Authors: Anthony De Sa
“What that poor boy’s mother must be feeling. She must be crying like a
Magdalena
, cursing the day she came here.” There was only a moment of silent contemplation. “She knows, she must know, a mother knows.”
“The news say he try saving money to buy a ticket for his mother, to go visit back home,” Aunt Zelia added.
“I no hear that,” Aunt Louisa interjected. “I hear
other stories about that boy and what boys like him shining shoes do for extra money.”
My mother moved back into the smoky kitchen. The discussion continued but no longer penetrated the padded bedspread that divided our two worlds. My aunts had taken note of my mother’s admonitions.
It was hot. I needed air.
Quietly, I made my way upstairs and out the front door and onto my bike. I took hungry gulps, filling my lungs to clear my nose of the smell that attached itself to me.
“Hey!”
I looked to Manny’s veranda. All I could see was his curly black hair above the porch railing. He ran to meet me at the gate.
“Let’s go!” I said.
“We can’t.”
I saw his mother at the front door calling him inside. She sounded anxious and mad.
“They found him on a rooftop … Yonge Street … a massage parlor … under some boards, drowned … like garbage.” Manny punched the words into the still summer air. He shrugged his shoulders then, wide-eyed, whispered, “He’s dead.”
I didn’t need to ask
who
was dead.
“Mannelinho!” his mother wailed.
Manny jumped up all five steps of his porch and the screen door slammed behind him as he disappeared into his house.
Stunned, I pedaled my way home. I found myself in our unfinished basement. The floor was concrete,
painted in battleship gray, and the walls were covered with wood-paneled wainscoting. It was an open space with exposed joists, and it was partitioned by function. At the far end was the laundry area with washing machine and double laundry tub; across from it was the stove—every self-respecting Portuguese had a kitchen in the basement. The rest of the basement had an old backseat of a Chevy my father brought home one day and a console television that stood next to the doorway to our
adega
, where the fat-bellied oak barrels rested on their wooden blocks. An old hospital sheet with three blue lines on it marked the entry to this spot.
I flicked on the TV and sat back on the seat, where the backs of my legs stuck to the leather. In a daze I rolled down my tube socks and scratched the itchy red ring that encircled my shins and calves. My socks had been held up all day long by elastic bands that my mother kept in a small bag in a drawer. I rubbed the groove that had been carved into my leg.
We didn’t have cable, only CBC and, depending on the weather, channel 7, which was 79 on the second dial. Anita Bryant strolled through an orange grove in her shiny white dress and perfectly coiffed hair. She looked so different from the woman who was leading the Save Our Children campaign. “And remember, breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.” I could feel my sister move behind the couch, and when I looked back I saw she had a towel wound like a genie’s turban on her head.
“She should have stuck to selling oranges,” my sister said.
The news resumed. My sister sat next to me and tucked her legs under her bum. I leaned into the TV.
“This is the street corner where Emanuel Jaques was last seen. Four days ago he was seen here shining shoes and then disappeared into what many consider the cesspool of the city, Yonge Street. Reports suggest that he and his brother and friend were approached by a man …”
Terri unwrapped the towel to scrunch up her wet hair and I could smell the Ivory soap.
“Emanuel’s older brother alleges a man asked … thirty-five dollars.” My mind began to wander. “He and his friend to move camera equipment … call home … to see … and upon his return, Emanuel was gone … vanished.” They plastered a picture of the large-eyed boy on the screen. It was all we had seen the last few days. He had a soft face and his smile seemed sincere between the large curls that framed his cheeks. “The search is over. The body of a twelve-year-old boy police have identified as Emanuel Jaques has been found on the rooftop of—”
“Ouch!” I roared. My sister had pinched my thigh.
“Don’t ever go with anyone. Got it?” She moved to turn off the television, but stopped when the hysteric wails of a mother trilled behind the interviewer’s questions. She was speaking Portuguese. I understood the words, what she was saying, the pain and suffering in what could not be translated. It somehow felt too close to home.
I skidded my bike into my uncle’s garage. There wasn’t much left of the pig; only the hind legs remained to be cured as they dangled and twisted from the wooden
rafters. The uncles had whittled away with their saws, and the pieces of meat had been divided: organ bucket, rib bucket, and so on. I was trying to catch my breath so I could tell them the news. I had dropped my bike on the gravel laneway, ignoring the kickstand. Before I could say anything, my Uncle Clemente caught me around the waist, laughed as he tried to shove something in my mouth. The men cheered him on as I squirmed in his hold. My uncle had rammed the pig’s tail in my mouth. Part of it curled around my tongue and the rest lodged in the roof of my mouth. They all laughed as I gagged then spat it out. I stood hunched over, building saliva to spit the taste out of my mouth. They patted me on the back. I was caught off guard. I looked to my father.
“You is a man now,” he whispered, his stubble scraping against my cheek.
I spat the taste out of my mouth, grabbed at my father’s warm wine and threw it hard against the back of my throat. This led to another wave of “
Força!
” and further bouts of approval with “
Um homem.
A man now.”
Everything became blurred by the tears that blanketed my eyeballs. The sounds around me became muted. I scanned the faces with their mouths wide open. I smeared the wine across my lips.
They don’t know yet. They don’t know about Emanuel.
I won’t tell them.
I picked up my bike and sped away.
I will hold on to this, certain it will hurt them.
I rode past all those boarded-up shops on Queen Street, past all the drunks toward Spadina …
My lungs were filled with a burning fire. My throat was dry and their voices grew
nearer, louder: “Treat you good, like one of the boys”
… City Hall and then Yonge Street …
I could hear the thunder of their feet on cement. They clipped my heels and I fell forward with my hands splayed out like spiders. My wrists buckled against the pavement. I looked at my hands, striped with thin lines like red hair
… I rode up the street, passed the neon signs and the dirty curbs that lined the new Eaton Centre …
They touched me with their strong hands. They tugged at my shirt, tore at me as I looked up into a searing sun, and they groped. I wanted to dip my hands into cold water to soothe their burning
… The haunting images left me as I pedaled faster and allowed the breeze to rush up my nose and fill my lungs.
I stopped just above Dundas Street—across the street from a place called Charlie’s Angels that had been cordoned off with yellow tape. I stood there straddling my bike, leaning over my handlebars, and watched along with the news teams, reporters, and everyone else who gathered. Silence. We all seemed to be waiting for something. There were so many people around and yet I felt a reverence, a numbing quiet, alone in a big city I didn’t recognize underneath a blood-orange sun.
I pedaled my way back home, slowly now, and turned up Palmerston Avenue. I don’t know how long I had been away. Everyone should have been outside; the streetlights weren’t on yet.
I’m sure they’ve heard by now.
I pedaled so slowly I was barely moving, fighting to keep my balance as I curved up the sidewalk, grappling the handlebars.
Where is everyone?
I passed one expectant porch after another where plastic crates held empty pop bottles, where rubber mats
awaited muddy shoes, and where the blue-and-white glazed saints,
azulejos
, whispered empty blessings.
My mother moved toward me down the empty street. I could see the white lace of her slip, lit by the moonlight, peeking from the bottom of her dress. As she met me I cowered slightly. She smelled of blood sausages and onions and warm paprika.
“Where did you go? Get in that house, now!” There was fear and anger tinged with relief in her voice.
I walked my bike through our front gate and dropped it on the lawn. The wheel spun slowly in the air.
She drew her sweater tightly across her breasts, tucked her hands under her armpits and then shivered. It wasn’t cold. Once inside I turned to see her look through the screen door before sliding the handle to
LOCK
. Then she closed the front door and did the same. It was the first time I heard the click of the deadbolt.
I lay in bed. The sound of the lock clicking played itself in my head only to be disturbed by the sudden clang of our garage door. Before I heard the familiar sound of his boots, the cadence of his steps climbing the stairs, there was always his smell: pig fat, Craven A cigarettes, and the sweetness of homemade wine. The same smell that would drift from laneways and garages, years later, to find me in my bed.
As he walked in I saw his face; it was shiny, pinkish-red like the skin underneath a scab. He sat by my bed with his face covered in droplets of sweat. He looked away for one moment and rocked forward as if he’d thought better of it and would leave.
I inhaled.
He sat back down again, looking out my open window. He turned to face me, opened his mouth to say something but stopped. I could see his tired eyes. He reached over and carefully brushed my hair from my forehead with his thick fingers. I didn’t want him to cry.
“You not hurt?” He took another deep breath. He was about to say something else, but instead got up. “Close you light,” he mumbled. Then he quietly shut the door behind him.
JULY 1
, 1978
8:40
A.M
. If I pressed my forehead against the mesh screen of my bedroom window, craned my neck and looked down at a certain angle, I could see my father on the veranda with his little straw hat, a Sam Sneed, perched on his head, his red-and-white striped shirt—short-sleeved, of course—and his plaid pants that the kids on the street jokingly called “all seasons,” like the tires. His slippered feet balanced on the wrought-iron railing as he tied the flag to the pole. The tip of the flag swept against the edge of the bathtub, standing upright on one end to form an enameled alcove, the focal point of our garden. Jesus stood inside it, all two feet of him, clutching at his plump Sacred Heart amid the strewn plastic flowers. With the door and windows already open, my
father moved to the living room, turned on the large console stereo—the kind that also contained a mirrored miniature bar behind a drop-leaf panel—and placed the single on the turntable. He set the volume to
HIGH
.
My mother had secretly stored her figurines safely in her linen drawer the night before, afraid they would scooch slowly along the vibrating furniture and smash onto her parquet floors. My sister had left before my father got up. She had arranged a sleepover with her friend Margaret. My mother would also be leaving; she “needed” to help her sister season the meat for
chouriço.
There was the initial scratch and pop of the needle hitting vinyl because of his already unsteady hand. He appeared on the veranda, just in time.
O Canada!
Our home and native land!
True patriot love in all thy sons command.
He stood there for the whole song, stiff and serious, his hand crossed over his heart. Then he sat in his folding chair with a Molson Ex in hand. It was quite a sight: the little man, his mismatched attire, wrapped in his adopted patriotism as the anthem blared from our windows and out our door onto Palmerston Avenue. It had become his annual Canada Day ritual—his alone.
My mother was in her room. “You’ll be okay?” she yelled over the horns and tubas as she wrapped her kerchief around her head. I nodded then looked down at my bare feet; I hadn’t even dressed yet. She lifted my chin gently with her index finger curled like a comma.
“Are you sure you want to stay? Maybe you want to come with me!” she shouted.
I reminded her that I was twelve—almost thirteen—and that I could take care of things. I was leaving, I tried to convince her, to go play at Manny’s house. I gently guided her down the hall toward the kitchen and the sliding doors. She hesitated for a moment, looked over my shoulder to see my father leaning over the fence, tapping his feet from one side to the next. The blaring music was becoming too much already. She gnashed her teeth through a strained smile then shuffled her way out the back door, out through the garage. She decided to take the long route through the laneway. It was probably best.
My mother and sister would both be gone the whole day. I decided to stay upstairs in my room, looking at my digital clock with its orange numbers, willing the day to wilt away. I would arrange my Star Wars cards yet again—Chewbacca at the front of the deck, Princess Leia at the back. I was getting too old for them but in a strange way they comforted me, and I knew they’d be worth something one day. When I got bored I flipped open my sketch pad and drew objects in my room: a chair, the rumpled sheets on my bed. I tried a perspective drawing of my room that got smaller with every failed attempt.
The 45 was set on
REPEAT
. The arm of the turntable, with its taped penny for added weight, moved slowly to its rest position; denied its reprieve, it then jerked and swung back over the record and into the fine grooves.
… With glowing hearts we see thee rise
,
The True North strong and free!
10:03
A.M
. If the couple of years were any indication, he would continue this way for the better part of the day with few interruptions: to get another beer, a glass of wine, or to shed an article of clothing in the growing July heat. At one point that morning I ventured into the kitchen to pour myself a glass of milk.