Zee , livre ebook

For my daughter, Mara


Title: Zee
Author: Su J. Sokol Cover Image: Romain Blanchard Book Design: Atelier 46 Literary Director: Marie Cadieux Project Manager: Léonore Bailhache Edited by: Jo-Anne Elder
ISBN (paperback): 978-2-89750-255-3 ISBN (PDF) : 978-2-89750-256-0 ISBN (ePUB) : 978-2-89750-257-7 Copyright © 2020 Su J. Sokol and Mouton noir Acadie, an imprint of Bouton d’or Acadie. Library and Archives Canada Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec Printed in Canada by Friesens
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Created in Acadie — Printed in Canada www.boutondoracadie.com





PROLOGUE

Zee is running, running harder and faster than she’s ever run before.
She’s already soared past the kids her own age on the track team, but it’s not enough. Zee accelerates, head down, until she passes the fastest of the sixteen and seventeen-year-olds as well. Even then, she does not dare to slow down. She pushes herself harder, further, the sound of her own heartbeat loud in her ears.
A sharp pain shoots diagonally from her right hip to her left shoulder. Zee ignores it, squeezing out another burst of speed. She takes a quick look over her left shoulder. The others are far behind. She’s running alone now, well ahead of everyone else. Yes, Zee has passed them all. Their bodies anyway. But their words, their emotions, once again catch up to her. They mercilessly shove themselves into her unprotected mind, pushing Zee’s own thoughts and ideas violently out. Zee’s heartbeat accelerates, beating a panicked rhythm in her chest as she tries to clear her head of them. She sucks in another lungful of air, forcing her exhausted legs to run still faster.
The world is spinning. Zee is running so fast that she can’t feel her limbs anymore, can’t even feel the movement of air against her face. Yet somehow, the voices of the others find her once again. It hardly seems to matter how far and how fast she goes. Zee suddenly realizes, with a degree of certainty that leaves no room for hope, that she will never truly outrun them.
Even so, Zee refuses to give up. She will not stop running even if it kills her.

Chapter A Zee’s birth

Picture a small room with a hospital bed and a fetal monitor, lavender oil overlaying the scent of disinfectant, new age music playing in the background. The midwife—white, late forties—speaks encouraging words to the expectant mother while a youngish Black man in horn-rimmed glasses stands by the bed wringing his hands. Beside him, a petite, dark-eyed woman of around thirty expresses her own concern by shooting the midwife looks that are practically menacing. In the center of all this is Emma—pale with frizzy reddish hair, head thrown back as she pants and pushes and wishes it were over.
Now imagine the peace of an undifferentiated oneness, and then, after a timeless interval, chaos. Reality cracks in two as an intense pressure bears down. It is overwhelming, unbearable. When relief finally comes, it is accompanied by an attack on every sensory front. Noise. Light. Cold. A confusing flood of feelings threatens to splinter the small, new consciousness into a million disparate fragments. To keep from drowning in this flood, the child takes a unique path. She opens up and lets it all in.

Chapter B infancy

The grown-ups name the baby Zee. This is how it happens: after forty-four hours of labor, the midwife—seeing signs of fetal distress—calls in the doctor. To distract herself from her worries and the pain of her labor, Emma, a tournament scrabble player, slowly recites the alphabet. Just as she gets to the last letter, the baby slides from her womb. “Zee” has arrived.
From all appearances, Zee is an ordinary baby. Perhaps it isn’t so strange that the newborn—large and healthy—sleeps through the first night in the hospital. Emma isn’t so sure. She’s given to understand that most babies aren’t capable of such a thing until they’re much older. Emma tries to shrug it off. She doesn’t want to be that type of parent—the type who thinks their child is somehow special.
The next night, Emma awakes from a nightmare to Zee’s panicked cries. She’d been dreaming that her baby was still and cold beside her. Though Zee is easy to soothe once Emma herself has calmed down, she nevertheless gives in to the suggestion that Zee be sent to the nursery. Emma doesn’t want her baby’s crying to bother others in the maternity ward.

Chapter C & D daycare

Of course, Zee does not remember these earliest moments. Her first clear recollections are from daycare.
Mama-Zee make their way down the sidewalk. The sun lights up Mama’s hair and plays hide and seek with Zee’s toes. It is warm and good. The stroller rolls. Mama-Zee sing about the wheels on the bus going round. Then the shadow of the converted church that houses the daycare falls upon them. Mama tenses/Zee moans. Mama coaxes Zee out of the stroller and up the stairs. Mama’s mouth says “fun, play, friends” but inside her is WORRIED, GUILTY, SAD; then relief when Zee is deposited with her teacher. Mama pretend-smiles just before she turns to leave.
The first time Mama-Zee separate, Zee cries until she passes out. Even after Zee is able to temper this reaction, she still finds it hard to keep from slumping to her knees, a small, helpless keen escaping her lips. It is Zee’s teachers’ disapproval/worry that push Zee to play and sing with the others, pretending at engagement, at fun. After a while, the pretense feels natural. Almost real. And then later, separation from Zee’s daycare friends becomes almost as wrenching as the earlier ones from Mama.
Daycare is a chaos of noise and movement, thought and feeling, but it’s Billy who stands out. The biggest in their class of two and three-year-olds, his feelings are larger too. HAPPY! SAD! EXCITED! ANGRY! But more than anything, Billy is HUNGRY—for food, for attention, for new things. He stuffs his cheeks with his sandwich, then eyes Zee’s meal with a painful longing—a longing Zee feels compelled to satisfy.
Zee’s lunch is different from her classmates’. Each day, Mama prepares a vegan meal for Zee to bring to daycare while the others eat food that the daycare provides. The teacher helps Zee open the small containers Mama has packed. There are chickpeas, apple slices, raisins. Zee likes the way the foods are shaped. Nothing too big for fingers to pick up. Billy is watching, trying to imagine the tastes. This day, Zee has something new: a whole tofu hotdog. Billy stares, his fascination turning to horror, but the teachers don’t notice. It’s left to Zee to figure out what to do.
Afterwards in the office, Zee stands with Billy and looks with his eyes at the drawings taped to the wall. Cats with triangles for ears. Dogs with sausage bodies and short little legs. Then Zee studies each item on the desk, connecting them to the names that come into her mind. Stapler, Scotch Tape, Band-Aids, mouse pad . Zee listens as they telephone first Billy’s father then Zee’s mother. They have taken Zee’s shovel away but at least Billy is no longer crying.
At home, Zee obediently lies down for a nap in the bedroom so Mama can cook. Mama promises that if Zee sleeps now, she can stay up late tonight. “Uncle Malcolm is coming for supper,” she tells Zee. “He’s bringing his special friend ( lover ) Pedro.” Mama does not mention Meena, but Zee sees that she’s expected too. Zee smiles, looking forward to seeing all her grown-ups together. Zee breathes slowly, eyes closed—trying to pretend-sleep like Mama pretend-smiles.
(Please go to sleep, Zee, please sleep, please sleep, please ….)
Zee wakes to Mama’s voice in the nearby kitchen. “… and the two of them somehow managed to slip out into the backyard. They found Zee with a toy shovel in one hand and Billy’s hand in the other. They’d buried the tofu hotdog in the sandbox.”
Zee sits up. Would Mama be angry if Zee came out now? Meena is helping Mama with the onions. Through Mama’s eyes she can see Meena’s straight black hair swing back and forth with her chopping. Onions make Mama-Zee cry. But Mama feels happy. She’s watching Uncle Malcolm, who’s hunched (like a stork, my special Zee stork) on the kitchen stool, listening to Mama’s story.
“What were the two of them doing?” Uncle Malcolm asks.
“I think it had something to do with the fact that Billy’s dog had died over the weekend. Billy’s dad told him the dog needed to be buried in the backyard so she’d fly up to heaven. But then the City Health Department wouldn’t let them.”
Meena looks up at Mama (so beautiful) but Mama (warm happy) is watching Malcolm.
Pedro shakes his head. “Why do parents (dumb breeders) say shit like that to their kids?”
“Let’s hear the rest,” Malcolm says, smiling at Pedro. (Hope my connection to Emma/Zee doesn’t scare him off. Why did Emma choose me/Black/gay/ nerdy as sperm donor?)
“Why did the tofu hotdog make Billy think of his pet?” Meena asks.
“The dog was a dachshund named Hotdog,” Mama says.
Mama pictures their doctor’s little dog. So does Meena, but it’s fatt