Honey(57)

“That sounds quite, intense.”

“I still don’t know why the devil has such an aversion to table salt.”

“Were these Christian exorcisms?” Layla asks.

“Part Christian, part other things. I’m not really sure. My Grandmother had a lot of beliefs.”

“And how old were you when you attended the exorcisms?”

“Like six or seven.”

“And what were you being told about the evil spirits?”

Yrsa can see that Layla is more interested than she should be letting on.

“The usual things: that you had to say your prayers and eat your greens or they’d come possess you.”

“Do you believe in spirits?” Layla asks.

Yrsa has never spoken with anyone about this.

“I think.” And she has to think. “That most of it is bullshit.” There was the smell of frankincense the first time she saw someone faint from the power of the Lord. “But for those of us who are ‘skeptics,’ or ‘with science,’ there’s also a lot we’ve been told to think about the spiritual world. There are practices we’ve been told are primitive, or illegitimate. And, for my Grandmother, she found a lot of solace in her beliefs. In her other worlds.”

“You were close with your Grandmother?”

“I spent a lot of my childhood with her.”

“You speak in the past tense?”

“She died when I was thirteen.”

“What happened?”

“Accident in the home. She had Alzheimer’s.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I was with her actually, the night she died. It was just me and her.”

“That must have been difficult. Would you like to talk about it?”

“Not really.” Yrsa looks back to the window.

“Where did she grow up?”

“Jamaica.”

Layla makes her notes. “And this is your mum’s mum.”

“Yes.”

“And your grandad?”

“Runaway, dead. We don’t know, my Grandmother never said who he was.”

“Would you say your mother and your grandmother had a strong relationship?”

“They had an, interesting relationship.”

“How so?”

“They didn’t like each other.”

Layla gives space.

“They were different. But also kind of the same. I don’t know.”

Layla gives more space.

“My mum’s difficult. She likes to hide things,” Yrsa says it before she thinks.

After too much space Layla asks, “What sort of things?”

Yrsa thinks of the look she sometimes catches, flashing and fading, across her mother’s eyes.

“You know it’s interesting,” she says. “Because my Grandmother was also only raised by her mother, no dad.”

“What happened to him?”

“No one knows. Apparently he was there, and then he wasn’t.”

“The maternal influence has been very strong in the family then,” Layla smiles.

Yrsa doesn’t know that this is something to smile about.

“My great-grandmother was very cruel, my Grandmother told me. She’d say, when she was punishing me, that it would be nothing on what her mother would do. She’d rub chili peppers into her skin, lock her out of the house; my Grandmother ran away when she was young.”

“That must have been very hard for her.”

“Must have been hard for my great-grandmother too,” Yrsa adds. “She was only fifteen when she had a baby. Just before my Grandmother died, when she was losing her mind a bit, I remember she started talking to her mother again. I don’t think she was very happy to see her.” Yrsa laughs.

“When you say talking to her, how do you—”

“I mean talking to her. My Grandmother used to say that life and death are different sides of the same coin.”

“And do you—”

“So is therapy meant to make me better?” Yrsa interrupts, bored now of the family history.

Layla smiles like someone trying to practice patience. “I don’t like to think of therapy as making someone ‘better’ per se. Hopefully it will offer some tools, or new perspectives on things that may feel…” She is thinking of the right word. “Important in your life.”

“Right.”

Layla challenges Yrsa more than she expected. She expected her to just say, “And how do you feel about that?”

“And the sessions are very much guided by you.”

Yrsa feels disappointed, but she’s not sure about what.

“I would have bought a car,” she says.

“Sorry?”

“With the guy’s credit card. I would have bought a car.”

Layla tucks her hair behind her ear and it immediately bounces back. “Why a car?”

“For no deep reason. Not everything has to have a reason.”



* * *





[email protected] to [email protected] Fri, 1 July, 11:49 (1 day ago) One of my mum’s poems. Made me think of you.


delirium

When I’m shopping for oranges and he tells me to hurry up and pick one.