Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood [242]
“Mom,” she says, after Charis has greeted her and has put on the kettle for bedtime tea, “what’s this chunk of stone and this pile of dirt and leaves doing on the living-room table?”
“It’s a meditation,” says Charis.
“Christ,” Augusta mutters. “Can’t you put it somewhere else?”
“August,” says Charis, a little tersely, “it’s my meditation, and it’s my house.”
“Don’t snap at me!” says August. “And Mom, it’s Augusta. That’s my name now.”
Charis knows this. She knows she should respect August’s new name, because everyone has a right to rename herself according to her inner direction. But she chose August’s original name with such love and care. She gave it to her, it was a gift. It’s hard for her to let it go.
“I’ll make you some muffins,” she says, attempting to conciliate. “Tomorrow. The ones with the sunflower seeds. You always liked those.”
“You don’t have to keep giving me stuff, Mom,” says Augusta, in an oddly grown-up voice. “I love you anyway.”
Charis feels her eyes watering. Augusta hasn’t said anything this affectionate for some time. And she does find it difficult to believe – that a person would love her even when she isn’t trying. Trying to figure out what other people need, trying to be worthy. “It’s just, I worry about you,” she says. “About your health.” This isn’t really the part of Augusta that worries her, but it stands in for the other, more spiritual things. Though health is a spiritual thing too.
“No kidding,” says Augusta. “Every time I come home you try to stuff me full of veggie burgers. I’m nineteen, Mom, I take care of myself, I eat balanced meals! Why can’t we just have fun? Go for a walk or something.”
It’s unusual for Augusta to want to spend time with Charis. Maybe Augusta isn’t totally hard, not lacquered and shiny all the way through. Maybe she has a soft spot. Maybe she is part Charis, after all.
“Did you mind a lot, not having a father?” Charis asks. “When you were little?” She’s been on the verge of asking this for a long time, although she’s feared the answer because surely it was her fault that Billy had left. If he’d run away it was her fault for not being appealing enough to keep him, if he’d been kidnapped it was her fault for not taking better care of him. Now, though, she has some other possible views of Billy. Whether Zenia was lying or not, maybe it’s just as well Billy didn’t stick around.
“I wish you’d stop feeling so guilty,” says Augusta. “Maybe I minded when I was small, but look around you, Mom, this is the twentieth century! Fathers come and go – a lot of the kids on the Island didn’t have them. I know some people with three or four fathers! I mean, it could have been worse, right?”
Charis looks at Augusta and sees the light around her. It’s a light that’s hard like a mineral and also soft, a glow like the luminosity of a pearl. Inside the layers of light, right at the centre of Augusta, there’s a small wound. It belongs to Augusta, not to Charis; it’s for Augusta to heal.
Charis feels absolved. She puts her hands on Augusta’s shoulders, gently so Augusta will not feel seized, and kisses her on the forehead.
Before she goes to bed, Charis does a meditation on Zenia. She needs to do this, because although she has often thought about Zenia in relation to herself, or to Billy, or even to Tony and Roz, she has never truly considered what Zenia was in and by herself: the Zenia-ness of Zenia. She has no object, nothing belonging to Zenia, to focus on, so instead she turns off the lights in the living room and stares out the window, into the darkness, towards the lake. Zenia was sent into her life – was chosen by her – to teach her something. Charis doesn’t know what it was yet, but in time she will uncover it.
She can see Zenia clearly, Zenia lying in the fountain, with