The Marriage of Rose Camilleri by Robert Hough

Author:Robert Hough
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: novel, marriage, Malta, trauma
ISBN: 9781771623056
Publisher: Douglas and McIntyre (2013) Ltd.
Published: 2021-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

Fifteen

That day in the schoolyard, when Cristina detected a strange scent in my hair, she clung to me so tightly I thought that I might suffocate. “Cristina? What is it? What’s happening?” She wouldn’t answer, would only compress her face in the recess between my neck and shoulder, her little arms coiling tighter around me, her feet pummelling the tops of my legs. People were looking. Another mother, a nosy parker named Barbara Warner, asked if I needed help. I shook my head; if I’d had my druthers, I would’ve told her to mind her own business. Instead, I rocked Cristina, playing the child-comforting mother, telling her it was okay, everything was all right, Mama’s here now. Cristina was old enough that lifting her had become difficult. My legs were starting to shake. The muscles in my arms were weakening. “Cristina,” I said, “I’m going to put you down now.”

I had to hold her hand all the way home. From that day on, she wouldn’t let me out of her sight. I’d go outside to hang laundry, and I’d hear her behind me, struggling with our screen door, kicking it when she could not make it open. When I cooked she’d be at the kitchen table, her eyes following, and if I stopped to use the bathroom, she would follow me, arms around one of her dolls, anxious. She wanted to sleep with Scotty and me, something she hadn’t done since the age of three. In the morning, she refused to go to school, howling as I dressed her. Was she afraid I would leave our family? Yes. Was she punishing me for an indiscretion she did not yet understand? I believe so; there was no end to the complexities of my little girl. Was my own guilt finding its way into my second-born, giving her stomach-aches and bad dreams? Again, yes: my kids were sensitive. It came from both sides of the family. Scotty’s mother, as I have said, was battered by insomnia and nervousness. On my side of the family, there was Uncle Alessandro, who lived on the southern shore of Gozo, near the ferry to Malta, in a cottage built of limestone. Inside his little house, he was fine. But if he took a step outside? He became a hyperventilating mess. His family dealt with this by bringing him food and abandoning the idea that he’d marry. Having read articles on agoraphobia in both Today’s Parent and Family Circle, I now understand that, with the aid of medication, he might have led a normal life, the poor fellow.

Hours I spent, playing games with my little girl. I would lie awake at night thinking of art projects I could do with her; our house filled with stickers and pipe cleaners and multicoloured beads. I would take her shopping with me, and ask her to cross off the items on my shopping list. On weekends, we would take walks, Cristina gripping my hand. One day, I received a call from the school: Cristina had had what is euphemistically referred to as an “accident.

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