by Ian Williams
Is the current francophilia just displaced anglophilia? Is any attraction toward a European colonizing power a cover for self-loathing? I’m not online researching houses in Morocco or Haiti or any former French colony with Black people, though I’d be less conspicuous in these places. I would never be an ogre among Black people. Yet I instinctively cast my future self as an ogre in France over a human in Guadeloupe. Is it possible that I can no longer live outside white contact, even at the price of a reduced life? It troubles me that an unexamined “good life” for me as a Black man means living alone or living white. Furthermore, the effect of living in the West so long is that isolation in the name of sanity is easier than integration.
My desire for France deflates upon this realization. I imagine the neighbours chasing me through the village with pitchforks, crying out, Nègre, Nègre. And when I correct them in my timid French, they are unable to see me as having more than an infant’s intelligence, which, in their opinion, is more confirmation than rebuttal of what I am. I close my laptop for the night.
* * *
—
I’m ashamed to say it, but a few days later I’m back on the French real estate site.
I think I’ve figured out what’s so appealing. As a Black man in France, sure, I’d still be visible, even more detectable because of my nervous French. But the flip side of that hypervisibility is that I’d be forced to reduce the surfaces of contact with the outside world. My language skills would prevent me from any engagement with complex subjects, would render me unable to hear, except by tone, the disapproval expressed about my being.
I make myself a cute little avatar on the real estate site. I choose my hair, my eyebrows, my complexion, my clothes. I set up alerts for isolated properties. I save properties to my favourites. There’s a stone barn on the Spanish border, way up in the Pyrenees. No neighbours. I could renovate it into a house, no? I wind up the courage to write the real estate agent in French for more info. No answer. I write other agents. No answer. I write one agent three times, through different channels, and no reply. Out of a dozen queries, I get two replies. Maybe it’s a sign that I shouldn’t spend my savings on becoming an ogre.
* * *
—
I’m writing all these agents and not getting much feedback, which makes me wonder, Is there so much demand for these properties that potential buyers can be ignored? No, the houses stay on the market for a long time. Is my French incomprehensible? No, my partner proofread some messages. Is there a strike in France? Is it because I mentioned I was Canadian and they didn’t want to deal with a foreign speculator? Is my name too English? Is there something wrong with me? You see how events that might seem innocent to white people always have another layer with us? Maybe my avatar with the dark skin might be causing realtors to ignore me.
So I go back to my profile and choose new skin, eyes, and hair. Presto, I am now a white man. This is my version of the dating site experiment where a Black woman used the same description but different names and profile photos (Hadiya as a Black woman vs. Jessica as a white woman). You can guess which profile attracted more responses. But I can’t go through with the race baiting. I just can’t. Within a day, my moral senses are tingling. Race switching feels dishonest, no doubt, but mostly it feels like a betrayal of my own life and my people, in the name of experiment. In the end, I erase my face altogether.
After becoming invisible, surrendering myself to the imagination of the realtors, whose default client would probably be white, I get two responses. Quick and casual, to be fair, but still, someone saw me.
The angry Black man restrains himself.
Back in reality, the moving company is also ignoring my e-mails. The movers are scheduled to arrive at my place in Vancouver in a few days, but I need some information to coordinate my travel to Toronto. I call the company.
When will my furniture arrive in Toronto? I ask.
We can’t tell you that, the service agent says.
Huh?
I mean, we can’t give you an exact date. We can only give you a range.
Okay.
You’re looking at four to eighteen days.
Lady, you crazy, I think. But I ask, Anything narrower?
Well, we’ll know once the driver’s on the road. We’ll call you forty-eight hours before arrival.
I explain to her that I need to book a flight and make arrangements, so forty-eight hours doesn’t give me enough time to beam myself from Vancouver to Toronto.
That’s the best we can do, she says.
And what if I’m not there in time?
Then, I’m sorry, we’ll have to charge you a re-delivery fee.
* * *
—
I book a flight for day 12 of the four-to-eighteen-day range. When the new owners take possession of my condo, I spend a week in Victoria so I can continue working in relative comfort. I arrange to have my new place in Toronto cleaned. I call the moving company for an update. Your furniture will leave Vancouver this week, but we can’t tell you when exactly it will arrive. I board my flight. I stay at an Airbnb in Toronto for two nights. I call the company. Still four to eighteen days. I clean the empty condo again. I have Internet installed. I move into the empty condo. I buy a patio set from Craigslist. I position it in a corner of the living area. I eat my meals here. I Zoom-teach my classes here. I sleep on the floor in the bedroom with my puffy coat under my hip for padding. I call, but I have a hard time reaching the moving company. A week passes. Two weeks pass. It’s been almost three weeks since I left Vancouver. I e-mail the moving company on Thursday. The truck will arrive on Sunday! I try to reserve the elevator. We need more notice, the building manager says. And we do not permit Sunday moves. We’re sorry. Everyone is so sorry but not troubled.
* * *
—
What sustains me throughout this time is the recourse to leave a bad review of the company on multiple sites. The thought literally warms me at night.
* * *
—
Day 22. I finally reach the moving company. I explain that my building needs more notice to arrange a security guard and the elevator for moves.
The service agent says, I sent you a message with the Sunday delivery date.
That’s not everything, I say. My building doesn’t allow Sunday moves. And even so, you sent me a date but not a time range. I need a window to reserve the elevator. I can’t reserve it for the whole day. And I need ninety-six hours’ notice, according to building policy.
She says, You can’t expect us to know how much notice you need. Each building is different.
I say, You’ll have to re-deliver.
She says, There will be storage costs and re-delivery charges, because we have to subcontract this out.
I am holding the phone with one hand and clamping my forehead with the other. Listen, I say. I’ve been trying to be flexible [cough, not an angry Black man] from the beginning of this process, but now your company is really straining my patience. On your end, please arrange re-delivery for Monday or Tuesday. On my end, I will book the elevator and arrange security. Those are our respective responsibilities in this transaction. I’m fulfilling mine. Please handle your business.
The customer service agent is quiet. I feel a surge of power after the machismo of my monologue. But it’s not real power. It’s just adrenaline, and adrenaline short-circuits me. If I don’t sit down soon, I’ll black out.
I ask, When can I expect to hear from you with a confirmation?
* * *
—
DO NOT use this company unless you’re moving to an alternate dimension where time has no meaning. I’ve been waiting for my furniture so long that I’ve forgotten the colour of my couch. You’d have better luck putting all your belongings in a spoon and walking across the country. Plus they’ll slap you with various hidden charges and staggeringly poor communication
. The reps won’t answer your e-mails or return your call for days. I wish I could draw a skull and crossbones across their logo. BEWARE!!!
I fantasize about incinerating the company with as much fire as anonymity allows.
* * *
—
It’s not a rant, I tell myself. I have a moral responsibility to review this company. I must warn others. I liken myself to all the social media social justice warriors who bear witness, who record state violence, who are vocal about holding people accountable for injustice. Is this not an injustice?
I hesitate before clicking Submit. If my review is not about rage, then it’s about authority. Leaving a negative review wrests power from the perpetrator and turns it over to the victim. The reviewer has the power to open a trap door and feed the one who is reviewed to the gators. Click Submit, says my left shoulder.
A tiny voice on my right shoulder, my Christian conscience, says, You’ve had your fun, Ian. You’ve vented. Don’t click. I hear a replay of my voice during the phone conversation. My voice turns into a cold prairie when I’m angry. (I don’t get angry.) (Not the way people recognize anger.) (I get irritated when dealing with nonsense, bureaucracy, policy.) The voice comes out when I’m doing business alongside my mother and she is not being taken seriously, when adjustments that are possible for others, like being reimbursed with store credit, are not extended to her. The voice comes out when I’m passed around like chattel among call centre representatives. The voice is controlled, logical, academic, surgical. It burns, but it’s ice, not fire. I go from being a Black man to being a person with rights to being a machine.
My partner has a similar voice. I first heard it when we were in a sub shop and she was trying to fix her mother’s roof from a different country and time zone. It’s the voice of immigrant children advocating for a family member against a corporate representative. And more than that, it speaks on behalf of people who have been wronged by a network of systems that refuses to co-operate with our kind.
It is the voice that refuses to submit to anonymity, that stands up, swollen and bloody-mouthed, after being knocked down.
Canadian Idol
People rank moving as the most stressful life event, ahead of divorce and having children, and they rank public speaking as the greatest fear, ahead of death. I don’t know if I believe that. I just know I have no furniture, I’ve been wearing the same clothes for days, there’s a pandemic raging, it’s literary festival season, and I have an event with Margaret Atwood in a few days.
I’ve met Atwood a few times. At a lunch event, when my collection of poetry, Personals, was shortlisted for the Griffin Prize, she put her hand on my shoulder, all atwinkle, and said, I enjoyed your reading last night. We met again when I was up for the Giller Prize. At the gala, I was at one table with my people and she was seated at the next table with her people. I asked her people for a photo with her, and they took the message via cupped hand into her ear and she beckoned me over. I won the prize later that night and dissolved into a total fanboy onstage when I saw her smiling up at me from her table.
Now, a festival in Calgary is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary by pairing authors for conversation. They asked me who would be my dream partner.
Margaret Atwood, I said.
Let’s see what we can do, they said.
Atwood agreed.
The evening before the event, I watch a CBC documentary that begins with a montage of Atwood walking onto stages around the world to the adoration of crowds. “She’s a cultural and literary rock star,” says the voice-over.
The morning of the event, there’s still no furniture in my place. It’s been twenty-four days since I left Vancouver, fifteen since I last slept in a bed or sat in a comfortable chair. My set-up for the event is a bookcase turned on its side. My laptop sits on a tool box to raise it to eye level. I take a shower, I put on a turtleneck, and wait in the virtual green room.
Atwood shows up on time, wearing red. Even her glasses are red. My brain involuntarily runs a search of all the times red appears in her work: the red shirt, a red fox, red smocks on the handmaids. I decide red must be her favourite colour. The room behind her is softly lit. I can’t discern the purpose of the room. It’s a sitting, living, reading, meeting, office room. She notices there is nothing behind me. She wants to know why. I explain that I’m moving. I tell her about the delays with the moving company.
Do you have a bed, Ian?
I have a sleeping bag.
Do you have a pot?
One. I have a knife too. And cutlery. I’m okay.
As I explain the moving situation, she gets progressively more disturbed by the course of events. Her line of questioning is insistent, her attention dizzying—downright disorienting. She is not loud or forceful in the least, but when her attention is on me, I am unable to steer the conversation away from her curiosity. Hers is the kind of magnetism where you are not so much captivated as held captive until she decides to release you.
They said they’d deliver in four to eighteen days, I say. Now we’re on day 24.
Her mouth drops a little. What’s the name of this company? she demands.
I hesitate.
Do you want me to make a phone call to these people?
No, no, I say. But I bet you’re very good at being taken seriously. I’m sure you’d be able to get things done.
Have you dragged them on Twitter?
Not my style.
Where do you live?
I tell her.
I know someone in the area. They can deliver some food to you.
I can’t take charity.
It’s not charity. It’s just food.
Still, I can’t. But thank you.
My armpits are wet. I’m glad I’m wearing a dark colour. It’s not that I don’t have money. I could set myself up in relative comfort, but habits of frugality are hard to shake. Why buy another plate when I have plates in the back of a truck?
She asks again, slowly: Do you want me to make a phone call, Ian?
The way she asks, like the Godfather, shoots panic through me.
I say, Please don’t. Please. You’re putting me in the position of defending my oppressors.
She tenses her lips. Maybe it’s a smile.
I’m afraid of what you’d do to them, I say. And I want my stuff delivered undamaged.
* * *
—
The public conversation goes well. Atwood is her usual witty, assured self. I drop my voice when I call her Margaret. I really want to say, Ms. Atwood, but she has set a tone for the evening that would make such formality comical. She has practically offered everyone a drink. Stay, relax, get comfortable, she is saying. Let me tell you a story.
She tells stories about editing poets I read in the library stacks. She has been around long enough to relate to everything I say. I read a poem about forgetting. She reads one about remembering. I talk about wearing one pair of Velcro shoes throughout my PhD. She talks about bell-bottoms and beehives and miniskirts. The moderator asks us what we were doing when we were twenty-five. I was about to start a job in Massachusetts and discover what being a Black man in America was all about. She nods. She tells a story about going for a walk in Cambridge and ending up at a Vietnam protest.
This event takes place the week after her eighty-first birthday.
How old are you? she asks me on air.
Forty-one, I say. Half your age.
Oh, you’re young. You think you’re old, but you’re not.
I wonder if she means wise. The unsent moving company review flashes through my head.
By the time she was my age, she had written, without exaggeration, about twenty books. I have written five. This one here is book six.
She tells us that when she was around my age, she moved seventeen times in one decade.
My mind skips back t
o her concern in the green room. She wants to free my furniture. In my head, a baritone sings, Go Down, Moses. Let my furniture go. (Onscreen, in a display of impressive flexibility, she pulls her feet into view and, lo, she’s wearing red Santa Claus slippers. Red. Confirmed.) The person she is onscreen confirms what I admire about the person she is in my imagination: a natural ire rises up in her at injustice, small or great. We could call this being principled or holding the world accountable to principles. If you say that you are going to deliver furniture by a certain time, deliver it by that time. It’s that quality of being principled, writ large, that translates into her feminism and commitment to environmental conservation. Writ small, it translates into alleviating inconveniences. The difference between Atwood and me lies somewhere in this point. I am prepared to suffer. I expect a certain measure of it. She is prepared to change things.
Case in point, there’s a time lag afflicting the event moderator. In the silences, I lean my ear toward the monitor, urging him to speak. Atwood fills the silences to give the moderator language.
* * *
—
After the event, we’re in the green room again. She asks if I will be okay.
Yes.
Are you sure? Do you want a care package? Or an onion? Just say the word.
I have onions.
When she says good night, the darkness behind her seems enormous.
I cannot ask the questions that spring to mind as she is slipping away. They are too delicate. How does she sleep since her partner, Graeme Gibson, died? I mean the question quite literally. On which side of the bed? Does she still keep his pillow there? At what point does his smell leave the mattress, the room, the house?