight,” I informed him.

He swallowed and ran a hand
through his brown locks. “I know.”

“Can you really blame her?” I
pressed. “After all, there’s no one in this world that she hates more than you,
and yet she’s been walking around all these years proudly bearing your
features.”

Something heavy banged against
the kitchen floor. Philippe looked through the dining room and at the swinging
doors that led to the kitchen, then back at me.

“I suppose that you’re
correct.” He fidgeted with his tie.

“You suppose?” I raised an
eyebrow.

He cleared his throat and
crossed his legs. “No, I don’t blame her, or any of you girls for that matter.”

“As if you could ever have an
effect on me,” I sniffed.

Cienna and Camelea re-entered
the room. Cienna looked very much like a drooping lily as she was helped onto
the sofa and had her dress straightened out for her by Mother Hen. Philippe
looked at her, eyes brimming with concern. He probably remembered those Sundays
after church when she’d curl up in his lap and take a nap before we left for
the return trip to Paris. He used to have that look on his face as he watched
her sleep, as if scared that she’d somehow fall and hurt herself.

“Are you okay?” Philippe
asked.

The colour returned to her
cheek, and her eyes narrowed. “Don’t you think that you should have thought
about whether or not I’d be okay
before
you left?”

“I…”

Cienna sucked her teeth and
rolled her eyes. It was a very unladylike thing to do, especially in front of
Philippe who, from what I could remember, was all for being well-mannered.
Camelea, reminiscent of a dog at a shelter, begged with her hungry eyes for
Philippe to take her home and shower her with love.

“Just leave me alone.” Cienna
closed her eyes, wincing slightly at whatever image may have formed in her
head.

Philippe’s eyes mirrored her
pain as he silently heeded to her command.

“À table!”
Maman appeared. She was
wearing a dress that clung to her and accentuated her features. It was red, a
colour that always looked good on her. Any other time, I would have
complimented her on her appearance, but not tonight. Tonight she was Judas, and
unlike Jesus, I didn’t forgive those who betrayed me.

“It smells wonderful,”
Philippe said, standing.

Beside me, Cienna pretended to
gag again. I took her hand as we walked into the living room.

I remembered the last time
that the five of us sat down for a meal together. It was late April. My sisters
and I were sitting at the dining table waiting for
Maman
to come
and join us when Philippe showed up. He was always busy during the week, so
after breakfast, we wouldn’t see him again until bedtime, when he came to tell
us goodnight. I should have known that something was wrong when the both of
them joined us for dinner.