My Person

This is an excerpt from Canadian writer Téa Mutonji's first novel My Person. Tania and Margot have been friends and roommates for decades. Tania tells Margot this isn’t working for her anymore—they’ve been entangled for too long, she wants to "unknow" her.  I was immediately engaged by this story and look forward to reading more but I admit that, while reading the first paragraphs, I was hoping that there would be a recipe for meatloaf, my favourite food group. 

Margot and I were preparing to host our monthly dinner party when I told her this wasn’t working for me anymore. I had decided to end our friendship earlier that evening while grocery shopping at the Metro in our neighborhood. I’d filled my cart with all the ingredients I would need to make meat loaf, which I made every Sunday when we’d host these parties—our Sunday Loaf parties. It was Margot’s favorite meal, my mother’s recipe, a staple in our home. It was my way of saying: Yes, I want this to end, but look at how much I still care. It took eight minutes to walk through the Metro parking lot and back to the apartment. I wasn’t thinking of anything. Our friendship did not flash before me like some kind of dead-wife montage in a film. I did not experience some kind of come-to-Jesus moment in which the Earth cracked open. There was no sudden realization. It was all just cool.

Outside, it was dark. Women wore workout sets while walking their dogs, goldendoodles in their creamy apricot coats. Really, I wasn’t thinking of anything critically, except dodging dog shit. The air was stiff and shifted my mood; I became melancholic, felt even a little exhilarated with anticipation. We’d been hosting these dinner parties since I moved in, not this past August, but the August the year before. It began with a housewarming. Weeks later, on the first Sunday of the following month, I made the meat loaf again for the exact same group of people, and like that, we’d created a tradition.

Before all this, when I had floated the idea of us living together, our friends expressed concerns about our compatibility. She’s so type A, they said. And you’ve just sold your next book, don’t writers need solitude to write? Still, the Sunday Loaf parties had evolved into a celebration of our love: Margot and I always color-coordinated our dresses—merlot or crimson in the fall, shades of blue in the winter, pastels in the spring. We decorated the apartment according to the season and collaborated on the menu. But the meat loaf remained the centerpiece. We both agreed this was proof that we really were in this for the long run. “This” being our friendship, our community, the fine china we displayed in the wooden cabinet behind the dining table.

I was aiming for a clean separation without any complications. I couldn’t figure out an exact reason for wanting to leave. This was causing me a lot of stress, because Margot was the kind of person who’d need an exact reason. There was a void I couldn’t quite explain and this voice in my head that kept saying: It’s time to go. But I couldn’t say that to Margot because I did not want to be therapized. She’d gently present that I was just “being a poet” then suggest I needed a meaningful vacation, somewhere like Delhi. I’d find myself crazed with a sudden loss of faculties and agree with her, and if I wasn’t careful, I might even end up on a red-eye to a meditation retreat, paid for by Margot. A gift she’d then hold over me for the rest of our lives.

Read more: Literary Hub