Page 152 - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

Would I have answered differently if I’d known that Mum intended this to be

a proper talk about my future? Probably not.
Mum was livid.
“Sitting on a beach reading a good mystery novel? Sitting on a beach reading
a good mystery novel?? If that’s the height of your ambition you and I are
finished, Freddy.”
“Come come, Mother . . . How can we ever be finished? I’m your son.”
“I’m going to give you one more chance,” she said. “What are your plans for

the next few years? What motivates you?”
I spoke of the past instead of the future; a past, it turned out, I had neither
lived for myself nor been told about. I remembered a sign that read REBEL TOWN,
but not in English. I remembered people striding around with cutlasses, and a
nursemaid who was a tiger—her lullabies were purred softly, and the melodies

clicked when they caught against her teeth: Sleep for a little while now, little
one, or sleep forever . . .
“That was my childhood, not yours,” my mother snapped. “Yours is a pitiful
existence. I had you followed for six months and all you did apart from turn up
to play in a sandpit with infants was go to galleries, bars, the cinema, and a
couple of friends’ houses. What kind of person are you? I spoke to your weed
dealer and he said you don’t even buy that much. You are without virtue and

without serious vice. Do you really think you can go on like this?”
“What shall I do then?”
“You’ll start working at Hotel Glissando next week.”
“Will I? Can’t somebody else do it?”
“No, Freddy. It’s got to be you.”

—

THIS WAS SEXISM; my younger sister Odette is much handier than me. I pointed
this out, but my mother seemed not to hear and proposed that I shadow Dad at
the hotel for a few months in order to acquire the skills I lacked. I told Mum that
I wouldn’t and couldn’t leave Pumpkin Seed Class at this crucial moment in the
development of their psyches. Mum told me her career was at stake. A bright-
eyed, bushy-tailed, and unscrupulous woman who was just below Mum in the

chain of command was gunning for her job, subtly and disastrously leaving my
mother out of the loop so that she missed crucial directives and was left unaware
of changes to the numerous hourly schedules and procedures that it was her task
to oversee and complete. I could see my mother’s stress as she spoke: It was