Читать книгу Last Flight Out - Jennifer Psy.D. Vaughn - Страница 11

The old stories came to me only because I asked. I wanted to know why I was the only child who didn’t have cousins, or two sets of grandparents. Why didn’t my mother’s family want to meet me? How was I half-Iraqi, but looked anything but? Why did my mother leave her home?

Enough of her culture had seeped into my young brain by then to tell me I was living a very different sort of life. In spite of how my parents were raising me, with love and opportunity and generosity and kindness, I felt like a part of me was missing.

After escaping her childhood home my mother spent only a brief time with the women who welcomed her into their underground world. After a couple days of rest and preparation, they handed her a small cardboard box that held travel documents and enough money to buy food and clothing. The rest, they told her, was up to her.

During yet another dark night, the journey to her new life resumed. The women had arranged for her safe passage out of the country, but she needed to figure out how to get to her final destination. Hitching rides from kind strangers, and sleeping under the stars, she finally made her way to England, where she quickly enrolled in school. At night, she worked at a ground level pub along a quiet one-way street. The family who owned the place allowed her to sleep in the back room that was equipped with a bathroom and a small sink. They were kind and never asked questions my mother was not prepared to answer. They had a good idea that she was on the run from someone or something, but never pressured her to divulge her secrets.

They had a son, who was a few years older than my mother and studying medicine at university. They often spoke of how proud they were of Easton and his brilliant mind. My mother listened politely at first to the glowing stories, but over time began to genuinely look forward to the tales they told of the fine stranger who seemed destined to spend his life saving others.

By the time Christmas rolled around that year, my mother was fully engrossed in Easton and spent many hours dreaming of the moment he would arrive home for holiday break. The family had invited her to spend the holiday with them at their country home a few miles outside of the city. My mother had no car, so the husband decided he would help her close the pub early the evening before, then take her home with him. His friendly ways were unfamiliar to my mother, but she accepted this gracious invitation out of respect and curiosity.

What was this Christmas all about? She wanted nothing more than to learn.

Plans changed, however, when a last minute snowstorm blew in, canceling Easton’s trip home. Through their disappointment, the couple carried on with their plans, giving my mother her first glimpse at a tradition that celebrated light and promise and the sanctity of family. She spent several minutes carefully unwrapping what would be the very first gift ever given to her.

It was a necklace on a gold chain with a tiny bird in flight. Its wings spread out, with sparkling diamonds at their tips. My mother told me she wore it every single day, for years after. In times of great stress, I would see her stroking the bird, as if it gave her enough strength of purpose to press forward.

Although she had still not met their only son, my mother saw the love that had raised him. At times, she would catch herself staring at the handsome couple as they entwined their fingers or laughed together at a private joke. There were never harsh words, no fists ever reached out in anger, and happiness seemed to seep in from every direction. Hands worked together at this business, no one ever shouldered all the labor, and my mother quickly became a valued member of the team. The couple always padded her paycheck with a few extra pounds, saying they had no idea what the future might hold and my mother needed to think about moving on to something more important than the family pub.

They took notice of my mother’s impeccable attention to detail, and the steady hand she used to complete her daily work. They had no knowledge of the nightmare that had chased her from her native home, but they were determined to give this young woman a fighting chance in her new life. They noticed that although she was intelligent and caught on quickly, she seemed to have very little in the way of a formal education.

As the weeks turned into months and my mother breezed through her lessons, the wife decided she needed more of a challenge. For two hours after school each day, my mother would continue her studies at the pub. Having gone to university before settling down with her husband, the wife dug out her old textbooks and designed a lesson plan full of world history, mathematics, and English.

As a young woman, my mother spoke clean English but tended to miss nuance, innuendo and social cues. The wife also knew that she was innocent in the ways of the opposite sex. My mother admitted to even me that she was completely oblivious to the gawking eyes that watched her move along the cobble stone floors inside the pub every night. The couple had an inkling that their sudden spike in business was not due to the foamy beer from the tap, but instead because word had spread throughout the city of their comely new employee.

The wife had found a burka buried deep inside my mother’s tiny room, underneath a load of dirty towels. Because of her long black hair and olive complexion, the wife assumed she was of Middle Eastern descent but she had the most sparkling green eyes the wife had ever seen. Lined by thick black lashes, and as wide as a meadow in the springtime, they forced your own eyes to blink in an effort to clear away what seemed like a mirage along the desert sand. She was a vision, and yet she was entirely unaware of it. As my mother explained to me how the couple debated the best way to have this delicate conversation with her, she would laugh as she recalled how they described the unintended but very real effect she was having on their patrons. The couple had noticed that my mother shied away from men, refusing to engage in their playful banter, scurrying away from their touch. She would unintentionally cower at the sound of a raised voice, or shudder at the clank of a beer goblet on the wooden bar. She had not yet learned that not all men were so brazen in their attempts to appeal to her. But she was about to.

In those early months with the sweet little family, my mother took only if she had already given. She walked the streets with a quick step and lowered head, unwilling to meet the gaze of the passers-by who inevitably stared at her lovely face. She came fully prepared to each lesson with the wife, completing each assignment ahead of schedule and above expectation. Her teachers routinely advanced her to the next level, the next grade until the day came when they told her it was time to begin her secondary education.

This was my favorite story of all. I would beg my mother to tell it over and over. It never got old.

It was the day she received what is equivalent to a high school diploma. Wearing a fine dress given to her by the couple, my mother joined them for dinner at an elegant restaurant she had heard about only in stories. Someone else folded her napkin, someone else gently placed her exquisite meal before her, and someone else paid the bill that came delicately wrapped in a leather binder at the end of dessert. She told me that she had made a decision that night. As she looked at the faces of the two people who had become like real parents to her, she took a deep cleansing breath, and spoke from the most private place buried inside her heart.

She started softly and slowly, the story of her life. She owed them that.

She told them of the family she fled from, the sisters she left behind. She told them of the murdered girl who had been her friend, the vengeful rage of her father, her own fear of becoming what her mother already was.

She explained how she became desperate to run away, single-minded in her driving need to escape the torture of being passed from one heavy-handed man to another.

She watched their eyes, locked on her as she described how she hatched her final plan in a matter of days, her destination guided only by rumor and word of mouth among the women. She said she had prayed that night that if she did not find the door at the bottom of the stairs, God would take her home.

If salvation was nothing more than false hope, she preferred death.

She tried to find the appropriate words to describe to the couple the moment she stood on the edge of the doorway, getting her first look at the outstretched arms of the angels on earth standing just inside. She wanted them to understand the risk these women were taking. One wrong step and there would be no time wasted bringing any one of them to swift justice. How they all knew there would be no acceptable form of punishment other than a violent and bloody death. In spite of that, they risked it all.

The couple held her eyes the entire time, only looking down occasionally when the horror of my mother’s truth seemed to strike so deeply they could barely stand to listen. She will never know what they were thinking that night, because they never asked a single question during the entire time my mother spoke. They were silent as she told of the bold courage of the group. How they hid their soul-saving work from the human corruption that festered just outside their front door.

God’s hands move in many directions, the women had told my mother. Sometimes they push you down to make you fight harder, and sometimes they lift you up when your own mortal resolve has failed.

As the night wore on, and their fellow patrons pushed their chairs in and left the restaurant with the glow of wine and good spirits, my mother’s words began to slow. She looked into the misty eyes across the table and uttered the words she had never had cause to speak before. Three little words she should have known her entire life, but until then had felt as foreign on her tongue as a new language.

“I love you both,” she began, “for giving me hope and kindness and a place I shall call home for the rest of my life.”

The couple did not realize they had been holding tight onto the other’s fingers. For the next few seconds, the fingers froze then tightened, exchanging more than words ever could. The couple who had been blessed with only one child, but had enough love for a dozen, had already given this woman-child a permanent place in their family and in their hearts. The daughter they did not create, but one who came to them as if on a path from above. They told her they had waited for this moment, knowing that she kept her heart guarded, never asking for it to be included or assuming it was even welcomed. Without intending to, she had brought them a peaceful kind of joy; an unexpected gift they could never have prepared for, but couldn’t imagine not getting.

In the months spent with the couple up until that point, the most important piece of this puzzle had been missing. My mother described to me the final moments of her celebration dinner and the surprise that followed, as if they were guiding her to the next fork along the road of her life. She would recite for me what the couple had said to her, word for word.

“Dear, we have loved you from the moment you knocked on our door,” the husband and wife began, each finishing the other’s words. “We don’t know the people you came from, but from this point forward you will always be our daughter.” The husband looked down at their locked fingers, as a single tear slid slowly down his cheek.

“We love Easton in a way we could never imagine feeling again. Yet, we do…for you. We have arranged for you to join him at university. We have saved enough money, and the school is granting you a scholarship to make up the difference. We have kept it a surprise, because we knew you would never ask for our help. Everything is paid for, your place is being held, and you will begin in one month.”

“Easton will meet you at the train, settle you into your new apartment, and help get you ready for classes to begin.” The wife picked up her napkin and dabbed her eyes before continuing. “We will respect your wishes to do as you see fit once you get to school but if I could make one suggestion…” she began tentatively, hoping her words would be welcomed advice. “I see in you some of the qualities we saw in Easton. You are calm and steady, you have a disciplined mind, and you wish to help other people,” she stated firmly, forcing my mother to accept this as fact rather than compliment, which she refused to acknowledge most times. “These are qualities best put to good use among physicians. Doctors must be calm, they must be confident, and above all else seek to ease the pain and suffering of complete strangers.” The wife then focused her eyes directly at my mother. “You are going to be very important in the lives of others, I can just feel it. Where you go from here is completely up to you to decide. It doesn’t matter who told you otherwise, but in this life there is always free will. We will always be here for you, but the world is also waiting for you to take your place in it.”

My mother held the wife’s gaze firmly, feeling the sting of tears behind her eyes. She had never known the physical phenomenon of joyful tears. She spent so many years fully in control of her emotions that not even her sisters had ever witnessed the fall of a tear from her face.

Like a door swinging wide open, my mother’s iron resolve shattered and she was overcome by gratitude. She had a flash of the fear she had felt the night she left her father’s house. The blind rush of adrenaline that had propelled her down the dark empty streets to the safe house. She briefly recalled sharing bread with mothers and children huddled under heavy blankets in the back of rusty old trucks traveling away from the abuse their families had nurtured for generations. She wondered what had become of them, and offered thanks yet again for the blessings she had been given.

As the family prepared to leave the restaurant that night, emotionally spent and ready for the warm comfort of home, they each heard the moan of the heavy wooden door as it was pulled open. They chuckled to each other as they expected to hear the loud happy conversation of a couple heading inside for a final toast of the night.

Instead, all was quiet as the tall man entered. He was wind-blown, his cheeks dusted with color from the early spring chill. His eyes darted around as he adjusted his collar and raked his fingers through thick blond hair tousled by the breeze.

My mother described this to me many times. I always closed my eyes as if to drop myself into this memory as a quiet bystander watching from nearby.

She told me how she felt a tug deep inside her stomach that hitched her breath and forced her mouth wide open in search of air. No words formed inside her head as she felt a swarm of butterflies spread their wings along the sides of her chest. This was good, she had explained to me, because she could not have spoken anyway.

As the tall man looked in their direction, she could not help but stare. Then she could hardly understand why he suddenly broke into a trot, heading straight for her table. As he swept the wife into a bone-crushing bear hug, a lightning bolt of realization shook my mother to her very core.

This glorious man with the wide white grin and strong shoulders was none other than Easton! The doctor-to-be and beloved son of the two most treasured people in her young life was then turning toward my mother.

She extended a shaky hand in his direction only to have him bypass her outstretched fingers in favor of a chest-to-chest embrace. Her skin pulsing with what felt like electricity, she returned the hug feeling hard muscle and soft gentle hands on her back.

Finally, she stepped back and looked up into the face of the man who would become her husband.

Soon enough after that, he would become my father.