No Going Back

by Sheena Kamal

  Dedication

  For my mother

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Part 1 1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  Part 2 15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  Part 3 33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  Part 4 43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  Part 5 53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  58

  Part 6 59

  60

  61

  62

  63

  64

  65

  66

  67

  68

  69

  70

  71

  72

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Sheena Kamal

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Part 1

  1

  Agents search me at the Canadian border. Of course they do, those fascists.

  What exactly is suspicious about a woman traveling alone by bus from Detroit and into Canada with no luggage, I ask you?

  Well, put that way, maybe it’s fair, but an entire bus is held up while the border agents in their ill-fitting uniforms conduct a physical search of my person and ask me questions verging on the intimate. Intimacy and I aren’t well acquainted, so the questioning stalls for some time.

  “How long were you in the United States?” the female agent asks again, starting from the beginning. She’s likely doing this for the benefit of her supervisor, who has decided to join the party. Though the woman is older, they both look like poster children for the SS, with their blond good looks and their belief in harassing citizens of the country they’re supposed to be guarding.

  I tell them what they want to know, even though the information is stamped right there in my passport. My voice breaks from the cold. It’s freezing, even inside the checkpoint. Raindrops spatter the windows, and outside I can see the wind kicking up fallen leaves. Sending them dancing. The damp and the gray remind me of Vancouver, my city, but the biting cold tells me I’m far from home.

  “And what was the purpose of your trip?” she asks.

  I shake myself back to the present and try to focus. But it’s difficult. We’ve been through all this before. This is how they get you: a constant stream of repetition until you change your story out of sheer boredom.

  But I’ve been questioned by fascists before, and I know their game.

  “My father grew up in Detroit. I went to visit his childhood home,” I tell them. I don’t say that he was a child of the Sixties Scoop, a program where thousands of indigenous children from Canada were adopted out of their communities. I’m not sure if cultural genocide is covered in their cross-border orientation handbooks.

  The agent doesn’t believe me. Her supervisor is too busy sending me a threatening glare to notice the subtle shift of my body, the tension around my mouth. My patience is at an end. They’re either going to do a more thorough physical search or not. The words strip and cavity come to mind. I have never liked being touched by strangers, and the idea of having my cavities inspected verges on the obscene.

  Maybe this is why I try to explain myself, for once.

  “My father died a long time ago,” I say. “Someone he used to know showed up on my radar recently, and I had some questions. I thought I’d go to Detroit to learn more about my dad’s life.” And his death. But that’s another story entirely. “I wasn’t planning to stay more than a couple days, but the trip took a little longer than I expected.”

  I hear a door open and feel a blast of icy air on my nape. I look over my shoulder to see who’s behind me. Whether or not anyone new has come into the station. It’s an unconscious gesture, but a telling one.

  One that they’ve noticed.

  They exchange glances. “Looking for someone?” says the woman.

  “No.” My attention moves from the man in the blue toque who’s just walked in, the man who was sitting near the middle of the bus we were both on, and snags on the agent’s latex gloves. I begin to imagine where those gloved hands might be going shortly. Which cavity they might start with first. I’m sweating now, despite the chill in the air.

  The supervisor steps forward and speaks for the first time. His voice is deep and smooth, like the singer of a forgettable jazz band. He looks over my passport. “Nora Watts,” he says, drawing out the syllables. Is he trying to be sexy? If he is, it isn’t working. “Did you find what you needed in Detroit, Ms. Watts?”

  “I found that my father is as dead as he’s ever been. Life moves on, and so should I.”

  “What’s wrong with your voice?” The supervisor notices for the first time how rough it is. How it sounds like it’s been scraped up from my diaphragm and shoved through my throat.

  “Laryngitis.”

  “You say you live in Vancouver but you’re going to Toronto. Why there instead of back home?” The supervisor takes over the questioning now, which is a plus. He seems more reasonable to me right about now, given the choice between him and the woman with the gloves. And I’m starting to enjoy the jazz voice.

  “My daughter,” I say. “I’m going to see my daughter.”

  The real question here is: Will my daughter want to see me?

  They step aside to decide my fate. I try to look more like a fine and upstanding citizen, though my wardrobe and shabby appearance are telling a different story. That maybe I’m not so fine, definitely not upstanding, and it’s possible I don’t even have laryngitis.

  I look like a woman on the run from her enemies.

  A fair assessment, because that’s exactly what I am.

  Part of me wants to tell them that my father’s bloodline goes back to this land before their ancestors even had the thought to come here, but the other part reminds me that my mother was an immigrant from the Middle East, and I may not want to pull that particular thread right now.

  A baby in the waiting room begins to cry, putting everyone on edge. The baby’s brother, who looks to be about six, tries to get their mother’s attention, but she’s too busy searching through her bag for something to distract her crying child. Toque Man gives the maybe six-year-old a chummy smile.

  As the infant continues to bawl, I stare at the gloves and the female agent’s long, thick fingers. Imagining where they might go if I’m not persuasive enough.

  In the end, they let me back through to my country of birth with my cavities intact.

  Back on the bus, some of my body heat returns. The bus heaves into motion, and I leave Detroit behind. Finally. With the greatest relief, I watch the scenery fly by outside the window.

  Oh, Canada.

  I relax, thinking I’m in the clear because the Ambassador Bridge is in the rearview mirror.

  The relaxation doesn’t last for very long.

  Toque Man is s
itting directly behind the six-year-old’s mother, where he’s been ever since we first boarded the bus in America. She and the infant have the seat in front of him. The six-year-old is across the aisle. Whenever the boy turns to look at his mom, he sees Toque Man. With the bus only a quarter full, the man’s choice of seating is unthinkable. Nobody wants to travel in such close proximity to a young family. Nobody but this guy. At the border, I was too far away to hear what he was saying when his passport was checked, but I know whatever it was, he wasn’t being honest. His posture was relaxed, his smile a little too easy. Practiced.

  It was the same way he’d smiled at the little boy.

  I don’t like it at all.

  I’m trying to keep my eyes open, to pay attention to the middle of the bus. We’re barely across the border when there’s a distraction I hadn’t anticipated.

  The radio comes on.

  It’s playing a song I recognize, one that I have sung. The song follows me into Windsor and then past it. I have left Detroit behind, but there’s that damn tune in my head—and now it’s on the radio, too. Sung by an unsigned soul artist and a former blues singer caught unawares on the airwaves, the song is a tribute to a relationship heading for the rocks. A call and response. It’s a good song, maybe even a great one, but it isn’t the kind of thing you hear on the radio anymore.

  Do people suddenly give a shit about independent artists? I’m as surprised as anyone.

  The bus sputters on the highway, and for a moment my fellow passengers are jolted into a collective prayer that we won’t break down here, not when we’re so close to our destination.

  I don’t know their reasons for the journey, but mine are pure and decent, for once. I may have lied about the laryngitis, but everything else is depressingly true. I am on my way to see the daughter I’d given up for adoption as an infant, Bonnie. She’s seventeen now. We have not had much of a relationship up until this point, but I’m hoping to change that. I have made sacrifices to cross the border from America into Toronto to see her and to explain that the decision to let her go was made from a place of hurt. But I want to try to have a relationship now. If she’ll let me.

  The radio host comes on after the song finishes and informs the listening audience that the man on the record is one Nate Marlowe, a soul singer who is lying in a hospital bed, fighting for his life from a gunshot wound. A bullet struck him in the lung. Various complications have left him in critical condition. Nobody knows if he will make it, but the country seems invested in his recovery.

  A young black man lost to senseless violence, says the host.

  Far too good-looking to die so young, implies his cohost.

  The authorities have apprehended two young gang members who, it is suspected, went to Nate’s house with the intention of killing another person. He was a casualty in someone else’s vendetta. They think the female singer on the hook and the second verse was the real target of the hit. It annoys me, but they’re right to speculate. She was the target. Nate Marlowe got in the way of a bullet meant for her heart.

  I know this because the mystery woman on the record is me.

  I check the urge to look behind me because the instinct is getting ridiculous now. It almost got my cavities inspected back at that station.

  Toronto is an ugly city, I think, as we drive through it. Better-looking than Detroit, but it can’t compare in any way to Vancouver, which is the city where I parked my dog, Whisper. She’s in good hands, but they’re not mine, and I can feel her longing for me through the miles that separate us. I can’t wait to return to her, even going so far as to imagine our reunion and that silky patch of fur behind her ears.

  What I don’t imagine is the reunion that I’m about to have with Bonnie.

  My daughter.

  Jesus.

  Here goes.

  2

  A hitch in the plan. There’s a traffic jam in Toronto that’s put us behind schedule. What a surprise.

  In addition to the existing afternoon parking lot that is the downtown core, apparently the British royals are in town, where the latest power couple allegedly fell in love. Folks have lost their minds, they’re so excited. Crowds gathering just for a glimpse of two people. Attractive people, but still. No amount of beauty is worth the crush of bodies on the street and the general lack of respect for personal space.

  Finally, we arrive at the bus station. As I disembark, a group of elderly women walk by wearing the most garish little hats I’ve ever seen. Someone near me whispers that the hat monstrosities are called fascinators, but that’s just ridiculous. I don’t see a fascinating thing about them.

  Distracting, yes.

  It’s because of these women in the hats that I lose sight of the mother and her two children.

  As I move through the station, I keep an eye out for the young family. For a moment, I think they’re gone, but then I see them up ahead. The mom pauses by the door to take a phone call as the crowd surges past them. The baby is in a carrier strapped to the front of her body, and the boy is holding her free hand. The pacifier slips from the baby’s mouth, and she lets go of the boy’s hand for a moment to put it back in.

  It happens so quickly.

  The boy moves away, and in a split second, he’s out the door. I sprint through those doors and see Toque Man, with his hood up now, pulling the boy across the street. There are so many people around. Now that I’m outside, I shout for help. For the man to stop. People turn and stare, look to where I’m pointing. A few of them catch on and start running toward the boy, too.

  The man drops the boy’s hand and takes off. He turns a corner and is out of sight. I turn the corner, too, but see nothing but a throng of people in the way. I don’t know this city well enough to anticipate where he would have gone, so I head back.

  When the first bystanders get to the child, he’s crying.

  By this time, the mother is outside, too. She’s holding the baby and running toward her son. There’s a look of intense relief on her face, but even from a distance I can see she’s still frightened.

  I watch as she’s reunited with her child, as some of the other bystanders try to explain to her what they saw. A couple of people remember that I’m the one who sounded the alarm and gesture toward me, but I move back, toward the edge of the crowd.

  A jogger in skintight running gear is staring at me. “Aren’t you the one who—”

  “No,” I say.

  I’m not sure if she believes me, but thankfully she shrugs and turns back toward the scene unfolding in front of us.

  When the first police officers arrive, I feel comfortable enough to slip away. The boy will tell them about the man from the bus. The bystanders will confirm the description, and they will find this man and hopefully put him behind bars, where he belongs. I could stick around and share my side of things, but what’s the point? They’ll just have more questions, and I’ve had enough of those for today.

  Besides, I don’t talk to cops.

  As I walk away, I take one last look at the young mother. The police are leading her back to the station. She’s clutching both her children to her, and it looks as though she’ll never let them go again. Good. Her gaze skips past me, not recognizing me from the bus. That’s good, too. I have my own child to deal with.

  It’s cold and I’m suddenly very hungry. I could eat a steak but settle for a grilled cheese sandwich and a cup of watery coffee from a deli nearby. In the bathroom I wash my face and finger-comb my hair. I wince at the reflection in the mirror. Is this the face an estranged daughter would want to see? Maybe not, but it’s the best I can do under the circumstances.

  I wait for the streets to thin out and then head for the Queen streetcar. On the streetcar I stop thinking about that boy’s near miss and try to focus on Bonnie. Toronto meanders by at a slow crawl. With the past few days I’ve had, not to mention the adrenaline high and eventual slump after today’s events, my body just about shuts down.

  I’m so lulled by the movement of the streetcar
that I fall asleep and miss my stop. The driver wakes me up at the station and asks me if I’m alright. I would tell him the truth, but he doesn’t look like he can handle it. I just nod and say yes. A few minutes later we’re on our way back.

  It’s fall in Toronto, the season only just beginning to turn frigid, which is what may have effected the sudden chill in Bonnie’s posture. She’s a teenager, but all the self-importance and spitfire that go with that age have momentarily deserted her.

  We’re standing in front of each other, this girl and I, for the first time in our lives. Face-to-face, and neither of us is unconscious. An improvement.

  She’s leaner than she’d been a year ago, at least from what I saw in photos. Tougher, too, given the suspicious look she threw in my direction when she first saw me, before she recognized me. Ah, those eyes. There is no denying they are mine, dark and fathomless. I try to read her, but I can’t.

  This is normally what I’m very good at.

  Observing people, seeing what’s beneath their surfaces, what they keep buried. But Bonnie remains a mystery. Some people say that you can never know your children, which might be true.

  There is so much I want to say to this young woman, this teenager.

  “Nora? What are you . . . is this about the tattoo?” Bonnie says, to cover her shock.

  “What tattoo?”

  She doesn’t answer for a moment. Then, her voice low with urgency, she tells me about the tattoo she remembers from the time she was kidnapped over a year ago. “I can’t get it out of my head. I draw it all the time. It makes me feel like I did back then, when they took me. Like someone’s always watching,” she says.

  “Have you told your parents about this?”

  She shakes her head. “No. It’s just a feeling, right? I don’t want to freak my mom out.” She’s scared but doesn’t want anyone else to be.

  This caution, the instinct for silence . . . I guess there must be some connection between us after all.

  All my hopes of what this reunion could be fall away, and now I’m scared, too, though my fear means almost nothing. I have lived with it for far too long. It has made a home inside me, and I have come to expect it.