Mycosis. Priscila Uppal

      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”

      Mycosis

      The village, the one in the east, was threatened. Charlotte knew they were all threatened to a certain degree, but the east, due to its geography, was the most endangered. Naturally, it had become her most precious, the one she spent more time considering, the one that needed her most in order to flourish. There had been other problems over the last couple of weeks, problems that at the time seemed insurmountable, that had been conquered. And this too could be conquered if she put the correct plan into action and drew from all possible resources. She couldn’t turn her back on them now. They needed her protection. Who else was there?

      There were enemies. Some natural and some she hadn’t counted on at the beginning of her mission. In fact, the whole thing had come as a surprise. The startling delicate treasure that she found in the corner of her bathroom against the light pink wall underneath the toilet, when she was on her hands and knees scrubbing the tiles after the shower pipes had burst. The plumber had left her late in the afternoon, after she spent three hours sitting, biting her blunt fingernails on the living-room sofa bed anticipating the heavy bill he would present her with. The bathroom floor was covered in mud from his work boots, streaks of brown and dotted black on the bathroom tiles pressed into the cracks. She had purchased the cream tiles not a summer ago, and couldn’t stand a dirty bathroom. She got to work, filling the only pail she owned that came with a sale on sponges, a brighter pink than the walls, and began scrubbing the floor with hard and fast strokes as if it were a casserole dish. Then she saw it. Why hadn’t she noticed before? Maybe it had just materialized, or maybe she had never looked hard enough behind the toilet. Perhaps it had been building over the last weeks or maybe months, sustained by the drizzle of shower water spraying over the metal curtain rod as the steady stream from the nozzle hit her arched back when she shampooed her long brown hair or bent over to soap up her legs for shaving. The toilet tank, right up against the wall and near the base of the bathtub, could have kept the area hidden from her view. Regardless, now she saw it. Growing.

      At first she had been tempted to destroy the mushroom-shaped mould, its colour reminding her of the nicotine hue nails take on after decades of smoking. Her instinct was to put on her winter boots and jump on it to break its hold on the wall, or spray it with extra-strength disinfectant and watch it shrink by melting. She had already left to put on some thicker work gloves meant for gardening, not wanting to get her hands dirty, when something made her turn around and look again. She could have sworn the mould had changed positions, about a quarter of a centimetre from the white tiles, the mushroom’s head titling upwards, like an open mouth. Charlotte, she said shaking her head as if to clear the thought from her mind, nothing is out of the ordinary here. You’re just upset about the pipes and the floor and the time it will take to finish with this mess. Keep to the original plan. Clean your bathroom. Put on a CD and drink a cup of tea. But Charlotte didn’t listen to her voice, not that one. She dropped to her knees and edged towards the mould, her ear arched in the direction of its mouth.

      The first thing she noticed was the smell, a piercing waft like earwax. As she managed to find a semi-comfortable position, resting the soles of her feet against the tub with her legs crossed underneath her and her left hand supporting the weight of her torso against the wall, the stench was instantly stronger, and brought a faint taste of bile to the back of her throat. Scrunching her nose, and cupping her hands over her mouth, she got used to it, the way she eventually got used to new weather when the seasons changed. The mould had shape, contours like a dome, and an indent on one side, thumb-sized. The colour of the indent was a mix of brownish-yellows and beige whites, a swirl close to an amber stone on her favourite necklace, and when she eventually let her fingers slide over it, poking to see if it was strong, it had the feel of thick rubber. She stood and backed up, taking in an aerial view. “My god,” she exclaimed, “it’s beautiful!”