The Prodigal Daughter
Illustrated by Maja Kobylak.They’ve changed the layout of the airport. Yellow signs, zip-tied to lampposts and fences, lead me through a looping maze of concrete, so confusing that I stop to gesture a few words to a man in a fluorescent jacket. He points in a vague direction and I wander until the taxi rank comes into view. I’m fifteen minutes late but the driver waves off my apologies, takes my bag, and begins to speak at me. From his tone I can guess he’s asking me questions but the syllables blend together and my mind goes blank.
“Di dove sei?” He asks, something I finally understand, and I pull out my list of words. England, family, visiting.
He laughs and says I look important. Importante. All I have are work clothes and workout gear and nothing seemed appropriate. He asks what I do, but my list ends there, so as we pull onto the motorway he talks about his wife and newborn son. They live in a village a few miles from here, he tells me, and leans to point out of the window, jerking the car in a way that makes me grip onto the door. Another taxi streaks past, blaring the horn, and he stops talking to spit some curses at the dirty smoke it leaves behind. He tells me about his son’s sleeping habits and I watch small terracotta towns breaking the surface of the valley below.
It has changed, but only in small things. I was prepared for a shift, that the past twenty years would be tangible. But it is only in a new billboard, exulting in the cleaning power of Solfan (“Una nuova formula!”), a cluster of warehouses on the outskirts of the city, the golden arches of McDonalds on every junction we pass. It is like I am looking through the eyes of my ten-year-old self, only to be pulled back by another jaunty cartoon mascot leaning over us. I am left to face it: Italy doesn’t care about me. My absence meant nothing. The landscape did not shift, I recognise it still. It went on quietly evolving, and it continues even as I return.
The driver is still talking about his family, how they want a brother, fratello, for his son. I open the window and pull the warm air into my lungs, feel a kind of pleasure in the exhaust fumes stinging my throat. Staring at the straggling pines on the horizon, I think about London. I hate these clothes. They remind me of coming back to my dark flat. Or home in Brixton, my dad’s proud smile that doesn’t mean much to me anymore, in a house that feels too empty. My stillettos are already scuffed from the journey, and I feel stupid, even more stupid when I think back to buying them. Half of my first paycheck, just because I could afford it. That person, walking the shoes down Oxford street, wearing them to the office no matter how many blisters they gave her, isn’t real to me anymore. And she would sit at her desk, logging in numbers for ninety hours a week, and look at them with pride. Every second worth it, to show people that she was successful, that she was better than them. I feel sick, and search through my handbag, bringing out a plastic bag I got at duty free. It’s already slick from my damp palms.
The driver stops talking, asks if I’m well. I shrug. He turns on the radio, and I pick out words, try them on in my mind. Traffico, governo, ultime notizie. The rest flows by me, just sound, but I clutch onto these, try and make their unfamiliar shape mine. As mountains climb around us, the radio sputters out. The driver doesn’t shut it off and every once in a while the voices start back up again with a chatter or blast of music. We’re the only ones on the road now and as we swing around a corner we see the river.
The driver speaks in fast Italian. “Così bello”. So beautiful. It’s a silver chain looping across the valley, and is so deeply familiar I choke on my response. It comes back to me: day trips with Noah. Diving from the rocks and seeing who could hold their breath the longest. I turn and look at the rock face instead, grip the bag tighter. I want to tell the driver to turn around, I want to go back to my flat and lie in my bed and hate myself, I want to think about that call from the hospital over and over again.
My manager came to see me in person, two weeks after I stopped turning up to work. She had to shout my name through the door before I forced myself to answer. Her face made it clear she could smell the unwashed plates by the sink, and she didn’t bother to sit down. Shame came to me through a thick haze, weakened enough that I didn’t care, and when she told me I was done, I said nothing. She let herself out.
When we rumble down the drive, the sun has begun to set, dousing everything in sepia. I pay, and he clasps my hand in thanks, and I wonder, is this how people are here? The sky is wide open above the house, and in the golden light the sandstone walls are ablaze. I kick off my heels and stand on the gravel in my tights and time is thin. I’m here alone and Noah is standing next to me.
The smell of cooking meat accompanies my grandmother to the door, and I see beyond her that the table is set. When she hugs me, and shakes, I am struck with the fact that she is real. Before she was an anecdotal picture, but she is real, if fragile, with skin crumpled like paper.
“Vieni, vieni,” she says, and makes me sit, offers me bread and presses candies into my palms.
For a long time we sit across the table, and I try to speak. My mouth is clumsy. Each stumbling word knots her fingers tighter, fumbled grammar makes her shrink into her chair. She is mourning me, I think, I am not who she remembers. The smell of cooking meat builds, heavy and fragrant, and the nausea from the taxi returns. When she shuffles to the kitchen, I distract myself, and walk around the room. It is a museum to our childhood. Do not touch, I think, then shake myself for my sentimentality. I run my fingers along the ridges of the table. I pluck at the woven straw chairs, flip through books, draw a line through the dust on the TV. Pulling back the lace curtain I look at the fields where Noah and I would go and play God, turning leaves and stones to flesh. The sun has set, but the wheat still has a golden tinge. We used to think this time was magic, when we'd run back inside for dinner and hope that leaving our playmates there between the stalks would really bring them to life. There are no other houses for miles. I wonder if she is lonely, with only the fields here. I wonder if she feels the pain that I do, even after twenty years without us.
My grandmother comes back in, holding something between her fingers. The photograph is worn but legible. Two children sat on the steps of a house. I am mud-covered, bruised, and laughing. Noah wraps his arms across my shoulders and smiles.
“Look,” my grandmother says, “Now you are home.”