Cover Before Striking. Priscila Uppal

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      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”

      Cover before Striking

      The most common phrase in the world in print is Cover Before Striking. Thousands of books with tiny cardboard flaps in every language telling the same story, the same lie. It’s madness to think, with all the warnings, no one seems to be listening.

      every language telling the same story

      Crazy was a word my father used a lot, especially in association with women. Women were invented to create havoc for men, my father said. Fire-eaters. Looking to cause trouble where there doesn’t need to be any. Set fire to your pants and then to your house. That’s what women do. You would nod and make faces. I would say nothing, until later, in my bed, when he would rub my belly and ask those questions. I would have to answer. Crazy. Irrational, if he felt like being more psychological about it. Those things never happened. You made them up. You’re always telling stories. You are lying.

      a word my father used a lot

      Lying crazy on your living room floor. Burgundy carpet burned, frayed, pink spots from vodka spills, keeps my back warm, tickling like fur on my knees. Yellow plastic ashtray bought at the discount store in the market, Made in Taiwan. You laughed and said we were all Made in Taiwan. And I imagined myself being melted into a shape with grooves for sticks and fingers to fit. With small black type across my back and ashes smeared on my face. Watch the smoke curl and rise like runaway clouds in a storm, afraid of catching the fever, paper burning in staircase spirals the way I thought fairytale houses would, filter glowing like a pulsating wound, flicking my lighter on and off, on and off, each crack from my fingertips making me tremble. Intoxication. Your feet dangle over my hair, wide and black spread on red. Yellow light telling me to slow down. Slow down. The dizzy feeling in my belly, the downtown traffic. Gazing at the ceiling, dripping the last swig of vodka onto my thighs to mix with your come. My grooves sore but aching for your fingers. I am lost in the smoke.

      curl and rise like runaway clouds

      He would smile when he said it. Dark thinning hair without a part. Bushy eyebrows furled in amusement. Lips a tense bow. Arms like pendulums. I never knew which side he was going to take. Swing. Swing. I wanted to hit him. Make the movement stop. Take his balding head in my shaking hands and beat it on our yellow fridge, watch the magnets (mushroom, doctor’s number, pizza place, preschool blushing heart), watch them fall to the floor like exploding stars and the picture I had drawn three years earlier, still up on the fridge because no one paid attention, curled at the corners, smudged with fingerprints, grease from cooking, frying our food always in too much oil. Everything we ate in shades of brown or black, burnt bread and fried, trying to disguise the smell with fans whirling, whirling smoke and ashes all over the kitchen, beating the alarm with a broom handle to stop the wailing, wailing, announcing our food was overcooked, overdone, again. Stashing the broom in the crack between the fridge and cupboard. I wanted that lilac to fall. All other flowers wilt. I wanted to press his face up against it, beat him with the broom handle I’d felt on my back, my back, and lower than that. Make him bleed. See I was still a child three years ago drawing with Crayolas, sometimes unable to stay inside the lines.

      all other flowers wilt

      Dinnertime. I am tired of mashed potatoes and peas, green and white mush served in sterile silence. Only sometimes a smile from the pretty nurse, the one with long raven black hair feathered like crows’ wings, brushed back into a silver pin that glitters under the blinds. I want to feel her hair and have her feed me with her large spoon like a child. I usually accept another helping to watch her move, row by row. I know I could’ve been a nurse like her. I like to think she could’ve been me.

      Dinnertime