Zadie Smith - Swing Time

It was this train of thought that left me unprepared for what came next. She stopped talking, rested her head in a hand, and said: “Love, I have to ask for your help with something.”

She winced as she said it. I steeled myself against some form of self-dramatization. Terrible to think back now and realize this grimace was most likely a real, involuntary reaction to a genuine physical pain.

“And I wanted to deal with it myself,” she was saying, “not to bother you with it, I know you’re very busy, but I don’t know who else to turn to at this point.”

“Yes — well, what is it?”

I was very involved in trimming the fat off a pork chop. When I at last raised my eyes to my mother’s face she looked as tired as I’d ever seen her.

“It’s your friend — Tracey.”

I put down my cutlery.

“Oh, it’s ridiculous, really, but I got this e-mail, friendly… it came to my surgery. I hadn’t seen her in years… but I thought: Oh, Tracey! It was about one of her children, the eldest boy — he’d been expelled from school, she felt unfairly, and she wanted my help, you see, and so I replied, and at first it really didn’t seem that strange, I get these kinds of letters all the time. But now, you know, I do wonder: was it all just a ploy?”

“Mum, what are you talking about?”

“I did think it was a bit odd, the amount of e-mails she was sending, but… well, you know, she doesn’t work, that’s clear, I don’t know if she’s ever worked, really, and she’s still in that bloody flat… That would drive you crazy by itself. She must have a lot of time on her hands — and right away it was a lot of e-mails, two or three a day. It was her opinion the school unfairly expelled black boys. I did make some inquiries, but it seemed in this case, well… the school felt they had a strong case and I couldn’t take it any further. I wrote to her and she was very angry, and sent some very angry e-mails, and I thought that was the end of it, but — it was the beginning.”

She scratched anxiously at the back of her head-wrap, and I noticed the skin at the top of her neck was raw with irritation.

“But Mum, why would you reply to anything from Tracey?”—I was holding the sides of the table—“I could have told you she’s not stable. I’ve known that for years!”

“Well, firstly she’s my constituent, and I always reply to my constituents. And when I realized she was your Tracey — she’s changed her name, you know — but her e-mails have become very… weird, very peculiar.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“About six months.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about it before!”

“Darling,” she said, and shrugged: “When would I have had the chance?”

She had lost so much weight her magnificent head looked vulnerable on its swan-like neck, and this new delicacy, this suggestion of mortal time working on her just as it works on everybody, spoke to me more loudly than any of the old accusations of daughterly neglect ever had. I lay a hand over hers.

“Odd in what way?”

“I really don’t want to talk about it in here. I’ll send some of the e-mails on to you.”

“Mum, don’t be so dramatic. You can give me an idea.”

“They’re quite abusive,” she said, tears gathering in her eyes, “and I haven’t been feeling very well, and I’m getting a lot of them now, sometimes a dozen in a day, and I know it’s stupid but they’re upsetting me.”

“Why don’t you just let Miriam deal with it? She deals with your communications, doesn’t she?”

She took her hand back and assumed her backbench face, a tight, sad smile, suitable for combating questions about the health service but unnerving to see over a dinner table.

“Well, you’ll find out sooner or later: we’ve split up. I’m still in the flat on Sidmouth Road. I have to stay in the neighborhood, obviously, and I won’t find another deal like that, at least not right away, so I asked her to move out. Of course, it is technically her flat, but she was very understanding about it, you know Miriam. Anyway, it’s not a big deal, there’s no hard feelings, and we’ve kept it out of the papers. So that’s the end of that.”

“Oh, Mum… I’m sorry. Really.”

“Don’t be, don’t be. Some people can’t deal with a woman having a certain amount of power, and that’s just how it is. I’ve seen it before and I’ll see it again, I’m sure. Look at Raj!” she said, and it was so long since I’d thought of the Noted Activist by his real name that I realized I’d forgotten it. “Running off with that fool girl as soon as I finished my book! Is it my fault he never finished a book?”

No, I assured her, it was not her fault Raj never finished his book, on “coolie” labor in the West Indies — though he had been working on it for two decades — while my mother began and finished her book, on Mary Seacole, in a year and a half. Yes, the Noted Activist had only himself to blame.

“Men are so ridiculous. But it turns out so are women. Anyway, it’s a good thing in a way… at a certain point I really felt she was trying to interfere in ways that… Well, this obsession of hers with ‘our’ business practices in West Africa, human-rights abuses, and so on — I mean, she was encouraging me to ask questions in the House — in areas I’m not really qualified to speak on — and in the end I think what it was really about, in a funny way, was trying to drive a wedge between me and you …” A less likely motivation for Miriam I could hardly imagine, but I held my tongue. “… And I’m getting older and I don’t have as much energy as I did, and I really want to be focused on my local concerns, my constituents. I’m a local representative and that’s what I want to do. I haven’t got ambitions any further than that. Don’t smile, dear, I really don’t. Not any more. At one point I said to her, to Miriam—‘Look, I’ve got people walking into my surgery every day from Liberia, from Senegal, from the Gambia, from Côte d’Ivoire! My work is global. This is where my work is . These people are coming from all over the world to my constituency , in these terrible little boats, they’re traumatized, they’ve seen people die right in front of them, and they’re coming here. That’s the universe trying to tell me something. I really feel this is the work I was born to do.’ Poor Miriam… she means very well, and God knows she’s well organized, but she lacks perspective sometimes. She wants to save everybody. And that kind of person does not make the best life partner, for sure, though I will always consider her a very effective administrator.” It was impressive — and a bit sad. I wondered if some similarly chilly epigraph existed for me: She was not the best daughter, but she was a perfectly adequate dinner date.

“Do you think,” asked my mother, “do you think she’s unhinged… mentally ill or…”

“Miriam’s one of the sanest people I’ve ever met.”

“No — your friend Tracey.”

“I wish you’d stop calling her that!”

But my mother wasn’t listening to me, she was in her own dream: “You know, somehow… well, she’s on my conscience. Miriam thought I should have just gone to the police about the e-mails in the first place but… I don’t know… when you get older, somehow things from the past… they can weigh on you. I remember when she used to come for counseling at the center… Of course I didn’t see her notes, but I got the sense, speaking to the team there, that there were problems, mental-health issues, even back then. Maybe I was wrong to stop her coming in, but it really wasn’t easy to get her the placement in the first place, and I’m sorry, but at the time I really and truly felt that she had abused my trust, your trust, everybody’s… She was still a child, of course, but it was a crime — and it was a lot of money — I’m sure it all went to her father — but what if they’d blamed you? At that point it was just best to sever all connections, I thought. Well, I’m sure you have lots of judgments about what went on — you always have a lot of judgments — but I wish you would understand that it was not easy raising you, I was not in an easy situation, and on top of everything I was focused on trying to get myself educated, trying to get myself qualified, maybe too much so in your opinion… but I had to make a life for you and for me. I knew your father couldn’t do it. He wasn’t strong enough. No one else was going to do it. We were on our own. And I had a lot of balls in the air, that’s how it felt to me, and—” she reached across the table and grabbed my elbow: “We should have done more — to protect her!”