THE COMEBACK OF ALARICK by Kabirat Aleem

Sept. 1998

Young and belligerent, seventeen-year-old Jordan stood with his arms crossed around his body as he faced off with his father at the Baleria International Airport.

“I just said that I do not want to go. I will not go. You can’t make me,” he repeated, as he had been doing in the past five days since his father had informed him that he was leaving the country for his maternal uncle’s place in Rova.

Stupid Rova that he heard they don’t speak English. How was he supposed to survive there? How would he cope? How would he make friends? Was he supposed to leave his friends here to go make friends with sheep on his uncle’s ranch? Who still does ranching as a full-time occupation anyway? Stupid ranch! Stupid cows! Stupid Unc… No, he couldn’t really call his uncle stupid; even though he did not know the man well enough, he had been nice enough to him the last time he and his family came to Baleria.

When his mother died. Jordan had been nine years old then, and Maman had been sick for a long time before his father told him one day when he came back from school that his mother was now resting with God.

“I do not want her to rest with God; I want her here!” was the first thing he shouted before he ran upstairs to check on the bed that his mother had laid on for months without going out while her body was racked with coughs and the doctor was always coming and going till people could almost believe that the man lived in their house. Maman was nowhere to be found. Jordan still relived the way he had run down the stairs, hitting his legs against the door of his father’s study as he shouted, “Where is Maman?”

“The undertaker already took her away. They will take care of her body, then we can go see her later before the burial,” his Parpa had replied in his deep voice as he raised his head from the correspondence he was penning.

“How could he even think of work at the moment?” was the paramount thought on Jordan’s mind as he stalked out of his father’s study and slammed the door with all the fury of a nine-year-old. That was when he realized that his toe was bleeding, but he did not care as he trailed his bloody footstep back to his mother’s room. Not even when Molly, their resident housekeeper, cook, and caregiver, called him, did he answer. He slammed the door of his mother’s room and went back to lock it from the inside before curling on the spot where his mother had lain for months. He folded his body tightly as he curled up on the bed. He hated his father at that moment for the fact that he couldn’t even feel the heat of his mother on the bed again. He hated Molly because the stale scent that he had come to attach to his mother couldn’t even be detected on the sheet, no matter how much he inhaled deeply. All he could breathe in was the scent of lavender and soap. He had curled up there and refused to stand up when he heard Molly’s voice calling him to come and eat something first.

“How dare she?”

He curled up without answering as he heard the knock on the door, even after hearing the heavy steps of his father on the staircase.

Not until his father said, “Jordan, get up and open the door. The undertaker just called. We can go see her now," he said.

He ran to the door and flung it open, and with a sulky look, he demanded, “Where is she?”

He did not stop hating his father till they got to the nondescript-looking establishment of the undertaker. Nor did he let go of his anger until they were shown to the no-frills room where his mother’s body was placed in the coffin on a slab.

As he was about to rush in, his father laid a hand on his shoulder. Jordan looked at the man in annoyance.

“Are you sure?” Parpa asked, and that was when Jordan saw what he had been too angry before to see on his father’s face. His eyes were red-rimmed like he had been crying, and grief weighed down the corners of his mouth, making his moustache look droopy.

Jordan nodded, and his father patted his shoulder before telling him to go ahead as she followed slowly behind.

Maman looked like she was sleeping. She seemed more at peace than she had been in the past few months that he had watched her deteriorate from the beautiful woman that everybody praised to the shell of her former self.

Mama,” Jordan whispered, as if she could answer him. Maman, are you okay now? Maman, are your lungs no longer bad?” Jordan felt his father’s presence behind him even before he felt his hands on his shoulder.

Jordan,” his father called, and his voice caught.

“Parpa, is she fine now?” Jordan asked while looking at his mother’s hand, which was always clutched around one handkerchief or another as she placed the material against her mouth whenever she was coughing. The hand lay passively against her waist now, and they seemed to be resting from all those works too, just as his mother was.

He heard his father sigh before he said, “Yes, Jordan. She is fine now. She is at peace with God, and she no longer feels all that pain. Where she would...” he cleared his throat. “Where she could smile again and look down at you in happiness as she watched you grow happily. She will want you to be happy. That was what she said. For all of us to be happy”

Jordan turned back sharply to look up at his father, and he caught the tears that fell from his father’s eyes before the man quickly swiped them off with the back of his palm when he saw his son looking.

“Is that what she wanted, Parpa? For me to be happy? For us to be happy?” he asked, and his father nodded.

“Then, Parpa, don’t cry,” he said as he hugged his father’s waist.

Jordan had started crying in earnest on their way back to the house. He cried while he finally accepted to eat the toast Molly had made for him. He cried when his father finally realized that he had hurt his toes when Molly said she found trails of blood when she came upstairs to call him. He cried as his father disinfected the cut for him and bandaged it. He cried himself to sleep.