Sara Alexi - The Illegal Gardener

“Marmalade?”

“Oranges in a sugar syrup.”

“Thank you, I have had oranges today. There are many oranges on all the trees and I have had so many. Every day I have many.” His expression tells her that he is sick of oranges.

“Toast and coffee then?”

“OK.”

They amble up the lane. Aaman silently offers to carry the milk. Juliet indicates this is not necessary. Juliet’s neighbours are all so busy they don’t see her pass. The noise of the chatter and laughter and music ebbs and flows as they make their way.

Juliet opens the door to find the cat is on the kitchen table again. Aaman lifts it off and looks at Juliet to see if his action is acceptable. She laughs gently and offers him a seat.

Aaman sits puzzling over the tent of cushions on the table covering a tea towel whilst Juliet cuts and toasts the bread. The butter from the fridge is hard and Juliet contemplates buying a microwave, just for these little jobs, she tells herself. She puts the butter on a plate and slips it under the grill tray to warm.

She joins Aaman and gives him toast. Aaman is still gazing at the centrepiece. Juliet laughs and throws the cushions back onto the sofa. Pulling the tea towel away, she says, “Tarah!”

Aaman smiles. The joke crosses cultures. They are both relieved.

“Are you OK from last night?” he asks.

“Yes, thanks. Are you? You were very brave last night,” she pauses, “and when you were a boy…”

“No, I was not brave, I was terrified. I did not jump into action. Your baba was very brave to be in the fire for you.”

“I think for an eight-year-old boy you were very brave. My dad was a grown man.” Juliet pours the coffee and puts marmalade on her bread. Aaman picks up the jar and examines the contents.

“You say he is dead? You miss him?” He sniffs at the marmalade.

“So much. But I missed him more before he was dead.” She realises that to Aaman this will not make sense. “It’s a long story. Milk?”

Aaman nods before tipping his head on an angle like an attentive bird and then sits back, coffee mug in hand, as if he has all the time in the world to listen to her.

“My dad was the best.” Juliet laughs at the love of the memory. “He played with me all the time when he was at home. When I was very little, my mum worked and my dad stayed at home until I started school. Then they both worked. Mum came home before Dad but she…”

Juliet’s tone deepens and her face becomes firm.

“I don’t know, she always seemed cross and in a hurry, whatever we did. When Dad came home,” Juliet sighs and smiles, “it was as if all the hurry and all the crossness disappeared and we’d chase round the kitchen table and play hide and seek around the house. Mum would get snappy because the airing cupboard would get messed up, or her bed would be unmade by my dad pretending to hide under the covers. But he was great.”

“You were very younger when he died?”

“No. And that’s why it hurts. Their arguing slowly increased. It got to a point that they had no sense of timing. They would fight openly in front of me. I was at an age when I wanted to be with my friends all the time so I tried to go to other people’s houses after school. It felt good at their houses, normal.

“Then I would go back and Mum would be shouting at Dad. He’d see me and go quiet. She would carry on. Then he would leave the room and she would still be shouting. He would put his hand over my mouth and get me in an arm lock pretending to kidnap me and we would sneak out and eat fish and chips at the corner shop and not go back until bedtime.” Juliet sucks on her lips to hold back the tears.

“Here I go again.” She smiles, but the corners of her mouth turn down.

Aaman rocks forward, puts down his coffee cup and rests his forearms crossed on the table, looks Juliet in the eye and waits.

“OK. Well, basically he left. I was thirteen. I became friends with Michelle that year. She really helped, we would stay out from school until late, be out all weekend. Mum didn’t care. She never asked where I had been. I would come home, full of our adventures and call her to see where she was. ‘Mum,’ I would call. ‘Yes, by some major error in my life!’ and my heart would sink. Even today, when I talk to Michelle, it always hurts. It brings back those times.” Juliet straightens her back and looks up at the ceiling. The cat rubs against her legs and she picks him up and absently puts him on her knee.

“I don’t think I am very nice to her. I mean I haven’t seen her for…” She stops, closes her eyes, fingers counting. “Twenty-two years. That’s a long time, and I’m sorry to say I never call her. She just keeps on calling me.” Juliet looks at Aaman, fearing his judgement. None comes.

“Anyway, she was my rock that year when he left, and for many years after. I thought he had left without a word. I didn’t see him leave. He never phoned, he didn’t write—or so I thought.” Juliet exhales roughly through her nose, elbows on the table, her head sinking into her hands. The cat adjusts to avoid being squashed. Her voice becomes quiet and muffled into her palms. Aaman leans toward her to hear.

“When I was moving out of the house, I was eighteen and my escape route was college. They even paid us to go in those days, grants and so on.” Juliet unburies her face and leans her chin on clasped hands. She cannot meet Aaman’s gaze, so she looks at, but doesn’t see the painted wall.

“I wanted to take everything that was mine so I would never have to go back. I was looking for something, I forget what, it might have been a shoe and I had searched everywhere. I went to look in the bottom of Mum’s wardrobe because that’s where she kept her shoes, so yes, I suppose it was a shoe. Well, you can guess what I found there! They dated back to the day he left.”

She strokes the cat, his fur slicking with the slight sweat of her palms. He has a quiet purr. Juliet takes a deep breath.

“The first one had no address or stamp on it so I presume he left it at the house on the day he left. It explained his position and how he regretted what was happening and how he loved me and that I could not have done anything to help. He said he’d come for me as soon as he found somewhere for us but meanwhile I could ring him at the pub he used to go to. He couldn’t call me because of Mum. The next one had a stamp, two days later. He asked how I was and why I hadn’t called, was I cross, if I was then he understood but he needed to talk to me and a time and a place to meet after school.

“The next letter said he had been to the house but I had been out and Mum had been angry and would I please call him. We moved sometime around then to a tiny flat and I had to move schools. I felt like I was going mad, losing my dad and all my friends at the same time. The flat wasn’t far so I still saw Michelle in the evenings and at weekends, but the letters dated after that were to a post-office box. That’s a box for letters you can have at the post office so no one really knows where you live.”

Aaman nods his understanding and accepts more coffee.

“He said he had called round. He said he had gone to my old school. He said he had even gone into Mum’s work. He said she had said I didn’t want to see him and that I would contact him when I did. Was it true, he asked? You get the picture.

“There were fewer and fewer letters dated over the next three years to that P.O. box. There were three birthday cards and three Christmas cards. All hoped I would like the gifts. I have always wondered what the gifts might have been.”

Juliet stops stroking the cat and picks up her mug, tipping it slightly to look, but not to drink. She sets it back down.

“In one envelope was a Decree Nisei. That’s a divorce paper saying it is final. In the last dated letter, just before my sixteenth birthday was a newspaper clipping. A one-inch report of a pedestrian killed in a car accident and my dad’s name. That’s how I found out my dad was dead.” Juliet feels the weight of her words. She is still, and in that stillness is a crack, followed by a splintering and then the crashing of protective walls, the explosion of repressed emotions.