When I was thirteen, Grandmother told me that there were two kinds of love: one that nurtures and one that consumes.
The first kind was the kind she shared with Grandfather. Through thick and thin, they stuck together, forever each other's half. When Grandfather died, Grandmother was left alone to take care of their seven-year-old daughter, my mother, but never did Grandmother look back to those days with bitterness. The only reason she gave me was that Grandfather's love gave her all the strength she needed to fight through life and raise their child.
"He might not have spent as many years with me as I had hoped, but your grandfather had always shown me so much love – enough love to last a lifetime, even if it meant living without him," Grandmother would always say.
The second kind – the one that consumes – was the kind that my mother felt for my father. Mother died a few days after she gave birth to me: heartbroken, alone. Grandmother told me that the only crime my mother has done was to fall in love with the wrong man, at the wrong time, in the wrong place. She loved deeply and with all her heart, leaving nothing for herself.
"Your father might have loved your mother," Grandmother said to me once, "or he might have not. We will never know for sure. But your mother loved him without restraint, giving him everything -- heart, body, mind and soul. He took all of her away when he left, never to come back."
I was too young at thirteen to understand everything that Grandmother was telling me. All I knew was that she was warning me against the all-consuming love that became my mother's downfall. Even without understanding all of it, I knew that Grandmother was right. I promised myself that I would not follow in my mother's footsteps. I would love a man, but I would always leave something for myself.
I thought I learned my lesson. I thought I would be able to stand by that conviction. But I was wrong. Nothing prepared me for what I was about to face.
Ah, yes. Fate could be cruel sometimes.
*****
Grandmother pushed a cup of tea towards me. "Drink it while it's hot."
I did not heave out the sigh threatening to escape my throat. I did not particularly like the taste of that tea. It was made from roots of plants that Grandmother said grew in the middle of the forest, where trees grew the thickest. Grandmother had been making me drink that every single day for almost two years now.
"Selene."
Her tone told me that she could read the hesitation in my eyes. Finally, I thought it was time to beg my way out of this.
"It does not taste good," I complained, pushing it away. "I don't like it, Grandmother."
She sighed and leaned on the chair. "Whether you like it or not, Selene Kier, you are going to drink that."
"You are never this insistent before," I said, frowning a little.
She smiled wistfully and took my hand, gently squeezing it. "This is the only thing that made sure you do not suffer the same fate as your mother's."
I tensed. Grandmother talked about Mother as rarely as she could. When I was younger, she would only talk of Mother because I was asking questions. In time, I realized just how painful it was for her to talk of her daughter; I stopped asking questions. She would only talk of Mother once in a while, and never about the disgrace she suffered.
My grandparents used to live very near Mary's place, which was about two-hour walk away from the place where we now lived. They had a little brick house back then, much like Mary's (although I would not consider Mary's house small now), and they were living well enough. Even after the death of my grandfather, Grandmother's life was fairly easy, since Mary's mother, who was still alive back then, would always help her. Mary and my mother were the best of friends, hence the closeness of our families. If only father had not entered the picture, perhaps I would not be living inside the forest with my Grandmother right now.
Father got my mother pregnant when she was twenty, promised to marry her, but never did. Instead, when mother was on her third month of pregnancy, he left, telling her that he would come back for her. My mother's condition was still concealable that time, but after two months, it was already apparent to everyone who saw her. She became the talk of everyone she knew, but Mother still held on to Father's promise.
A month before she was due, when the pain caused by the rumours spread about her had already become unbearable, Mother begged Grandmother to leave that place. She had always loved the forest nearby, and decided that she wanted to live there. Grandmother did as her daughter wished. Acting on Mary's mother's orders, Mary's father, brother, and husband (she was already married to George then) built a hut for Grandmother and Mother. It became Grandmother's home ever since.
It was in that hut that I was born. It was also in there that Mother died. Father never came back, as Grandmother feared. Not wanting me to grow up being the focus of everybody's scorn, Grandmother decided to raise me inside the forest. Sheltered and well-loved, I found this kind of life beautiful, magical, incomparable. That was the reason why I could not leave this forest even if it meant I had to part from the man I love, Marcus: I belonged to this forest as much as all the trees, shrubs, and rocks in the vicinity belonged to it.
"Do you understand me, Selene? I make this tea so that you won't get pregnant."
Grandmother's gentle voice brought me back to the present. I could not look at her. It just dawned on me that my behaviour last year could have very well reopened the wounds my Grandmother suffered from a long time ago. Marcus and I became lovers, and if Grandmother did not always coax me to drink her special tea, what happened to my mother could have happened to me, too.
Not that I thought Marcus would not have married me. He asked me to live with him, did he not? He would have done the honourable thing. Still, it would have reminded Grandmother of what happened to my mother.
"I'm sorry," I whispered.
Grandmother rose from her seat to put her arms around me. "There now, Selene. There is nothing to be sorry about." I felt her lips on my head. "I was merely concerned about you. You remind me so much of my Catherine. Both of you are headstrong, passionate women, if a bit reckless."
I looked up at her and saw the tears in her eyes, although she was smiling. "Grandmother, Marcus is not like my father. He would have done the right thing had he gotten me with child."
She said nothing, just smiled and kissed my forehead. I knew what she had in mind: I could not be sure that Marcus would have acted differently from the way my father did. But I knew Marcus. I believed in him. I loved him. The kind of love we shared nurtured; it would not destroy. I knew, because he chose to leave me when he realized that I would never leave this place. His eyes led right into his soul, and when he realized that we could not be together, I saw sadness and pain there that mirrored my own. And so I knew: he would drag me out of the forest and into a church if he had gotten me pregnant. He would not be the coward that my father was.
I reached for the cup of tea and brought it to my lips. It did not matter now. Marcus was gone, and even though I did not have any lover at all, it would not hurt to reassure my grandmother. I would not be the fool that my mother was.
