THURSDAY: The Boat People

BY ERIKA MACNEIL

Copyright is held by the author.

I DON’T want to leave but I have no choice. My brother, Ronin, tries to cheer me up, pretending we are going on a vacation rather than escaping with our lives. He keeps teasing our mother, Anya, asking, “Wherever did you find these beautiful clothes?” or, “Would you like cream and sugar in your tea for our voyage across the sea?”

My father, Luka, has been gone for a week, and already I am losing the sound of his voice in my head. The only part of him that still clings to me is the smell of his tobacco, lingering in the folds of my shoulder. I wrap the woolen arms around me in an empty embrace and crouch further in the hull of the wooden craft, still damp from the morning mist, its moldy seats slick with moisture seeping into my pants.

There are nights when I feel certain the water will swallow us whole, the waves looming large against the blackened night sky. Conversation is pointless as we are tossed about, my stomach lurching with each pull and tug of the unforgiving churn of water. I stop asking for food after the first night of retching over the side of the boat, and make do with sips of water while I slip in and out of slumber. Four of us go overboard, leaving empty spaces between our huddled figures. Somehow, I feel my father’s firm grip on my arm, preventing me from being flung into the sea. Rage boils in my belly as Ronin continues to make a joke about my lack of sea-worthy legs, all the more infuriating when my mother’s hollow stare renders me invisible.

Looking back, I realize it was she who became unseen. Anya had removed herself from that boat so she could stay back with my father’s body, buried deep in the cemetery we’d never visit again. “Luka would have loved to see the ocean,” she’d murmur wistfully to anyone who would listen. “Patience, darling, we’ll soon be there,” she’d coo, picturing his gentle face cradled in her hands. I watch her lips move, her eyes growing vacant.

When we finally arrive, her skin has turned ashen grey and her voice is no longer tender. All that remains of my beautiful mother is an empty shell, withered and spent. Ronin and I do our best to rouse her, to fill her with the newness of our adoptive country, but it is too late. Her mind refuses to migrate.

She dies less than a year after our uprooting, and my brother and I are left to fend for ourselves. We hear my father’s younger brother, Lars, has made it here as well, but nobody can direct us to his doorstep. Ronin becomes distant and moody, rarely speaking except in curt monosyllables and mumbled remarks. I begin to bleed the following summer and have to use wads of toilet paper to stop the flow, occasionally missing school to wash my underclothes and hang them to dry on the balcony. Mrs. Franks lives in the apartment upstairs and looks in on me when she can. She stares at my ragged clothes as though willing them to mend themselves and expand to accommodate my burgeoning body. Sometimes, she passes me her daughter’s worn outfits, faded and ill-fitting.

Today would have been my father’s 60th birthday. I celebrate without Ronin, who won’t even acknowledge his existence, let alone mine. There are too many spirits haunting his sleep at night; the poor wretches we lost in the waves refuse to leave him in peace, crying out to wait for them after being thrown into the wake of our boat. It is my mother he misses the most. He was her favourite and it seems like an insult how she didn’t make any effort to survive. He never speaks of our father.

I light six candles one by one: one for each person whose names are lost at sea, one for my father who never saw the sea, and one for my mother who gave in to the sea. I have made peace with these ghosts in order to chart my own course through murky waters. I call on these lost souls to free me from the guilt of survival. I try recalling my father’s voice raised in song at twilight over the dinner table, his head always bent in reverence for the meal my mother prepared. My brother’s absence weighs heavily on my heart, an abandoned chamber echoing with faded memories of happier times.

Suddenly, a phantom wind blows through the kitchen and all six candles go out. I glance over at my reflection in the dirty mirror over the sink. I hardly recognize myself, my sunken eyes and hollowed cheeks drawing stark lines across my face. The guttered flames drip hot wax onto the cracked plate.

There is a knock at the door and I rise on shaking limbs, eager for but nervous of company. The figure in the doorway is a carbon copy of my dear father; same hooded eyes, deep frown lines etched in furrows across a wide forehead. Uncle Lars has a heartier laugh and a fuller belly than Papa, but I recognize him at once, though this is the first time I have ever laid eyes on him.

“You are as difficult to find as you are beautiful to behold, little one,” his voice has a mild trace of the old tongue, lilting in singsong, the edges softened by strife. “And where is your brother these days?”

“Behind you,” Ronin appears from the shadows, his voice matching our uncle’s deep treble. “We have been looking for you as well, Uncle.”

“Not hard enough it seems!” Lars steps aside and ushers Ronin into his own hovel.

My father’s last words ring in my ears: never forget your roots, Mishka. You are your father’s daughter, my greatest achievement, my life’s work. This may be the end of me, but it is only the beginning of you.

***

Dancer by training, teacher by trade, writer on a whim. Erika is the librarian at Rogers PS in Newmarket, Ontario, where she lives with her family and hosts workshops and open mics for local writers. Her work can be found in Rice Paper, Bangs Zine, and The Last Stanza. You can reach her at @hintsofgrey on IG, @bibliobug on Goodreads, or @writeronawhim on Substack.