Writings / Fiction: Tashania Colquhoun

I tried to do my homework, but it was impossible to focus. I wasted the hours tossing a tennis ball above my head, doodling in my binder and writing in my diary, all the while circling my thoughts and feeling sorry for myself. Who was this man and what was he doing here? When did she get married? Why didn’t she tell me? There was a knock on my door. My mother asked if I wanted something to eat. I answered no and tried to return to the calculus laid out on my desk. I had only half-heartedly worked my way through one question when I heard footsteps padding down the hall and the soft click of my mother’s door being closed. I sat up tense and silent in the darkness, my stomach in knots over what would come next. It was only a few minutes before moans massaged the walls and the squeaky springs of my mother’s bed began to strike off-key chords. I put my headphones on, pressed play on my CD player and turned up the volume while I fumed at her betrayal. How could she do this to me? I don’t know this person from Adam. Finally, anger simmered to sadness and tears soaked the pillowcase as I tried to muffle my cries with my face pressed deep into the pillow.

I awoke to a loud growl in the hollows of my stomach. My cheek was sticky and crusted from drool and dried tears. I peeled myself out of bed, wondering what time it was. The hallway and living room were bathed in dark and shadows, the glow of the full moon casting just enough light to see my way to the kitchen. There was a take-out container left on the counter, “Dee” written in black marker across the Styrofoam lid. I opened the container to find rice and peas and oxtail, my favourite, with a spoon’s round impression left in the bed of rice and a crater in the mound of meat, where someone had clearly removed a piece of oxtail. Though my mother and I often shared food, deliberately ordering two different meals just so that we could try each other’s, I was disgusted and threw the entire container out and made myself a cheese and jam sandwich instead, which I took out onto the balcony.

Outside, the stars were dull specks in the haze of streetlamps and lit rooms scattered in buildings so tall they seemed to touch the sky. Voices rustling in the wind, heels clicking on the concrete, honking horns and humming engines breathed life into the night air. With my elbows balancing on the rusted railing, I chewed silently so that I could relish the familiar sounds of my neighbourhood. On nights when my mother worked overtime, I would leave the window open, so that noise would come pouring into my room, drowning out the fear-filled silence of loneliness. When I finished my sandwich, I pitched the crusts over the balcony and watched them fall to the ground, inches away from the garbage bins. Damn, I missed. I returned to bed, feeling better and more hopeful for tomorrow. Maybe I’ll wake up and he’ll be gone, I thought. Maybe, this is just temporary. She’ll realize she doesn’t like him and send him back, like an impulsive buy returned the next day.

But it wasn’t temporary at all. When I awoke, even though I did not see him, I knew that he was still there, sleeping in while my mother dressed for work and I got ready for school. Shhh, she said as I noisily removed a bowl from the cupboard. He’s sleeping, she said. I recoiled from her hug at the front door and stepped on the shiny toe of his loafers with my scruffy sneakers, grinding the pattern of my sole into the leather, half by accident, half on purpose. My mother scowled and shooed me away before fetching a piece of paper towel, which she moistened with her spit and used to wipe away the scuff. I rolled my eyes and left without saying goodbye. She leaned her head out into the hallway and hissed my name. You better check that attitude, she said. You have no manners – leaving without so much as a word. I told her that I said goodbye, without turning around. You just didn’t hear me. I pressed the elevator button and waited with my back still facing her. Look at me when I’m talking to you, she whispered harshly. Thankfully, the elevator came and it was empty. I immediately rushed inside and pressed the close button repeatedly until the steel doors slid shut. I exhaled finally, feeling as though I had been holding my breath since the stranger’s arrival. I tilted my head back and blinked away the tears welling in my eyes.

In spite of all my earnest prayers, when I returned home from school he was sprawled in the couch watching some reality judge show, his cotton robe splayed open, revealing his hairy chest and plaid boxers. He glanced back when he heard the door slam behind me, but returned his attention to the TV after only a slight nod. Cigarette smoke scented the air as wisps of smoke curled from a freshly outted butt on a coaster turned ashtray. Wait till my mother finds out, I thought as I unlaced my shoes. I grumbled hi as I torpedoed to my room, afraid that he’d tell my mother that I was being rude. And although I tried to be strong, the tears fought their way to the surface and I found myself lying face down, crying into the pillow again. I waited up to hear my mother tear him a new one when she came home and found out what he had done to her wooden coaster, but there was only tenderness and warmth in her voice – she never even brought it up. I kept thinking, if it had been me…

It went on like this for weeks. I would come home and head straight to my room, where I would waste away the hours barely doing any homework and receding into a dark place of yearning and hatred for my mother. On the weekends, I spent the mornings at the library and the afternoons wandering the streets, perching on park benches to people watch or read a few pages of a novel. Before, my mother had set strict curfew rules, but now she was too preoccupied to notice when I strolled in half an hour, sometimes even a whole hour later than allowed. Meals were eaten with as few words as I could get away with, without being technically accused of having a rotten attitude. By the third week, I cried my final tears and coloured pages of my diary with black ink; the stranger was here to stay.

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