BEFORE I DIE, I PRAY TO BE BORN | ✓

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THURSDAY
07 NOVEMBER, 1996
ISAIAH

               The rustle of the wisteria scrapes against my skin. That's what it feels like, anyway. The nearest protruding roots are three metres from my trainers and yet each shiver of its leaves flashes scalpels through the air. The seams of my hired suit are polluted with remnants of detergent or embedded with parasitic thorns. I can't stop pulling at it which I'm sure Rabbi Aharon has noticed.

The itch is worst in my palms and feet where it bristles under four layers of skin. No matter how much I claw and scrub my hands against my trousers, the prickling only inflames until I'm sure the only thing that'll get rid of it is to dig my teeth into the core.

The migraine I've been evading for months has grown impatient. I'm constantly on the verge of tears or throwing up. The sky is too bright, Rabbi Aharon's voice too hoarse. Everything from the croak of the crows to the pressure of the pins that keep my kippah in place fills me with rage.

I need a cigarette.

Rabbi Aharon recites passages from Psalms and Proverbs, then the memorial prayers. I asked for the whole service to be performed at the graveside; it would feel ridiculous to occupy the temple for a single mourner. When I met with him yesterday, he did me the kindness of pretending he didn't know my mother, that he wasn't fully aware I'd be the only person attending and asked me all the same questions you would of a stranger with a dead relative.

'And her parents, are you sure they won't come?'

'I don't even know their names.'

For a moment, I imagine climbing off a plane in Kingston and running from temple to temple asking for any information about anyone with the surname Matalon, asking if anyone remembers the nineteen-year-old girl who fled the country twenty-four years ago.

I imagine finding her parents in a mansion once built by British colonizers, immediately identifiable from its Georgian architecture, elevated on stilts and embellished with balustrades and finials like I've seen in pictures. It's painted a gentle yellow, the same shade as the chicks in Auntie Tamila's backyard. I'm led to a sitting room with windows that reach from floor to ceiling and are covered by sheer curtains to diffuse furious sunbeams into soft light, and there, my grandparents are weeping into lace handkerchiefs because they've been weeping for twenty-four years and only stop when they see me. Somehow, they know before I can say a word.

They rush to embrace me and assure me they regret their abandonment of her every day, that they scoured all of England until they eventually had to give up and pray that, one day, she'd return. God heard their prayers. God sent me to them. This is the second chance they've begged for. They're sorry for abandoning me too. They love me, mamzer or not. Won't I stay?

An icy gust thrusts me back to the cemetery where I'm alone.

Dorian offered to come. He offered so many times it started to sound like insisting. I almost caved, solely because Muma would hate it more than anything. Anything except having Dorian's mother at her funeral — the only name Muma speaks with more venom than mine is Miriam Andrade.

But I'm too tired even for spite and pettiness. So I came alone.

I'm the only one here to shovel dirt into the grave. I'm the only one here to escort her to God.

I recite Psalms 78:38 as I do, then Isaiah 6:7 — "Your transgression will depart and your sin will be atoned." When the coffin is covered, I face Jerusalem to speak the burial Kaddish. As important as it is in Jewish tradition, I wrote no eulogy. I couldn't come up with a word to say. It's almost funny: with a master's degree in literature, I could be expected to be a better writer.