Small Pieces E-Book

Joanne Limburg

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Seitenzahl: 360

Beschreibung

SHORTLISTED FOR THE JQ WINGATE, 2017 My mother, my family and Judaism are nested inside each other. I am Jewish and always Jewish; it's analogous with family, however hard it is, and however strained, it can never be disavowed... I remain, as my therapist put it, 'enmeshed', all tangled up in the family hoard. This book has been both a continuation of my conversations with them, and an attempt to untangle myself. This is Joanne's account of coming to terms with her brother's suicide and through that process, the entirety of her family life. In Small Pieces Joanne explores her childhood, her Jewishness and her mother's death as well as that of her brother. The life and family Joanne describes is a complex combination of conflicting influences - both scientific and literary; Jewish and humanist impulses; and middle America and North London settings. Small Pieces is a beautiful and searingly honest meditation on family and faith.

Leseprobe

To my brother

Contents

Sister

Vessel One

Vessel Two

Vessel Three

Vessel Four

Vessel Five

Vessel Six

Vessel Seven

Vessel Eight

Vessel Nine

There Is No Vessel Ten

Acknowledgements

Also by Joanne Limburg

Author’s Note

Copyright

Sister

She will harrow this town, she will turn him up,

whole or in pieces. Being a sister,

she knows that brothers are born to trouble.

Her part is to rescue him,

lend him a heart to face his enemies,

or failing that, confound them herself

with withheld smiles, or with her sharp

big sister’s tongue; and if she finds

them gone to ground, their damage done,

she’ll cut the losses for both of them

and seek him out, wherever he’s lying,

broken and say, Brother, there’s

no shame in one lost battle, or

in ten. Put the phial down –

don’t drink! And if it is too late

for that, she’ll scruff the man and stick

her fingers down his throat, or find

an antidote, or make her own,

or heave time back, or failing that,

and even failing that, she’ll take him home,

and never mind how small the pieces.

I don’t take notes

I don’t pack a notebook with me, I don’t buy one at any of the airports, or in Plainsville. The notes I take are few, scribbled in the front of my address book. Here they are in total:

Diversity

choice

options

share

Please wait while we create a variety of entertainment choices for you.

Psalm #91

In the lab, they culture competent cells.

Ant & Dec

My brother’s keeper.

Bluebird of happiness.

Wild turkey.

Buzzsaw cicadas.

deer

lizard

These were my reminders of the strongest impressions, the notes I could not refrain from making – the signs of my writerly incontinence. They were a clear indication, even then, that I would break the vow I had made, not to write about any of this, because to write about this, to make creative or any other kind of capital out of it, would place me so beyond the pale that the only honourable course would be to kill myself in turn.

Rabbis

You need to understand that a great deal of time has passed since the fall of the Temple, so we’ve had to survive all these centuries without priests and without offerings. We have relied instead on rabbis and on printed words: rabbis are no closer to God than other Jews – God is broiges with us,1 he won’t speak directly any more – but they have studied his old words in greater depth than the rest of us, and for this reason, if nothing else, we bring our questions to them. We have to bring them somewhere.

The worse the situation, the more urgent the question: when you’re ill, when someone dies, when jobs are lost and marriages are breaking up, when the discontented among the nations remember that they hate us and start their persecution up again – that’s when you go looking for rabbis. Or if you don’t, someone else will. After my brother’s suicide, my mother and I arrived at his home in the Midwest to discover that an old school friend of his had found a rabbi right there in the middle of the plains and contacted him on our behalf. He wasn’t the sort of rabbi we were used to seeing: like my brother’s school friend, he was very Orthodox, and we were more accustomed to the Reform variety, but we were dazed, and very much in need, so of course we saw him.

He told us that my brother had a Jewish soul, and right now it was more at peace than it had ever been.

‘He didn’t deserve what happened to him,’ he said. ‘We say that when someone dies as he did, that it’s not their fault, because something has just taken them over. I want to reassure you: he is at peace.’

‘What I find so hard,’ my mother said, ‘– one of the many things – was that he’d been cremated before we got here – cremated with no funeral.’

‘I know – that must be very hard for you to think about – but it makes no difference to how we see him or his death.’

My mother was all tears. I looked at her, and remembered her crying some eighteen years before, when her Auntie Yetta was cremated at Golders Green. Not only was it forbidden but also – and I think she was watching the smoke coming out of the chimney when she said this – how could any Jew choose to be cremated, after everything that’s happened? She didn’t say that again this time. She only said that she would have prayers said for my brother when we got home, and the rabbi said that would be the right thing to do. Someone should say Kaddish for my brother, for his Jewish soul.

I saw my mother’s tears but I did not feel for her – I could not, for my own protection, and because I was concentrating on feeling for my brother. He was angry, I thought; he was an atheist, he had married out – he would not appreciate having the existence of his soul confirmed, let alone its Jewishness.

‘I can see,’ the rabbi said, ‘that you are both in your way good Jews.’

And then I clenched my Jewish teeth…

But five years later, when I had a question, it was that rabbi I chose to email:

Dear Rabbi __________,

I hope I have reached the right person. I think it was you who spoke to me and my mother after my brother, Julian Limburg, took his own life in Plainsville in 2008.

My mother certainly found your words very comforting. Sadly, she died herself two years ago. As the last member of my nuclear family of origin, it fell to me to arrange her burial, memorial stone and stone consecration. It was some comfort to be able to arrange things as she would have wanted them.

You might remember that my brother was a scientist, but I’m a writer by profession, and writing is how I process my grief. With this in mind, I have been revisiting the conversation we had with you, and I remember your saying that from a Jewish point of view, my brother had done nothing wrong – something had taken him over, you said – but when I look up the subject of Judaism and suicide, I find that mostly, the line taken is much harsher.

Although I am by choice a non-practising Jew, I do find myself thinking about the issue in Jewish terms (I have been reading Gershom Scholem on tikkun today, for example) and I wondered if you knew of any texts in English that might help me to think this through.

I must admit that both my brother and I had difficulties with our religious background, but I still associate it with home and family – often I find that the less Jewish my life gets, the more Jewish my writing gets. It needs to find expression somewhere.

Anyway, thank you for reading this, and – again assuming I have the right person – for your kind words five years ago.

With best wishes,

Joanne

So I had asked my question, and the rabbi answered:

Hi, Joanne,

It is so meaningful to hear from you. I find it pretty amazing that you write to me today, as just yesterday as I was searching for something in my database I came across your brother’s name. Although the time has passed, I still so vividly recall meeting both you and your mother and I am sure that the pain never fades or truly goes away.

I am sorry to hear of your mother’s passing. I have no doubt that your presence in her life, especially in recent years, brought her so much comfort. My heart goes out to you that you went through so much loss in such a short time span.

As for your question in regards to some Jewish texts on suicide and your comments on how you have been finding a more harsh line in your research:

There is no doubt that from the perspective of Jewish law and its writings, suicide is forbidden. The Torah states: ‘However, your blood which belongs to your souls I (G–d) will demand’.2 This includes one who takes his own life. Since our life doesn’t belong to ourselves any more than anyone else’s life belongs to you or me. All life belongs to the Giver of Life – and He doesn’t appreciate life being destroyed wantonly.

Nevertheless, it important to understand and accept there are those who commit suicide out of extreme distress or emotional agony. Therefore it is entirely left up to the Knower of All Souls (same one as the Giver of Life, aka G–d) to know whether this person really had any free choice left in his soul. This is not something that any fellow human being can conclude on our own, as we do not truly know what was going on within that person at that specific time.

That is why Jewish law holds that as long as no one actually saw the person committing suicide, or as long as no one actually knew what was being expressed at that very moment, we assume that the person was under extreme distress or emotional agony, and was therefore not responsible for his/her actions.

The basis of the sentiments I shared with you and your mother at your time of mourning. You can find more insights on this topic, as well on the concept of death and mourning in Jewish writings here: [ ______________________________ ]

I find it fascinating that you write that ‘the less Jewish my life gets, the more Jewish my writing gets’. There is an old Jewish saying that ‘The Pen is the Language of the Soul’. I believe firmly that within every Jew, regardless of affiliation or level of religious observance, there is a soul which is alive and burning. At times it may express itself more in writing then in practice, but it is there nonetheless, in its full glory.

I appreciate your note as it is meaningful to see that a conversation from so long ago can still linger on. Please be in touch and let me know if I can help further in any way.

Best,

Rabbi __________

We emailed back and forth a couple more times. He asked if he might see the poems I had already written about my brother’s death and I sent them to him. Then he suggested that the complex questions I was bringing to him might be more fully addressed by a rabbi closer to home, and offered to refer me to a colleague in the town where I live. I hesitated: what I had said about having ‘difficulties with my religious background’ had been something of an understatement – in the three years between my brother’s death and my mother’s, there were times when I had experienced a real physical revulsion at the prospect of any kind of religious practice – but, as I had also said, there had been some comfort in making the proper arrangements for my mother’s funeral, so I agreed.

In the traditional Jewish tales, people bring their questions to the rabbi in his home. I met this second rabbi in coffee shop. What I saw was what I had expected to see: full beard, no offering of his hand to a woman, black coffee in a paper cup from this non-kosher place. One of them, in other words – but then he spoke, and I recognized the voice immediately – a young Jewish man from north London, with an accent exactly like my own – that is to say, one of us. I was still glad that I had decided not to buy my Christmas wrapping paper before I met him that morning: I hadn’t wanted to seem aggressive.

He got his black coffee in a paper cup, I got my tea with milk in the house crockery and we found a table together upstairs. I explained what had brought me there: my brother’s suicide, the difficulties in the family, the pressure we had both felt to practise, the tension it had caused when first one of my male cousins and then my brother married out, while my own marrying out had not seemed to bother anyone much. Jewishness, I should remind the reader, is passed down the maternal line: that way, it matters less who rapes us.

‘And you feel you had an easier ride because of that?’ the rabbi asked.

‘Exactly,’ I said.

The rabbi made an irritable noise. ‘That Jewish continuity thing,’ he said. ‘It really gets to me. I don’t think continuity by itself is a good reason for doing anything.’

I had not been expecting that: to hear him say something that could have come from my own mouth. I relaxed a little.

‘Neither do I – nothing was ever explained to us growing up. You do what you do because we’ve always done it. They never explained why in Hebrew classes – they just assumed we would—’

‘Don’t get me started on Jewish education…’

‘I don’t think either of my parents actually believed in God – I know my dad certainly didn’t – they practised to carry on the tradition, but my brother never saw what the point was if you didn’t believe in it, and to be honest, neither do I.’

‘Mainstream Judaism: it’s like the Church of England.’

‘It is: you don’t pay attention in shul,3 you sit and whisper and fidget, and all the older kids try and get out before the sermon. You’re just there because you’re there, and no one gives you a reason.’

‘I hated it too – I wanted more rigour – that’s why I went to the seminary instead of sixth form.’

‘What did your parents think?’

‘They weren’t happy.’

‘But they said yes?’

‘No, but I went anyway.’

Out-rebelled by a rabbi. I told him what I had told his colleague, that the less Jewish my life, the more Jewish my writing.

‘I’ve been reading about Kabbalah,’4 I said.

‘Oh yes?’

And so I started talking about the creation story, the story of the world as I understood it so far. Before the beginning, there was only Ein-Sof, the No-End, the Infinite, God existing in perfect, timeless completeness, with neither room nor need for anything other. But it came about that Ein-Sof decided to create the universe, and for this he would need to leave space, so he entered into himself, contracted himself into a hand’s breadth, an act known as zimzum.In this way he created a vacancy, an area of darkness in the world, into which part of his substance emanated, bringing into being a primordial universe of pure spirit, divine light.

Within Ein-Sof, there is neither separation nor differentiation, neither subject nor object, neither darkness nor light, neither mercy nor judgement, but in the process of contraction and emanation, there was a separating out of the different aspects of the divine, the Ten Sefirot.

For one beautiful instant, everything was in its proper place, but then the catastrophe happened. For each Sefirah, a vessel was created. Finite and imperfect as they were, however, these vessels were unable to contain the godly essence even in its separate parts – almost immediately, they shattered. A new universe came into being: disordered, material, temporal, and containing, for the first time, the possibility of evil. The fragments of the first vessels, the kelippot, were scattered through the universe, sparks of divine light now trapped in the fallen, material world.

The counterpart of this primordial break, in the history of all peoples, is the expulsion from Eden; in the history of the Jewish people, it is the destruction of the First and Second Temples and the Exile from Zion. For Jews, every subsequent loss is an echo of this one, the founding loss: when we sit shiva at home for our dead relatives, and the synagogue officers come with the prayer books and the low-slung plastic mourners’ chairs, they always bring along a little card that says, ‘May God comfort you among the mourners for Zion and Jerusalem.’

The First Temple was destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BCE5 and its replacement, the Second Temple, by the Romans in 70 CE. Both catastrophes are commemorated once a year, in high summer, on the Jewish date of Tish’ah b’av, the 9th of Av. On this day, the Book of Lamentations is recited publicly in synagogue, with other laments, commemorating other disasters, added into the liturgy.

In Lamentations, the sacked city of Jerusalem is personified as a woman, bereft and humiliated, grieving for her many losses. As I lived through the deaths of my brother and mother, the clearing out and sale of our family home, and then the second clearing out and sale of my mother’s flat, which represented my last secure foothold in the city of my birth, I was haunted by the lines that open the first Book of Lamentations, the first lines of the King James version:

‘How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people!’

Poor, wretched Daughter of Zion, ripped from her home, her people, her context; she must now ‘dwelleth among the heathen’. Of course, the Daughter of Lamentations has been taken into captivity, whereas I undoubtedly chose to dwell among the heathen, but I never thought, when I made that choice, that my old home and the nuclear family who lived in it would be so comprehensively lost. That I would sit solitary, dwelling among the heathen, scrabbling for a home in the margins of an ancient text.

There’s before and there’s after: before and after the breaking of the vessels, before and after the Exile, before and after my brother’s suicide. I explained to the rabbi that his death was the point of fracture in my world.

‘When he did that,’ I said, ‘it sent out cracks in all directions – all the way through the family story, past and future. Everything I think I remember, I have to question now. I don’t know where the problem started – it’s all fragments. And it’s up to me to gather them because I’m the one that’s left.’

Gathering fragments: it’s the task for which Jews have been chosen – assuming we’ve been chosen for anything – and if the primordial fragmentation was the cause of our Exile and dispersal through the nations, then the repair is its purpose. We must find the sparks of divine light trapped in the world and release them so that everything can return to wholeness and harmony. And so that the Messiah can come. For the first time, obviously. (What, you think he’s been here already? Really?)

This work of gathering and repair is called tikkun olam, the ‘repair of the world’. Orthodox Jews believe they can accomplish this through prayer and meditation, through observing halakhah – the Jewish laws – and through good works.

‘I have always liked the idea of tikkun olam,’ I said, ‘but I have a secular version – it’s about good works, trying to make the world better, trying to mend things.’

‘That’s not such a bad way to see it.’

‘Even when it doesn’t seem to make any difference, I believe we have to try.’

‘Are you familiar with Pirkei Avot at all?’

‘Pirkei Avot? No, I’ve only seen the words – I don’t know what they mean. I never retained any Hebrew.’

‘Pirkei Avot are the Sayings of the Fathers. I was thinking in particular of what Rabbi Tarfon said: “It is not for you to complete the work, but you are not free to idle from it.”’

‘So we won’t achieve perfection, but that’s no excuse not to try?’

‘Exactly.’

‘I like that.’

‘So do I.’

The rabbi told me he was planning to run a study group on Pirkei Avot. He thought I would find it very rewarding – would I think about it? I said I would. Our drinks were finished, the conversation at an end. We said our goodbyes outside the café, then he went off to wherever his work was, and I went home to mine.

1    Annoyed or upset with someone. Not on speaking terms.

2    Writing God’s name in full is forbidden for Orthodox Jews.

3    Synagogue.

4    Jewish mysticism.

5    ‘BCE’ stands for ‘Before the Common Era’, an acceptable alternative for the more specific ‘Before Christ’. We also have ‘CE’ instead of ‘Anno Domini’.

Vessel One

Q: What is the traditional response on first hearing of a death?

A:‘Blessed be God, the true judge.’ This is the short form of the blessing, which is used for the news of any death, regardless of one’s relationship to the deceased. When a Jew is one of the chief mourners, he should recite the blessing in its entirety: ‘Blessed are You, Lrd our Gd, King of the Universe, the True Judge.’

It’s 15 August 2008, the middle of the summer holidays. Chris, my husband, is at work; our five-year-old son is at a holiday club; I am alone at home, supposedly writing but really just drifting about the house – I am too hot. The phone rings. It’s my Uncle Richard.

‘Joanne? It’s Richard. I’ve had some awful news from America – some really terrible news. I think you’d better sit down.’

‘What is it?’

‘Julian committed suicide last night.’

‘Oh God – how? What happened?’

‘I don’t know. Someone from his lab found our number – no idea how – and phoned.’

‘Does Mum know yet?’

‘No – we’re going to drive down and tell her. Don’t phone her yourself. I think it’s best she has someone with her when she hears the news.’

That makes sense. I agree not to phone Mum, but not long afterwards, before her brother has reached her and before my husband has reached me, she phones for a chat and knows at once from my voice that something terrible has happened, and then I’m forced to tell her myself. The first thing she says is that she feared this might happen; the second is that she has to book us some plane tickets.

Here is the first scene in the story of me and my brother: I see my grandmother carrying a blanketed bundle along the long, long aisle of a toyshop so vast that from my vantage point, I can’t even imagine where the walls might be. She keeps going along the aisle, putting one foot in front of another, and suddenly a baby arm shoots out of the blanket and points at a Tiny Tears doll. She asks the bundled baby a question, something like, ‘Is that what you want for your sister?’ and takes it off the shelf.

I was always told that Tiny Tears was the present my brother gave me when he was born. I think by the time I was old enough to ask who gave it to me, I must have realized that my grandmother was a far more likely benefactor, but I also knew that my parents would never lie to me about something so important, so to stop the two stories from arguing, I imagined a new story: about my brother, my grandmother and the impossibly big toyshop. And I still say that the story of the toyshop is my first true memory of my life as a sister.

There are tooth marks on my passport. I put it in my mouth while Mum and I were queuing to check in and the resistance it offered felt like an invitation to bite, so I did. Now that we’re on the plane, my passport is tucked away in my bag, so I’ve had to bite down on the ball of my thumb instead.

We are sitting in the back row of Economy on a plane bound for Chicago, where we will change for our internal flight. I have flown to the States a few times before, but always to New York – JFK or Newark. On the New York planes you are never more than two rows away from someone ordering kosher. But this is a plane to Chicago, and the two gangly boys in the seats in front of us are Mormons, on their way home from a mission.

I once opened the door of my parents’ house to a similar pair of smiling young men. When I told them we were Jewish, they asked which tribe. I know they are fond of converting us posthumously. I expect they’ll already have harvested my dad, my aunt and all my grandparents; they’ll be gleaning my brother soon.

But I feel mean, thinking like this. All I really have against the boy in front of me is that he is reclining into my space, and that he is entitled to do.

Mum is on my left, in the window seat, with her eyes closed and her iPod on. I always take the aisle seat when I can: that way I won’t panic every time the plane banks, making the window fill with Earth or Space, Death or the Infinite. Which would be worse? My brother used to talk about it sometimes. He was sure that death was the end, and it didn’t scare him. It was irrational, he said, to be afraid of something you wouldn’t be there to experience.

I am irrational. I am terrified of death. I am terrified of flying; had I not been, I might have visited my brother. If I had seen him, I might have realized how desperate he was; I might have prevented this.

I bite my knuckles, for a change. It’s very painful. Good.

Which tribe are you from? In the biblical sense that the Mormon at my door intended, the answer could only be Benjamin or Judah, as the other ten tribes were lost after the biblical Israel split into two kingdoms and the more northerly of these was absorbed into the Assyrian empire. Whether I am literally descended from one of the sons of Jacob is debatable: Judaism was once a proselytising religion, after all. If I wanted to see my Jewish identity in tribal terms, then I would have to widen the definition of my tribe to encompass all other Jews.

Sometimes I do find it useful to think of Jewish society as tribal – not ethnically tribal, whatever that might mean, but anthropologically. All the aspects of my upbringing that strike my husband as alien – the importance of kinship and genealogy, the adherence to ritual and tradition, the life centred round a small community in which everyone knows everyone else – have a flavour of the pre-industrial about them. Traditional societies are a bit like human pyramids: no one member can move too far without threatening the integrity of the entire structure. In ‘And the One Doesn’t Stir Without the Other’,1 Luce Irigaray describes how the identities of mother and daughter are intertwined – fused, even. Imagine that concept extended, so that the daughter does not stir without her mother, her father, her brother, her aunts, her uncles, her cousins, her grandparents, her great-uncles, her great-aunts and her first cousins once removed.

As Nancy K. Miller, the Jewish American critic, puts it: ‘How do you remember your life? How can you even tell it’s your life, and not that of your tribe?’2

My last real conversation with my brother – which may as well stand for so many similar ones – took place one Sunday afternoon, a few months before he died. He phoned me to talk about his best friend.

‘You know Elliott’s having his transplant soon?’

‘Is he? In the hospital here? Down the road?’

‘Yes.’

‘So that’s stomach, both parts of the small bowel, pancreas…’

‘… and they’re “throwing in a spleen”, he said… They’ve only ever done it on a few people.’

‘I know – you said. You must be so worried.’

‘Worse than worried. You know there’s always the danger of rejection – he might not come through. If the worst comes to the worst, it might be the last chance I ever get to see him, so…’

He took a deep breath. I interrupted:

‘Of course you can stay here!’

Julian carried on as if I had not spoken, as if he were reeling off something he’d memorized and was scared of losing his place.

‘… I’d like to come and stay with you, but this is the thing – I don’t want you to tell Mum I’m in the country.’

‘What?’

‘I can’t come unless Mum doesn’t know.’

‘But why not? I know you’ve not been getting on but—’

Julian reeled off his side of a story I already knew too well, the one about Mum’s latest disastrous visit to the States. Julian had paid for her plane ticket to California, where he and his wife were attending a conference, so that Mum could look after their toddler daughter Giselle. Her last few visits had ended with the two of them barely speaking, but they both hoped that this time it would work out better: Mum was pleased that Julian had asked her for help, that he had paid for the trip; he was delighted that she had agreed to come. But then:

‘Mum neglected Giselle – she left her strapped into her stroller all day, in her dirty diaper all day, so Giselle got this terrible rash and her clothes were ruined. And Mum kept complaining she was bored, and there was nowhere to go – we told her before she came over what it would be like, we thought she came because she wanted to help, but then she expected us to entertain her. And then the worst thing was, when we were in the last plenary session, I suddenly heard ‘Daddy! Daddy!’ and she was standing in the doorway of the conference hall holding Giselle, and when Giselle saw me she cried, and they had to stop the speech while I went to her – in front of everyone, it was horrible…’

‘Mum said Giselle cried every time she tried to take her out of the buggy – she said she gave up in the end.’

‘I know what Mum said, but the fact is she neglected Giselle.’ ‘She didn’t mean to!’

‘She doesn’t care about her.

She’s constantly comparing her to your kid, as if he were the standard.’

‘Mum compares everyone to everyone – it’s a tick she’s got.’

‘Well, we think she’s rejected Giselle, and we think she’s rejected her because she’s not Jewish, and she’s half Japanese.’

‘Mum’s not a racist.’

‘Do you know what the first thing she said was when I showed her Giselle? The very first thing?’

‘No.’

‘It was “Ooh, she’s very dark, isn’t she?”’

‘Oh dear… but she won’t have meant anything by it… She thinks Giselle’s gorgeous – she tells everyone that.’

‘But she’s always saying stuff like that when she comes here. She commented on the food we had in the fridge – she said it was all Japanese stuff, there was nothing for her to eat there. And we had to get a separate fridge for when she comes, so that we can move our usual food to the basement and fill the kitchen fridge with stuff just for her – because otherwise she’ll just keep going on about it.’

‘But you know what Mum’s like – she always says the first thing that comes into her head. She doesn’t mean anything by it, she just doesn’t think.’

‘But she says things – things with needles in – and they just kill me, Joanne, they just kill me. Maybe she’s different with you.’

‘No, I don’t think she is. And actually she’s always said things to me – and not just recently. Always.’

‘Really?’

‘Yes. Always.’

‘Like what?’

So then it was my turn to tell a story about Mum, the one about when I was twelve years old and my period started on a Saturday night while Mum and Dad were out and we were at home with the babysitter. I understood what had happened – because whatever else you might say about Mum, at least she prepared me for that – so I went to our parents’ wardrobe where I knew she was keeping the sanitary towels for me, and I sorted myself out. Then later, when she came home, I told her my period started and she said:

‘“Are you sure? Are you sure you weren’t just fiddling down there?”’

‘Jesus!’

‘Oh come on – it’s quite funny, really, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t think so. I think it’s terrible. I’m sorry you’re stuck with her in the UK, I’m sorry you have to deal with her by yourself. She’s got mental health problems – don’t you think she should have some sort of counselling?’

‘She wouldn’t accept it. Look, I know she’s difficult, but I don’t think she realizes what she’s doing when she says those things – I think that’s why she doesn’t remember them. I confronted her about the period thing once, and she just said I had fantasies about her. You’ll never get her to see what she’s done wrong. She’s too old to change.’

‘I suppose so.’

There was a long transatlantic pause, filled with despair.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘why don’t you come over, and we can have one meal with Mum, just one, and I’ll be there, I’ll make sure it’s all OK, I’ll be a buffer—’

‘But no! I can’t see her! I can’t do it! She’ll say something, and it’ll just kill me!’

‘But I can’t do what you’re asking me – it’s too much, and anyway, even if Chris and I could keep our mouths shut about you being here, you can’t expect our boy to.’

‘Oh. No, I hadn’t thought of that.’

All the life had gone out of his voice.

‘OK, just leave it, then.’

‘But you should see Elliott – don’t let it stop you seeing Elliott—’

‘No, no, it can’t be helped. Just leave it.’

I thought we had, but an hour later he phoned me again.

‘I’ve been thinking about what Mum said to you, and I’ve realized it makes me really angry – I mean, no wonder you’re so fucked up!’

‘But I’m not fucked up – OK, maybe I used to be, but I’m fine now.’

‘No! You’re not fine, you’re not fine – you’ve always been completely messed up and it’s because of Mum!’

‘But I’ve found a way to deal with her—’

‘No, no, you haven’t – you’re just protecting yourself because you have to deal with her every day. Our therapist says we were emotionally abused.’

‘No! Mum wasn’t perfect, but she meant well, she really did.’

Across the sea, my brother sighed. I tried to explain myself.

‘But, Julian, we’re both parents ourselves now. What I’ve realized is, it’s not what you mean to do that has the bad effect on your kids – it’s the things you can’t help doing… Can’t you please come over? Don’t not come over because of this…’

‘I just don’t feel I’m getting anything out of the relationship with Mum any more.’

That stopped me in my tracks – it had never occurred to me that it might be possible to break up with one’s mother. And then I said the thing – the thing with needles in – that of all things I would give years of my life to unsay:

‘Except £20,000.’

I heard my brother’s sharp intake of breath, as if he were in sudden pain (‘it just kills me’), and with that the thread between us – that had held so long, at such a great distance – snapped beyond repair.

Having arrived where we do not belong, Mum and I must join the longer queue at immigration. We spend the next hour and forty-five minutes slowly shuffling forward, while a piped voice welcomes us to the United States at five-minute intervals, and reminds us to keep queuing. Department of Agriculture beagles move in and out with their handlers, sniffing for contraband. We shuffle round a corner. The people in front of us tell us all about their trip, and we avoid telling them about ours. We shuffle towards the next corner, and check our passports again. At the far right, at the end of the row of immigration desks, people without passports sit in a cage – they are in full view, a warning. I wonder what I would have to say to get deported straight away, to be excused all this. ‘Fuck you and fuck America!’ – how about that? How about I shit in my hand and throw it at them?

No. That’s not me, it never will be. When we reach the desk, the officer apologizes for the wait. He is a human being. He has a very sweet voice, and his toffee-brown eyes match his hair.

‘What’s the reason for your visit, please?’

Mum starts crying. I lean towards the officer over the desk, and we have the conversation that will serve as a template for so many others.

‘Family business. My brother’s just died. He lived in Plainsville.’

‘I’m sorry for your loss. He must have been young. Was it an accident, may I ask?’

‘No, there wasn’t an accident.’

‘Was he ill?’

‘In… in a manner of speaking… I suppose he must have… He took his own life.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.’ The officer taps a few computer keys. ‘Could you look up into this camera, please? Thank you. Was he married? Did he have any children?’

‘Yes, he was, and yes, he did.’

At this, with quite exquisite sadness, the officer shakes his head.

‘That’s so sad… I just don’t understand it… I just don’t understand why someone with a family would do something like that. I’m so sorry. Could you place your forefinger and thumb on here for me, please? Thank you… Well, I have to say, if that’s OK… in a way I know what you’re going through… I lost my own brother a few years back.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say in my turn, as he returns my passport. He then asks my mother for hers, and as he takes her details, her irises, her fingers, he continues with his story.

‘He didn’t have a family, though. He was a junkie, had been for a long time. He went fishing on a lake, and then he went missing – drowned.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say again. ‘That’s hard.’

We both shake our heads. Such a sweet, sad man, a voice like treacle. Perhaps I could send Mum on to fetch the luggage while he and I have mournful sex in a broom cupboard. But he gives my mother her passport back, and we say goodbye.

Chicago airport is the size of a city. We start with a long walk to baggage reclaim. From there, we take a bus to another terminal, and then we take another long walk to the departure gate, where we wait a long time.

First, the flight is delayed. When the plane arrives, they let us on almost straight away, but then it doesn’t leave, and it doesn’t leave, and it doesn’t leave… One of the stewardesses keeps going up to the door and looking through, waiting for a signal, but it doesn’t come. At last we are told there is a problem with the engine; someone will have to carry out checks before the plane can be confirmed safe to fly. A couple of men in overalls appear and bang about in the cockpit for a while; then the pilot comes out and stamps down the aisle. He looks furious.

We are going to be very, very late arriving. Mum is in a state again: she has convinced herself that my brother’s wife will be meeting us or at least waiting up for us and that she will become even more distressed by our lateness. After forty-five minutes or so, I realize that she needs me to look as if I’m doing something, so I go up to the stewardess and ask if she can say how delayed we are going to be. She asks if we want to leave the plane. I say, no, no, no and then, to my shame, I start to cry.

‘We don’t want to leave, we have to stay, it’s just that there’s someone very distressed waiting for us at the other end – could we get a message to the airport? Can we do that?’ I can’t seem to stop talking; the whole story gushes out. The stewardess is a kind listener, but there is nothing any of us can do. A little later, when she comes round to distribute complimentary drinks, she pats my arm, like a nurse.

Eventually, we take off. We fly through the Midwestern night, over sleepy cities with their regular grids of sodium lights, over fields and water towers and long, long highways. The scale befuddles me. Mum is reading a medieval mystery; she is holding the present at arm’s length, and who could possibly blame her?

It was a Saturday, not long after Mum’s disastrous babysitting trip. She appeared at our front door at her usual time, loaded up with handbags, overnight bags, knitting bags and carrier bags full of food and books and newspapers. My son poked his head out of the living room to say hello to his grandma and see if she had any presents for him. She distributed her bags in little heaps through the living room and dining room, then followed me into the kitchen where I was putting the kettle on. She said what she always said after she’d said hello.

‘Haven’t heard from your brother…’

‘Oh.’

‘Have you?’

‘No. Not since the last time.’

‘No email?’

‘No. I did mention the money the last time I wrote, but I haven’t heard back – about that or anything else. I think he’s swamped at work at the moment.’

Mum pressed her lips together and leaned on the worktop.

‘I really thought he’d repay it, once the money from the house came through.’

My brother, my cousins and I had just sold a house we had inherited together and Julian had been going to pay our mother her money back out of his share.

‘I know. I don’t know why he hasn’t – like I said, I think he’s just swamped.’

‘But still… you know, my financial adviser didn’t want me to lend the money – he advised against it.’

‘I know.’

‘It’s really eaten into my capital.’

‘Yes, you said.’

‘I think I’ll just have to sell the house and move somewhere smaller.’

‘Really? Do you really have to?’

I pictured the house in Stanmore where my brother and I had grown up, imagined it emptied, with Mum shutting the door for the last time, handing over the keys to another family. It was not as if I enjoyed visiting there much, but there were all the younger versions of myself and my brother still running around the rooms and the garden, and they would be left homeless.

‘I was thinking about it anyway. It’s too big for me now.’

‘It’s your house. It’s up to you.’

I passed her a mug of tea. She gave the quick little sigh that meant she was going to start on my brother again.

‘You know, he told me not to tell Ayako he was borrowing the money – he seemed to be in some kind of trouble. I can’t help wondering if he might have a gambling addiction?’

‘No idea.’