The Page Mum Read

Mum read the artist statement because Leila asked her to.

Later, Leila would remember that clearly. There had been no invasion of a notebook, no file opened without permission. She had handed over the laptop after dinner and said, “Does this make sense?” What she had meant was closer to: Tell me it is good, and tell me I have managed to say something difficult without hurting anyone.

Mum read slowly. Toby was downstairs with Nina and Anushka, adding a cardboard bench to the little garden. The room was unusually quiet. Leila stood by the window, watching the corner of the laptop screen reflected in the glass.

When Mum finished, she did not speak immediately.

“Is it bad?” Leila asked.

“No.”

“Then what?”

Mum looked at the paragraph again.

“Some of it feels very private.”

“It doesn't name anyone else.”

“You say your mother is awake at night trying not to wake you. Anyone looking at this with me beside you will know who that mother is.”

Leila came away from the window.

“It's what happens.”

“Yes.”

“You said I didn't have to make it invisible.”

Mum put the laptop on the bed carefully because her wrist still hurt.

“I said our situation didn't have to be hidden from people who could help. That isn't exactly the same as every detail belonging on an exhibition wall.”

Leila folded her arms. The movement made her feel younger, which annoyed her enough to keep them folded.

“So I can't write about my life?”

“That isn't what I'm saying.”

“It sounds like it.”

Mum rubbed her forehead with her left hand. “I'm in your life. Toby is in it. That makes some things complicated.”

Leila looked at the screen. The paragraph about wanting to be away from people she loved seemed suddenly crude and selfish. She wanted to defend it before Mum even mentioned it.

“That line is true,” she said, pointing.

“I haven't said it isn't.”

“Do you hate it?”

Mum read the line again.

“No. I understand it. I have felt it too.”

That stopped Leila more effectively than criticism would have.

“You have?”

“Of course. I love you both. I would also occasionally like to put a plate down without someone asking where their socks are.”

Leila almost smiled. Mum did not.

“What worries me is that you've made me into someone who is only tired and frightened. I know those are the parts you see in the room. But they're not the whole of me.”

“I can't put your whole life in a hundred and fifty words.”

“No. So perhaps you need to decide which part you have enough room to show fairly.”

The word fairly made Leila defensive. She had worked hard to avoid making the room sentimental. She had left in irritation, noise, the fact that love did not always make people pleasant. Now it seemed that being honest was another thing she could do wrong.

“I don't want it to sound like a brochure,” she said. “A family facing challenges but remaining positive.”

“Neither do I.”

“Then what do you want?”

Mum looked at her for a long time.

“To be asked that before the answer is already written.”

Leila took the laptop. She did not slam it shut, but only because she was responsible for returning it undamaged. She sat at the desk and opened a blank document.

“Fine. I'll write about buses.”

Mum leaned back against the pillows. “Don't punish the work because you're angry with me.”

Leila wanted the last word so badly that she chose not to speak. She could feel the sentence waiting at the back of her throat, something unfair about Mum wanting to look better. She was glad later that she did not say it. At the time, remaining silent felt less like maturity than being denied the only weapon she had.

She tried writing about the route. Stops. Reflections. The relationship between public and private space. The words became more respectable as they became less hers.

Mum turned off the television, which had been playing without either of them watching. She took her book into the corridor by the end window, giving Leila the room. The gesture made Leila angrier for a minute because it was kind when she wanted something simpler to resist.

When Toby came back, he found her deleting a sentence.

“Are you working?”

“Trying.”

“Can I have the desk after?”

“In a bit.”

He looked at the screen. “Is that about us?”

“Some of it.”

“Am I in it?”

Leila turned towards him.

“I wrote about you telling Callum where we live.”

He frowned. “Why?”

“Because you weren't embarrassed.”

“I was.”

She stared at him.

“You didn't say.”

“You asked if it felt strange. I said a bit. That was what I meant.”

He put his cardboard bench on the desk.

“Are you saying I was brave?”

“I wasn't using that word.”

“Good. It sounds like when adults talk about having injections.”

Leila looked back at her sentence. She had made him into a child who answered simply because he had not yet learned shame. He had actually been a child choosing to answer despite it. The difference mattered, and she had missed it while standing right beside him.

“Do you want me to take it out?” she asked.

“Yes, please.”

She deleted the sentence.

“Thanks,” he said. “Can the house be in it? The picture, I mean. The garden's better now.”

Leila laughed once, unexpectedly.

“We'll talk about that.”

When Mum returned, Leila was drawing the hotel room from the doorway. She had left the beds empty. The people who lived there were suggested by the things they used, not arranged for anyone to examine.

“I took Toby's bit out,” she said.

Mum nodded. She did not ask whether Leila had removed hers too.

“I don't know how to do the rest yet,” Leila added.

“That's all right.”

“It doesn't feel all right.”

“No,” Mum said. “Not yet.”

They went to bed with the conversation unfinished. Leila lay awake longer than usual, but this time she did not try to turn Mum's breathing into evidence for a drawing.