What We All Long For by Dionne Brand (most important books to read txt) 📗

If she saw a man in a yellow shirt, she wouldn’t do it. She saw no man in a yellow shirt. If, at the bank, someone seeing her with children made her go ahead. At the bank no one gave her leeway. Angie was waiting for a look that said that she existed, that her life was understandable. That was what the game meant. She tried to suggest it with her own eyes, to say, Hey, how’s it going today? I’m tired, what about you? But cold stares came back at her. Or what she thought was coldness.

She turned and walked out of the bank after taking out twenty of the fifty dollars in her account. But Angie knew that she had come for more. She had come to feel as if she were here and alive. Well, no reason to think that the teller in her own life, with a boss over her and her hopes in lottery tickets, could possibly know that she needed this, no reason at all. But she was depending on the teller anyway—as a compass. She hoped. But didn’t see the woman who sold her tomatoes and flowers at the corner store, from whom sometimes she could see a glimmer of familiarity. With what? With life, with the fact that Derek was off, perhaps, with a woman; this wasn’t the real thing, but it had caused her to look at the real thing, which was that she was of no interest to anyone. Except the children, and that was instinctive, just as Derek’s need for her was instinctive. Or perhaps his was vanity. Someone to bed, to feed him, and someone to mistreat, which she gathered was instinctive too. But all this hadn’t to do with Derek. She realized that if she was to do it, she had to be clear, and this game was cheating because she had already decided. Except today she needed a sign. A simple sign would have done it. Maybe going to the bank was the mistake. Who could expect a sign from that? But perhaps she was going at cross purposes all the time, knowing that nothing could deter her from the decision she had made. On her way back to the apartment, she still played the game. If the baby didn’t cry, she wouldn’t, if the next person she saw carried a green bag, if, if, if … When she arrived at the apartment building, all of her ifs had run out.

Angie remembered a headline in the Globe and Mail newspaper box on the corner of Parliament and Wellesley, “Breastfeeding prevents cancer in women.” She burst into a laugh. Well, fine, let the whole city get on her tits then. She had ended up being the same milk cow as her mother and sister-in-law. Soon she’d be wearing black too, in living mourning of the sin of being a woman. What, after all, had she wanted? Passion. Not secret passion but public passion. Public red-glowing passion. And that had led her here anyway. Well, she sure wouldn’t die of cancer. The thought put her in a silly mood.

She got to the twenty-first-floor apartment, took the children’s light coats off, straightened the living room, put the baby down, gave Carla a pencil to draw with, hauled a chair to the balcony, picked the baby up again, chuckling to herself over the headline. She smoothed the baby’s cheeks, and he chuckled too. Then Angie went back onto the balcony and stood on the chair, and as if suddenly remembering herself, the baby in her hand, she called to Carla, who was singing that song she’d taught her and which Carla had sung all the way back from the bank. “Carla, stop that noise now. Come here, luvvy, and take the baby.” Carla came and held Jamal. “Put the pencil down now. Hold tight, dear, and go inside and put him down on the sofa. Stay there till Mummy comes, Mummy has to do something. There’s Mummy’s girl. There’s my baby.” Angie waited until Carla had gone into the apartment, then she stepped off the balcony.

Carla stayed singing to the baby until she was tired. The baby was screaming. She left him on the sofa and went back to the balcony to tell her mother, but Angie had disappeared. Perhaps she was in the bedroom, Carla thought. Then she noticed the chair was tipped over. She forgot about the baby. She’d always wanted to see over the balcony, but Angie wouldn’t let her. She straightened the chair, climbed up, knelt on the seat, and peered over the balcony.

A woman was lying on the knob of grass at the front of the building way down below. She would tell Angie. No, she wouldn’t tell Angie because then Angie would know that she had climbed on the chair. A skinny brown-haired girl and a man naked to the waist on a balcony below looked up at her, screaming, “Get down from there.” Carla jumped off the chair and ran to the sofa to hush Jamal. Angie didn’t come back. She heard sirens and more yelling, but she was afraid to go to the balcony again. Angie was a long time. The baby blubbered and sniffed himself to sleep. She remembered to put his comforter in his mouth. His eyes were wet, his mouth turned down in a sob. Carla sat on the sofa with him in case he woke up. Angie was taking so long. She got her pencil and sat writing squiggles to herself. A big A meant Angie, a wormy line meant said, a dash meant to, another wormy line, this time to the length of the page, meant hold the baby.

Carla approached the blue house now with some apprehension. This is how Angie must have approached the house. With a desire that was primal yet a certainty about how dangerous it was and how improbable. The house was not actually blue any more. Hard winters and neglect had scraped the