Karen Jennings
An Autobiographical NovelSample Passages
The Big House
Six months after my father’s death, I fall in love. I am 29 years old and have been in love before, yet this time I am caught off guard. In the past months I have been mostly alone, staying in the house with my mother, reluctant to go out, especially at night. The house is large and we use separate lounges and bathrooms, eat at different times. Even so, the house feels small, my life outside the house even smaller. I am teaching history part-time at the same school where my mother teaches Afrikaans. I have only two classes – less than two hours a day. I accepted the position so that I could spend most of the day caring for my father, but he passed away two weeks into the first term. So my mother and I work together, live together. We shop together, go to movies together. We are dependent on one another, though we tell others that we are careful not to be. I don’t like to leave her at home alone, but at times I am anxious to get out and away.
I tell myself that I will use the time to write. I pretend that I am, but I write nothing. I pile books on my bedside table that I plan to read. I don’t even open them. I am not certain of what grief should be. Is it this? My mother’s grief is more manifest. She has grown confused and forgetful. She walks slower than before. Repeats herself. Leaves doors unlocked and can’t remember how the computer works. I hate her for this. I have no patience and we argue daily. Perhaps this is how I grieve; with anger and intolerance.
I meet Juliano accidentally. It is a Friday night and I am at a bar with acquaintances. I have not been out in months. It is cold and rainy and I did not want to leave the house. Under my jacket and scarf I am wearing a pyjama top. I turn around to go to the bathroom and I bump into him. We both apologise. I am surprised by his accent and he tells me he is from Brazil. We talk for the rest of the night. The first few weeks with Juliano I cry a lot. I cry every day, sometimes for hours. I feel like a fool. He tells me that he understands, though I don’t think he really does. But he is kind and thoughtful and when I cry he doesn’t try to stop me.
As with all who fall in love, we do not like being apart and after a couple of months he asks me to move in with him. He lives in a loft apartment two kilometres away. I agree, but feel guilty. My mother is afraid on her own in the big house. I tell her that I will move out slowly, little by little. I will visit her every day. The distance is nothing. ‘Of course,’ she says, ‘of course,’ but she is upset. This is the house that she and my father bought shortly after their marriage. The house that they fixed up, made additions to, where they tended a garden and a swimming pool. The house that they raised their children in. Yet she has grown to despise the thing. The stretches of lawn and the pool that keeps turning green. The large rooms that gather dust. There are too many lounges, too many empty spaces. Too many places through which a burglar could enter. It is an old house. It needs attention and time and energy. She doesn’t want to be there anymore. Not on her own. She begins to mention the possibility of selling and talks to a couple of estate agents, though my sister and I doubt anything will come of it. She is too indecisive lately.
Even before the house is on the market she begins to panic about clutter. She opens drawers and cupboards and despairs about the things we have amassed. The garage is full of boxes of objects that my father kept – our toys, our books, old tables, chairs, planks of wood, half-empty tins of paint. In the breakfast room are two small cake plates that my father brought home one day for my sister and I. I was perhaps five or six. I don’t know where he got them. They are identical. A light blue base with a floral border, gold rimmed. He told us that we would hang them on the wall as decoration until we were old enough to have our own houses. Nobody seems to remember that I would sit in the breakfast room looking at them. I was trying to identify differences in the two plates, determining which was the best so that when it came to the point when my sister and I had to choose whose was whose, I would have the upper hand. When friends visited, I would point out the plates to them. As my mother de-clutters, she gives the plates away to her sister-in-law. I am torn apart. My mother and I scream at one another and do not talk for several days. But she gets the plates back without any difficulty. My sister doesn’t want hers. She doesn’t even remember him giving them to us. I take both to Juliano’s flat where I display them on stands.
A month later the big house is for sale. I make a list of everything that must be kept. I want to avoid another misunderstanding or argument. The list is long. My mother and I fight again. We begrudge one another personal memories and want ours only. We have been living too long inside one another’s grief. My father is, for each of us, ours alone.
The Big House
Six months after my father’s death, I fall in love. I am 29 years old and have been in love before, yet this time I am caught off guard. In the past months I have been mostly alone, staying in the house with my mother, reluctant to go out, especially at night. The house is large and we use separate lounges and bathrooms, eat at different times. Even so, the house feels small, my life outside the house even smaller. I am teaching history part-time at the same school where my mother teaches Afrikaans. I have only two classes – less than two hours a day. I accepted the position so that I could spend most of the day caring for my father, but he passed away two weeks into the first term. So my mother and I work together, live together. We shop together, go to movies together. We are dependent on one another, though we tell others that we are careful not to be. I don’t like to leave her at home alone, but at times I am anxious to get out and away.
I tell myself that I will use the time to write. I pretend that I am, but I write nothing. I pile books on my bedside table that I plan to read. I don’t even open them. I am not certain of what grief should be. Is it this? My mother’s grief is more manifest. She has grown confused and forgetful. She walks slower than before. Repeats herself. Leaves doors unlocked and can’t remember how the computer works. I hate her for this. I have no patience and we argue daily. Perhaps this is how I grieve; with anger and intolerance.
I meet Juliano accidentally. It is a Friday night and I am at a bar with acquaintances. I have not been out in months. It is cold and rainy and I did not want to leave the house. Under my jacket and scarf I am wearing a pyjama top. I turn around to go to the bathroom and I bump into him. We both apologise. I am surprised by his accent and he tells me he is from Brazil. We talk for the rest of the night. The first few weeks with Juliano I cry a lot. I cry every day, sometimes for hours. I feel like a fool. He tells me that he understands, though I don’t think he really does. But he is kind and thoughtful and when I cry he doesn’t try to stop me.
As with all who fall in love, we do not like being apart and after a couple of months he asks me to move in with him. He lives in a loft apartment two kilometres away. I agree, but feel guilty. My mother is afraid on her own in the big house. I tell her that I will move out slowly, little by little. I will visit her every day. The distance is nothing. ‘Of course,’ she says, ‘of course,’ but she is upset. This is the house that she and my father bought shortly after their marriage. The house that they fixed up, made additions to, where they tended a garden and a swimming pool. The house that they raised their children in. Yet she has grown to despise the thing. The stretches of lawn and the pool that keeps turning green. The large rooms that gather dust. There are too many lounges, too many empty spaces. Too many places through which a burglar could enter. It is an old house. It needs attention and time and energy. She doesn’t want to be there anymore. Not on her own. She begins to mention the possibility of selling and talks to a couple of estate agents, though my sister and I doubt anything will come of it. She is too indecisive lately.
Even before the house is on the market she begins to panic about clutter. She opens drawers and cupboards and despairs about the things we have amassed. The garage is full of boxes of objects that my father kept – our toys, our books, old tables, chairs, planks of wood, half-empty tins of paint. In the breakfast room are two small cake plates that my father brought home one day for my sister and I. I was perhaps five or six. I don’t know where he got them. They are identical. A light blue base with a floral border, gold rimmed. He told us that we would hang them on the wall as decoration until we were old enough to have our own houses. Nobody seems to remember that I would sit in the breakfast room looking at them. I was trying to identify differences in the two plates, determining which was the best so that when it came to the point when my sister and I had to choose whose was whose, I would have the upper hand. When friends visited, I would point out the plates to them. As my mother de-clutters, she gives the plates away to her sister-in-law. I am torn apart. My mother and I scream at one another and do not talk for several days. But she gets the plates back without any difficulty. My sister doesn’t want hers. She doesn’t even remember him giving them to us. I take both to Juliano’s flat where I display them on stands.
A month later the big house is for sale. I make a list of everything that must be kept. I want to avoid another misunderstanding or argument. The list is long. My mother and I fight again. We begrudge one another personal memories and want ours only. We have been living too long inside one another’s grief. My father is, for each of us, ours alone.
