Cover
Selected Praise for Priscila Uppal’s Works
Projection: Encounters with My Runaway Mother
“Projection proves to be remarkably free of self-pity … [A] raw, passionate memoir, a fierce exercise in family exorcism.”
— Montreal Gazette
“Uppal is brave … made of sterner stuff than most; an inspiration to messed-up adult children everywhere.”
— Globe and Mail
“[S]uperbly conveyed without any excessive literary artifice … Projection is a book that’s simultaneously cerebral and visceral, and its ardent refusal of any sort of mind-body split — to sacrifice sophistication for sentiment or vice versa — is the sign of an author who has thrown herself wholly into her book.”
— National Post
“Incorporating movie and pop-culture references as storytelling devices is what makes this book truly shine … Above all, Uppal is an impeccable writer, deftly infusing complex scenes and emotions with power and weight … a worthy read.”
— Quill & Quire
“[A] heartbreaking memoir.”
—Toronto Life
“Intimate, sad, probing and self-aware, often very funny logbook of a harrowing encounter.”
— Literary Review of Canada
To Whom It May Concern
“It is to be hoped that Uppal will continue to rival Atwood in productivity and wit. As Shakespeare might have said: Fortune, smile again on lovers of CanLit; grace us with more irresistible stories from Uppal’s unique perspective.”
— Montreal Gazette
“Uppal is a deep thinker, capable of carefully peeling back layer upon layer of the human psyche … makes us laugh and cry long after the last page of the novel has been read.”
— Ottawa Citizen
“Uppal’s writing bursts with humour, plot turns and insights … Uppal should be congratulated for writing one of the most powerful and riskiest scenes in a Canadian novel … [she] reveals herself as a compassionate and perspicacious novelist whose humanity and intelligence cannot be overlooked.”
— Globe and Mail
The Divine Economy of Salvation
“In its confident voice and its unsparing, concisely powerful narrative — like Margaret Laurence at her best — Divine Economy is an impressive debut.”
— Globe and Mail
“A luminous debut … haunting, gripping, and surprisingly nuanced: begins as a simple mystery and turns into a work of great depth and seriousness.”
— Kirkus starred review
Dedication
For Richard Teleky,
who has been here since the beginning
Epigraph
Who, marked for failure, dulled by grief,
Has traded in his wife and friend
For this warm ledge, this alder leaf:
Comfort that does not comprehend.
— Edna St. Vincent Millay, “The Return”
The Lilies
The thick cotton gardening gloves she had buried quickly, by the maple tree in the corner of the backyard, near the fence. The dog had shown too much interest in her quick digging, circling around her nervously, threatening to bark, and she had done a clumsy job. She would have to go back out and re-bury. The threat of the neighbours watching weighed upon her chest, or the thought of her husband finding her there, thinking she had gone crazy. He would blame it on menopause. He was not one to squirm at the word. Secretly, she believed, he enjoyed it. The hot flashes and fiery temperament, the need it created in her to be held. She had become a passionate woman again.
It wasn’t the menopause, she knew, that caused the flowers. They were not visions she had created, though like most things in her household, she didn’t understand their actions. Violet had lived amongst flowers before; they were her namesake. How then, she wondered, can they just turn on you? Drinking her rum and Coke, she sat slouched in the kitchen as the dishes stacked in the drying tub. She let the alcohol steep in her body. Maybe some sleep would help. But she was wide awake, and then there was Pickles, who was running around the hole, sniffing the evidence.
Violet worked in a fruit-and-vegetable store part-time ever since her daughter Claire had moved away to Toronto. She had planted fruit and vegetable seeds for years, and her obsession had only grown with time. The way they smelled while roasting or boiling, how carefully you needed to separate the vines from entwining, and the stick of muddy soil between her thick-fingered hands to make them rise, all provoked her to keep growing. She planted every spring and reaped her harvest until the last days of autumn. Even chopping fruits and vegetables seemed a natural extension of her body. Firm rounded fingers eased themselves around knives and cutters, or the draining hole of a juicer. Working at the store helped her pass the time since her home no longer needed her full-time, not without Claire. Without Claire, there was no “little one” to bring up. “Bringing up Claire,” she would gloat, “was my best work.” Though it wasn’t. The work was awkward and frightening in her hands as she watched the pig-tailed girl blossom into breasts and hips and thoughts about the world Violet could barely fathom. Not that Claire was what you could call “a bad seed.” She wasn’t. No angel, either. Inevitably, after a certain age, Violet knew a child no longer radiates innocence, but Violet had never found Claire innocent. Not even as a newborn. She had fallen from her womb, had tasted blood, and come out fighting for air. Her newborn, she feared, already had a bone to pick with a world that wouldn’t contain her. Adult Claire now occupied an untouchable space, an area of tension like the one between her shoulder blades. Even the sound of her name out loud made Violet sense that Claire would eventually disappear from her completely like morning dew.
Sweat had doubly accumulated from the fear of the flowers and the rush of the alcohol, her face flush as if she had been baking all day. She sat envisioning her gloves underneath the ground rising like yeast into a white balloon with swollen fingers and wrists, digging their way back inside her house. Looking around the room, she tried to shake the thoughts off by repeating the names of common objects: dish, spoon, tablecloth, fridge. However, just as common as anything in her kitchen were the lilies outside. She tried not to think of their gramophone faces, the exposed seeds extended like insect antennae, or the sharpness of their leaves. Stay still, she told herself, as if the flowers were monitoring her movements, heads pointed like ears in her direction, afraid she might wake them from their resting. Pour yourself some vodka. But the alcohol made her blood warm, which sent her back to thoughts of blood. The blood bothered her most. The stench curled on the tip of her nose as she imagined a trail of blood from the gloves tunnelling through the backyard, feeding on itself, waiting to be discovered like oil. Or worse, it being autumn, they might be plotting to rise again in the spring. The dog, still sniffing the area with her hunter’s nose, only confirmed her suspicions. She peed and Violet felt convicted.
The next morning she woke early. Stealing out of bed, as she did every weekday morning to make breakfast before Carl went to work, seemed sneaky instead of sweet today. She couldn’t tell him about the violent flowers, and this morning she woke even earlier than usual, needing to confirm somehow by looking out her bedroom window that she hadn’t imagined the whole incident. There they were: white lilies with their bonnets pulled tightly and tied under their chins, covered