The Return

Posted by Isa on November 14th, 2007 | Categorized as Stories | Tagged as the return | 117 views and 3 Comments

Bright lights. Noise. With that, the girl is brought to a rude awakening. She opens her eyes and realises that she cannot see – she is not wearing her glasses. Shapes are blurry around her – the seat, matt of dark blue. She begins to search frantically. They could not have gone far she had been sitting on a seat on an aeroplane forever! She lets out a terrified cry – she hates not being able to see. The reaches, trying to reach her father – but it is her mother who responds.
“I can’t find my glasses.” And suddenly, there are tears on her cheeks, though the girl only feels heat.
“Arêtte de pleurer.” Her mother says immediately, picking up the glasses from the floor where they had fallen earlier.
“How long until we get off?”
“Another 10 hours. So go to sleep.” The girl is given her Peter Rabbit plushie. He was a going-away present from her friend, Huck. He was a little worn, a little weary when she got him, but she loves him the most.
She sits and thinks of home…

*

Later, when asked ‘what does you remember most about America?’. She will not know what to say. Should she say that she spent her whole life trying to live up to a ‘Dream’ and an identity that was never hers to own in the first place? That she has always felt she has never belonged anywhere? She was never truly ‘American’ because she was a French-speaking Australian ex-pat. That in Australia, she could never fit in because she did not know the language, the customs?
She remembers some things of America – a private lycee where she spoke French all the time as well as at home, and had to wear a uniform. She remembers her home, with her neighbour, Gilbert who owned 2 Golden Retrievers who she learnt to love at an early age. Most of all, she remembers Vivianne – her Mauritian nanny/mother. She remembers the hours of fun and games, and especially whose bed she would crawl into after a nightmare. The over riding feeling though, is the utter fury and hurt caused when Vivianne did not come with them to Australia.

*
Australia. The land of the kangaroo. Her father’s land. She felt no connection to it. But perhaps she would, in time.