Page 106 of What It's Like in Words
“I do have a hilarious story to tell you about the training exercises, though.”
“Tell me.”
“Later. You’re not ready yet.”
She tells me to sit while she makes the tea. I move to the sofa and pull the blanket over me. She puts her hair up in a bun with the leopard-print scrunchie from around her wrist and fills the kettle. “How was yesterday foryou?”
The washing is still on the radiator behind the sofa. I touch my feminist T-shirt, and the fabric is dry.
“Ruth, honestly, it’s been the strangest twenty-four hours. So, the night before last, after I saw you, I got into a fight with this guy at the station and—”
“A fight?What?” Ruth switches off the stove and sits with me.
“Not afightfight, but I was pushed and then sort of pushed again.”
“That sounds like a fight. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. I mean, I lost the fight. But I should have handled it differently.”
“Why, what would you have done?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not confronted him? But he knocked into me and smashed my phone and I didn’t want him to get away with it. But then he shoved me and got away with it anyway. So there’s no winning.”
“No, there’s no winning. Well, no, that’s not true. You’re winning by being you. These guys are going to be the losers ultimately. Even if they don’t know it yet.”
Ruth tucks the loose strands of her hair into the newly constructed nest on top of her head. She always looks effortlessly beautiful, like an art student from a movie who’s always got paint on her jeans and carries an armful of books and a portable coffee that she never spills even though she runs everywhere.
“Anyway, to cut a longer story short, I called my mum last night.”
“You did? Wait, on a Thursday? What did you talk about?”
“Dad.”
“Oh.”
“She told me I put him on a pedestal and that he wasn’t perfect. Did you know?”
“That you put him on a pedestal?”
“That he wasn’t perfect.”
“I mean… well, yeah. But, Enola, didn’tyou?”
“I don’t know,” I say, understanding now the capacity I have for both knowing and not knowing something at the same time. “But what does that mean? Am I supposed to just forgive her for everything?”
Ruth’s chest drops with a breath. “I don’t know, Laa. She isn’t perfect either. She handled it badly. But she does love you.”
I pull my knees up. “I have all these memories of my dad being fun and… now it’s like I don’t know either of my parents.”
“How well do any of us know our parents? Think of my dad—he doesn’t even know who his parents are.”
“Has he ever tried?”
“I think he did once but there weren’t great records. Lots of unwanted babies. Mum looked up her ancestry once, though.”
