Like Bees to Honey

‘Are you hungry?’ I ask.

‘Sorry?’ She looks frightened.

‘Can you smell food?’ I ask.

‘Sorry? No. Please.’ She is frightened.

‘You must eat whatever you smell,’ I say.

I turn, I walk from her, squishing my marshmallow-tipped heels, not looking back. I find my seat.

I move Christopher to one side; I sit.

I look to the pregnant woman. She is talking to the man in front of her; they are looking at me. She is full of fear. I need to reassure her. I know that she is frightened, but she must eat.

I mouth words to her.

I mouth, do not worry.

I mouth, I do not have the evil eye.

I mouth, you must eat what you smell.

I wonder what shape birthmark her child will have.

and then I realise that I have started.

~s – ob

~s – ob

sobbing, again.

I really am the flight maniac.

I have woken Christopher with my moving about, with my sobbing.

‘Iwaqqali wi

i l-art.’

~you embarrass me/you make my face fall.

I stare at him, stopping my sobbing, allowing tears to trickle and snot to drip, but no sound.

‘Iwaqqali wi

i l-art.’

~you embarrass me/you make my face fall.

‘Who taught you that? Who taught you that?’ I demand.

‘It’s ilsien pajji

i.’

~mother tongue.

‘How? Tell me how,’ I demand, again.

Christopher does not answer.

The small television screens come down, a graphic of a toy plane is edging slowly over the UK, heading South. The air steward tells us that headsets can be bought, the film starts. Live Free or Die Hard, I am glad that I cannot hear the words. Christopher is watching the screen.

A child, across the aisle, says, ‘For fuck’s sake.’

I turn. He is twelve, maybe younger. His mother smiles at me, briefly.

And I think of Molly, again.

tears drip.

~dr – ip.

~dr – ip.

again.

It is nearly 6 a.m. I think of her getting dressed. I wonder if Matt will send her to school. I think of her hair and of how Matt cannot manipulate bobbles, cannot bunch or plait. He may use the wrong brush, tug at her tats, not hold the hair at the root. I think of her crying out with pain.

I think of the mums in the school playground, of how the news will spread in hushed tones. I think of how they will fuss around Matt, eyes full of pity, of how they will never understand what I have done. I think of how he will have to excuse me, talk of grief, and how they will say that six years of grief is excessive.

And I know that they are right.

I think of Molly’s pink sandwich box, of routine, of her tastes, her quirks. I think of Matt struggling to find clean uniform, to dress, to juggle his work and his Molly. I know that he will be late for work if he waits for her to be clapped into school from the playground.

My thoughts are confused, jumbled, whirling.

I can still hear her sobbing.

I hope that Matt keeps her from school today, just today. He will need to go in to see the Headmistress, or telephone her, or both. The teachers will have to be told what an evil mother I am, of how I have abandoned my daughter and run away to a foreign country with my only son. But I know that any words exchanged will be missing the purpose, the point, that they will never fully understand why. I know, I appreciate, that people will be quick to judge me. I would hate me too. But, still, leaving my Molly, leaving my beautiful girl is dissolving any remnants of my remaining heart.

I think of her.

And then, suddenly, I am missing her, too much.

My sobbing vibrates through my body; it causes me to snort snot from my nose. My sobbing causes tears to stream.

and my shoulders shudder.

~shud – der.

~shud – der.

~shud – der.

beyond control.

I am out of control.

I pull my large shawl tighter around my shoulders. I bring the two ends together, up to my face, again. I bring the smooth material onto my face, until it covers my eyes, my nose, my being.

I breathe into my shawl.

I wonder if my Lord is laughing at me.

She wakes me.

‘Would you like any food or drink?’

I forget; for a moment, I am unsure where I am.

‘Would you like any food or drink?’ she repeats.

I look at her trolley. I see tiny bottles in a drawer.

‘Two whiskies, please,’ I say.

‘Ice?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘A mixer?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘Anything else?’

I look to Christopher, he is absorbing the film; I wonder if he is reading lips, if I should buy him a headset. He seems to be on another planet, not really with me today, an outline.

‘Do you want a coke?’ I ask him.

Christopher looks at me then shakes his head.

‘Nothing else,’ I turn, I tell her.

‘Sorry?’ She is confused.

‘Nothing else,’ I repeat, louder, almost a shout. She nods, takes the drinks from the metal drawer; she does not question me any further.

‘That’ll be five pounds.’ I hand her Matt’s money, as she pulls down the table clipped onto the chair in front and places the drinks before me.

The whisky burns my throat but at least I feel something.

I stare out through the oval window, watching, waiting.

I see the sea, the deep blue sea.

The seatbelt sign goes on.

within minutes the click.

~cl – ick.

~cl – ick.

~cl – ick – ing.

of metal is heard.

‘Cabin crew, ten minutes till landing,’ he says but we all hear.

And then, the plane is descending, rocking, bowing, dipping, shaking, swaying.

And then, I see Malta.

I see my Malta.

The island looks so tiny. I look through the small oval window. I see white, grey, green, blue. The natural colours dance before my eyes, they swirl and twirl and blend.

And as the plane dips, the colours form into outlines, then buildings, looking as if they have been carved into rock, into a mountain that never was. A labyrinth of underground, on ground, overground secrets have formed and twisted into an island that breathes dust. An island surrounded in, protected by a rich and powerful blue. I know that there is so much more than the tourist eye can see.

Quickly, the plane bows to my country, the honeypot of the Mediterranean.

And then, the wheels hit tarmac.

Mer

ba.

~welcome.

I am home.

Tlieta

~three

Malta’s top 5: About Malta

* 3. Location

The Republic of Malta is a small, heavily peopled, island nation. Situated in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, south of Sicily and north of Tunisia, the islands benefit from the sunny Mediterranean climate.

I was born Maltese, in 1971, into a family that had been united through ages, through generations. Malta had first crumbled under the sun, then under siege, bombardment, invasion and yet each time it grew stronger. The dust, the ashes, it all formed into the labyrinths, secret passages that connect, divide, protect. The islanders have resilience, a determination, an acceptance of sorts. It is said that if you have been stripped to nothing, when you mend you alter, your aura changes, your purpose becomes clear.

My mother once told me, ‘In-nies ji

u Malta biex ifiequ.’

~people come to Malta to heal.

I left. I do not know what that means.

In Malta, my people speak the language Malti.

~Maltese.

We have a Semitic tongue that developed from the language spoken during Arabic invasion and occupation. Later came French-speaking Normans, the Knights of St John with their Italian and Latin, then British occupation. And so Malti became a combination of all the languages that drove through the island, of all those who came and left. It was born a rich, a breathing tongue, one that voiced our history, our invasions, our identity. When Malta later gained independence, both English and Maltese tongues were offered official status and Malti became the national language of my island, of Malta. It is known that my people can speak with one tongue, with two tongues, some speak with three or even four.

I was born into the home that was shared by my parents, by my grandparents, by my sisters and by my oldest aunt. It was the way, then. Our family was sealed, a unit that leaked noise, anger, laughter, excitement, wild gesturing with arms and hands.

There were no quiet moments. We liked it that way.

I was the third, the youngest daughter to be honoured upon Joseph and Melita. I was the favoured daughter of Melita. She called me qalbi.

~my heart.

My mother used to tell all that I was a kind, a loving, a quick-witted child. She would describe how my eyes carried a mischievous sparkle that warmed her. When I was a child, I could do no wrong.

But from an early age my feet would shuffle. I wanted to know more.

My mother would tell me that from the moment I could I would toddle out of the front door and down the steep slope that led to the harbour. My mother would tell me about frantic searches and screaming relatives dashing around the city. My mother would say that soon they learned to run to the harbour, that I would always be found standing on the same bench, waving at the boats.

And as I grew, my fascination with the atlas, the globe, the sphere, with the wide spaces and exotic names, grew too. No one could tell me of life off the island, no one had ever travelled to the distant, the bizarre-sounding shores.

I was restless to roam.

I longed for further than my island could give.

And so, as soon as an opportunity arose, I asked.

I asked my father if I could be educated away from the island, in England. Eventually, because I drilled and drained, my father agreed that I would travel, that I would be educated in the UK, but then I would return and marry a Maltese boy. I promised my father and then my mother that I would return. I promised them that they could choose my partner, I would agree to anything, to everything.

I promised.

My mother wept for twenty-eight nights.

One month before my nineteenth birthday, I flew to Manchester airport, and then climbed into a taxi to Liverpool University.

Four days later, I had found Matt.

I can, without any hesitation, avow that within four days on English soil I had met the man whom I was convinced I would spend the rest of my life in love with. Within four days, I knew that I would not keep my pact with my father, with my mother and that in doing so, I would break my mother’s heart.

As I was falling into Matt, my mother wrote to me. She said that when I left the island that ‘naqta’ qalbi’.

~I cut my heart, I lost hope.

She knew.

It was as if she could always see into my spirit and then into my mind. My mother gave up hope because she knew, just knew, that when I fell it would be totally, all or nothing. And so when I left Malta, my mother lost hope and now I realise that without hope, there is nothing.

I lost my virginity to Matt. I lost my family too.

I remember.

‘You make me lovesick,’ Matt said; he turned his naked back, away.

‘Is that bad?’ My fingers brushed his shoulder.

‘My heart is sick,’ he spoke and his shoulders began to quiver.

‘I don’t understand. What have I done?’ I feared the end of us. I remember that Matt turned to face me. We were squashed into a single bed, his student room, naked skin on skin.

I had known him for five days.

His fingers, his face, were covered in my scent.

I remember.

Matt stared into my eyes.

I remember the intensity, the strength, the drowning.

‘I have fallen for you. I feel lovesick.’

‘You mean you feel love?’ I questioned.

‘More than that.’

‘Lovesick?’

‘Lovesick,’ Matt smiled.

The lovesickness was mutual, but I never told him. Those words were his. The concept, the depth, the languishing in lovesick moods. They were claimed by Matt. He left me wishing that I could find the language to express the extreme emotion that he whipped within me.

My sacrifice showed him what my tongue could never curl.

I was naïve, perhaps dim. It was a tradition, a lesson, a belief, a thought that floated with my friends in Malta. There were rumours that if we went to the toilet immediately after or if we stood during sexual intercourse, then we would not find ourselves pregnant, it was our only control. I’d seen pregnant women, of course I had, but the connections that I made as a child didn’t quite fit. In Malta, we were told that babies were bought in shops or sometimes they came by boat. Pregnancy and sexual acts didn’t quite go together, somehow. A pregnant woman went on to buy a baby, not to deliver one, it made sense.

As girls, we were also taught, through generations, that a sexual act outside of marriage would pollute all those who came into contact with it, it would lead to catastrophe. I knew that.

Seven months after landing in England, I found out that I was pregnant. I never talked of having an abortion, my faith was strong, my love secure. Christopher was growing inside of me.

I was naïve, uneducated in such matters. Within my family, sexual consequences were never discussed, not fully, not in practical terms. Pregnancy was masked. My mother had told me that I had arrived by boat.

Matt and I decided to marry after the child was born, in love, not from duty.

We decided that I would stop my studies and we decided that Matt would continue his. We would live together officially; we would move in somewhere, rent a flat.

I was excited.

I loved Matt.

He thrilled my insides with words, with gestures, with his lovesickness. I wanted to grow old with him, happily.

And so, I telephoned my parents.

My father answered, he was so very thrilled to hear my voice.

And then, I told him that I was with child. I told him that I had a baby growing within me and that I understood the sexual facts of life. I told him that everything made sense now, that my coming to them on a boat must have been a lie. I even laughed, ha ha ha.

My father told me, ‘Inti di

unur g

al din il-familja. Minn issa, mhux se nqisek aktar b

ala binti.’

~you are a disgrace to this family. From now on, you are no longer my daughter.

My mother refused to speak. I longed to hear her voice.

With my father’s Maltese words, something inside of me broke loose, not my heart, something else. I began to crumble. My sense of being, of worth, of belonging, of identity began to flake from me. And Matt tried to hold me, to stick me back together.

I married Matt when Christopher was eight months old.

I betrayed my Maltese name.

Erbg

a

~four

‘And here we have Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, known to the Merseyside locals as Paddy’s Wigwam. This is said to be linked to the large Irish Catholic congregation and the building’s architecutural design, which draws on that of a Native North American wigwam…’

I first met Jesus in Liverpool.

There are two cathedrals in Liverpool. The Metropolitan Cathedral stands proud; it lives in harmony with Liverpool Cathedral. The two majestic beings face each other along a street that is called Hope.

When I first arrived, that street, that view, the two churches, made me feel safe. In Malta domes and steeples take over the skyline. On the corner of Hope, I felt closer to my island, to Malta, somehow.

When I first arrived here, I was living in student halls just off Hope Street. I could see Catholic faith from my window. I could attend mass, be thankful, continue to grow.

When I broke my promise, my mother’s heart, I refused to walk along that street called Hope, again. There were other routes, longer routes and I took them. I felt that to walk that street would be to play with my Lord, to tease, to laugh. I did not deserve to feel protected, safe, any more. It was my belief that in the insulting of my parents, my island, that I must also refuse that link with my Lord that connected my people.

I did not realise, then, that my Lord was vengeful.

At the end of Hope, tourists, visitors, students stand on grey pavement. They look up the stone steps to the concrete construction formed into a giant tepee of a Catholic cathedral. Tent poles stick out from the top, catching my Lord’s sunlight and my Lord’s tears.

When I first arrived, I approved of the cathedral, the construction. A giant tent, connecting, sheltering and yet crafted into a fine-looking thing. There was something about the vast space, the structure, the contrasts: uniqueness.

Three days ago I missed, I longed for my mother.

I thought of the tepee of the cathedral.

I did not understand the link.

Three days ago, before this journey began, I found myself on the corner of Hope Street, Liverpool. My Lord was weeping, again. It was raining, I had no umbrella, my hair was curling, frizzing into a nest.

I felt cold in my bones, shiver shiver, shiver shiver.

‘Welcome to Paddy’s Wigwam,’ I whispered.

Three days ago, I stepped out into the road, not checking for cars.

I thought of my Lord. I thought that if He was there, watching, listening, wanting, then He would do as He wished.

Three days ago, I did not care.

I had nothing.

I walked a.

~z – ig.

a.

~z – ag.

across the road.

Cars stopped, waited, beeped. Drivers moved their lips, cursing. I could not hear their words. Tourists gathered at the bottom of the grey steps. Some spilled from the shop, some stood very still, eyes fixed on the cathedral, mesmerised; others listened to a guide who spoke of architecture and history. I pushed through, I divided a tour of day-trippers, huddled under huge yellow umbrellas. I climbed the steps leading up to, down from, the overwhelming cathedral.

The doors opened, automatically, dramatically, sensing my movements on the welcoming mat. I walked in, demanding, needing.

I had been sitting, staring, searching the inside of the cathedral for some time. Father Sam knew me, he knew my grief, my rejection. He came to me, sat next to me, cupped my hands in his.

‘I’m being punished.’ I spoke in a hush, a respectful hush.

‘It doesn’t work like that.’ Father Sam spoke softly, carefully, his hands joined over mine. I remember seeing a blue ray reflecting over our hands. For a moment I dwelled on the light, on my Lord’s breath, on union.

‘I don’t trust your faith.’

‘Why Nina? Tell me,’ he asked.

‘I failed to keep a promise. I broke a promise to my parents, to my island.’

And then, suddenly, I was sobbing and as I started, it grew, increased, my weeping was uncontrollable.

the tears fell, my shoulders shuddered.

~shud – der.

~shud – der.

~shud – der.

I was beyond restraint.

‘Tell me, Nina,’ he said.

‘I thought that I couldn’t cry any more, that I’d forgotten how,’ and with those hushed words all of the tears that had failed to be shed were released.

My tears formed into a puddle.

‘We have choices in life, Nina. You are clearly distressed. You are living in a hell of your own making.’

‘My son, Christopher, has gone,’ I sobbed.

‘I know.’ Father Sam lowered his head and began reciting a prayer.

‘Please don’t.’ I began to rise. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t be here.’

‘You need to find your way, Nina. You need to allow God into your heart.’

‘I have nothing.’ I stood, I turned, my knees shook as I staggered towards the exit.

‘You have a husband, a daughter. Think of how you are affecting them, of the punishment that you are binding onto them.’

I kept walking, ignoring his words, lurching towards the exit. I heard him, fast, catching up to me. I felt his palm, heavy on my shoulder. I stopped.

‘Go to Malta. Speak to your family and tell them that God sent you,’ he whispered into my ear.

I carried on, forward. I did not look back. I could not turn. I could not articulate.

I stopped when I reached the top of the steps leading up to, down from Paddy’s Wigwam. I tried to breathe in and out, in and out. I thought of my life, of my inability to love since Christopher passed.

It had been six short years and in those six years I had never considered that I was affecting Molly and Matt. I had never considered the burden, the punishment that I was tying to them.

I had thought that I was protecting them. I had thought that if I loved my husband, my daughter, that if I devoted myself to them, then my Lord would come, that He would punish me, that He would pick them away from me, one by one.

Father Sam had told me that I was living in hell, perhaps, perhaps not.

Three days ago, I stood on the steps leading up to, down from Liverpool’s Catholic cathedral and I thought about my view, my vision of hell. My hell was burning damnation, with a devil, with chained slaves stoking eternal fires. My hell would not contain an innocent child. I felt confused. Father Sam’s words were shooting in, out, through me. He did not make sense to me.