ELINA
By Alexandra Sweny
I couldn’t believe it had really happened. I knew it was coming, of course – for the past two
months my life had not really been a life at all; instead, I had existed in the folds of suitcases, in the dry
wheezing of cardboard boxes scraping along barren floors.
Now those suitcases were here with us, in the baggage claim of the Toronto airport. We had
amassed an impressive pile of canvas and leather, zippers and bursting seams. They were filled, to the
brim.
We brought everything with us; we left everything behind.
We left behind the beautiful mountains of Athamura. We left behind my grandmother’s faded kitchen
tiles and the ragged slopes of the Ganges rapids. We left India behind like it was nothing.
I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to block out the sound of my father’s English, echoing in
mortifyingly broken fragments throughout the terminal. I used to love the sound of his voice, but there
under the dim artificial light it sounded so shameful. I couldn’t bear to look at my mother, either - all I
saw was her swollen belly as she leaned against our suitcases and pressed a hand to her abdomen.
They are going to name my brother Robert.
Robert. It is the first English name I have dared to say aloud, and in under a month it will belong
to my brother. Robert; proper name. It means “bright frame”, or so I have read. But I’m not stupid – I
know it is more.
I don’t bother telling them that they had always liked the name Sohan for a boy. It was supposed
to be for my grandfather, but my parents must have figured by now that the Marks, Jasons and Roberts
have a better go of it than the Roshins, Jafars and Sohans.
My brother will grow up in a different world. Never will he have to hear an awful
mispronunciation, or be forced to endure a recess alone. He will never be that boy, that name. He will
speak English without an embarrassing stutter and bond with other little boys over crayons. My parents
don’t have much, but already they have given my unborn brother the most valuable gift of all.
And me? My name is Elina. In Sanskrit that means “woman of intelligence”. In Greek it means
“sunlight”. It was the Germans who did it best: add another “l” and I become Ellina – “other, a foreigner”.
I am selectively translatable, exclusively adaptable. I mean something everywhere but here.
What does that say about me, then? That I am jealous of an unborn baby?
It’s my mother’s voice that brings me back. She has noticed my clenched fists and tight jaw. She
reaches out and brushes my hair from my face.
“Think of the schools, Elina,” she says. “You will be somebody here.”
This is what I say: who has time for schools when I can’t remember anything about home? They
teach us how to find areas and perimeters, slopes and parabolas. And it’s easy, shifting numbers and
balancing equations. It makes sense. It’s constant. The important things aren’t so; that must be why they
aren’t taught. They don’t teach how to remember in the classroom. They won’t tell me how to remember
the arc of our backyard hillside, or the slope of the green horizon, or the area of my old home, rounded
out to the nearest square foot. Eleven hours away from India and even I have forgotten.
But I say nothing, and my mother goes back to watching my father. Absently, she begins to hum.
It’s a familiar melody: an old nursery rhyme we used to sing in the village. My grandmother sang
it to me when I was little - I had forgotten it until now. I gaze at my mother, but she does not notice me.
She continues humming as her eyes follow my father’s fleeting shape, unaware of the truth that resounds
in her voice, beneath the squealing trolleys and fatigued footsteps.
This is what I know: my brother will grow up with this song.
And this: when he’s older, I’ll tell him all about those mountains of Athamura and the Ganges
rapids, and the faded blue of grandmother’s floor. I will tell him everything about what we left behind.
But most importantly, I decide, as I reach over and take my mother’s hand, I will tell him about what it
was we managed to bring.