A Cat-alytic Taxi Ride | ✓

Chapter 13 | Choices To Be Made

"Let's take a photo, Jade!"

Heron pulls me out of my chair and makes me stand in front of the wall beside the living room which is filled with photographs. The two of us stand side by side.

"Sherry, honey, go bring Leyla's Polaroid camera, please."

"Will be right back!" she replies cheerfully.

"We bought it to her as a gift for her birthday last year," he tells me, looking quite fond. "She seems to have a thing for photography."

I had one too, I want to say, but the words get stuck in my throat. My old and forgotten love for photography is still rather sensitive topic for my heart. Opening that heart to the blood sibling I'm meeting for the very first time seems to be even more difficult.

"I must be looking quite a disaster for our first photo together," I say with an awkward laugh. I left home wearing nothing but an old shabby sweatshirt and faded jeans. My hair is all over the place, and my eyes must surely hint at the sleepless nights I've been having lately.

"You look just fine, baby. Don't worry." He gives me an assuring smile. "And besides, this is not going to be the last photo we take together, only the first. Am I right?"

I smile, feeling more assured than ever. "Right," I say, and blush a little. My heart feels warm, as if cushioned under fluffy blankets. How young was I, the last time I'd felt like this?

Sherry returns with the Polaroid camera with a huge grin on her face. Pushing a strand of hair behind her ear, she says, "Okay, time to pose! Awh, look at you two. So cute!"

Sherry seems to be quite a positive and cheerful lady. I can imagine these two together so well. They must make such loving parents, parents who would hug their child when they're crying, parents who would impose strict rules on their child to keep them disciplined, but nothing too restrictive to their freedom. Parents like that must truly exist, right? People who have never had parents like that, either grow up to become the best parents in the world or the worst--no in-between--and I believe my brother falls into the former category, which is a relief. None of that generational trauma.

Heron puts an arm around my shoulder and pulls me in to his warmth, smiling widely. I can't relax myself to the same extent, but I try to smile too. Sherry clicks two photos. The thin polaroid slips out and she shakes it for a while, until the black screen blooms a photo of two siblings. When I take the photo in my palm and look at it, I feel my breath getting knocked out at the sight. The two of us really do look similar. Everything, yet nothing. The same blood flows in us, but we know nothing about each other. And yet he hugged me with so much ease, held me with so much love, as if he'd been waiting for this moment all along, as if this is how we were meant to meet.

If this person had been by my side from since I was born, then would I have grown up to be a different person?

Perhaps this question would now haunt me at every moment of my life, and everytime I am haunted by it, I will think of that one man, and my hatred would inadvertently grow a shade deeper.                                             

"Oh, I'm definitely framing this," says Heron, holding the polaroid in front of him, staring at it with a childish wonder. "Jade, wait here. Let me go feed this to my computer real quick." He heads off to the other end of the corridor and enters a room on the left.

I continue staring at the photo. We are at least fifteen years apart in age, yet I somehow look older than him. Or rather, he looks younger than me. The presence of life and the absence of it. "When I look at you, I realize that it's possible to tell only from someone's eyes how little desire they have left to live."