So many snow games with Rowan and his pals when we were little. Snowball fights that went on for hours…I hated the bite of the cold, like an electric saw the length of my spine, when a boy would shove a snowball down my neck — but the boys themselves I loved. Four, five, six of them — and me, always the only girl. I loved the violent mixing of our bodies when the sled would hit a bump and we’d be ejected, rolling over and over in the snow, elbow on forehead, knee in gut, head slamming nose — it hurt like hell but it warmed me up and turned me on; I wished it would never end.
First a tomboy, then an androgyne, Subra says…Forever hanging out with boys, hankering after a man’s life and a man’s death…When did that end — when Fabrice died? Or when, scarcely a month later, little Toussaint was born?
Rena stays in bed for a while, eyes closed, breathing in the Florence air and slowly intoning the words Tuscany, Renaissance, beauty.
The laughter of a small child wafts up to her from the street below, bubbling and gurgling like a brook — oh, the word gurgle was invented for that laugh.
Tell me, Subra says.
Toussaint’s laughter at age two — his mad joy to be running down the footpath between Alioune and me, left hand in his father’s right, right hand in my left — Toussaint the dwarf thrilled to have the undivided attention of two giants, two gods — one, two, three-ee-ee! — his feet would leave the ground, he’d go soaring through the air, his laughter would ring out, we’d set him down—’Again!’ he’d say — one, two, three-ee-ee! — his feet would leave the ground, he’d go soaring through the air, his laughter would ring out, we’d set him down—‘Again!’ he’d say — and we’d do it again, five, ten, twenty times — that day, another day, then another — it was infinity, eternity, we wanted it never to end and so did he—‘Again!’—the joy of it—‘Again!’—his feet leaving the ground, Mommy to his right and Daddy to his left (yes, Daddy: given that Fabrice died before Toussaint was born, Alioune has always been his father)…And then it was over. One day we stopped playing that game with Toussaint and started playing it with Thierno…and then it was over for Thierno as well. Finis. Nevermore. And no one noticed the moment of the ending. Did Simon and Lisa ever play that game with me? With Rowan? If they did, I have no memory of it. Neither, most likely, do my sons. They’ll play it with their own children, who will forget it in turn. Invisible connections…
Snow, murmurs Subra.
In infrared photography snow is black, ice cubes are black, people’s glasses (even transparent ones) are black, everything cool is black, black, black…But the dark skin of my lovers is subtly shaded, rippling with a thousand nuances of light; sometimes you can even see the veins through it. Infrared reveals what I cherish more than anything else, what I’ve always longed for, what I lacked most as a child — warmth.
When I’d lose my temper, my mother would call me a ‘fury’ and send me to my room to calm down. She meant it teasingly, but deep down I liked being called that — I thought the word suited me to a T. In my mind it was connected to fire and I liked the image of myself as flaming and flamboyant…furious, fierce, ferocious — yes, a real Fury — me!
My first memory is of being cold. Can it really have been as cold as all that in our house in Westmount? Carpets in every room, stained-glass windows, wood panelling, book-lined walls…‘Shh, your father’s working, he’s trying to write his thesis.’ ‘Your mom’s with a client. Don’t you have any homework?’ ‘Shh, can’t you see I’m reading? I need to concentrate. Please go and play, darling.’ ‘Rowan, Rena, please don’t make noise when I’m with a client, all right? They’re such unhappy women, you wouldn’t believe what they’ve been through.’
Apart from defending prostitutes, Ms Lisa Heyward’s primary concern at the time was the pro-choice movement: her phone would ring off the wall every time a doctor got arrested for having terminated an unwanted pregnancy. Henry Morgantaler, for instance, who claimed to have carried out some five thousand abortions single-handedly. The man had a lot in common with France’s Simone Veil — born the same year, both were Jewish and had lost their parents in the Nazi death camps; both, moreover, were subjected to revolting slander as they fought for abortion rights (hadn’t Jews always ritually killed and eaten Catholic babies?). In 1973, a fifteen-year prison sentence was handed down for Morgantaler, but he was released after only a few weeks, thanks to the efforts of tireless professional feminists like Ms Lisa Heyward.
For me this meant spending long hours alone with Lucille as I waited for Rowan to come home from school. It was Lucille, in fact — a vivacious young black woman from Martinique — who unwittingly introduced me to eroticism. Waking up one day from my afternoon nap (I can’t have been more than three or four), I heard strange noises coming from the far end of the apartment. I tiptoed across the kitchen and saw that Lucille’s bedroom door was ajar and that she was in there with a man. They were naked, their chocolate-coloured skin was smooth and slick and their bodies formed a sort of ebony gondola that rocked swiftly back and forth in the moving waves of blankets and sheets. The man was cupping Lucille’s head in his hands, gently holding her neck and staring into her eyes and whispering to her in Creole, I could make out a word here and there but most of them were drowned out by sounds of pure music, pure desire, pure pleasure…
Maybe that’s where you acquired your taste for the French language? suggests Subra.
Could be. Definitely it was the first time I ever saw a man’s sex erect and in action, and I’ll never forget it. As her lover penetrated her simultaneously with his gaze, his voice and his impressive tool, Lucille’s eyes sparkled like diamonds, her mouth was half-open in a smile and she kept gasping and letting out these little yelps — no, more like bits of song but always on the same note, staccato — everything about the couple palpitated and vibrated and spoke to me of ecstasy. Yes, that must be when I first realised how much you could ask of life, if only you dared…
Meanwhile there were endless hours of solitude and boredom to be got through. When Rowan finally came home from school, he taught me everything he’d learned there. Day after day — reading, writing, spelling, arithmetic, geography. My brother gradually becoming more than a brother to me — father, mother, god, sole horizon. ‘I’m the sun, Rena, and you’re the moon.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘You have no light of your own; all you do is reflect my light.’ ‘Yes. We’ll stick together forever, won’t we, Rowan?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘We’ll live together when we grow up.’ ‘Come give me a hug.’ Five and nine, at the time. My plump soft body pressed up against his wiry, knotty one. ‘I’m a nice girl, aren’t I?’ ‘Sure you’re a nice girl.’ ‘You love me, don’t you?’ ‘Sure I love you.’ ‘I love you more than anything in the world.’ ‘Damn right you do.’ My heart skipping a beat at the swearword. ‘But I’m older than you are, so you have to obey me.’ ‘I know.’ ‘I’m the master and you’re the slave, okay?’ ‘Okay.’ ‘Promise?’ ‘I promise.’
Rowan was warm. And because he was warm, because he was like the sun to me, because I worshipped him, overjoyed by his trust in me and awed by his inside knowledge of the adult world, everything he said and wanted was right. So when he said, ‘You know, Rena, it’s not enough to be nice, you’ve got to learn to be bad, too,’ I nodded and promised to do my best. And when he slipped his middle fingers inside of me, one from the front and the other from the back, and tried to force them to touch, I winced and squirmed but when he said, ‘That doesn’t hurt, does it?’ I said, ‘No.’ And when he used his penknife to remove all the twigs and leaves from a thin supple willow branch, then impaled me on it, causing me to bleed, and said, ‘Don’t worry, Rena, it’s only natural, women bleed all the time, you should be grateful to me for making a woman of you,’ I said, panting against the pain, ‘Thank you, Rowan.’ Crying or complaining were out of the question — I had no one to turn to. You weren’t around then, Subra; I hadn’t invented you yet.