BEFORE I DIE, I PRAY TO BE BORN | ✓

▬▬ 34

FRIDAY
15.11.1996
DORIAN

               Ima lounges on the daybed by the unlit fireplace reading a recent volume of Tradition. The sight of her is a faulty defibrillator: it kicks my heart rate up only to calcify the muscle altogether and my blood is stripped of oxygen.

'Madam,' Tanvi's voice echoes in my ears, 'the youngest Mr Andrade has arrived.' She bows herself out of the room and I stifle a cry for her to stay (how can she smile when she delivers me to saber-teeth?).

I stand at the archway of a court room, shaking head to toe, whilst Ima does nothing to acknowledge me. With no hint of urgency, she continues to read and I wait, each second a strike against my spine. The clocks here have truncheons in place of hands. The world runs on my mother's time.

They must have recently returned from synagogue; Aba is nowhere in sight, meaning he's doing his normal tour of the house to check all the lights we'll need in the next twenty-four hours are on and the ones we won't need are off. This he always does himself though it's the kind of chore considered demeaning for the man of the house.

Ima finally shuts her magazine. She places it on the side table, sits up with effortless elegance, and looks at me.

Her nose crinkles and though I drop my gaze to the floor, I can feel hers on me like a film of glue that pinches as it dries. She scans me from the tarnished tips of my multi-coloured Adidas, up my loose jeans, to the hole in the collar of my striped t-shirt, and lands on my white silk kippah embroidered with birds and flowers.

'You look homeless.'

I want to tell her that considering she shipped me to America and told me not to come back, in a way, I am homeless. That during holidays when we have to leave our university accommodations, I am homeless. I want to tell her I like the way I dress now, that I don't care what it looks like because I'm finally comfortable in my skin. The seams on these clothes may be one tug from unravelling but they aren't bulked with powder bleach, they don't come with fishing lines that wind so tight over my chest I can't breathe or hooks that sink into my muscle to command me like a marionette. I want to—

'I'm sorry.'

'I know you weren't intending to wear jeans for Shabbat, Dorian.'

'I... didn't pack— I didn't plan on coming here.' My voice scrapes my throat like nails on chalkboard.

Ima's gaze returns to my kippah. It's the only one I brought with me so I had no other option, but as her lip curls, I realise it would have been less of a transgression if I entered the house without one. (Stupid idiot, what was I thinking? How did I think it a good idea to enter my parents' den with a kippah so obviously reformist?)

With a sceptical hum, she gets to her feet. Ima herself is dressed in a modest but elegant caftan, one of the many she keeps exclusive to Shabbat, her hair covered with a matching scarf.

'I was told you had grown. You look like you've shrunk, though that may be the illusion of these rags you call attire.'

Without expecting a response, she walks out of the room and I know to follow. I scurry at her heels like a dog follows its master. My heart throbs behind my throat.

My bedroom looks exactly as it did when I lived here. That's not a statement about them preserving my presence but one about the fact I never had a presence at all.

Ima opens the wardrobe and picks out a suit, plain and sleek. 'We had this made for you.'

Something happens to my insides when I hear that. They were so confident I would come? Someone was watching me long enough to assume new measurements? Why would she bother spending the money on me? Though the pockets are empty, I know the suit comes with a contract I'll have to sign without reading the terms.