This Love | ✓

Part 41

"I was upset because I started thinking about my mother again," I lied, averting my gaze to the wooden floor.

I felt Jason's eyes boring into me as he waited for an explanation.

"Remember, I told you that my parents were from Texas?" I began. "My dad worked at a tech company there, and my mother was an artist. Dad was quite satisfied with his job, but my mother wasn't too happy to be living in Texas. So, when he proposed to her, she talked him into moving to Britain. They moved to a small flat in Luton. At that time, that was all my dad could afford. And a year later, I was born."

Fighting the urge to stop, I went on, "My parents weren't very happy together. The first fight that I remember was on a school night in year two. That's the first grade here."

I narrated the incident in a monotone, allowing a flurry of images to resurface in my mind. I remembered pressing my ear against the bedroom door, straining to hear my mother's soft voice. She had been angry about how small her studio was and how she had no time to paint. I shut my eyes as I recalled my father consoling her with a laboured calmness that soon faded. I had buried myself under the covers, plugging my ears and singing 'Happy Birthday' to myself until I fell asleep.

"It was my favourite song," I explained with a humourless laugh.

Jason smiled sadly, holding me closer to his chest.

"They argued like this almost every night. The next morning, they would act normal around me. My mother was unhappy with the flat, the lack of time and money, and my father was finding it difficult to start all over at a new office. But those fights aren't my only memories. I have some good ones, too. I used to love it when my mother would pick me up from school every afternoon and walk me home. And I loved when Dad would drive me to London every other Saturday."

I shook my head to clear away the nostalgia.

"Anyway, when I was in fourth grade, there was this play in my school. Something about a princess, I don't even remember," I laughed dryly. "But it was such a big deal to us. Every girl in my class — myself included — wanted to be the princess. Our teacher gave all the girls a few lines to memorise. Whoever recited them best the next day would be cast as the princess."

I had been so thrilled to tell my mother about the play when she picked me up from school. I almost failed to notice that there was something wrong with her hands. They were still covered in splotches of black and red paint. I had never known her to leave the house without washing the paint off her hands. But I was too taken by the sheet of dialogue clutched within my fingers to make much of it.

"Mummy, Miss Jody says if I remember my lines, I can be the princess," I said to her, nearly bubbling over with excitement.

My mother responded with silence, her eyes focused on the pavement. To grab her attention, I tugged at her hand impatiently.

"Teach me my lines?" I begged, raising my head to examine the dark clouds gathering in the sky.

"No, Leena," she said, her voice rough with annoyance. "Ask your father to help you. Now, come on."

My mother urged me to walk faster, her dangling earrings swaying in the wind. Disappointed, I withdrew my hand from hers, my small palm coming away with streaks of half-dried paint.

I shifted against Jason, scrubbing my hand on my jeans to remove watercolour stains that weren't there.

"My dad came home after work and helped me learn my lines," I said. "That night, I heard my parents arguing again. My mother was furious that she had to stop painting every afternoon to pick me up. Until then, I thought that my mother liked our afternoon walks as much as I did. I didn't know that it was a burden on her. She complained about how nothing felt right. Dad shouted at her saying that it was her fault that they moved there in the first place."