Make or Break

I dragged myself off the plane and through the rigmarole of baggage collection, passport control and onto the tube without engaging with any of it. Is it possible to have your mind racing without actually thinking about anything? Fragments of thoughts came to me: Jimmy’s face when we said goodbye the first, second, third and final time; Dad’s young kids and how they looked at him; Dad’s young kids(?!); Pete and his eagerness to get back to Goat (Giselle); that super-large crepe from the market, shark flags, Ian in his white NSYNC outfit, Diego saying Jimmy liked me, Ian’s cologne, Diego’s pancakes, gluten day, Jimmy’s face on gluten day, Pete’s face on confession day. Dad and his kids. Dad and his kids. Dad and his god damned kids . . .

I stood on the tube, my bag between my feet and my winter coat, which had been in in my suitcase, weighing heavily on my shoulders. It made me feel burdened and cumbersome after the last two weeks of shorts, flip-flops and summer vests. As the movement of the carriage jolted me back and forth I began to feel more awake and questions popped into my head. Are those kids my half-brother and sister? Did the little girl look a bit like a blonde Annabelle? Dad draws vaginas? Does he have a model? Was that woman with the thin hands his wife and vagina model? Was Mum ever his vagina model? Why in Christ’s holy pyjamas do I have to contend with THAT mental picture?! The thin hand woman had a big diamond on her finger. Mum had never worn such extravagance, preferring to give money to those more needy (generally an obscure charity that nobody ever donated to, like ‘slam poetry counselling’ or ‘save the British house spider’ even though most people were busy flushing the things down the plughole) – so why did that woman get a big diamond? Did Dad know he had a second family? It sounded ridiculous but Dad was a little vague at the best of times. Perhaps he had some kind of weird affliction that caused a person to live a double life without ever fully knowing it? Maybe it was a new kind of brain tumour that, once diagnosed, would be named after him, and our family situation would end up in a celebrated oncology dissertation? Thoughts such at these flew in and out, but nothing stayed in my mind long enough to fully explore.

One hour and four train changes later I arrived at Annabelle’s. I walked in and fell into her delicate arms, relishing the familiar smell of her Sunday-morning special: cinnamon and coconut porridge. Katie, in pink flannel pyjamas, ran over followed by the thundering footsteps of Hunter.

‘AUNTY JESS!!’ He screeched.

Katie made excited squeals.

‘Kiss sandwich?’ I said, crouching down, and each of my flight-parched cheeks received a giggly kiss.

I was desperate for a Katie cuddle. I scooped her up. In the past I thought there was nothing a Katie cuddle couldn’t solve but now, with her unyielding arms around my neck, I wasn’t so sure. Tears trickled down my cheeks.

‘So,’ I said, leaning forward and setting my coffee on the polished coffee table fifteen minutes later. I sank into my favourite spot on the sofa, where the cushions were neatly lined up instead of in their usual haphazard manner. Hunter and Katie sat on the floor occupied with the gifts I’d given them. ‘How are we going to tell Mum?’

‘We just tell her.’ Annabelle curled her legs under her in the armchair opposite and spoke over the top of her mug of herbal tea, the steam curling past her delicate nostrils. ‘What else can we do?’

I nodded and wondered how Mum would react. She was nearly seventy and she’d been with Dad most of her life.

‘Where’s Pete?’ Annabelle said.

I looked at her strangely then realised I hadn’t even told her about him cheating and staying in Cape Town to find himself, become an internet sensation and fuck Giselle.

I huffed out an angry exhale. ‘You know this trip, apart from Priya’s wedding and shagging Jimmy, was a complete disaster.’

While Hunter helped Katie do a puzzle on Hunter’s bedroom floor, Annabelle and I sat in the living room. I told my sister about seeing Pete kissing Giselle on Goat’s Instagram, about Jimmy at the festival saying he really liked me and how I’d turned him down, about the rainy day on the sofa that ended up in an afternoon of unbelievable sex (which technically wasn’t cheating because Pete cheated first and fuck him, anyway). Then I got distracted by describing Giselle and her airbrushed-like skin and said I was growing out my fringe and that Botox actually sounded kind of harmless, and somehow ended up on how pissed off I was that I got sat next to a man on the plane who had Alzheimer’s and kept tapping his wife to ask the same questions over and over, keeping me awake. I’d felt bad about being annoyed by the Alzheimer’s man and spent the rest of the plane ride worrying that I’d end up with Alzheimer’s myself, which would be the universe’s way of punishing me for being intolerant. Annabelle’s expression told me I hadn’t had enough sleep and needed to calm down. I turned down her offer of a ‘smoothie’ and went into the kitchen and ditched the coffee for camomile tea.

Around 2 p.m., as I napped on the sofa, the sound of a van door sliding shut alerted us to Mum’s arrival. Annabelle and I gave each other a fortifying look, then went outside to greet her.

‘Oh my deary dears, hello!’ she said, leaping out of the van and gripping me in a bony hug. She smelt faintly of ylang ylang and vegetable stock. ‘You look so well! And tanned. Why are you tanned? Where’ve you been?’ She frowned. ‘Did you leave Annabelle on her own? Did you use sunscreen? You know that stuff is full of chemicals, don’t you? It’s best to just wear long sleeves and a big hat.’

‘Hi Mum,’ Annabelle said, taking the suitcase from the driver who looked only too keen to dump and run. I imagined Mum had gabbed the poor man’s ears to bleeding point after being silent for so long.

Mum spun around. ‘Oh my dear Belle-belle, have you coped? Did Jess leave you? I’m so sorry I stayed away longer, I had my eyes opened to the guilt we all carry and I had to do some serious inner work. Did Wayne call you? Where are my delicious grandchildren?’

We hustled Mum out of the cold, let Katie and Hunter leap all over her, chuckled at their faces when presented with dreamcatchers made of foraged plant matter, then Annabelle set them up in Hunter’s bunk bed with a movie and the three of us made tea in the kitchen.

‘Can we make you something to eat?’ I asked Mum. ‘A sandwich?’

‘We have grain-free bread?’ Annabelle offered.

Mum flapped her wrinkly hands. ‘No, no, no,’ she said. ‘I don’t eat like that any more.’

‘Like what?’ I said.

‘Like that: this lettuce, with that tomato, with that bread, with this chicken. The body doesn’t know what to do with all the different things at the same time! Oh, the poor body. It’s called Mono Meal-ing. I’ll tell you all about it. No, I shall just have the tomatoes, please, if you have them. And the lettuce a little later.’

‘Right.’

While Annabelle got the tomatoes I made tea, then we moved to the living room, Mum chatting about the benefits of eating only one food item at each meal, giving the body the respect it deserves while it performs the ‘wondrous, delicately balanced art of digestion’.

‘You know, you can actually feel your body responding to the nutrients if you have them one by one,’ Mum said, taking a seat at one end of the sofa. ‘Now are you going to tell me where you had to go that was so important you left Annabelle on her own?’ She frowned at me again.

I sat at the opposite end and turned to face her. ‘Mum, we have something to tell you.’

‘Is it about Katie?’ Mum’s face paled and she drew a worried palm to her pendant.

‘No! Nothing like that. Katie’s been doing really well, hasn’t she, Annabelle?’

‘Really well,’ Annabelle said, settling into her armchair.

‘So, then, what is it?’

‘It’s about Dad . . .’

Mum looked worriedly from me to Annabelle. ‘Is he OK?’

‘He’s fine,’ Annabelle said.

‘Hardly,’ I snorted at the same time.

Annabelle gave me a look. Mum glanced between the two of us, confused.

‘This is going to be really hard to hear,’ I said. Annabelle had thought it best I just come out and say it: succinctly and plainly. Annabelle said I was to stick to the facts and not get carried away with anger just yet. We needed to let Mum know that we would be here for her no matter what. With this plan in mind I began the succinct, clear speech I’d been practising in my head. ‘I went to South Africa and I—’

‘SOUTH AFRICA?!’ Mum shrieked, looking horrified.

‘Yes, and when I was there—’

‘What on earth for?!’

‘Priya’s wedding. But Mum—’

‘Priya got married? To that nice lesbian girl?’

‘Yes, to Laurel. The nice lesbian girl. And Priya is a lesbian too, you know, Mum. That’s how lesbianism works. Priya—’

Annabelle made a throat-clearing noise.

‘Anyway,’ I said, nodding to Annabelle. ‘When I was in Cape Town I saw Dad.’

I waited for Mum’s reaction but she just looked at me as if she was waiting for the real nugget of information.

‘With a woman,’ I continued. ‘A younger woman. Who had a really big diamond and nice clothes and—’

Annabelle made a ‘get back on track’ little cough.

I glanced at her and nodded. ‘And it’s true, it’s all true, because there was this dog hotel/restaurant/gallery-type place doing an exhibition. Of vaginas. And they were really—’

Annabelle coughed again.

‘Anyway, they told me the paintings were by someone who was away in Mozambique “with his family”. And then when I went in there to get my phone from this guy Jimmy, who I met and hung out with because Pete was up the Cederbergs with some bitch called—’

‘Jess,’ Annabelle said.

‘Sorry.’ I looked at Mum, her eyes flitting back and forth between her two daughters, a look of non-comprehension on her face and really, who could blame her.

‘Mum,’ I said, getting my thoughts in order. ‘The thing is . . .’ I paused. I just had to say it. ‘Dad has a whole second family in South Africa. A young wife and two children. I saw them. I saw them with my own eyes.’ Tears welled and I sniffed back a sob.

Mum sat very still. She blinked and breathed and burnt calories at her resting metabolic rate, but that was about it.

‘Mum?’ I said, searching her face for horror, hurt and/or anger.

She fiddled with her tiger’s eye pendant, her eyes glassy and unfocused. Annabelle and I looked at each other. I ran my hand under my dripping nose.

‘Mum?’ Annabelle said. ‘Did you hear Jess?’

Our tiny mother sat still, her knees pressed neatly together, encased in brown wool slacks. She seemed to take up no space at all on Annabelle’s sofa.

‘They drugged her on that course! I knew it!’ I shuffled along the sofa and grabbed hold of Mum’s hands. ‘Did you leave your sherry unattended at any point?’

Annabelle shook her head. ‘They weren’t drinking.’

‘Oh,’ I said, nodding. I sniffed back my burgeoning tears and turned back to my spaced-out mother. ‘Did you leave your lentils unattended?’

‘What?’ Mum said, clicking back to attention. ‘Lentils? Yes, Plum, I think I could probably get you the recipe . . .’ Her eyes lost focus again and fell on a point somewhere between the floor and La La Land.

‘They’ve brainwashed her!’ I said. ‘I knew it was some kind of cult.’

‘She’s in shock.’ Annabelle said gently. ‘Mum?’

Mum looked up. ‘Yes?’

‘Did you understand what Jess just said?’

Mum’s eyes darted from me to Annabelle. ‘Yes.’

‘Then you ought to be reacting to this news a little differently than you currently are!’ I cried.

Mum blinked at me. Then turned and blinked at Annabelle. ‘I suppose I should ring your father,’ she said.

‘That’s a good idea.’ I shot into the kitchen, retrieved Mum’s phone from where Annabelle had it charging and raced back to the living room.

It took her a few moments to get her passcode right, during which time I’d bitten nearly all my fingernails off and had starting chewing the edge of my sleeve. Once the phone was unlocked, Mum hesitated a moment before dialling. The room was silent while we waited for the call to connect. This was it. There would be tears. There would be anger. There would be accusations and denials and our family might never be the same again.

‘Hello dear,’ Mum said into the phone. ‘We have a slight problem . . .’

I frowned. Understatement!

‘No, she’s fine, no need to panic.’

What?! Oh, I think there was a very real need to panic. In fact I’d been doing it for weeks, and was hoping the rest of the family would join me. I spun to see Annabelle’s expression. She had her eyes narrowed on Mum.

‘Yes . . . yes, I’m afraid so . . . I’m awfully sorry . . .’ Mum twirled a finger round her necklace, her brows in the shape of concern, not utter fury like they ought to have been.

What the fuck was happening? I looked to Annabelle, whose face had hardened.

‘OK, I will, love. I know . . . Yes we did, we did . . . Bye dear.’ Mum got off the phone, placed it purposefully on the coffee table in front of her and after what felt like an age, lifted her gaze.

‘What the fuck was that about?!’ I squawked.

‘Well, girls,’ Mum straightened her already straight slacks, played with her pendant, pinched at her turtleneck collar. ‘That was your father.’

I made a ‘duh’ face.

‘And he . . . well, I . . . you see, your father and I . . .’ Mum turned to me. ‘Plum, the people you saw with your father . . .’

‘Yes?’ I said.

‘Well . . . it’s not what you think.’ Mum shook her head, her neat grey hair bobbing back and forth. ‘Those children are . . .’

‘Are . . .?’ I pressed.

‘And that woman, Maryna is her name—’

‘You know her?!’

‘Not personally, but I . . . well, she’s—’

‘SPIT IT OUT, MUM!’

Mum jumped at the volume of my voice then blurted her explanation. ‘Dein vater ist verheiratet! Die frau die du gesehen hast, ist seine tochter und die kinder sind seine enkel! Die wahrheit ist, ich bin die geliebte und wir sind familie nummer zwei! So, das war’s!’

‘In English,’ I said through gritted teeth.

‘Of course.’ Mum looked from me to Annabelle again. ‘The thing is . . . The thing is . . .’

‘What’s the friggin’ thing?!’ I roared, making Mum jump again.

‘Plum, it’s very complicated but your father and I . . . well, more to the point you two girls and I, we’re . . .’

‘We’re the second family,’ Annabelle said, her voice quiet and loaded with realisation.

Mum’s eyes widened behind her glasses. With her turtleneck jumper it gave her the impression of a startled tortoise. Her stunned gaze flitted between Annabelle and me. Then her face dropped.

‘Yes,’ she said to her lap.

All the blood rushed from my head. I felt faint.

Mum’s hands worried her pendant again. She looked from Annabelle, still and expressionless, to me, fighting back a panic attack. ‘Schiessen,’ she muttered.