SEAN CULLEN

Marni turned the pages of the fraying journal she had been poring over for almost an hour, during which time she had been waiting for one of the words to catch her eye. She had planned her whole life for this moment, with all the hours she had spent working multiple jobs, just so that she could have enough to afford to move out of Ommha and Missierha’s house in her early twenties, to both of their dismay. Her omm lived with her now ever since her missier passed. But now… now Marni felt that she had finally found that space and time to write a work of historical fiction she could call her own.  

She continued flicking through the journal of Maltese historian Joseph Attard, then stopped. These were the words that caught her eye: 

Could Attard have known that in the next few moments the Axis powers were about to bomb the place he had always called home? Marni gazed out the front window of the home she had moved into only a decade ago. The sky was a brilliant blue, the grass golden, the sun gleaming off the plastic of the minicar which her five-year-old daughter often drove around in the front yard while her eldest son played ball. Marni saw herself in the front garden, her son Bailey laughing as he gingerly ran with the ball, her husband Ezran instructing their daughter Lana how to check her blind spot in the minicar, her curly hair and serious face smiling at her, before she shuffled forwards. Her daughter had not heard the warm laughter escape from her.  

Marni snapped back to reality. It was still just her in the studio office, and her mother, who was likely resting for the afternoon. Looking at the blank pages laid in front of her, she realised that for more than an hour now she had not written down a single word. She took a deep breath and penned what first came to mind. 

“Marnia? Marnia? Come here bint. I want to show you something.”  

“I’m busy omm,” Marni called back. She bit her lip. She glanced over the mess of stacked historical texts on her desk, feeling herself pulled between two purposes, before deciding it was not worth pushing it any further. When Marni arrived at the spare room which had become her mother’s, she found her stooping down to push a bedside cabinet drawer shut, muttering under her breath.  

All that was between them was the radiant sunlight streaming through the windows, and yet it seemed like an impassable barrier. Her mother began to sort through weathered envelopes she had laid out beside her.  

“Are they from Sliema?” Marni asked, still waiting in the doorway.  

“Come, come, sit here,” Marni’s mother did not glance at her as she cleared a spot at the end of the bed, before closely examining a well-preserved piece of parchment. “Now, your father wrote this letter when he was courting me from the island of Gozo,” her mother passed Marni the letter over a pile of other envelopes and postcards scattered between them. “I was training to be a seamstress at one of the local clothing stores in Sliema—have I shown you this letter already?” 

“No, no omm, you haven’t,” Marni replied. She smiled furtively at her mother before scanning through her father’s full message, penned carefully in Maltese. He wrote of longing for the day that he could be reunited with her mother; of the day he caught her eye at the Sliema Promenade; how he felt like an outsider visiting from the island of Gozo, thinking for sure that he would catch the evil eye for noticing her, but was taken aback when her mother smiled at him—she had remembered him several years earlier, from the pre-Lenten Carnival of February 21st, 1939, where they first met.  

“That was the last carnival before the war began, you see,” Marni’s mother explained, just as her daughter finished reading the letter.  

“Are you sure you aren’t busy bint?” Her mother furrowed her brow. 

“What? No—” Marni gave the letter back to her mother. “I’m with you, I’m listening.” 

“Good,” she nodded gravely, turning for a moment to wipe the side of her face away from Marni. “Now, your father and me—your father, he...” Her mother closed her eyes and grimaced. “Well, your father...”  

“Omm... are you alright?”  

Her mother let out one great harrumph, laying the letter aside. She opened a drawer, placing everything into it before closing it again.  

“I might get some rest before Ezran and the kids return from the park. Would you close the door?” 

As Marni scanned through meaningless administrative and work emails on the desktop computer, she almost missed it. She took a rapid breath. A message from the University of Malta, the place she had always dreamed of going to ever since high school. An offer—was it an offer? She could not believe it! An offer to research and write about the history of a country she had only heard about in family legends. Her dream to live and study in Malta for a year, the one she had been harbouring in her heart for so long, the one which had driven her to where she was now—it was finally coming true. 

Then her dream faded away in an instant. What would her mother think? Her kids were so young; Lana was starting kindergarten next month. She had already told Ezran about her application to study overseas, and though he was against it at first, thinking over the change it would bring, he ultimately agreed to look after the children. She had promised to do the same for him when the time came. But her mother—what would she say?   

She told Ezran first in the twilight of their lamp-lit bedroom.   

“That’s great news!” Ezran whispered, then looked at the ceiling. “The kids will miss you though.” 

“I know,” Marni sighed; she would be leaving only a week after Lana began primary school. Ezran turned to her so she could see into his brown eyes.  

“When you were younger,” he continued, “you talked about wanting to build a life for yourself, away from your parents’ constant influence—” 

“That’s in the past now,” Marni shook her head and switched off her lamp. She was now the one who let her gaze fall upon the ceiling, which flickered with the warm embers of Ezran’s lamp on one side, while her side became enveloped by the long shadow of a starless night.   

“I’m just worried that you won’t be able to be there for Lana when she needs you most,” Ezran breathed. “I don’t suppose you’ve told Elma about it yet?”  

“No, well—” There it was again: that ridiculous, haunting thought of what her mother would think. “Well, even now, it’s hard to predict how my mother will react sometimes. Do you remember how she was when we decided to buy a house, when I moved out of my childhood home?” 

Ezran seemed to consider it for a moment before shaking his head. 

“She’ll come around; I know it. We aren’t kids anymore, and I think your mother has finally accepted that.” 

Marni gave the reassuring sound of his words the lasting precedence he would have intended them to have. He could not truly know what it was like to be raised by her mother. Her father had passed away around the time she moved out. Could it be that her mother could not bear to live without him in the place where they had built a home together? 

She tried her best to calm her restless mind, but all within her was a flurry—she thought and kept thinking about the shock of her father’s sudden death; the cries of her mother over the phone as she recounted the moment she awoke to find missier without breath, his unstaring eyes still opened; the indelible shadow that welled within her body upon hearing her mother’s words; the irrepressible tug in the side of her ribs as shock became disbelief, and disbelief became a weeping that escaped from her like some trapped phantom, mingling in strange harmony with her mother’s cries. She had not let the grief surface like it did then. Like it was threatening to do now.