BEFORE I DIE, I PRAY TO BE BORN | ✓

▬▬ 38

FRIDAY
15 NOVEMBER, 1996
DORIAN

               'Madam.' Tanvi's voice echoes in my ears. 'The youngest Mr Andrade has arrived.'

I stand at the archway of a courtroom, shaking head to toe, whilst Ima does nothing to acknowledge me. She continues to read and I wait, each second a strike against my spine. The clocks here have truncheons in place of hands. The world runs on my mother's time.

Her nose crinkles when she finally glances at me. 'You look homeless.'

I want to argue that considering she shipped me to America and told me not to come back, in a way, I am homeless. I want to tell her I like the way I dress now, that I don't care what it looks like because I'm finally comfortable in my skin. The seams on these clothes may be one tug from unravelling but they don't come with fishing lines that wind so tight over my chest I can't breathe or hooks that sink into my muscle to command me like a marionette. I want to–

'I'm sorry.'

'I know you weren't intending to wear jeans for Shabbat, Dorian.'

'I... didn't pack– I didn't plan on coming here.'

Ima sneers at my embroidered kippah. It's the only one I brought with me but I realise now it would have been less of a transgression if I entered the house without one.

'I was told you had grown,' she says as she stands. 'You look like you've shrunk, though that may be the illusion of these rags you call attire.'

Without expecting a response, she walks out of the room and I know to follow. Her caftan billows at her ankles. Her hair is covered with a matching scarf and I focus on extrapolating the art deco pattern in my imagination to distract myself from the need to run.

My bedroom looks exactly as it did when I lived here. That's not a statement about them preserving my presence but one about the fact I never had a presence at all.

Ima opens the wardrobe and pulls out a suit, plain and sleek. 'We had this made for you.'

Something happens to my insides when I hear that. They were so confident I would come? Someone was watching me long enough to assume new measurements? Why would she bother spending the money on me? Though the pockets are empty, I know the suit comes with a contract I'll have to sign without reading the terms.

I've barely changed before there's a knock on my door, recognisable as Tanvi's from the million times I've heard it before. She smiles in the impersonal way Ima trained her to.

'Sir, your mother asked me to bring this for you.' She holds out a black velvet kippah. It must be one of Aba's. 'They will wait for you in the dining room.'

I turn around and the mirror on my wardrobe door captures me. It's incredible how quickly I've sunk into the petrified Dorian from my childhood. I will never understand the desire to freeze one's face at eighteen — this is the reflection I crave to hide in my attic.

My fingers go numb as I place the black kippah onto my head. Though it's hardly visible in my reflection when I face the mirror, it completes the obituary; the final stroke an artist brushes on her work purely on ceremony before she stands back and declares it "fini", though, to any viewer, the image would be identical without it.

I shut my eyes and summon the music I've been composing this past week to my fingers. It arrives with visions of Isaiah.

I can leave if I want to. HaShem gave me autonomy: I can leave whenever I want to.