Finding edward, p.1
Finding Edward, page 1
FINDING
EDWARD
FINDING
EDWARD
a novel by
SHEILA MURRAY
Copyright © 2022 Sheila Murray
This edition copyright © 2022 Cormorant Books Inc.
This is a first edition.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For an Access Copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free 1.800.893.5777.
We acknowledge financial support for our publishing activities: the Government of Canada, through the Canada Book Fund and The Canada Council for the Arts; the Government of Ontario, through the Ontario Arts Council, Ontario Creates, and the Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit. We acknowledge additional funding provided by the Government of Ontario and the Ontario Arts Council to address the adverse effects of the novel coronavirus pandemic.
Please see the Permissions page at the end of this book for information on copyrighted material that has been reproduced, with permission, in this volume.
library and archives Canada cataloguing in publication
Title: Finding Edward / a novel by Sheila Murray.
Names: Murray, Sheila (Documentary filmmaker), author.
Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20220207496 | Canadiana (ebook) 20220207526 |
ISBN 9781770866263 (softcover) | ISBN 9781770866270 (html)
Classification: lcc ps8626.u77825 f56 2022 | ddc c813/.6—dc23
United States Library of Congress Control Number: 2021938489
Cover photo and design: Angel Guerra, Archetype
Interior design: Tannice Goddard, tannicegdesigns.ca
Printer: Houghton Boston
Printed using paper from a responsible and sustainable resource, including a mix of virgin fibres and recycled materials.
Printed and bound in Canada.
Cormorant Books inc.
260 Spadina Avenue, suite 502, Toronto, ON M5T 2E4
www.cormorantbooks.com
For Joshua, Peter and Somae.
Contents
Cover
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Acknowledgements
Permissions
Land Acknowledgement
Landmarks
Cover
Half Title Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Table of Contents Page
Start of Content
Acknowledgements
Permissions
Land Acknowledgement
PageList
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ONE
The night his mother died, she said, “I’m glad you come to me early this evening, darlin’. You’re a good boy, Cyril.” He said nothing. Didn’t remind her he often left his friends to come home early, that he always carried the family cellphone so he could be reached if needed. His mother’s illness was unpredictable. Although the attacks were infrequent, the babies, his brother and sister, were too small to help her. It had been two years already since the babies’ father died, and Cyril’s father had been gone for so long he was almost forgotten. There was no one.
Her breathing woke him. The constricted suck of breath she’d made before. Worse this time. He sat beside her and fanned the hot air hanging heavy and moist over her head. His sister cried into her pillow, and his baby brother stroked her hair in imitation of Cyril with their mommy. After fifteen minutes, Cyril sent his brother to fetch a neighbour with a car to take them to the hospital. He made himself watch the fear in his mother’s eyes as, desperate, she stared into his. He felt himself freeze in the August heat. The hospital was nearly an hour away.
His mother’s breathing lasted for less than twenty minutes. It was noisiest just as the road turned toward Brown’s Town. Then it stopped. Right at the silk cotton tree, with its enormous crown and ancient tendrils of strangling ficus vine dropping fifty feet from its branches. Just as the sky lightened with another morning. Their neighbour stopped the car. “For respect,” he said. “I’ll leave you with her for a little while.”
* * *
The funeral was noisy with tears and singing. The pastor said the right things because he’d known Cyril’s mother for all of her forty-one years. She’d gone to that church just about every Sunday of her life. The wake lasted until four in the morning. Even the old ladies stayed with it. His mother was beautiful in a pink coffin with satin and lace for her pillow. Cyril felt singularly alone, his grief stained by anger at the tragedy of his mother’s death and the dollar difference between those Jamaicans who could afford their medicines and those who could not. The ground he stood on had become unsteady, saturated with sadness.
It was a very different funeral from the formal Anglican observance that had served his mother’s employer — whose house she’d cleaned for ten years — his adopted grandpa, Nelson. That had been four years earlier. Cyril, in a borrowed black suit, had sat rigid on a wooden pew, immersed in heartbreak and loss. Afterward, at the reception, he’d been unable to speak when Nelson’s friends asked him how he’d manage without Nelson’s tutorship, his mentorship. Cyril called it love.
But as his mother rested in the splendour she’d saved a life-time for, her friends squeezed the speech from him, plied him with love and faith, gave him their very best counsel come straight from Jesus. They held up their church-sister’s son, took their share of his pain.
After the funeral, the babies went to live with his mother’s sister in Philadelphia. Families were expandable. Sisters, grandmothers, aunties, and uncles looked after kids whose parents spent years working at seasonal jobs abroad, coming home in the winter. Or, having left for good, produced more family that expanded around the globe. Jamaicans were travellers. Many of the educated poured into the brain drain of doctors and lawyers and engineers who travelled to English-speaking countries, making new lives, creating middle-class English and American and Canadian children who would visit their extended families back in Jamaica for Christmas holidays at the beach and stay in homes where hibiscus bushes were strung with tinsel and holiday poinsettia grew vigorous and tall in people’s gardens.
Cyril’s immediate family was tiny: his mother’s sister, Vi, was his only real aunt. But there were many cousins whose blood relationships were muddled and whose catch-all titles were uncle or aunty. Canada-Uncle Junior was one of these.
“Two more small ones won’t make much difference,” said his Aunty Vi as she embraced Keesha and Daren. “But, Cyril, you must go to Junior in Canada. When your mommy was still with us, she wanted you close. But here is not your future. Foreign’s where you’re going to find it.”
The goodbyes and promises followed. Small gifts and requests. The excited jostle of neighbours and the tears of his brother and sister. His college friends, the boys, pledged to meet up when they finished their studies. Cyril had become the enviable one whose life was suddenly thrown wide open, though his friends’ parents watched with some concern.
He’d paid the bills, the electricity and the water and the costs left over from the funeral, after the executor lawyer had released Nelson’s legacy, intended for Cyril’s graduation from college. The lawyer had said the money could come to him now, given the circumstances. Cyril gathered the courage to leave his home and the people there who made up his family. He did it immersed in a grief that made him compliant with other people’s wishes.
Cyril left home because his mother was gone and his father had only ever been absent. He left because he had so badly failed to keep his mother safe. Had not challenged the illusory pride that had stopped her from asking other good folk for help. The cost of a prescription was a small thing beside the value of her life. She’d thought her God would keep her safe. Cyril had failed to understand the peril she’d brought upon her herself. He had neglected to protect his mother even though he’d been aware of her naïve belief.
Because other people said he should, Cyril used a part of Nelson’s gift to buy an airplane ticket. He took two suitcases from the giveaways that Nelson’s family had provided — one small, one large. He bought black shoes and black socks for Foreign, and a wallet to safeguard the precious plastic cards that would prove to the world that he was who he claimed to be. A new dark-blue passport contained the coveted Canadian visa, granted because of Junior’s assurance to Canada that Cyril would not become a burden.
His mother’s friend drove him to the airport. In addition to his two suitcases, Cyril had a small carry-on bag with Nelson’s address book inside. He wore a dark-blue blazer that had belonged to Nelson. It was a little too big; he walked with a stiff, straight back so his shoulders filled it. He forced a confident stride as he approached the check-in desk.
“How long are you going to be away?”
His mouth was sticky and dry, and he licked at his lips to wet them. “At least …” He sucked moisture to his tongue. “It will be at least a year,” he said, watching the clerk’s face to see if the open-ended nature of his travel shocked her as it did him. She smiled and handed him back his passport. His excitement over-came his trepidation. He was to be travelling as Nelson’s friends did. As his father had. Easy as the drive from Kingston to Negril. He’d have real wings to fly across the sea.
His mother’s friend watched him as he walked through the glass doors where only passengers were allowed. “Walk good,” she called. “Send us an email when you get there.” When Cyril turned to look back, stopped in a long line to pass through security, she’d already gone.
Cyril had never left his country before, had never been on a plane. When the engines roared and the huge thing began to hurtle down the runway, the old lady strapped in the seat beside him cried, “Jesus is taking the wheels,” and Cyril’s thrill spilled into laughter. He was flying into his future.
Face to the window, he saw below him the green miles of his mountains and the extraordinary turquoise sparkle of his sea, the big hotels of Montego Bay that were so quickly far away, distant ships on the water, and then, incredibly, the way clouds looked from the inside and then from high above.
When the captain announced they were thirty thousand feet above the ground, Cyril saw his mother moving through the brilliant blue sky: her thin and faded pink cotton nightgown, hairnet a cap on her head, knees curled in toward her chest, not quite fetal but deep asleep and unaware of her rush through the heavens. Her vulnerability startled him. He wiped his fingers over his eyes to push back tears. He was not surprised to see her there. He’d been waiting for her. “You are able to see through the creases in the universe,” Nelson had once said. “You are four-eyed, but I promise you, Cyril, you are not destined to become an Obeah Man. Your ability is your own personal blessing, not for exploitation.” His sight arrived without invitation and heightened his vision with a gauzy, bright light that changed what he saw. How he saw. When it happened, he stilled his mind and allowed himself to see what was revealed. It was his mother’s gift; she’d had second sight too. “Don’t tell your teachers, Cyril,” she’d warned him. “It will trouble them. I have seen the spirits of the living and the dead all my life, and they are my friends.” But the spirits hadn’t warned him of the things that mattered most: the loss of Grandpa Nelson and then his mother. He had never missed his father, but he missed his mother in every step of each day.
