In Remembrance of Coco and Pooh

Illustration: Saniya Kamal

My mother threw away all the toys I had once held dear. She told me it was because they had gone dark, blackened, covered in soot from a fire in the apartment, a fire she said that had been the work of a warlock who wanted to destroy her. The caretakers of the building said it had been the work of the firewood Amma kept bringing into her home, by way of labourers lugging it up three flights of stairs and dropping them on one side of her room. They had sorrily attempted to tell her to stop lighting indoor fires. But nobody has ever been able to command Amma into anything. 

Amma has worlds she lives in, realities which don’t jibe with my own. Sometimes it is hard to reach her when she’s in one of her farthest ones. I don’t know what really happened to my toys, and I don’t think I ever will. They weren’t in the room where the fire happened. The mother I once had could never be so reckless. Would never be so. 

I tell myself to be grateful, at least she’s not violent. Toys are replaceable. Mothers aren’t. At least she’s still here. She’s not, but she is, so be grateful. 

I would come home from school in the sixth grade to the smell of ittar. It was serene. It meant my mother was visiting, all the way from Bangladesh. My mother was everything — she made me happy in an unquestioning way, a way only a kid can be, reveling in the warmth of their parents. When she was there, the apartment seemed more like home, protected by my mother’s constant prayers. She doesn’t pray anymore. 

She was the one who told me I was going to have a little sister. I still remember the gentle lilt of her voice in the pitch-black night, right before I was about to sleep. It was a revelation in the guest room, where I would retreat to every time I needed a quiet space to play Harvest Moon on my dying red Gameboy. She eased me into the thought of a baby sister and a pregnant mother with charm, her motherly finesse. Baba was always my hero, but Amma was my mom. And she was a great, if flawed one. 

My stuffed gorilla, Coco, had been with us since before I was born. Okay, fine, he was my elder sister’s. But I used to love the way I could wrap his magic arms around my neck and stick my thumb, or a marble, into the light brown gash where his mouth was, pleasantly shaped like an O. It’s always nice when things fit. His belly was soft and welcoming, and the perfect size for a headrest. His eyes were plastic, somehow habitually looking at me, listening calmly; my old friend. Imagine making wine out of figs, imagine it having layers, imagine it having the never-ending depth of a far-away forest. That was the color of his cheap, plastic eyes. 

In the Philippines, I used to stare at him, and my Powerpuff girls — which my mother also threw away — and beg them to come alive. 

“You can trust me,” I said, “I won’t ever let anyone take you. I won’t ever let them know if you can talk. I promise to keep your secret, keep you safe.” 

I used to wait until my mother was asleep, or not in the room. I’d stare imploringly into their eyes with all the seriousness of a six-year-old on a mission for truth and start begging. When they didn’t suddenly animate themselves to tell me I had cracked the code to their freedom, that I had saved them from the misery of their banal daily performance, I would try again the next night. And the next. And on and on, until defeat. It wasn’t just the defeat of a child either. I still carry the remnants of that heartbreak with me. They demystified my world. I guess they couldn’t trust me. They knew I couldn’t keep them safe. 

There’s what feels like a sea urchin stuck in my throat and it hurts. I can’t bear these memories alone much longer. 

She kept my giant, life-sized Winnie the Pooh for a while. Funnily enough, it was the only toy that was actually in the room of the fire. My room, to be exact. She had loved him with a tenderness reserved only for him, sewing him up at his ripped seams over the years, hand-washing his fur regularly, and so it was no surprise that he had traveled with her (despite the logistical nightmare) when I went away to college. She took him to Morocco, she washed his little red crop-top, and once laughed about him having his butt exposed. The most vulnerable parts of him, unprotected. 

When I came back home and saw him, I don’t know what came over me. I held him and cried for a time, saying sorry. I don’t know what I was saying sorry for or how long I held him. Grief distorts time, space, and memory; with recollection I am barefoot in a puddle, at night, weeping into a version of myself I’ll never know again. He was covered in black spots and torn at the seams she used to sew up. But he was still smiling at me with that same whimsical smile I saw at Robinson the day I decided I would put him on my birthday wish-list. A rich relative had bought him for me after a quick phone call to confirm my choice, smirking on the other line. He liked extravagance, and my Winnie was the most extravagant toy in that department store. Bangkok had lots of large toys to buy, but Pooh was invariably my favourite. My poor Pooh bear.

That might be why he was my mother’s favourite too; she loved seeing me love things, as so many mothers do. I’d had him since I was twelve. He was there when my first love betrayed me, he was there when my father moved away from us in Virginia, he was there when I was bullied on my first day in Islamabad, and he was there at the beginning of the end, when my mother told me she had voices in her head; that she believed them over me. 

Anyone who knows me knows I speak to my things. I spoke to Pooh the most, with that reliable smile on his face. My cuddly comrade. In tatters, and no longer here. She never explained why he had to be thrown away, too. Avoiding what might have been the agony of his last moments, I miss him every day. 

My mother turns to me with indifference in her eyes. 

“Tell your boyfriend to turn down the music. He’s a bloody bastard, that one.”

She thinks I’ve been having an illicit affair with our neighbour. He’s in his fifties, and, to be frank, revolting to me — in every sense of the word. When I told my best friend of her accusations, he looked at me with a mixture of disgust and concern in his eyes. I recognized that reaction, having felt it so much that it no longer holds any meaning. 

Jepetto, my Norwegian Santa friend, is watching me cry as I write this, and I can’t look at his wise white beard right now. Carl, the little ceramic owl who hides under Jepetto’s beard, is looking away of his own volition. My toys mean a lot to me. My dad tells me I attach sentiment to things where I don’t need to, and that this attachment to inanimate things will wound me throughout the course of my life. I tell him that there will be a lot of things that will wound me in my life.  

I know nostalgia is supposed to hurt, and I have a say in this pain, but even my friends tell me I’m clingy. Coco used to cling to me. It’s hard not to cling when your hands are velcro. 

The sea urchin hasn’t left, I believe it’s travelled. I feel it in between my ribs now.