CHAPTER 24

IN THE YEAR THAT HER FATHER DIED, Adele took a sabbatical from her studies and returned home to settle the paperwork and sale of the store her father had owned and operated for thirty years. She hadn’t expected the property to sell so quickly, but a local developer had plans to convert the corner store and house she had grown up in into condominiums.

Adele stood outside and shuffled her boots through a pile of leaves that had blown in front of the yellow grocery store. Leaning against the exterior of the shop, dried bits of stucco sticking to her palms, she watched the movers take down the Coca-Cola sign with her father’s name plastered in green letters. Its rusted hinges creaked in the cool autumn breeze. Shivering as the wind blew through her trench coat, she pulled the collar close to her neck. The men teetered on the steel ladders placed on each side of the rod that had supported her father’s sign for the thirty years it had swayed in rainstorms, or stood perfectly still on humid summer days. Now it was as dead as the shopkeeper whose name was peeling and fading from its metal surface. Adele jumped when one of the worker’s pliers fell from his grip and came crashing down on the asphalt. She picked up the tool and handed it back to the man.

She let herself sink onto the cement stoop beside the store. Her father was gone. His store was gone. The life she had known with him was gone. Shortly after his death, the initial shock and disbelief had transformed into the cold reality that he was really gone. She had slept restlessly for weeks after his death and it was only now that she could sleep through the night, rising only with the sun and not a full moon. The coldness of the stoop filtered through her trousers forcing her to get up and pace, listening to the opening and closing of the toolbox, the jangle of tool belts. She turned around in time to spot the sign being swallowed between the folds of a blue moving blanket, then buried in the mover’s truck. Adele had arranged to store what was left of her childhood home in the basements of her sisters’ houses.

After the moving truck left, Adele walked inside the house. She glanced at the naked walls, stripped of all the photographs and paintings. There was nothing left that spoke of her family’s history. How could an entire lifetime be erased with the removal of a collection of artefacts? She thought of the many voices that used to blow through the hallways like a gentle breeze and sometimes a hurricane. She recalled the many times she had run up the stairs she was staring at this moment. She wondered whether her fingerprints would still be on the banister, whether her footprints were imprinted in the steps. Suddenly, she heard the floorboards in the hallway leading away from the kitchen heave. She looked across at her mother. Samira had lost several pounds since Youssef’s death. Her dress hung off her body, which now seemed stooped and shrunken; the weight loss had made all her clothes ill-fitting, but Adele knew her mother couldn’t bring herself to buy new ones.

“So everything is gone?” Samira asked, throwing her hands up in the air.

“Yes, Mama,” Adele replied, noting the resigned, sad look on her mother’s face.

“Will you change your mind?” Samira asked, mustering a smile. There was a strained hopefulness in her voice, a yearning for Adele to conform at last to the Lebanese way, to move back home with her, take care of her Mama.

Adele sadly shook her head. “I can’t. I need to get back to Toronto. I have a life waiting for me there.”

“You can have a life here again, habibti.”

“No, that’s not possible. I’m sorry, Mama,” Adele said, her voice cracking.

“Anything is possible.”

“Not that, Mama. I can’t do it.”

“You don’t want to do it,” Samira sighed. She sat down on the stairs. “You have always wanted to do things your own way. Why couldn’t you be more like your sisters? They followed tradition. They listened to all I had to say. But you,” she threw her hands up in the air again, letting them fall hard on her lap. “God rest his soul, but your Babba always said you were a little different. I tried to teach you all that I had been taught but you always struggled against everything I knew.” She looked out the window next to the front door. Several leaves had blown up the steps, scraping against the concrete as if begging to come inside. Then a gush of wind scattered the leaves down the small street Adele had grown up on. Samira began to cry, her shoulders rising up and down until she bent forward. Kneeling in front of her mother, Adele stroked her head, smoothed the unruly greying curls.

Samira looked up at her, her eyes glassy and red. “I failed you as a mother.”

Adele shook her head. “No you didn’t, Mama. I just wanted my own life, not yours.”

Samira took Adele’s face in her hands and stroked it gently. She held her like that for a moment, before she finally let go, rose from the steps, and said, “Well, I don’t want to live with your sisters and I can’t live alone in this country. I should’ve learned the language but that’s too late.”

Adele stood up too and said, “No, it’s not late. I can sign you up for ESL classes. I’ll find you a nice apartment.”

Samira shook her head. “Too late for that. This isn’t my home anymore. It never was. I was always an outsider.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Well, I guessed you wouldn’t stay with me, so I made a few plans of my own with the help of your Aunt Nabiha. Before you go back to Toronto, will you do something for me?”

She nodded, leaned in close to her mother. Her throat tightened as she listened carefully to her mother’s words.

They ate in silence that night on the living room floor. Adele had laid an old bed sheet in the middle of the room and placed the take-out Chinese food she had ordered for her and her mother on it. After a few bites, Adele pushed away her plate. She glanced across at Samira, lifting a sweet and sour chicken ball to her mouth, the red plum sauce sliding around the corners of her full lips. “Are you sure you want to do this, Mama?” Adele asked, her voice barely a whisper.

Samira stopped chewing, put her fork down. “This isn’t home to me, Adele. Like Ottawa isn’t your home anymore. Your sisters have their own families. They don’t need me. Anyway, I can’t live here without your father. He did everything for me.”

Samira blinked rapidly but tears slipped out anyway. Adele tried not to blame her father for her mother’s lack of the English language, her lack of sophistication when it came to functioning in this city. She pressed her teeth together and tried to stop the pressure she felt rising in her stomach, chest, and throat. He was dead. And it was too late for her mother to return to the first few months in Canada before she had met Youssef. Adele remembered how her mother had spoken fondly of the few ESL classes she had taken upon her arrival in Canada. Then she met Youssef and she relinquished her desire to learn English to babies, cooking, and housekeeping.

Samira quickly wiped her eyes then folded her hands on her lap. The wind thrashed the branches of the trees against the brick exterior of the house, making Adele look out the window. She watched autumn’s urgent push for change. The empty room they sat in, feasting on their last dinner of egg rolls and chop suey in this abandoned house, was a sign of an ending and a beginning. Adele lifted her head and took a deep breath. The room smelled of Asian spices and dampness. She reached across and placed her hand on top of her mother’s.